When a blaze takes both a neighbor’s home and his life, Emily Dickinson and her maid Willa have a burning desire to crack the case in this new historical mystery from Agatha Award–winning author Amanda Flower. Amherst, 1857. The Dickinson family braves one of the worst winters in New England’s history. Trains are snowbound and boats are frozen in the harbor. Emily Dickinson and her maid, Willa Noble, have never witnessed anything like it. As Amherst families attempt to keep their homes warm, fears of fire abound. These worries prove not to be unfounded as a blaze breaks out just down the street from the Dickinson in Kelley Square, the Irish community in Amherst, and a young couple is killed, leaving behind their young child. Their deaths appear to be a tragic accident, but Emily finds herself harboring suspicions there may be more to the fire than meets the eye. Emily and Willa must withstand the frigid temperatures and discover a killer lurking among the deadly frost. Praise for the Emily Dickinson Mysteries “Absorbing and well-written...hard to put down.”—Charles Todd, New York Times bestselling author of A Game of Fear “Well-researched, richly textured, and skillfully plotted, readers will fall for Flower’s lyrical mystery—word, verse, and stanza.”—Anna Lee Huber, USA Today bestselling author of A Perilous Perspective “Fascinating.... You will be delighted by this clever premise set in a little-explored historical time period.”—Victoria Thompson, USA Today bestselling author of Murder on Madison Square Amanda Flower is the USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning mystery author of over forty novels, including the nationally bestselling Amish Candy Shop Mystery Series, Magical Bookshop Mysteries, and, written under the name Isabella Alan, the Amish Quilt Shop Mysteries. Flower is a former librarian, and she and her husband, a recording engineer, own a habitat farm and recording studio in Northeast Ohio. chapter one I'd never been this cold. Despite the three pairs of stockings on my feet, I no longer felt my toes. Nor could I feel my hands with two pairs of mittens on them. I looked down at my hands from time to time to reassure myself that I still held the market basket. It was not as heavy as I hoped nor as full as my employers would have wished. The trains had stopped running days ago. Snowdrifts up to ten feet high blocked their path. It was the worst winter in my memory or in the memory of anyone I knew. We all felt the pinch from the Cold Storm of 1857. December had been snowy, but it seemed that January was taking it upon itself to prove it could surpass the very worst of weather the last year or even the last decade had to offer. Here in Amherst, the mercury was twenty degrees below zero, but I also heard that the same temperatures were crippling points as far south as Washington. The cold was torture here, but at least we expected harsh winters. It must have come as a shock to the Southern belles and fine gentlemen in the capital. I was grateful Horace, the Dickinsons' grounds keeper, had shoveled a path from the street to both the front and back doors of the homestead. Without that cleared path, my skirt would have been soaked through in no time at all. Even so it was narrow, just wide enough for one man to pass, so I had to grip my skirts and hold the market basket out in front of myself like I was making some sort of offering to the winter gods that caused this weather. The way I held my arms out reminded me of the mummy illustrations in the volume of ancient Egyptian history in Mr. Dickinson's library. Margaret O'Brien, the head maid at the homestead, met me at the back door that led into the laundry. She took the basket from my hands so quickly I felt a sharp pain in my stiff fingers. "Get in here before you let the heat out," she said in her Irish lilt. I stepped into the laundry and made sure the back door was firmly closed behind me. I placed the heavy blanket back in its place at the foot of the door to keep out the draft. I removed my bonnet, cloak, mittens, boots, and two pairs of stockings, which I tucked into the boots. When I was out of the boots, I changed into my house shoes. It was a relief to not be buried under so much fabric, but much of the cold that the cloak held at bay hit me like an icy wave crashing into Boston Harbor. In the kitchen Margaret unpacked the basket. "Where is my molasses? And where is the cinnamon I asked for?" Emily Dickinson came into the kitchen just then, quietly and lightly as she always did. She moved around the place like a house wren that popped up here and there on an unexpected branch in the garden. Emily was the eldest daughter in the house and the most puzzling of the Dickinsons. While her sister, Miss Lavinia, was straightforward and direct, Emily tended to weave her thoughts into verse and she felt no need to explain in common language their meaning or purpose. "Willa," she said with a smile. "You're back