The First Lighting

Some inheritances come with a flame attached.

Nora Collier spent twenty years reading fires for an insurance company - and walked away rather than sign a lie. What she didn't plan on was Brazierton: the Virginia town that has kept one ember burning since 1911, her great-aunt Posy's candle shop, and a gift Nora has spent a lifetime not using. Read the ash, and you feel the strongest thing someone felt when it burned.

Feelings, never facts. Nora knows the difference. She also knows the town's Hearth Bell sounds wrong, its keeper is keeping secrets, and somebody in Brazierton is lying about both.

Every clue is on the page: the ash, the daybook, a bell that rings fourteen pounds light. Race Nora to the answer - if you spot the lie before she does, you'll have earned it. A fair-play case, solved in full. Just a town worth staying for, and a woman learning how to stay.

This is a slow-burn cozy that smolders rather than races - a charming town, neighbors who look after their own, subtle humor threaded throughout, and one lazy but observant cat. Some mysteries are for lingering over.