Paging The Dead

Piecing together the evidence . . . Genealogist Sophreena McClure is an expert at unearthing other people’s secrets. Using old documents and photographs, Soph and her business partner, Esme Sabatier—also a gifted medium—trace family histories and create heritage scrapbooks. Their latest client, Dorothy Pritchett Porter, is thrilled with their research into Morningside’s most prestigious clan. But before Dorothy can proudly display her new scrapbooks on Founders’ Day, she’s found murdered. It seems the ties that bind can also strangle, for Dorothy has been killed using the Pritchett family pearls. Pegged as prime suspects, Sophreena and Esme turn their investigative skills from the dearly departed to the alive and dangerous, hoping to pin down the real killer among Dorothy’s kinfolk. Sophreena’s scrapbooking club members, crafty in more ways than one, pitch in to help. As the Pritchett ancestral roots turn out to be more tangled than anyone suspected, Sophreena wonders just how many skeletons lurk in this family closet—and whether she and Esme are destined to join them. . . .

"When a professional genealogist who teaches classes in family history scrapbooking is implicated in the murder of her client, she starts her own investigation to clear her name--and avoid jail!Genealogist Sophie McClure spends much of her time researching the histories of families. With the help of her business partner and medium, Esme Sabatier, she is able to achieve extraordinary results in tracing family histories, which she translates into archival-scrapbooking. When one of their clients ends up dead and the evidence in the crime scene points to them, Sophie and Esme are immediately suspected of foul play. To clear their names they need to channel all of their investigative efforts--with the help of their scrapbooking club--into finding a murderer"--

"Make no bones about it, genealogist Sophreena McClure and her psychic business partner Esme Sabatier have a lot of dirty work ahead of them. "The Forgotten man," a skeleton found inside of an unusual coffin in a nearby backyard, is creating a buzz around their small town. But it's the fresh corpse of a mysterious young woman that soon grabs everyone's attention ..."--Page 4 of cover.

The charming genealogical gumshoes in the cozy southern Family History Mystery series give new meaning to the old saying “keep the home fires burning” when their investigation into a long-ago house fire leads to a modern-day murder. It’s not just politics as usual when genealogists Sophreena McClure and Esme Sabatier are hired to create scrapbook tributes for a former North Carolina senator’s intricate family heritage and illustrious career. Sifting through the ashes of his past, they discover his baby brother perished in a suspicious fire that burned down his childhood home. Still saddened by his late parents’ steadfast conviction—against all evidence to the contrary—that the fire was cover for a kidnapping, the senator wants this rumor put to rest once and for all. So with only snapshots of the evidence, Soph and Esme are determined to smother all speculation about the decades-old tragedy. The party lines are drawn when a shocking present-day murder turns up new candidates for the crime—including some suspects from the senator’s inner circle. Are the sleuthing scrapbookers trying to pin down a killer as adept at making laws as breaking them?

From the New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, a definitive history of paper and the astonishing ways it has shaped today’s world. Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art; it has formed the foundation of civilizations, promoting revolutions and restoring stability. By tracing paper’s evolution from antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on the contributions made in Asia and the Middle East, Mark Kurlansky challenges common assumptions about technology’s influence, affirming that paper is here to stay. Paper will be the commodity history that guides us forward in the twenty-first century and illuminates our times.