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    The Cracked Spine
    The Cracked Spine
    The Cracked Spine
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Cracked Spine

    Written by Paige Shelton

    Narrated by Carrington MacDuffie

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In need of a good adventure, Delaney Nichols takes the leap and moves to Edinburgh, Scotland, to start a job at The Cracked Spine. She doesn't know much about what she's gotten herself into, other than that the work sounds exciting, and that her new boss, Edwin MacAlister, has given her the opportunity of a lifetime.

    When she arrives, she meets her new Scottish family; also working at the Cracked Spine are Rosie, perpetually wrapped in scarves, and who always has tiny dog Hector in tow; Hamlet, a nineteen-year-old thespian with a colored past and bright future; and Edwin, who is just as enigmatic and mysterious as Delaney expected.

    But before she can settle into her new life, a precious artifact-a previously undiscovered First Folio of Shakespeare's plays-goes missing, and Edwin's sister is murdered, seemingly in connection to the missing folio. Delaney decides to do some sleuthing of her own, to find out just what the real story is behind the priceless folio, and how it's connected to the tragic death, all without getting harmed herself.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 29, 2016
    ISBN9781515970668
    The Cracked Spine
    Author

    Paige Shelton

    PAIGE SHELTON had a nomadic childhood, as her father's job as a football coach took her family to seven different towns before she was even twelve years old. After college at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, she moved to Salt Lake City. She thought she'd only stay a couple years, but instead she fell in love with the mountains and a great guy who became her husband. After many decades in Utah, she and her family moved to Arizona. She writes the Scottish Bookshop Mystery series and the Alaska Wild series. Her other series include the Farmers’ Market, Cooking School, and Dangerous Type mystery series.

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    Reviews for The Cracked Spine

    3.5/5

    191 ratings26 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Quite fun to listen to! Unbelievably silly and fun, it grew o. me.
    • 4/5
      Such a lovely read. I loved the characters and the plot flowed very well. The writing was good and made the story pop off the page.

