The Dozen Witches (Ellie Blaine 1920s Mysteries, #02)

It’s Halloween in the quiet Yorkshire village of Melmersby; but Ellie is less worried about ghosts and goblins than she is about the prospect of her first society ball with the formidable, and very proper, Lady Danvers. But in the season of spooks, there are dark forces at work on the misty moors above Melmerbsy. Local fortune-teller Madame Zuzu is troubled by visions of doom, and these soon come to grisly reality when the first victim is found among the ancient stones of The Dozen Witches. Ellie, together with a charming and brilliant archaeology professor, an eccentric artist, Lady Danvers’ forbidding servant and the mysterious Butterfly Man, is drawn into a century-old mystery and tales of a curse that hangs over the deadly marshes of Swinston Moor. Ellie must untangle truth from fiction to exorcise the restless spirits that haunt Melmersby, but as the mystery unfolds she realises she may also need to face up to ghosts of her own. Ellie Blaine is a traditional, Golden Age Cozy Mystery series, packed with intrigue, diabolical villains, endearing friends, humour, emotion, a little romance and a real sense of history in the fascinating years following the Great War.