Summer Boarders; or The Great Jewel Mystery

When a wealthy widow opens her Hudson Valley estate to summer boarders, she gets far more than she bargained for. A smooth-talking Count has his sights set on both her niece's inheritance and the family land. A shady Englishman with a mysterious past arrives with his chatty daughter in tow. A young lawyer makes an honest play for the widow's heart while a ne'er-do-well with dollar signs in his eyes lurks in the background. And somewhere in this madcap household of fortune hunters and meddling neighbors, a cache of valuable jewels has vanished into thin air. What ensues is period comedy at its most delightful: romantic misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and enough schemers to fill a railroad car. Bruorton writes with a sharp eye for the absurd and a light touch that keeps the pages turning. This is escapist fiction in its purest form, a world where everyone has an angle and no one is quite who they seem.