The distraught heroine finds it hard to trust the motives of Brian, Wendy's high school boyfriend, or Prof. The killer, not content with hitting a single target, locks Phaedra in an uninhabited house's coal cellar shortly after she rescues Victoria Sutton, the administrative assistant to real estate broker Brian Callahan, from the bottom of a well.

And she was pretty clearly blackmailing Rollo Barron, a Richmond Times-Dispatch journalist whose review of her latest, The Duplicitous Duke, morphed literally overnight from a pan to a paean. Harriet had trashed technical editor Felicity Penrose's attempt to write a romance novel years ago. Her henpecked husband, Tom Overton, was a college archer before his marriage made him a worm ripe for turning. All the guests had ample opportunity to kill her, and most of them have motives. Phaedra's carefully crafted plot is promptly upstaged by the unknown party who shoots overbearing Regency romance novelist Harriet Overton dead with an arrow. Phaedra Brighton, of Somerset University, hatches the idea of sponsoring a seven-day event that will attract Austen fans from across Virginia, assign them roles in a climactic staging of Persuasion, encourage them to dress in period costume and inhabit their characters during the run-up, and dole out clues as to which character is going to kill which. Who'd of thought it? Bent on dissuading her aunt, Wendy Prescott, from selling the struggling Laurel Springs Inn, Prof. moreĪ Jane Austen Murder Mystery week spawns an actual homicide. But with time running out, Phaedra quickly realizes that with this investigation, there will be no second chances'- of cover. With more suspects than she knows what to do with, Phaedra finds herself on the hunt for a killer once again. Until make-believe becomes reality and one of the participants winds up dead. It is a foolproof plan to draw attention to the establishment in the hopes of saving it. In a last-ditch attempt to drum up more business, Phaedra convinces Wendy to host an immersive Persuasion-themed murder-mystery weekend. But when Aunt Wendy decides she is selling Laurel Springs Inn, Phaedra. She needs no Captain Wentworth to sweep her off her feet (though, she would not mind a Mr.

Phaedra Brighton has her life all figured out-she has a profession she enjoys, a wonderful (if exasperating) cat, and a cozy carriage house on the grounds of her aunt's inn.

'Phaedra Brighton is on the case when an innocent murder-mystery weekend turns into the real deal, in the newest Jane Austen Tea Society mystery.

A Murderous Persuasion by Katie Oliver