By Brandy Schillace
On Sale: August 5, 2025
Imprint: Hanover Square Press
Hardcover
Buy Links:
HarperCollins https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-dead-come-to-stay-brandy-schillace?variant=43118709571618
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1335121870/keywords=mystery%2Bbooks?tag=harpercollinsus-20
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-dead-come-to-stay-brandy-schillace/1146233457
Social Links:
Author Website: https://brandyschillace.com/
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/bschillace.brandyschillace.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PeculiarBookClub
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PeculiarBookClub/
About the book:
A delightful new cozy crime novel from the
award-winning author of the "twisty, engaging, and thoroughly
unexpected" (Deanna Raybourne) The Framed Women of Ardemore
House
An amateur autistic sleuth. A wry English detective. A murder case that
thrusts them both into the wealthy world of the rare artifacts trade...
Jo Jones can't seem to catch a break. Trading in city life for the
cozy, peaceful hills of North Yorkshire to take over her family estate
should have been a chance for a "fresh start.” Instead, she's been
driven further into the past than she thought possible -- and not just her
own. The estate property is littered with traces of ancestors that Jo never
knew existed, including the mysterious woman in a half-destroyed
painting – and hints about Jo's late uncle, who may hold the key to her cryptic
family history. Then there’s the gossipy town politics Jo must
constantly navigate as a neurodivergent transplanted American… And of course,
the whole murder business.
When prickly town detective James MacAdams discovers a body in the
moors with coincidental ties to Jo Jones, they're forced to team up
on the case. The clues will lead them into the wealthiest locales of Yorkshire,
from sparkling glass hotels to luxury property sites to elite country
clubs. But below the glittering surfaces, Jo and MacAdams discover darker
schemes brewing. Local teens, many of them international refugees, are
disappearing left and right, and each case is somehow linked to a shady
architectural firm -- which also happened to employ the dead man
from the moor-side ditch.
What begins as bizarre murder case quickly plunges them both into
the black market world of rare artifacts and antique trading... and a
murderer who will do anything to cover it up.
About the Author:
BRANDY SCHILLACE is the author of several works of nonfiction, including Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher. She is the creator of Peculiar Book Club, a twice-monthly live-streamed YouTube show. A former professor of English and gothic literature, she writes about gender politics and history, medical mystery, and neurodiversity for outlets such as Scientific American, Wired, CrimeReads, and Medium. She is also autistic, though has not (to her knowledge) been a suspect in a murder investigation.
Excerpt:
The man on the doorstep of Jo’s cottage
dripped rainwater; it trickled from wet-plastered hair to overcoat gun flap and
onto the overnight bag clutched under one arm. Jo had remembered to say hello,
but that didn’t stop him staring at her, all wide-eyed and open-mouthed. He
reminded her of a disheveled pigeon after colliding with a windowpane.
“Mr. Ronan Foley?” Jo asked, stepping
back to give him entry room.
“I—Yes.” He shuffled onto the flagstone
cottage entry. “I—I thought keys would be in a lockbox?”
“Um?” Jo had practiced every opening
line, but not this one. She blinked twice. “I have the keys for you. It’s for
an attic en suite . . . in my . . . house.”
“You live here?” The way he looked
around himself wasn’t entirely complimentary; Jo chose the high road.
“Don’t worry! You’ll have total
privacy,” she insisted. That was the point of going through all that trouble of
installing a full bath on the second level (including hoisting a freestanding
tub through the attic casements, quite a feat when you’re five foot four and
one hundred fifteen pounds soaking wet).
“Of
course, of course,” muttered Mr. Foley. “You . . . meet all your guests in
person?”
Jo
decided not to tell him he was her first guest. Or that she’d locked her knees
to keep from bouncing up and down with nervous energy. She also fought to urge
to ask if he was Irish. In- stead, she dangled the keys.
“The
door at the top of the stairs locks with the minikey,” she said. “The brass
ones are for the front door and dead bolt.”
“Thank
you, Ms…?”
“Jones.
Jo Jones.” She smiled, probably a little too much. He had a broad face and
smile lines, but he wasn’t smiling now. “Al- ways ask if you can get them
something,” Tula had said when she informed her about her decision to rent the
cottage. “It’s welcoming.” Wise words from the Red Lion innkeeper and the one
person Jo considered a truly close friend. She might have suggested what to
offer.
“I
could get you . . . something? I can cook. Well. I can warm things up.
Actually, I can drive into town and get food. Or maybe you’re thirsty?”
