Slaying at Stanway

Some weddings end with ‘I do‘—this one ends with ‘whodunit?’

When American ex-pat Nigella Hunt agrees to help her friend with the flowers for a wedding at the grand Stanway Manor, she expects a day of romance and celebration. But when the cantankerous wedding planner is found dead among the roses, the festivities take a deadly twist, and Nigella finds herself caught up in her very first murder mystery.

With all eyes on the guests at Stanway Manor—a historic estate rich with secrets and ties to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan—Nigella’s curiosity quickly pulls her into the investigation. As she digs deeper, she realizes this case is no fairytale; hidden motives, swirling secrets, and clues embedded in the manor’s storied past make every revelation more unexpected.

Set against the picturesque backdrop of Stow-on-the-Wold, Slaying at Stanway offers cozy mystery lovers an enchanting escape filled with literary charm, village intrigue, and a dash of danger. Can Nigella solve the case before the killer strikes again?

Perfect for fans of village life, literary legends, and amateur sleuths, this first installment in ACF Bookens’ Cotswolds Classics series is sure to delight.

Author Biography

ACF Bookens loves a good mystery, a quaint bookshop, and a good cup of coffee. She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she takes joy in the mountain views and the quiet back roads. She lives with her son and three rescue cats who are, of course, nocturnal.

Aslan, the cat in her books, is based on her departed first cat by that name, who spent an inordinate amount of time digging up her houseplants.

In her books, Bookens addresses issues of justice and writes with intention to disrupt the white supremacy that says that “whiteness” is normal by making purposeful note of every character’s ethnicity. She is weary of books that assume everyone is white unless the author says otherwise because being white is not the default of reality.

Her hope is that readers enjoy escaping into her stories and are challenged, just a little, to make themselves better people and the world a better place from the reading.