"It's been an enjoyable and murder-free time for Judith, Suzie and Becks - AKA the Marlow Murder Club - since the events of last year. The most exciting thing on the horizon is the upcoming wedding of Marlow grandee, Sir Peter Bailey, to his nurse, Jenny Page. Sir Peter is having a party at his grand mansion on the river Thames the day before the wedding, and Judith and Co. are looking forward to a bit of free champagne. But during the soiree, there's...

"Stanley and Vera, academically precocious but awkward teenagers, form a bond when they tie for first place in the National Spelling Bee. Though their mothers have big plans for them -- Stanley will become a senator, Vera a mathematics professor -- neither wants to follow these pre-determined paths. So Stanley hatches a plan to marry Vera in a sham wedding for the financial freedom to pursue his one true love: crossword puzzle construction. In enlisting...

Chief Harper comes to Cora Felton, asking her to solve a crossword puzzle found on the body of Old Man Overmeyer. Cora pokes into Overmeyer's death, hoping to prove he died of natural causes and soon learns the cranky hermit was the sole surviving member of a forty-year-old stock pooling agreement.

"Clayton Stumper might be in his twenties, but he dresses like your grandpa and fusses like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by a group of eccentric enigmatologists and now finds himself among the last survivors of a fading institution. When the esteemed crossword compiler and main maternal presence in Clayton's life, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle on him: a promise...