The Tale of Oat Cake Crag »

One of the book world's most respected authorities on herbs and their uses, Susan Wittig Albert is beloved by fans the world over for her mystery series starring herb-growing sleuth China Bayles -- as well as the Victorian Mysteries series she coauthors with husband Bill, under the pen name Robin Paige.

The latest tale in the "charming" (Publishers Weekly) Beatrix Potter series!

In the Lake District, noisy test flights of the new hydroplane are disrupting life in the village of Near Sawrey. Miss Beatrix Potter can barely hear herself think-which she needs to do for the new case she's just taken up. Her friend Grace Lythecoe has been receiving some anonymous letters, threatening her good name.

Now Beatrix must proceed quietly, so as not to arouse village gossip. And while her visit to Near Sawrey has proven to be anything but quiet, there is yet another piece of business for Beatrix to address: that of her own future. When she's offered a second chance at love, she decides that sometimes causing a disturbance can be well worth the trouble.

Publishers Weekly

Albert's charming seventh Beatrix Potter tale (after 2009's The Tale of Applebeck Orchard) finds Beatrix at Hill Top Farm in the Lake District, where she has taken refuge from her parents, who she knows will disapprove of her secret engagement to solicitor Will Heelis just as they disapproved of her engagement six years earlier to her editor, Norman Warne, who died before the two could marry. Meanwhile, Beatrix and the local birds and animals, including a teenage dragon, must put up with "a beastly fly-swimming spluttering aeroplane" that's been careering up and down Lake Windemere. More upsetting is the serious injury to Fred L. Baum, one of the plane's developers, who's found by Rascal, a popular Jack Russell terrier, at the bottom of Oat Cake Crag. The mystery element may be mild, but Albert does a fine job of recreating the wistful, nostalgic mood of Potter's children's books. (Sept.)