Old World Murder »

Kathleen Ernst (Madison, WI) is an award-winning author, educator, and social historian. She has published fourteen novels and one nonfiction book, earning her nominations for the Agatha Award, among other honors. She served as project director/scriptwriter for several instructional television series, one of which earned her an Emmy Award.

Visit her online at KathleenErnst.com.

Hoping to leave behind her heartbreaking past, Chloe Ellefson makes a fresh start as the new collections curator at Old World Wisconsin. This outdoor ethnic museum charms visitors with authentic historical artifacts and costumed employees who churn butter, make shoes, and reenact 1870s settlement life. But Chloe's first day on the job only brings misfortune when an elderly woman pleads with her to find the priceless eighteenth-century Norwegian ale bowl that she donated to the museum years ago. Minutes later, the disappointed woman dies in a mysterious car crash.

Throwing herself into a dangerous investigation, Chloe discovers that someone is desperately trying to erase all traces of the bowl's existence by any means necessary . . . including murder. With the unnervingly attractive part-time cop Roelke McKenna at her side, Chloe must solve a decades-old puzzle, catch a covetous killer, and stay alive in this deadly heirloom hunt.

Publishers Weekly

Ernst, the author of Clues in the Shadows and other YA American Girl novels, shows her ease in mining historical periods in her adult debut, set in Wisconsin in 1982. On Chloe Ellefson's first day as the new curator of collections at Old World Wisconsin, an outdoor museum that recreates the 1870s, elderly Berget Lundquist asks Chloe for the return of a family heirloom, a hand-painted Norwegian ale bowl that Berget donated to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in 1962. Within minutes of Chloe promising to locate the bowl, Berget dies after driving her car off the road into a tree. The fatal bludgeoning of Berget's aged neighbor, Bill Solberg, by a person hunting for the elusive bowl leads Chloe to suspect the item has some special value. While details of the Old World museum can overwhelm at times, clever plot twists and credible characters make this a far from humdrum cozy. (Oct.)