Banished! is how twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce laments her predicament when her father and Aunt Felicity ship her off to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy, the boarding school that her mother attended across the sea in Canada. Yet the sun has not yet risen on Flavia's first day in captivity when a gift lands at her feet. And Flavia being Flavia, a budding chemist and sleuth, that gift is a charred and mummified body which tumbles out of a bedroom chimney....

"Hailed as "a combination of Eloise and Sherlock Holmes" by The Boston Globe, Flavia de Luce returns in the much anticipated new mystery novel from award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Alan Bradley. In spite of being ejected from Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada, twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is excited to be sailing home to England. But instead of a joyous homecoming, she is greeted on the docks with unfortunate news: Her...

"It is the summer of 1950 - and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia's family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. 'I wish I could...