Set in Edinburgh, Scotland, Lost Books and Old Bones is a delightful new mystery by Paige Shelton, featuring bookseller and amateur sleuth Delaney Nichols. Delaney Nichols, originally of Kansas but settling happily into her new life as a bookseller in Edinburgh, works at the Cracked Spine in the heart of town. The shop is a place filled with curiosities and surprises tucked into every shelf, and it’s Delaney’s job to research the rare tomes and obscure artifacts that people come to buy and sell. When her new friends, also students at the medical school, come to the shop to sell a collection of antique medical books, Delaney knows she’s stumbled across a rare and important find indeed. Her boss, Edwin MacAlister, agrees to buy the multivolume set, perhaps even to keep for his own collection. But not long after the sale, one of Delaney’s new friends is found murdered in the alley behind the Cracked Spine, and she wonders if there is some nefarious connection between the origin of these books and the people whose hands they fell into. Delaney takes it upon herself to help bring the murderer to justice. During her investigation, Delaney she finds some old scalpels in the bookshop’s warehouse―she and discovers that they belonged to a long-dead doctor whose story and ties to the past crimes of Burke and Hare might be connected to the present-day murder. It’s all Delaney can do to race to solve this crime before time runs out and she ends up in a victim on the slab herself. "A complex plot, a cast of amiable characters, an array of suspects and an enchanting Scottish setting combine to create a clever entry in a capital series, one that provides multiple pleasures, whether or not accompanied by a single malt."-- Richmond Times-Dispatch on Lost Books and Old Bones "Full of quirky characters and charming settings...Delaney must race to solve the crime before she's in danger!"-- Woman's World PAIGE SHELTON had a nomadic childhood, as her father's job as a football coach took her family to seven different towns before she was even twelve years old. After college at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, she moved to Salt Lake City. She thought she'd only stay a couple years, but instead she fell in love with the mountains and a great guy who became her husband. After many decades in Utah, she and her family moved to Arizona. She writes the Scottish Bookshop Mystery series and the Alaska Wild series. Her other series include the Farmers’ Market, Cooking School, and Dangerous Type mystery series. Lost Books and Old Bones By Paige Shelton St. Martin's Press Copyright © 2018 Paige Shelton All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-250-12779-2 CHAPTER 1 The cold liquid splashed the back of my neck before it rolled down and underneath my shirt. I gasped and reflexively turned to see who had sloshed their drink in my direction. "Delaney! I'm so sorry. Oh dear. Here let's go tae the toilet. I'll get you cleaned up and you can have my shirt," Sophie said loudly with a drunken slur as she grabbed my arm and started to pull me through the crowd. "But then what will you wear?" I asked, trying to raise my voice. She didn't hear me above the crowd and band noise. I barely heard myself. Though loud, the performers weren't, in fact, a band; they were a duo. Mad Ferret was made up of one Irish and one Scottish gentleman. Together they performed upbeat folk songs that brought out the jig in pretty much everybody. I'd first seen them with Tom, my boyfriend, after the two Mad Ferret members had stopped by his pub one evening and invited him to a show. Tom had taken me to see them in a very dark pub that hadn't seemed quite big enough for the jubilant crowd inside. The setting was much the same tonight, though Tom wasn't with me and my new friends, Sophie and Rena, and my newest friend Mallory, whom I'd just met this evening. All the women were medical students at the University of Edinburgh. A few crowd dodges later, Sophie and I made our way toward the small back ladies' room, a place where everyone wrote their name on the walls and the liquid soap smelled like the lavender hips scent my mom used in her kitchen back home in Kansas. The three green-doored stalls inside were empty and the music fell into a muffled tinny bass beat when the bathroom door closed behind us. "Your shirt is soaked through. I'm so, so sorry. I was careless. I'll have it cleaned," Sophie said as she turned me around so she could inspect my back. Then she turned me again to face her. "Here, take mine." I stopped her just as she made it to the second button of her blouse. "It's not a problem. I've been spilled on before," I said. "Don't worry about it." She blinked her heavily mascaraed brown eyes my direction. Until tonight I'd only seen her and her roommate Rena with light to no makeup and hastily brushed or pulled back hair. They were usually dressed in scrubs or jeans. Their skirts and makeup as well as their post-test Friday desire to blow o