“Tea,”
the man said, and of course he would say tea. They were in Yorkshire.
“Yes!
Yes, that I can do. And cookies. You don’t call them cookies—but little
shortbreads with the jam in the middle?”
Maybe it was the fact that Jo had
forgotten to call them tea biscuits, or maybe it had to do with the fact she
wasn’t taking breaths between sentences, but the startled pigeon suddenly began
to laugh. It worked a change in him,
shaking all the stiffness out.
“Tea biscuits. You’re American—you are,
aren’t you?” “Erm” was the best she could do, but now, now he smiled.
“Delighted,” he said, shaking her hand.
“May I?” He pointed up the stairwell, but Jo looked at his wet mackintosh.
Obviously, he needed to clean up. And she should, as they say, put the kettle
on instead of jawing at him like an idiot. He hadn’t actually waited for an
answer, though, just gave the keys a jingle and disappeared up the stairs.
This wasn’t how she’d pictured her first
experience as a host— and she’d run every possible scenario right down to the
mise-en-scène. She’d try again when he came downstairs. Better make it a big
plate of biscuits.
* *
*
Jo hadn’t wanted to rent out her little
cottage, but the attic was empty, and her bank account soon would be as well if
she didn’t find some work. A year ago when she’d first moved to England, Jo had
envisioned herself freelance editing, but that still hadn’t taken off yet.
Plus, she had been spending all of her time in the Abington Archive searching
for any scant information about her ancestors with the long-suffering elder
museum curator, Roberta Wilkinson. Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly a
moneymaking endeavor. It was obsession.
But she couldn’t help it: Jo had moved
to the Ardemore property last year in a surprise inheritance following the
death of her mother, who conveniently never mentioned that her will would leave
Jo with a giant crumbling manor home (unlivable), the small cottage attached
(slightly more livable) or the gardens upon which they were built, which turned
out to be quite famous. The cottage made for a simple, straightforward home
that suited Jo nicely, but she’d learned in a hurry that the manor across the
hill housed only secrets.
The mysteries of her ancestors William
and Gwen, for ex- ample, who had lived in the estate house a century prior.
They were lord and lady so to speak; their portraits had hung regally in the
estate house as a constant reminder of their strange marriage and even stranger
living arrangement with Gwen’s sister, Evelyn. Some handwritten letters
revealed that Evelyn and William were having an affair. How much sister Gwen
knew about it all was unclear.
Jo had been the one to bring all this to
light last year when she discovered, buried beneath the crumbling estate, the
remains of Evelyn herself—and the telltale signs of pregnancy etched in her
bones. Curiously, no remains of a child were found with her, only a hope chest
filled with baby clothes buried in the garden and the letters between her and
William.
The questions surrounding the strange
love triangle at Ardemore estate a century ago and what exactly happened to
Evelyn’s child haunted Jo, but the constant dead ends threatened to drive her
mad. Even Roberta, who worked in a museum after all, was ready to let it go.
“Face
facts,” said the crusty old woman; the Ardemores had always been a “bad lot”
who didn’t care about community, and Evelyn and her baby “obviously” died in
childbirth. Time to focus on the better part of the Ardmore property: Jekyll
Gardens, about to open to the public in an event that would be historic for the
town of Abington.
The kettle whistled and Jo jumped; she
usually tried to stop it before the unholy screech. She poured hot water in the
pot and steeped; if her sojourn in the north of England had taught anything, it
was to never leave the tea bag in.
Her
guest was awkward. But so was she. This could work.
She reached into the cupboard for the
package of Jammie Dodgers. Jo bought them because, as a New Yorker, “Dodgers”
would always mean Brooklyn, even though they had been in LA since 1957. Of
course, there was the Artful Dodger, too, from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.
A silly name for cookies, maybe, but the mix of American baseball and Victorian
pickpocket ap- pealed to her sense of incongruity.
She emptied the whole box onto the tea
tray, and by the time she reached the living room, the man was standing in
front of her. Clean and tidy and now in proper lighting, he offered her the
chance for a better look.
Face:
full, square at the jaw. Hair: dark and wet, combed back behind the ears.
Mud-flecked black trousers had been changed to another pair, also black. Rather
baggy. The blue button-down shirt was damp at the collar.
“How long were you standing in the
rain?” Jo asked. “You were very wet.”
“Sorry? “Oh. Yes. It’s—I didn’t have an
umbrella.” He touched the curl at his temple with a wandering fingertip.
Had
she been rude? She held out the plate of biscuits to offer him one. He gave her
the smile again. Salesman smile, she thought, but his eyes settled on the
Dodgers with evident plea- sure.
