Aunt Dimity digs in

Atherton's Aunt Dimity series is cozy as a warm fire and soothing as a hot cup of tea. Aunt Dimity has been dead for years, of course, but her spirit lives on in the rose-covered cottage and the blue notebooks she's bequeathed to her niece Lori. Whenever Lori's baffled, she opens the magic notebooks, and Aunt Dimity's handwriting appears, offering pithy advice. Lately, Lori has her hands full with her four-month-old twin sons. Fortunately, a nanny appears on her doorstep just when Lori's amateur sleuthing skills are in demand: the vicar discovers a valuable document missing from his study, townsfolk report witches in the meadow, a visiting archaeologist digs up some malicious gossip, and an all-out war among the Harvest Festival planners seems imminent. Fortunately, Lori's gift for unraveling even the most challenging mystery pays off, leaving villagers at peace and the new nanny happily in love. Sweet, heartwarming fare for all British cozy fans. --Emily Melton

Aunt Dimity, the ghost with the flowing handwriting, returns for a fourth outing with her living partner, Lori Shepherd, in this fluffy village cozy. Now living in England, Lori and her lawyer husband, Bill Willis, have welcomed twin boys, swelling the mostly retired population of Finch. Living in the cottage left to Lori by her mother's close friend, Dimity Westwood, Lori is thankful for the arrival of the local and unmarried Francesca Sciaparelli to aid with the double joys of motherhood. In this corpseless tale, the mystery concerns a document stolen from the vicarage. Finch has become divided over the apparent Roman treasure trove discovered by archeologist Adrian Culver in a village field. An obscure 19th-century document, proving the find is a hoax, is the stolen item. Asked to resolve the dilemma, Lori, a rare book expert, is aided by Aunt Dimity who communicates with her ghostly handwriting in a special blue journal. Atherton produces a diverse cast of villagers, especially the formidable Peggy Kitchen, a veritable locomotive who is determined to chuck Culver and his archeological miscellany out of the schoolhouse before her well-planned Harvest Festival. Featuring Lori's cherubic twins, a number of stuffed animals and the triumph of true love, Atherton delivers pure cozy entertainment. Mystery Guild selection; author tour. (Mar.) FYI: Viking will simultaneously publish Aunt Dimity's Good Deed in paper. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Dimity Westwood is as dead as ever, but she's still on hand--a reassuring presence whose words appear magically in a blue notebook--to offer counsel and consolation to her legatee Lori Shepherd when fighting breaks out between Dr. Adrian Culver, the Oxford archeologist who's commandeered St. George's schoolhouse for his digging detritus, and village empress Peggy Kitchen, who'd been promised the schoolhouse for the Harvest Festival to put Finch back in touch with its ancient customs. St. George's vicar, Rev. Theodore Bunting, could have Adri˿n packing in a minute if he could only show him Disappointments in Devling, the pamphlet in which Bunting's Victorian predecessor, Rev. Cornelius Gladwell, confessed to having salted Scrag End field with archaeological artifacts in protest of an earlier dig. But someone has pinched the vicar's copy from his study, so he asks Lori if she can round up another of the only nine copies in existence before the conflict escalates into something worse. No fear. Though Lori, newly delivered of twins, will confront witches and long-buried romances, rumors of ghosts and aliens, nothing will go wrong among the dramatis personae--all of them as carefully matched as the pieces of a good tea service--that can't be mended by Dimity's advice, a little tactful conversation, and some of Sally Pyne's lemonbars. Atherton's placid fourth (Aunt Dimity's Good Deed, 1996, etc.) confirms her status as the coziest cozy of them all. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.