Murder is for Keeps, the latest book in an award-winning mystery series, celebrated for its small-town charm and picturesque Welsh setting, starring amateur sleuth Penny Brannigan. Local artist Penny Brannigan has been spending her summer painting Gwrych Castle and its surrounding landscapes. A privately owned, castellated Welsh country house, Gwrych has been sadly neglected for decades and is in a heartbreaking state of disrepair. So when she learns architectural historian Mark Baker is leading a team of enthusiastic volunteers to restore the castle grounds and gardens to their former grandeur, Penny is thrilled. But it’s not long before disagreements over the restoration turn deadly, and Penny is horrified to discover the body of a volunteer hidden in a castle outbuilding. Penny enlists her friend Gareth Davies, recently retired from the North Wales Police Service, to help investigate. As the two dig deeper into the castle's history, including its glamorous heyday in the 1920s, they find startling connections between an old, unsolved murder and Gareth's own family, and as they solve the present-day murder, Penny recovers a stunning piece of the castle's architectural heritage. Praise for Murder on the Hour "Fans of small-town cozies will find a lot to like."- Publishers Weekly "Whatever else you can say about appealing Penny, she doesn’t let romance distract her from her search for a killer. Information about appraisals and local color enhance the story’s charm."- Kirkus Reviews Praise for Slated for Death "Dorothy Sayers fans will welcome Duncan's fifth Penny Brannigan mystery set in North Wales... [Duncan] does a good job evoking the toil and hardship intrinsic to the slate mining industry that supported the area's economy for over two centuries. She manages a neat surprise ending, too."- Publishers Weekly "An entertaining entry in this long-running series."- Kirkus Reviews “This remains a delightful series, with continuing characters adding texture to the already good story.” -Booklist Elizabeth J. Duncan , author of the Penny Brannigan mysteries, is a winner of the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition for The Cold Light of Mourning . She was shortlisted for the Agatha and Arthur Ellis Awards. She lives in Toronto. Murder Is For Keeps A Penny Brannigan Mystery By Elizabeth J. Duncan St. Martin's Press Copyright © 2017 Elizabeth J. Duncan All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-250-10147-1 CHAPTER 1 The slender, fit woman with the red hair picked her way along the rough path, placing her feet carefully to avoid falling. The pathway, with occasional small rocks jutting through the hard-packed, dark soil, was much easier to negotiate now than it had been just a few weeks earlier. Then, it had been choked with weeds and enclosed on both sides by prickly branches and great masses of thorny brambles that had scratched and clawed at her legs. Burdened with painting supplies in both hands, she was unable to extend her arms for balance so she took her time on the gentle downward slope. At the bottom of the narrow path, she set off on a wider, smoother pathway that led past the main building of Gwrych Castle, an immense late-Georgian castellated mansion. Or what was left of it. Now, it was an abandoned, ruined shell of its former Gothic self, shrouded in decades of neglect but yet somehow maintaining the silent, faded dignity of its longago grandeur. A pointed stone arch draped in ivy, set into an exterior wall that heralded the approach to the castle's main building, beckoned her forward. When she reached it, the woman set down her easel and painting case and pulled a water bottle out of her backpack. It was cooler here in the shade, and she took a long drink as she admired the framed view through the arch. This was as close as she could get to what had been the magnificent manor house of the Bamford-Hesketh family for just three generations, ending with the death of the builder's granddaughter, Winifred, Countess of Dundonald, in 1924. The property then passed out of the family, but was bought by her widower a few years later and then sold in 1946. The structure was surrounded by tall, strong fencing, clearly marked with red and black DANGER signs. Through the ornate but lifeless castiron window frames, the stained glass they once held smashed long ago, she could just make out bits of faded, peeling plaster, and she mourned the loss of what would once have been magnificent, formal rooms. Even from this distance, she could almost smell the damp and decay. Penny Brannigan had spent the earlier part of the afternoon sketching one of the castle's eighteen towers and now, with the front of the castle bathed in a burst of mid-afternoon sunlight throwing it into stark relief against the heavy shadows of the trees behind it, she made her way down to the main terrace level. The terrace, with a sweeping, buttressed wall overlooking the parkland below, stre