Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Sloane Foster

Series: A Marnie Devlin Cozy Mystery

The Book:

Marnie Devlin came to Willow Springs for a fresh start and a vintage boutique—good light, good bones, and a town small enough to learn by heart. What she did not come for was a body behind a wall. But an obnoxious auctioneer turns up dead in a hidden room of a grand old Victorian manor, and at sixty-five Marnie has the two qualifications that matter: she notices everything, and nobody thinks to watch her while she's doing it.

She has help. Ruby, who manages the boutique, knows everyone's business in Willow Springs slightly before they know it themselves. Taco is a very small dog with an outsized talent for turning up exactly where the interesting thing is. And Marnie herself carries an encyclopedic memory for couture and a hopeless soft spot for strays, which is how she has ended up consulting on murder again in a town she moved to for the quiet.

The suspects arrive faster than the answers. The victim's niece was positioned to inherit his job and does not appear to be grieving it. A respected local doctor was swindled out of a fortune in forged art and has not forgotten who by. Every lead twists somewhere Marnie didn't expect, and when a witness is attacked, the shape of the thing changes—this isn't one death and a tidy motive. Somebody in Willow Springs has spent a long time behind a pleasant smile, and they have no intention of stopping now.

Released: August 22, 2026

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“A body walled up in a Victorian manor, a sixty-five-year-old shop owner who can date a hat at forty paces, and a dog small enough that nobody bothers to move him out of the room. Marnie Devlin gets underestimated on sight, and Sloane Foster clearly knows exactly how useful that is.”
— Willow 🌿

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Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Anna deWhal