Benjamin Bones

Leaving his home and shelving his career ambitions aren't the only sacrifices Ben faces. His unfaithful wife, Penny, is accompanying him to Cornwall in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. But moments after their arrival, Penny is run down in the street, and Ben is almost fatally injured. And while the villagers assume Penny's death to be an accident, Ben quickly deduces it was murder.

Divorce Can Be Deadly is the long-awaited second book in Emma Jameson's wartime cozy mystery series. Return to Birdswing, a tiny Cornish village, in the bitter winter of 1939 and revisit old friends as they embark on more amateur sleuthing. Irrepressible Lady Juliet is taking a correspondence course in private detection and is vexed by the return of her soon-to-be ex-husband. Meanwhile, not only has Ben failed to realize the depth of her feelings for him, but his obsession with Lucy, the Fenton House ghost, grows stronger.

A few days before Christmas 1939, Dr. Benjamin Bones is in a "Bah, humbug" sort of mood. It's the coldest winter on record, his country is at war, and his love life has run aground. But magic as well as mysteries abound in Cornwall. When Ben makes a bargain with an elfin little man, it leads him to an old woman who longs to make amends - and a chance for Ben to show that certain someone how much he cares.

There's no such thing as privacy in the tiny village of Birdswing. Everywhere Dr. Benjamin Bones turns, someone is spying from a window, listening through a wall, or gossiping over a garden fence. "The birds sing in Birdswing," says the vicar, Father Cotterill; and in February 1940, this is more true than ever. Waiting for Hitler to make his move and turn this "Phony War" into the real thing, Ben's fellow villagers are desperate for a distraction.