Death in the Dordogne Series

Interior decorator Mara Dunn and orchidologist Julian Wood team up again to solve two murders in Michelle Wan’s charming new botanical mystery.Mara is renovating the manor house of the wealthy Christophe de Bonfond when she discovers the body of a murdered infant. The body, concealed for more than a century, brings to light unexpected and critical information on an elusive Lady’s Slipper orchid that Julian avidly seeks. Christophe hires genealogist Jean-Claude Fournier to exonerate his ancestors, only to have the expert unleash even more terrifying suspicions. When violent death strikes in the present day, Mara and Julian begin an investigation of their own that leads them to uncover a trail of murder spanning many decades.

A reclusive English botanist helps a woman search for the truth about her missing orchid enthusiast sister in southwestern France in this “moody and elegant suspense story” (The Washington Post Book World).

Nearly twenty years have passed since Mara Dunn’s sister Bedie, an orchid enthusiast, disappeared while on a hiking holiday in southwestern France. Mara remains determined to find out what happened—but her only real clue is a sequence of wild orchids, including a mysterious, previously unknown Lady’s Slipper, captured on a roll of film found in Bedie’s long-lost camera. With the help of Julian Wood, a reclusive English botanist, Mara begins her search…stumbling into decades’ worth of local secrets and putting herself in danger. Rich in lush descriptions of the Dordogne, and laden with savory details of French cooking, Deadly Slipper is rife with surprising twists and turns.