Agnes Thorne

The library is a hazard site. The house is a crime scene. Rare-book specialist Tessa Calloway arrives at Fellgate Hall expecting a difficult conservation job. Instead, she finds a sealed library, two hundred and thirty poisoned books, and a household determined to keep its past undisturbed. The damage looks accidental. The timing does not. As snow closes the road and suspicion settles over the house, Tessa discovers that the contamination follows a pattern-precise, deliberate, and rooted in a secret buried for forty years.
Everyone beneath Fellgate's roof has something to protect. One of them is prepared to kill to keep it hidden. To uncover the truth, Tessa must read the evidence concealed in bindings, dust, gloves, and silence-before the poison claims another victim. Atmospheric, clue-driven, and written in the golden-age tradition, The Emerald Bindings is the second Tessa Calloway mystery.