Alan Bradley’s Debut Dagger Award winning Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a delightful, old-fashioned romp through the English countryside during the summer of 1950.

The protagonist, Flavia de Luce, is a prepubescent Miss Marple with an inquisitive, precocious manner. When she is not roaming around on Gladys, her bicycle, looking for mysteries to solve, she can be found in her fully equipped chemistry lab in the crumbling manor of Buckshaw, the family mansion. She has a penchant for poisons and a nose for news, so when she finds a stranger dying his last breathe in the family cucumber patch she sets out to investigate. She gets further involved when her father, the colonel, is arrested for the crime. Her father proceeds to tell her a fabulous tale about a rare stamp and a boyhood friendship with a shifty character, both of which play pivotal roles in the current mystery.

Bradley weaves a colorful cast of characters that come to life on the page as they fall prey to Flavia’s detective bravado. Expect a top-notch mystery full of hilarity and spunk and keep reading because Flavia has more adventures in the follow-up The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag.

The First Thursday Book Group meets to discuss Alan Bradley’s Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie on Thursday, March 3rd at 10:00 a.m. in the first floor meeting rooms of the Hoover Public Library. Join us to discuss this pot-boiler!