The Opera House Affair

Maya Chen is a preservation architect with a damaged reputation, seventeen boxes of books and an orange cat named Chairman Meow. She comes to Sea Ranch to restore the Pemberton Opera House, the building her grandmother fought to save in 1985. On her first morning there she finds the man who hired her dead at the foot of the grand staircase. The official word is a fall. Maya photographs fresh scratches on the stairs and a developer’s letter on the ticket counter. The opera house has walls thicker than its plans say. Its architect was accused of fraud in 1895 and spent his last years building things into it that nobody was meant to find quickly. Maya, a detective named Bradley Santos, the architect’s great-great-granddaughter and a lodge keeper who feeds everyone start measuring. Someone else is already inside the building. A cozy mystery of about 44,500 words in eleven chapters: hidden rooms, a small coastal town, a trial, and a cat who takes the credit. Book One of the Sea Ranch Cozy Mysteries by Sage Morrison. Chapter One is free to read.

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