the Portrait in Locked House

A family polished its history until no fingerprints remained. One portrait remembers what really happened.Charlie Vale has decided The Lantern & Quill is more than an inheritance-it's her future, if she can make the little shop pay for itself. A commission to catalogue the library of long-shuttered Harrow House, opening at last for Bramblewick's spring House and Garden Tour, may be the answer.Then Charlie opens the first folder in Aunt Wren's grey archive box, marked UNFINISHED - ELEVEN. Inside are two photographs of the same paneled room: in 1987 a turned-away woman hangs above the mantel; by 1991 the wall is bare. There is no record of the painting's removal, and no one in the family will speak of the woman at all.When the missing portrait surfaces inside the locked house, darkened varnish gives way to a startling truth-and hours later the appraiser who promised it would rewrite the family tree is dead beneath a fallen ancestral portrait, its hanging strap cut clean. As the town prepares to parade through Harrow House, Charlie must decide who feared the portrait's true subject, and whether restoring an erased life can become its own kind of theft.The Lantern & Quill Mysteries, Book Two. A bookshop cozy about family, forgery, and the faces history tries to turn to the wall. Reads perfectly on its own.Perfect for fans of Kate Carlisle's Bibliophile Mysteries, Jenn McKinlay's Library Lover's Mysteries, and Ellery Adams's Book Retreat Mysteries.