Alan Bradley Books In Order

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Winner of the 2007 Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger

A delightfully dark English mystery, featuring precocious young sleuth Flavia de Luce and her eccentric family.

The summer of 1950 hasn t offered up anything out of the ordinary for eleven year old Flavia de Luce: bicycle explorations around the village, keeping tabs on her neighbours, relentless battles with her older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, and brewing up poisonous concoctions while plotting revenge in their home’s abandoned Victorian chemistry lab, which Flavia has claimed for her own.

But then a series of mysterious events gets Flavia s attention: A dead bird is found on the doormat, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. A mysterious late night visitor argues with her aloof father, Colonel de Luce, behind closed doors. And in the early morning Flavia finds a red headed stranger lying in the cucumber patch and watches him take his dying breath. For Flavia, the summer begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw: I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.

Did the stranger die of poisoning? There was a piece missing from Mrs. Mullet s custard pie, and none of the de Luces would have dared to eat the awful thing. Or could he have been killed by the family s loyal handyman, Dogger or by the Colonel himself! At that moment, Flavia commits herself to solving the crime even if it means keeping information from the village police, in order to protect her family. But then her father confesses to the crime, for the same reason, and it s up to Flavia to free him of suspicion. Only she has the ingenuity to follow the clues that reveal the victim s identity, and a conspiracy that reaches back into the de Luces murky past.

A thoroughly entertaining romp of a novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is inventive and quick witted, with tongue in cheek humour that transcends the macabre seriousness of its subject.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag

Flavia de Luce didn’t intend to investigate another murder but, then again, Rupert Porson didn’t intend to die. When the master puppeteer’s van breaks down in Bishop’s Lacey, he puts on a show with his loyal assistant, the disarmingly charming Nialla, prone by Flavia’s estimation to strange bruises and long, solitary cries in graveyards. While Nialla plays Mother Goose, Rupert’s goose gets cooked, the victim of an electrocution that is too perfectly planned to be an accident.

Putting down her sister punishing chemistry experiments and picking up her bicycle, Gladys, Flavia uncovers long buried secrets of Bishop’s Lacey, a seemingly idyllic town that nevertheless has a mad woman living in its woods, a prisoner of war with a soft spot for the English countryside, and two childless parents with a devastating secret. It’s possible Rupert Porson’s van didn’t break down so accidentally in this charming hamlet. It’s possible the police won’t be able to solve his murder most ingenious. It’s possible that his killer may help guide Flavia in way over her eleven year old head, and to a startling discovery that reveals the chemical composition of vengeance.

A Red Herring Without Mustard

Award winning author Alan Bradley returns with another beguiling novel starring the insidiously clever and unflappable eleven year old sleuth Flavia de Luce. The precocious chemist with a passion for poisons uncovers a fresh slew of misdeeds in the hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey mysteries involving a missing tot, a fortune teller, and a corpse in Flavia s own backyard. Flavia had asked the old Gypsy woman to tell her fortune, but never expected to stumble across the poor soul, bludgeoned in the wee hours in her own caravan. Was this an act of retribution by those convinced that the soothsayer had abducted a local child years ago? Certainly Flavia understands the bliss of settling scores; revenge is a delightful pastime when one has two odious older sisters. But how could this crime be connected to the missing baby? Had it something to do with the weird sect who met at the river to practice their secret rites? While still pondering the possibilities, Flavia stumbles upon another corpse that of a notorious layabout who had been caught prowling about the de Luce s drawing room. Pedaling Gladys, her faithful bicycle, across the countryside in search of clues to both crimes, Flavia uncovers some odd new twists. Most intriguing is her introduction to an elegant artist with a very special object in her possession a portrait that sheds light on the biggest mystery of all: Who is Flavia? As the red herrings pile up, Flavia must sort through clues fishy and foul to untangle dark deeds and dangerous secrets. From the Hardcover edition.