“You’re
out of the way, living up here.”
“Sort of. We’re close to the trails,
though, and you can’t get any nearer the Jekyll Gardens.” Jo flapped a hand
toward the window. “You’ll practically be on the doorstep for tomorrow’s
opening ceremony.”
That had been the entire point of
finishing preparations for renting the cottage by May: the Jekyll Gardens
Opening Celebration. Jo may have lost her ancestral home to a fire, but finding
out that it was built on a garden designed by the renowned Gertrude Jekyll Well, it was one for the books. The
falling-down house at the edge of town had suddenly become a site of national
historical significance. The whole National Trust seemed to have checked into
the Red Lion inn.
“You’re lucky,” Jo added, hugging her
knees in the rocking chair. “I barely got the weblink up before you booked in—
otherwise there’d be stiff competition for a room, I’d bet.”
He hadn’t answered either comment, or
her attempt at a joke, just chewed a sticky biscuit and drank tea. Jo felt a
prickle run down her spine; was she not supposed to make chitchat? Wasn’t that
part of hosting duties? He’d looked at the clock twice, but after swallowing,
he refocused on her.
“I’m afraid I didn’t know about it. Just
traveling through on business.”
“Oh! But you’re here at just the right
time! The National Trust is opening the garden tomorrow — it’s where the manor house used to be.
Big party!”
“Sorry,
a manor? I didn’t see anything nearby . . .”
Jo jumped up and joined him by the
window, pointing to the dark distance. “Well, you can’t really see it from
here. But just beyond the trees is Ardemore House. What was once Ardemore
House, at least.”
“So, it’s a ruin?” her guest asked, and
gulped his tea.
“Well, it is now. It was deserted for
almost a century. The property was supposed to be in the care of my uncle Aiden
in the nineties, but he never really tended to it. Didn’t even live here, in
fact.”
Jo looked up to see her guest gaping at
her and stopped short. “So you are a newcomer to Yorkshire, then?” he asked. Jo
al- most laughed. He wasn’t exactly hanging on every word, was he? “A yearling,
I guess,” she admitted. “I came here to start over after my divorce and the
death of my mom last year. I didn’t realize inheriting the estate would be so .
. . complicated.”
She felt herself at risk of rambling
again, so she pulled out her phone and flipped to her photo library. “Here’s
the Ardemore House before. Here it is after the fire last year, still smoking.
I was inside it when it burned down.”
“You—What?”
Jo’s finger kept swiping through the
pictures. “That’s the gar- den workmen over summer, and here is the original
Gertrude Jekyll plan, and this—” Jo stopped at last on the National Trust page
“—this is the announcement of its opening tomorrow! I’m sort of, em—part of
the—committee.”
Mr. Ronan Foley looked down dutifully at
a bright summer green event ad: open time at 10:00 a.m., official ceremony at
noon, under pavilion, rain or shine. He didn’t say anything. Again. And Jo felt
her heart hammering. Uncertain about chit- chat, she’d instead launched into
full-blown special interest lecture. Nice, Jo.
Or
was it her reference to the fire? She’d got used to everyone knowing about all
of that; it had caused quite a commotion in Abington. There’d even been
interviews for the paper.
“Very interesting.” His eyes roved about
the room in a full circuit. Then he smiled, genuinely and wide. A surprised
smile. “Well, it would be my pleasure to come.”
Crap, Jo thought. She’d got a
hapless rain-soaked business- man who booked the cottage only because he
couldn’t get into a hotel.
And
now she’d accidentally invited him to the gardens.
“You
know, you really don’t have to—” she began.
“No, I do. It’s a wonderful idea. So
many locals will be there, new people to meet. You can expect me ” His eyes strayed to the enormous painting
over the fireplace even as he spoke. “My goodness. Beautiful painting.”
Evelyn’s portrait. It would be hard to
miss. The near-life-size painting took up most of the chimney. The gilt frame
glinted, offering the perfect contrast to the moody scene within: a woman with
strange, distant eyes, a face simultaneously demure and retiring, fierce and
resistant. She sat against a back- drop of flowers—yet the sky was a haze of
storm.
“Yes.
Evelyn Davies,” Jo said. “An ancestor.”
Do
not recite your family history. Do not mention that she was buried under the
house.
From THE DEAD COME TO STAY by BRANDY SCHILLACE. Copyright 2025 by BRANDY
SCHILLACE. Published by Hanover, an imprint of HTP Books/HarperCollins.
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