In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introducesone of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven... » 

In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introducesone of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flaviade Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950-and aseries of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion thatFlavia's family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stampbizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patchand watches him as he takes his dying breath.To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions,and connections. Soon her father is seized, accused of murder. And in a police cell,Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story of a schoolboy friendshipturned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery,of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school's tower thirty yearsbefore. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deathstogether, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of Englandhimself. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder but protectingher and her sisters from something even worse... «