Aunt Dimity Digs In (Aunt Dimity Series #4)

by Nancy Atherton

Overview

Watch out for Nancy Atherton's latest, Aunt Dimity and the King's Ransom, coming in July 2018 from Viking! 

The latest in this enchanting and fast-selling series, featuring the beloved ghost Aunt Dimity, opens in a picturesque English cottage where the lovable Lori Shepherd is up to her elbows in pureed carrots and formula bottles, striving to be the perfect mother to twins! Luckily, a beautiful Italian nanny arrives just in time--so Lori can help settle the local civil war stirred up by a visiting archaeologist's excavation.

With Reginald, the stuffed pink rabbit and Edmond Terrance, the stuffed tiger in tow, Lori hunts down a missing document, and the archaeologist digs up a lot more than artifacts. It is Aunt Dimity's magic blue notebook that provides the key to buried secrets and domestic malice, and shows all the residents of Finch that even the darkest acts can be overcome by forgiveness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101157008
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/01/1999
Series:	Aunt Dimity Series , #4
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	157,144
File size:	508 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nancy Atherton is the bestselling author of twenty-two Aunt Dimity Mysteries. The first book in the series, Aunt Dimity's Death, was voted "One of the Century's 100 Favorite Mysteries" by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. She lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Editorial Reviews

Aunt Dimity, the ghost with the flowing handwriting, returns for a fourth outing with her living partner, Lori Shepherd, in this fluffy village cozy. Now living in England, Lori and her lawyer husband, Bill Willis, have welcomed twin boys, swelling the mostly retired population of Finch. Living in the cottage left to Lori by her mother's close friend, Dimity Westwood, Lori is thankful for the arrival of the local and unmarried Francesca Sciaparelli to aid with the double joys of motherhood. In this corpseless tale, the mystery concerns a document stolen from the vicarage. Finch has become divided over the apparent Roman treasure trove discovered by archeologist Adrian Culver in a village field. An obscure 19th-century document, proving the find is a hoax, is the stolen item. Asked to resolve the dilemma, Lori, a rare book expert, is aided by Aunt Dimity who communicates with her ghostly handwriting in a special blue journal. Atherton produces a diverse cast of villagers, especially the formidable Peggy Kitchen, a veritable locomotive who is determined to chuck Culver and his archeological miscellany out of the schoolhouse before her well-planned Harvest Festival. Featuring Lori's cherubic twins, a number of stuffed animals and the triumph of true love, Atherton delivers pure cozy entertainment.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Dimity Westwood is as dead as ever, but she's still on hand—a reassuring presence whose words appear magically in a blue notebook—to offer counsel and consolation to her legatee Lori Shepherd when fighting breaks out between Dr. Adrian Culver, the Oxford archeologist who's commandeered St. George's schoolhouse for his digging detritus, and village empress Peggy Kitchen, who'd been promised the schoolhouse for the Harvest Festival to put Finch back in touch with its ancient customs. St. George's vicar, Rev. Theodore Bunting, could have Adrian packing in a minute if he could only show him Disappointments in Devling, the pamphlet in which Bunting's Victorian predecessor, Rev. Cornelius Gladwell, confessed to having salted Scrag End field with archaeological artifacts in protest of an earlier dig. But someone has pinched the vicar's copy from his study, so he asks Lori if she can round up another of the only nine copies in existence before the conflict escalates into something worse. No fear. Though Lori, newly delivered of twins, will confront witches and long-buried romances, rumors of ghosts and aliens, nothing will go wrong among the dramatis personae—all of them as carefully matched as the pieces of a good tea service—that can't be mended by Dimity's advice, a little tactful conversation, and some of Sally Pyne's lemonbars. Atherton's placid fourth (Aunt Dimity's Good Deed, 1996, etc.) confirms her status as the coziest cozy of them all.

Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Nancy Atherton and the Aunt Dimity series

"Atherton smoothly blends history, village life, and the otherworldly."—Publishers Weekly

"Every scene is superbly crafted to perfection. Even if you have not read all the books in this series, I have not, you can enjoy and immerse yourself in this cozy mystery.” —Open Book Society

"I love the graceful style... the sense of tight-knit community, characters who aren’t afraid to be themselves, and, the unique paranormal element...I only wish I had learned about this series earlier." —Gotta Write Network

"In the realm of the cozy mystery, there are few series that can hold a candle to Atherton's Aunt Dimity series." —everydayebook.com
 
"Atherton is a superb writer who brings a lot of charm and wit to her story." —Suspense Magazine

"Always a charming read, the Aunt Dimity series is just right for when life gets too hectic and you need to slow down a bit." —Deadly Pleasures Magazine

"Let Nancy Atherton and Aunt Dimity remind you of the reason you got hooked on books in the first place. I promise you will be scouring bookstores for more of the series after you give it a taste." —CrimeCritics.com

From the Publisher