Ink and shadows

It's fall festival season in Miracle Springs, N.C., in bestseller Adams's subpar fourth Secret, Book, and Scone Society mystery (after 2020's The Book of Candlelight), and good-hearted Nora Pennington, the owner of Miracle Books, and her friend and employee, Sheldon Vega, choose powerful women as the theme for the shop's front window. Following an evening at the Farm to Table festival, Nora returns home to find an old book page covered in strange symbols on her deck--and a dead body on her lawn. In between shared moments with her circle of friends, Nora investigates and becomes a target for both a murderer and the strident Women of Lasting Values Society. Nora's constant need to suggest books to everyone she meets makes her bibliophilia seem like a clinical disorder and mostly serves to pad the slim plot. Inveterate readers looking for new authors to try may welcome Nora's nonstop recommendations. Others will hope for a meatier plot next time. Agent: Jessica Faust, BookEnds Literary. (Feb.)

A North Carolina bookseller takes time out from her vocation of matching every reader with the perfect book to solve another murder. Nora Pennington, the owner of Miracle Books in Miracle Springs, has a coterie of friends calling themselves the Secret, Book, and Scone Society. Each member's success in overcoming a troubled past has given her the strength and insight to help Nora solve several murders. After Celeste Leopold and her moody daughter, Bren, open a health-food store selling CBD oil in Miracle Springs, they're shunned and verbally attacked by the narrow-minded Women of Lasting Values Society, which also targets Nora's shop for putting a display of books about witches in the window for Halloween. When Bren is found dead in Nora's yard, the only clue is a sheet of paper covered with strange symbols and letters that she left under Nora's doormat. Nora's group springs into action to support Celeste and do some detection. Nora gives the local sheriff a recommendation of an expert to identify the paper, which brings her former college roommate to town, though Nora hasn't seen her since her own life fell apart years earlier. A joyful reconciliation is followed by the identification of the paper as being much older than the ink. Could someone's attempt to create a faux valuable item have served as the motive for murder? The answer seems to lie in Celeste's mysterious past, which she keeps hidden--until her death puts Nora in grave danger. Lovers of reading and strong women will be impressed by this entertaining cozy packed with mystery, romance, and sisterhood. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.