About Ink and Intrigue at Ivy Tree Inn: An Ariadne Winter Mystery (The Ariadne Winter Mystery Series Book 1):
From the bestselling author of the Karina Cardinal mysteries and the award winning The Brass Compass comes a new historical cozy mystery series.
What happens when a fashionable magazine writer stumbles upon a dead body at an exclusive 1958 inn during what’s supposed to be the “Wedding of the Century”? For Ariadne Winter, it might be the story that makes her career—or ends it.
Step back into a world of vintage glamour, tightly guarded secrets, and a daring young woman determined to solve a murder before her time runs out. Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and Tana French.
A dead body, a magazine deadline, and a race against time—1958’s most fashionable writer turns sleuth.
1958. The workforce is predominantly male. Societal norms dictate women should be compliant, fashionable housewives. To Ariadne Winter, the sole tradition she aims to embrace is that of being fashionable. Amidst the ambiance of Ivy Tree Inn, where she’s been dispatched as a writer for Ladies’ Lifestyle Magazine, her focus wavers as she grapples with an interview assignment concerning a Hollywood starlet on the cusp of royal matrimony—an event hailed as the “Wedding of the Century.” While Ariadne dutifully attends to her task, her heart yearns for the pursuit of her collegiate ambition: to be an investigative reporter for a renowned newspaper.
However, fate intervenes when she discovers a dead body and recognizes the opportunity it presents to write her way into the role she desires. Yet, as Ariadne delves deeper into the lives of the inn’s inhabitants, she uncovers a labyrinth of intertwined relationships and long-buried secrets among guests and staff alike, yielding a plethora of suspects. With a murderer on the loose, her magazine deadline looming, and the inn cordoned off by authorities, Ariadne faces a race against time to untangle the web of deceit and solve the murder before she loses more than just her job.
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Author Bio:
Ellen Butler is the international bestselling author of the Karina Cardinal mystery series. Her experiences working on Capitol Hill and at a medical association in Washington, D.C. inspired the mystery-action series. Multiple books in the series have hit #1 on Amazon bestseller lists in the US and abroad. Book critics call the Karina Cardinal mysteries, “intelligent escapism.” Butler is also the author of the award-winning historical suspense novel, The Brass Compass. The Brass Compass has won multiple awards for historical fiction including: 2022 Speak Up Talk Radio Firebird Book Award, 2018 Indie Reader Discovery Award, 2019 Readers’ Favorite Silver Medal Winner. Butler started writing in the romance genre and won the The Romance Reviews Readers’ Choice Award 2015 with her novel Planning for Love. Her 12th book Operation Blackbird, a Cold War Spy novel, was published in October 2022 and won a Next Generation Indie Book Award gold medal for historical fiction.