The Forger's Shadow

A dead appraiser. A coded ledger. And an inheritance that comes with a bloodhound, a thirty-year secret, and a very inconvenient deputy.

Museum curator Wren Holloway has enough on her plate; a fresh divorce, a career in limbo, and a grandmother she never knew who just left her an antique shop on a barrier island off the Georgia coast. The plan is simple: get to Palmetto Key, liquidate the estate, and leave before the sweet tea and marsh sunsets do something dangerous to her judgment.

The plan lasts about four hours.

When Wren finds appraiser Gerald Fitch dead in the back room of Holloway Antiques — a forged provenance document in his hand and a bloodhound of uncertain loyalty at her feet — simple stops being an option. The shop is full of masterwork forgeries no amateur could have made. The locals range from suspicious to hostile. And Deputy Cal Renner, whose quiet competence and unexpectedly well-read bookshelves are not helping Wren's focus, keeps suggesting she might want to stay.

Then Wren discovers a hidden compartment in the shop wall: her grandmother Margaret's coded ledger, thirty years of meticulous documentation proving that someone on Palmetto Key has been running a multimillion-dollar antique forgery ring through coastal estate sales — and that Margaret spent her life gathering the evidence to stop it.

Now Wren has a choice. She can take the next ferry home and let her grandmother's work die with her. Or she can do what Holloway women do — pick up the loupe, trust the dog, and finish what Margaret started.

Even if the person who killed Gerald is still on the island. Even if they're watching.

The Forger's Shadow is a warm, wry cozy mystery about the inheritances that matter most — not the ones in the will, but the ones that teach you who you were always meant to be. Perfect for readers who love Ellery Adams's Secret, Book, and Scone Society, Jenn McKinlay's Library Lover's mysteries, and Lucy Arlington's Novel Idea mysteries.