      Delaney is a lovely character and her found family is a treat! Looking forward to learning more about all of the characters over the rest of the books.
    • 4/5
      Paige Shelton's name was enough to make me want to read this book. I have read several other cozies by her and really enjoyed the cast of characters and the settings. The setting for the Cracked Spine was no exception. The idea of visiting Scotland and the descriptions of the towns and warmth of the people made a tourist stop there sound inviting.That said, I had a hard time connecting with this particular eccentric cast of personalities. I wanted to get to know them more than we were allowed. Many were kept at arm's length so they could be possible suspects. Fortunately, there will be a solution for that issue. There should be many more books in the series and we should be able to become well acquainted with this new group across the pond. I gratefully received this e-galley from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
    • 5/5
      The Cracked Spine is a thoroughly enjoyable cozy mystery. Delaney has just been laid off from her museum job in Kansas and is ready for an adventure. She answers an ad for a job in Scotland and jumps at the opportunity. She is welcomed to the country by a fantastic group of characters. Her new boss, Edwin, is the owner of The Cracked Spine...a bookstore and so much more. Edwin is also rich and collects unusual and varied items. Edwin's sister is murdered and a First Folio is missing. Are the two related? Delaney and her new friends work to solve the crime and protect Edwin. The best cozy I've read recently! hope this series continues!
    • 2/5
      Pretty far-fetched. Delaney, a rare books expert who hails from Kansas, had just arrived in Scotland a matter of hours when she was investigating the murder of her new boss's sister, someone she had never met. More surprising was that not one person told her to bugger off with her nosy questions. My version was an audiobook read with an excruciating Scottish accent. And someone should tell Shelton that it's Scotch whisky, never Scottish. She made a point of using the local terms for everything else except this one. Thin plot and poor characters in what appeared to be a promising cosy mystery.
    • 1/5
      The audiobook skips around; it’s obviously defective. It’s very annoying!
    • 1/5
      Couldn't get into it. Slow moving, with too much woo-woo. Read about 130 pages and just couldn't go on with it.
    • 4/5
      Delaney Nichols is laid off from her job at a museum in Kansas and decides that now is the time for her to take an adventure so when she reads an advertisement for a job at a rare book store in Edinburgh she jumps at the opportunity and applies for the job. 3 weeks later she is in Edinburgh, ready for her adventure but not knowing what she's getting involved with.Delaney's first few days on the job have her searching for a rare Shakespeare folio after the murder of her boss's sister. The story moves rapidly, IMO, and suddenly Delaney and the reader are faced with the solution.Being the first in the series, I can see a great deal of room for the continuation of character growth as well as mysterious possibilities. Definitely looking forward to another in the series.
    • 2/5
      I read about a third of the book and quit because I could get past the concept that a new American in Edinburgh would feel compelled to investigate the murder of a person they never met. I've read lots of cozy mysteries but the main character had some connection to the murder victim.
      Maybe this was explained later in the book, but I couldn't continue find out.
    • 3/5
      After losing her job, Delaney takes a leap of faith and move to Scotland to work in a bookshop. She hardly has a chance to settle in before tragedy strikes the shop’s owner: his sister is murdered, and a priceless portfolio of a work by Shakespeare goes missing. Delaney takes it upon herself to try to solve this murder, even though she is not a detective. If readers can get past this illogical chain of events that led Delaney from being a reporter in America to being an amateur detective in Scotland, then you can enjoy this story. The mystery is a bit weak, or maybe it’s just simple, but the characters are interesting and the overall novel is entertaining.
    • 5/5
      Great Fun Mystery. Really enjoyed it. 5 Stars.
    • 5/5
      My first read by Paige Shelton. This is a series of books and best to read in order but not necesary.I listened to an audio on You Tube.Delaney Nichols is from Kansas and lost her position when staff was cut. She is offered a position by Edwin MacAlister in Edinburgh, Scotland at a book store, The Cracked Spine. The other workers are Hamlet and Rosie. Rosie has Hector, a terrier and I find welcome as a character.Tom owns a pub nearby and becomes an interest in Delaney's life.The mystery begins when an undiscovered First Folio of Shakespear's plays are missing and Edwin's sister is found murdered. Delaney becomes an amateur sleuth. This was a great read/listen and I will listen to the other books.I liked the characters and being in an old book store held an interst for me as well as some history of the area. Makes me want to go back to Scotland and Edinburgh.I give it a 5*.
    • 1/5
      Scotland. A bookshop. A murder mystery. A disappointment. Delaney Nichols finds herself on her way from losing her museum job in the Midwest US to a new job in Edinburgh. An intriguing premise of this series was that Delaney has conversations with the voices of story characters in her head. There’s even a flashback to when it happened to her at 10 years old; and she told her father. And that’s practically the last thing said about it. The day after Delaney arrives in Scotland, her new boss’ sister is found murdered in her apartment. Missing is a rare folio of Shakespearean works that had been entrusted to the victim. Introverted Delaney takes it upon herself to investigate. In a city she’s never visited before. Questioning people she’s never met before. In a culture vastly different than what she grew up with. While trying to settle into a new job. And starting up a new romance. In a mere handful of days, she figures it out and solves the crime. How she didn’t get arrested for impeding a police investigation is beyond me. Okay, okay. I’ll go along because the characters are colorful, if a bit flat. But wait, those voices from the novels? The concept that really drove my interest in the story enough that I just spent nearly eight hours with the audiobook? Yeah, they’re gone. No clue why. At the end of the book, they still aren’t definitely back - it’s hinted at, but not confirmed. The entire story ended up like a mishmash of ideas thrown into a hopper and randomly pulled out. String them together with a nearly nonsensical murder mystery and call it the first of a series. No, thanks. One is sufficient.
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed Paige Shelton's Dangerous Type Mystery Series so I couldn't wait to begin the Scottish Bookshop Mystery Series and I'm so glad I did.

      I don't know any reader that has experienced the descriptions of Scotland as written in the novels by Rosamunde Pilcher that isn't fascinated by the prospect of more wonderful stories in this setting and now delightfully by a cozy mystery author. As per the author's website description, “Kansas born and bred laid-off museum archivist Delaney Nichols answers an ad for a position with a rare and used book and manuscript shop in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her new life across the ocean is full of adventure, mystery, and a touch of romance with a pub owner who looks amazing in a kilt.”

      Due to my favorite aunt and uncle living in Fowler, Kansas (approx. 40 minutes south and west of Dodge City) for the last years of their lives I visited them multiple times. As I wasn't comfortable with the thought of taking the "puddle jumper" from Denver to Dodge City, I always flew from Philadelphia to Houston to Wichita and then drove to my aunt and uncle's home which was an approximately 3 hrs. car ride. This also allowed me to have my own car during my visit. My aunt loved to visit Wichita for her clothes shopping expeditions so my aunt, uncle and I shared several multi-day expeditions. After my uncle's death, my aunt and I then decided to go to celebrate shared memories and create our own treasury of adventures. In reading this cozy mystery, the delight of having Delaney being introduced as “Delaney Nichols from Kansas in America” to everyone in her new locale in Edinburgh made me smile every time and it was fun to learn their reactions as well as Delaney's reactions to the Scottish accent, vehicles being driven on the left side of the road, the new foods, men in kilts and particularly a certain handsome pub owner. I loved the individuality of new boss Edwin MacAlister, new coworkers Hamlet, Rosie and Rosie's dog Hector that also makes Delaney feel part of The Cracked Spine bookshop family. To have Delaney become embroiled in helping to solve a murder investigation while just beginning her new job in a new country makes for an exciting opening of a new cozy mystery series by a favorite author. I can't wait to read more titles in this series!
    • 2/5
      Very slow and quite dull. Delaney had just arrived in Scotland and I didn't understand why she took it upon herself to interrogate people and try to solve the murder of a person she had never met. I plodded along with this book to finish it but I won't be reading any more of the series. I've read one other book by the same author and also found it quite mundane.Slow.There are better cosy mysteries out there.
    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Cracked Spine by Paige Shelton. The characters are engaging (especially Delaney, Edwin, and Tom) and the mystery plots are engaging. I learned a great deal also – about old manuscripts, auctions for old manuscripts, restoring old manuscripts, and so forth.

