the grenadillo box

This ＂absolutely absorbing＂ Georgian-era mystery ＂blends historical detail with riveting crime drama＂ (Booklist, starred review).

New Year’s Day, 1755. Nathanial Hopson, apprentice to renowned cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale, is called to Cambridge to install a new library in the country home of Lord Montfort. But after a gun goes off during a dinner party at the nobleman’s estate, Montfort is discovered dead on the floor of the library, clutching a lovely carved box of rare grenadillo wood in one hand, a gun discarded near the other. Everyone surmises the death of the ill-humored peer to be a suicide. Everyone, that is, except the discerning Hopson, who is drawn immediately into the investigation. But the bloody business becomes personal when the body of Hopson’s friend is found in the frozen pond on Montfort’s estate. Now the only thing certain is that Hopson’s sleuthing will put him--and the fair beauty aiding his inquiry--in grave danger.

＂Colorful and wildly entertaining, the novel spins enigma after enigma. . . . A wonderful read.＂ --The Guardian

＂An auspicious fiction debut . . . Engaging and enjoyable＂ --The Observer

＂[This] compulsive page-turner . . . will appeal especially to anyone who was spellbound by Charles Palliser’s The Quincunx.＂ --The Daily Mail

＂[Gleeson’s] portrait of Georgian England is masterly and the mystery--enhanced by her unique and unlikely sleuth--enthrallingly complex.＂ --Library Journal

Janet Gleeson is the author of works of fiction and nonfiction which have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her books include The Arcanum, which was Radio Four Book of the Week and a Sunday Times bestseller; The Money Maker; which was serialized Radio Scotland and included in Radio Four Book of the Week’s compilation on the financial crisis; An Aristocratic Affair; The Lifeboat Baronet; as well as three historical crime novels. Gleeson has a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) degree in English and art history from Nottingham University and a Masters from Birkbeck College, University of London. Before starting her writing career, she worked at Sotheby’s and Bonhams as a cataloguer and valuer of old master paintings, and at Reed Books as an editor responsible for many of the Miller’s Antique Collecting Guides. Gleeson has served as an antiques correspondent for House & Garden and written for numerous magazines and newspapers including the Times, Daily Mail, the Literary Review, New Statesman, Apollo, the Antique Collector, and Portcullis, the magazine of the House of Commons. She lives in a medieval barn in Dorset.