Essex Witch Museum Mysteries

Rosie Strange doesn't believe in ghosts or witches or magic. It's no surprise therefore that when she inherits the ramshackle Essex Witch Museum, her first thought is to take the money and run. Still, the museum exerts a curious pull over Rosie. There's the eccentric academic who bustles in to demand she help in a hunt for the bones of the notorious Ursula Cadence, a witch long since put to death. And there's curator Sam Stone, a man about whom Rosie can't decide if he's tiresomely annoying or extremely captivating.

The La Fleur restaurant has a slew of unusual phenomena. Bonnet-clad apparitions pass through walls, blood leaks from ceilings and rats besiege the dining room. Experts from the Great Essex Witch Museum are called in to quell these strange sights. But before Rosie Strange and Sam Stone can do their thing, events turn darker. For La Fleur's chef has been strung up and slaughtered like a pig. More oddly, the only witness, the owner's daughter Mary, swears blind a ghost did it.

It’s summer in Adders Fork. The sun is out, the sky is blue and things are going swimmingly for Rosie Strange. The Essex Witch Museum has been relaunched with a new Ursula Cadence wing and picnic grounds. Then developers roll into the sleepy village to widen the road. When the centuries-old Blackly Be boulder, said to mark the grave of a notorious witch, is moved, all hell breaks out. Within hours a slew of peculiar phenomena descends, and when a severed head is discovered atop the boulder, the locals storm the museum to demand someone take action.

Ghosts, witches and all kinds of creepy things seem to congregate in the town of Adder's Fork, where the world-renowned Essex Witch Museum has its home. Death stalks the pages, cats offer companionship (of sorts) and ghosts haunt a variety of characters. Where are Rosie Strange and Sam Stone when you need them?  

Halloween in Essex, and things are going well for the writers on the Mystery and Suspense course at Ratchette Hall. Things, however, take a turn when early on All Saints' Day the course administrator is discovered murdered. The Essex Witch Museum investigators are quickly drafted in. As Rosie Strange and Sam Stone's investigation progresses they find more questions than answers: who is making the howling noises late into the night? What is the strange glimmering glimpsed in the woods?

Secretly Rosie Strange has always thought herself a little bit more interesting than most people - the legacy her family has bequeathed her is definitely so, she's long believed. But then life takes a peculiar turn when the Strange legacy turns out not just to be the Essex Witch Museum, but perhaps some otherworldly gifts that Rosie finds difficult to fathom.  

Christmas: a time for family and festivity. Unless you’re in Adder’s Fork, home of the Essex Witch Museum, where it’s a time for ghostly spirits and demonic visits. In these 12 short stories, menacing ghosts and supernatural terrors haunt Rosie Strange and Sam Stone, as well as characters past and present from beyond the Essex Witch Museum. Featuring stories from The Strange Casebook as well as original short stories.

From the twice CWA Dagger shortlisted author of The Twelve Strange Days of Christmas come 12 never-before-published stories to transport you to the macabre world of inexplicable phenomena. With returning characters from the Essex Witch Museum series and a weirdly wonderful tale for each day of Christmas, these spooky stories are the perfect companion for long, dark winter nights.