Murder at the Cracked Goblet: A humorous French cozy fantasy mystery where five misfits unite unwillingly in a medieval bastide in an alternate France ... replaced science (The Unlikely Ones Book 1) Kindle Edition

A merchant. A half-unwrapped honey candy. No blood, no wound, no visible mark. And a Tuesday in March when, in Cordes-sur-Ciel, a tavern that had been leaning for years begins to lean for good.✦ ✦ ✦"Mauclaire," said Sorvyn."I can see perfectly well it's Mauclaire," said Lormois. "What I cannot see is why Mauclaire decided to die on a market day, in a lane, in front of witnesses, on my watch.""Bah," said Torben. "Bad for business."✦ ✦ ✦Sorvyn Veldaris just wanted to run his tavern. Pour blonde ale from Gaillac. Measure the crack in the floorboards every morning the way he had for six years, pretending it wasn't growing. And above all, above all, not answer the questions people asked about his pointed ears — a Sombralin in a Tarn bastide was unusual, and "unusual" was enough to make people look.What he got instead: a regular customer dead in a nearby lane, a constable counting the days until retirement, and a Mage-investigator from the High Magistracy installed at his best table — the one that doesn't lean too much.Around him, by accident more than by choice:✦ Torben, dwarf brewer who says "bah" in place of every other word, and whose dark ale that nobody orders says more about him than his seventeen catalogued grunts.✦ Isaure d'Alvernis, Mage-investigator dispatched from Albi, who classifies suspects in alphabetical categories, drinks only tea without sugar, and who should never have been sent for so little — unless "so little" wasn't so little.✦ Sagnol, an old regular who pays in coins minted under Aliénor IV, abolished sixty years ago, with the sovereign dignity of a man who has decided that time itself is in the wrong.✦ Bramm Griseforge, half-orc bard who sleeps in the storeroom between two casks of blonde ale, plays clumsy when sober and just well enough when he isn't, and whose lute Marguerite carries the stickers of taverns that no longer exist.✦ Sister Denarie Prudhon, priestess of the Temple of Mercurin, scandalously tight-fisted, who keeps a great ledger where every coin has a column — and who has just discovered a word her ledger has no column for at all.✦ ✦ ✦"How much does a gesture cost?" Denarie asked."Free," said Torben, without looking up from his cask."Free," she repeated, as though the word belonged to a foreign language whose grammar she had never learned. "What column does that go in?""None," Sorvyn said.✦ ✦ ✦The High Magistracy does not send a Mage-investigator for an old merchant dead of natural causes in a provincial bastide. Sorvyn knows it. The constable knows it. And whoever was in that lane before dawn knows it too.Five misfits who barely held together.A mystery none of them asked for.A bastide where magic replaced science, and whose crack is widening.✦ ✦ ✦Welcome to the Cracked Goblet. The ale isn't for everyone. Stay anyway.✦ ✦ ✦The Unlikely Ones is a six-book cozy fantasy series set in an alternate-history France where magic replaced the steam engine — for readers who pull up a chair at the tavern fire and stay for the regulars. This first volume reads as a standalone. Read more