Murder at the Dowager’s Matchmaking Fête

A Cozy Regency Mystery of Murder, Love & Ghosts

By: Marisa Paxon

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

I am the narrator of this book, which means I have already hauled everyone through every candlelit smile, every petty social skirmish, and one spectacularly ill timed corpse, and now they have decided I should also sell it. Naturally.

Welcome to Penninghurst, where the Dowager Marchioness hosts a matchmaking fête so expensive it could heat a curate for the winter, and so tightly managed it could make a grown man apologise for breathing out of rhythm. Imogen Fairweather arrives as chaperone to her seventeen year old cousin, armed with borrowed silk, a talent for sums, and the sort of practical mind Society finds deeply offensive in a woman. She is meant to keep Charlotte modest, pleasant, and marriageable. Instead, she finds Lavinia Maddingly, widow, rival, and walking scandal, dead in the ladies’ retiring room.

That would be nuisance enough, but Lavinia refuses to stay politely dead. She reappears as a ghostly companion, tethered to Imogen like an unwanted moral improvement, offering commentary, accusations, and absolutely no help whatsoever beyond demanding justice in the most irritatingly entertaining way.

So now Imogen must solve a suspicious death in a house that would rather balance its reputation than its accounts, while the ton looks for someone convenient to blame and the servants quietly rearrange the evidence with practised hands. Luckily, the marquess’s valet, Mr Crowhurst, is the sort of man who can fold linen, secrets, and an entire household’s panic into neat corners, and he keeps turning up with exactly the information Imogen should not be asking for. Try not to swoon. It’s undignified.

Expect a cozy Regency whodunit with a talkative ghost, a scandal threaded through every curtsey, and a clue rich investigation that lands on a satisfying, logical truth, without gore or grit for sport. Also, because humans are hopeless, a closed door, very low heat slow burn romance with a hopeful for now ending insists on happening in the margins.

Perfect for readers who enjoy witty Regency sleuthing, snarky paranormal interference, clever servant side intelligence, and a heroine who solves problems with a ledger and a spine.

It is a complete, stand alone case and you can step in here without homework, unless you count social etiquette as homework, in which case you are already doomed. Go on then, click Look Inside and let me drag you through it properly.