      The setting is a book and rare manuscript shop (The Cracked Spine) in Edinburgh, Scotland. The bookshop and city are both described so well that I can clearly picture them in my mind. My only regret about the book is that I can't visit Delaney and the others in The Cracked Spine.

      I highly recommend The Cracked Spine by Paige Shelton to all fans of cozy mysteries, especially those who are also fans of cozies set in the UK. I can't wait to read the next book in the Scottish Bookshop Mystery series!

      Note: I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of The Cracked Spine. All opinions shared are 100% my own.
    • 3/5
      Decent - The mystery was rolled up in the last few pages and was a wee bit disappointing - I expected something a little more complicated. I'd read the next in this series.
    • 4/5
      Delaney Nichols has lost her job at the museum she worked for in Kansas and is now looking for another job. She reads of a bookstore in Scotland seeking an adventurer. She doesn't think of herself until that point but something about the ad, or perhaps it's Scotland calling. When she gets to Scotland she's immediately drawn into secrets and the owner's sister's murder.

      This is a lovely introduction to a new series filled with eccentric characters, a heroine who has a unique ability that I look forward to reading more about, a couple of interesting men and of course a bookstore - all of which is in a place I want to visit. Really looking forward to learning more about the characters and seeing what else Delaney is going to get into.
    • 3/5
      Delaney relocates to Scotland to work in a rare-bookstore called The Cracked Spine. Everyone she meets is overly friendly and wants to help/take care of her. There’s a mysterious treasure trove of valuable artifacts in the basement and a valuable rare Shakespearean folio has gone missing and there is suspicion that the Edwin, the bookshop owner’s sister sold it since she was a recovering drug addict and the thinking was that she had returned to drugs
    • 4/5
      First, the setting was the best part of this book; I've never actually been to Edinburgh (yet) but I felt like I was there. Writing in dialect sometimes got on my nerves, but mostly I found it added to the characters and story rather than detracting from them. The bookshop, The Cracked Spine, sounds amazing and I would have liked to have had the story spend more time inside the shop with its wonders (especially the 'warehouse'), than outside in dodgy neighbourhoods. The plot was certainly a mystery; I never had any inkling who murdered Jenny, but I'm not sure anyone could have known as the author pulled a Christie and didn't set the story up to be solved. Lots of red herrings though. The characters are what I struggled with here and having read Shelton's other work, I'm not surprised. Her characters tend to be hit or miss with me and I feel like there's often just something missing that's keeping me from connecting with them and really caring about their outcomes. She sometimes nails it, as she does with Jerome and Betts in her Country Fried Cooking school series and it's why I keep coming back. I suspect here, part of my failure to connect with Delaney is her wide-eyed naivety; she acts a bit like a 12 year old just orphaned rather than a well-educated woman who had a successful career in a museum before moving to The Cracked Spine. I'll definitely read the next one, and I hope that we'll spend more time in the bookshop with the treasures there, and that Delaney sheds the innocent farm girl schtick.
    • 2/5
      I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't make it happen. I read a little over half of it before calling it a day. I never felt a connection with any of the characters and really didn't care who the murderer was.
    • 3/5
      Delaney Nichols moved to Edinburgh to work at Edwin's bookshop that specializes in rare books after being laid off from her museum job in Wichita, Kansas. The first person she meets is a cab driver who takes her under his wing. On her first day, she discovers she will be attending auctions and meets many of the persons with whom she will be working. Then her new boss's sister is murdered. In her past, she'd had a drug abuse problem. Edwin believes she'd reformed. She was holding a valuable folio for him for safekeeping. The folio, however, seems to have disappeared. A bit too much of the plot is implausible for this to be a really good mystery. Delaney, Tom who owns Scotland's smallest pub next to the bookshop, and Elias the cab driver and his wife Aggie are really the only characters I loved. Hamlet, a boy who works in the bookshop, shows promise. I'm not sure Edwin is completely on the up and up, Rosie who keeps the shop's books is even a bit questionable, and I'm certain I don't really care for the others who attend the auction. Too many members of the police force were introduced. It's a flawed book. I might give the second installment a chance mainly to see where the series is headed, but if the problems of the first installment aren't corrected, I'll probably skip the remainder of the series. I really expected a writer with other series to deliver a more interesting and plausible plot. The Scottish setting and dialect makes up for some of the shortcomings.
