Encore

Shortlisted for the 2016 Bony Blithe Award and the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel

When actress Bella James relocates to the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake to perform at the renowned Shaw Festival, she is only looking to step out of the spotlight of television celebrity and onto the stage. What she finds instead are long-buried human remains in the yard of her rented house. Upon learning that a woman was brutally attacked in the home thirty years earlier, Bella becomes convinced the two events are inextricably linked and that a deeper story was buried with the bones. With the help of a detective desperate to prove his worth, Bella begins asking questions that should have been asked decades earlier about a victim no one seems to have missed. In doing so, she soon finds herself embroiled in a dangerous drama both on and off the stage.

​A fast-paced, cozy mystery that combines humour, heartbreak, and plenty of suspense, Encore offers a backstage look at life in the theatre along with plot twists that will surprise and delight even the best armchair sleuth.