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.)