    • 5/5
      Delaney Nichols is our protagonist and she has recently been laid off her job at the museum in Wichita Kansas, and she just decided to accept an offer in Edinburgh Scotland. It is at a little book shop called the Cracked Spine. Delany is befriended by Elias, who she met when she selected a taxi cab at the airport to bring her to her hotel. Elias reminded her of a kindly uncle back in the states. The great thing is he turned out to be almost her guardian angel. He offered to show her around Edinburgh though he discovered trying to ‘help’ her might just be getting him in trouble. She meets all her new co-workers and starts to learning what her job will actually entail. Which still seems to be partially in shadow. There is Edwin the owner, Rosie the old lady who carries her little dog with her everywhere, and Hamlet, the young man, going to school and work and is an aspiring Shakespearean actor. She hasn’t been given full instructions yet, but she does know she’ll be doing a bit of cataloging. Then the owner's sister is brutally murdered. Delany hadn’t yet had a chance to meet her, but the more she learned, the more curious she became and the more she stuck her nose into it. There were a lot of clues and some misdirection and since Delany had just met all the people who work at the Cracked Spine and some of Edwin’s associates, and while she wants to believe they are all innocent, she doesn’t know and can’t be sure. So when she finds clues, she is not always sure who to trust with them.I really enjoyed this book I think I need to look into some of the author's other works. However, I am certainly going to be on the lookout for the 2nd book in this series. Delany and crew are an eclectic bunch and really a whole lot of fun. This book felt more like a just a taste, a warm up for great stories to come. I highly recommend for cozy mystery lovers!
    • 4/5
      What fun! After all, who wouldn't want to take on a slightly mysterious bookseller position in Scotland and leave Kansas behind!? Delaney Nichols has a great phone interview with bookstore owner Edwin MacAlister and off she heads to Edinburgh. There are friendly cabbies, a kilt wearing pub owner and a murder to solve, all in the first half of the book. The detailed descriptions of the area of Edinburgh that the bookstore resides really made me see the places in my head. I look forward to much more about these great characters.
    • 3/5
      From the cover, I was expecting a typical cozy mystery with an amateur sleuth chasing down the clues and eventually solving the crime. What I got was an amateur sleuth finding pretty much only one clue, asking a few questions and miraculously solving the crime. Nothing really flowed right. I don't buy the motivation behind Delaney leaving the US for Scotland, the club Edwin is a part of seems like it should be a bigger part of the story but doesn't amount to much, Rosie witnessing an accident and then ending up flirting with the victim doesn't tie into anything, Delaney hearing voices from the books around her is an interesting side plot but nothing is made of it and I could go on and on but it's all more of the same. I was hoping for a whole lot more from the book but at the end of it all I enjoyed the characters so much, I just might read the next book in the series. If it wasn't for side characters like Elias, Tom and even little Hector I wouldn't bother. I hope the storyline flows much better in the next book of the series. If the subplot isn't going to be fully flushed out, I hope Shelton leaves it out so it doesn't distract from what is enjoyable in the storyline. I recommend this to anyone who likes cozy mysteries with more emphasis on good characters rather than a believable plot.
    • 5/5
      Author Paige Shelton takes many a book lover's dream-- moving to the UK and working in a bookshop-- and weaves it into a first-rate beginning of a new series. Through Delaney, she does an excellent job of portraying an American's culture shock in the ancient city of Edinburgh: driving on the "wrong" side of the road, the narrow streets, the incredibly old buildings everywhere, and the accents and friendliness of the Scottish people.But the cultural differences aren't the only reason to devour The Cracked Spine. Delaney is an intriguing blend of intelligence and naïveté, and she's surrounded by an excellent secondary cast. The scarf-wearing Rosie with her little dog Hector always in tow. Handsome and charming Tom from across the street. Her landlords Elias and his wife. Detective Inspector Winters. And with all the treasures he's collected in The Cracked Spine's storeroom and his disorganized, mad professorish ways, Edwin MacAlister should be the source for many a future mystery.Speaking of mysteries, the one in The Cracked Spine is a good'un. I didn't have a clue to the killer's identity, which always gives me a thrill. There were a couple of tiny things that made me raise an eyebrow: Delaney's finding her cottage was a bit too fortuitous, and I didn't quite believe her willingness to investigate Jenny's death, but they in no way ruined my enjoyment of the book. On the contrary-- I can't wait for the next installment!