cover image UNCATALOGUED

UNCATALOGUED

Julie Wallin Kaewert, . . Bantam, $5.99 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-553-58220-8

With this Agatha Christie–meets–Nancy Drew offering, Kaewert delivers the sixth installment to her Booklovers mystery series (Unsigned, etc.) starring British publisher Alex Plumtree and his American fiancée, Sarah, who is always involved in something "frightfully secret for an international task force." This time around, Alex and Sarah plan to meet in Nantucket for a quick wedding before heading to Dartmouth College for their class reunion. There they hope to find unpublished documents written by 17th-century diarist, Samuel Pepys—documents rumored to contain nasty little secrets about the Royal Family. Alex leaves London in the midst of chaos: the Queen has been gravely injured in a riding accident; the people are divided between Prince Charles and Prince William as successors to the throne; and London's Financial Center has been bombed by terrorists. Stateside, the atmosphere changes dramatically as Alex and Sarah search for Pepys's papers in the dusty archives and hidden passages beneath Dartmouth. The author's love for rare books is the focal point of the story, but the plot, which is stitched together by the similarities between Pepys's journals and current events, is a weak thread. (Jan. 7)