The Mitford Murders

Jessica Fellowes, Little Brown, R275

Fellowes, who has written the Downton

Abbey official companion books, has started a new mystery series, The Mitford

Murders. The story is inspired by the unsolved 1920 murder of Florence Nightingale Shore, goddaughter of the original Nightingale, on a Brighton-bound train. But in the land of fiction, anything can happen, including an 18-year-old nursery maid and the 16-year-old daughter of a lord turning into sleuths. It is a gentlewoman’s mystery, where the society of pearls and furs collides with the realm of washerwomen and gamblers.