The villagers of Bishop’s Lacey are holding their collective breath as St Tancred’s tomb in the local church is about to be opened after five hundred years. Inveterate eleven-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce is first at the scene, but the body she finds lying there is not that of a desiccated saint; it is Mr Collicutt, St Tancred's celebrated organist.

With the family finances in a parlous state, Flavia's father has rented Buckshaw to a film company for a location shooting. When a heavy snowfall cuts the village off, the actors are talked into staging a benefit performance in the parish hall. But old jealousies surface, and the leading lady is murdered. Flavia, who has been enlisted to help out behind the scenes, finds herself up to her knees in snow - and murder!

“You frighten me,” the Gypsy said. “Never have I seen my crystal ball so filled with darkness.” For Flavia de Luce, the old gypsy's words open up old wounds and new possibilities. Is she a faker, or is there some truth to her powers? And when the village is rocked by another ghastly murder, how will a growing fascination with gypsy lore help Flavia to solve it?

When Flavia de Luce is banished to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada, she’s soon on familiar ground when, on her first night, a mummified body is dislodged from a chimney, and she is presented with a gruesome puzzle to solve. Girls have been disappearing with alarming regularity, leading Flavia to wonder not only how and why but what exactly is the academy's true purpose? Flavia must enter a shadowy world where truth and lies seem interchangeable and no one can be trusted.

Twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is back at Buckshaw at last, but her homecoming is overshadowed by news of her father's illness. Forbidden from visiting him in hospital, Flavia busies herself in the village, but she soon makes a macabre discovery: the corpse of a reclusive woodcarver in an empty house, except for a curiously uncurious cat. Curiosity may not kill this cat, but Flavia is energized at the prospect of a new investigation. However, what awaits Flavia will shake her to the core.