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

It’s Christmastime, and the precocious Flavia de Luce an eleven year old sleuth with a passion for chemistry and a penchant for crime solving is tucked away in her laboratory, whipping up a concoction to ensnare Saint Nick. But she is soon distracted when a film crew arrives at Buckshaw, the de Luces decaying English estate, to shoot a movie starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern. Amid a raging blizzard, the entire village of Bishop s Lacey gathers at Buckshaw to watch Wyvern perform, yet nobody is prepared for the evening s shocking conclusion: a body found, past midnight, strangled to death with a length of film. But who among the assembled guests would stage such a chilling scene? As the storm worsens and the list of suspects grows, Flavia must use every ounce of sly wit at her disposal to ferret out a killer hidden in plain sight.

Ms Holmes of Baker Street: The Truth About Sherlock

Sherlock Holmes strides into our imagination, deerstalker hat jauntily set on his head, pipe protruding from his mouth, and a formidable intellect from which he painstakingly masters the mysteries he investigates. Yet the qualities that set Holmes apart as a masterful sleuth are rather commonplace perhaps even universal in any woman. In a deep investigation of the literature of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, C. Alan Bradley and William A.S. Sarjeant uncover the surprising truth about Sherlock Holmes.

The Shoebox Bible

A beautifully written memoir of a family whose mother stores hope in a shoebox.

As a child, during the cold, dark winter days of the Second World War, the author found hidden beneath a floorboard in his mother’s bedroom closet a well worn cardboard shoebox.

At the time he could make little sense of the ragtag things he found inside: cigarette packages, soup can labels, handbills, calendars, paper bags, pie boxes any scrap of paper upon which his mother could copy out, in her old fashioned handwriting, what seemed to be no more than unrelated snippets of Scripture.

He knew only that the box, which he would later come to think of as The Shoebox Bible, had something to do with the fact that his father had run away from home. Many years would pass, and his mother would be on her deathbed before he would once again hold this treasure in his hands. And only then would he put together the pieces of the puzzle, and learn the complete truth.

Beautifully and lovingly told, The Shoebox Bible is a wonderful memoir of a precocious family who manage to live and love despite the absence of their father.

Interspersed with heartbreaking quotations from the Old and New Testaments, this sad, funny, and above all inspiring story will appeal to readers who fell in love with such inspirational books as Tuesdays with Morrie and Mister God, This Is Anna.

A Study in Sherlock

BESTSELLING AUTHORS GO HOLMES IN AN IRRESISTIBLE NEW COLLECTION edited by award winning Sherlockians Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger Neil Gaiman. Laura Lippman. Lee Child. These are just three of eighteen superstar authors who provide fascinating, thrilling, and utterly original perspectives on Sherlock Holmes in this one of a kind book. These modern masters place the sleuth in suspenseful new situations, create characters who solve Holmesian mysteries, contemplate Holmes in his later years, fill gaps in the Sherlock Holmes Canon, and reveal their own personal obsessions with the Great Detective. Thomas Perry, for example, has Dr. Watson tell his tale, in a virtuoso work of alternate history that finds President McKinley approaching the sleuth with a disturbing request; Lee Child sends an FBI agent to investigate a crime near today’s Baker Street only to get a twenty first century shock; Jacqueline Winspear spins a story of a plucky boy inspired by the detective to make his own deductions; and graphic artist Colin Cotterill portrays his struggle to complete this assignment in his hilarious The Mysterious Case of the Unwritten Short Story. In perfect tribute comes this delicious collection of twisty, clever, and enthralling studies of a timeless icon. Featuring stories from Alan BradleyTony BroadbentJan BurkeLionel ChetwyndLee ChildColin Cotterill Neil GaimanLaura LippmanGayle Lynds & John SheldonPhillip & Jerry MargolinMargaret MaronThomas PerryS. J. RozanDana StabenowCharles ToddJacqueline Winspear print version only