The Flavia de Luce Series (Flavia de Luce, #1-4)

THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE  
It is the summer of 1950—and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, Flavia de Luce, an eleven-year-old aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw.
 
THE WEED THAT STRINGS THE HANGMAN’S BAG
Flavia de Luce, a genius at investigating murders, thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey are over—until puppeteer Rupert Porson has his own strings sizzled in an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. But who’d do such a thing, and why? All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can’t solve—without Flavia’s help. But in getting so close to who’s pulling the strings of this dance of death, has Flavia gotten in way over her head?
 
A RED HERRING WITHOUT MUSTARD
In the hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey, the unflappable Flavia de Luce had asked a Gypsy woman to tell her fortune—never expecting to later stumble across the poor soul, bludgeoned almost to death in her own caravan. Was this an act of retribution by those convinced that the soothsayer abducted a local child years ago? As the red herrings pile up, Flavia must sort through clues fishy and foul to untangle dark deeds and dangerous secrets.
 
I AM HALF-SICK OF SHADOWS
It’s Christmastime when a film crew arrives at Buckshaw, Flavia de Luce’s beloved home, to shoot a movie starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern. Amid a raging blizzard, the entire village of Bishop’s Lacey gathers to watch Wyvern perform, yet nobody is prepared for the evening’s shocking conclusion: a body found strangled to death with a length of film. Who among the assembled guests would stage such a chilling scene? As the storm worsens, Flavia must ferret out a killer hidden in plain sight.