The most award winning book of any year!

Winner of the Crimewriters’ Association Debut Dagger Award, the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Dilys Award, the Barry Award, and the Spotted Owl Award.

Meet eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison.

It is the summer of 1950-and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely skewered by its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”