cover image Miss Julia Happily Ever After

Miss Julia Happily Ever After

Ann B. Ross. Viking, $27 (336p) ISBN 978-0-5932-9646-2

It’s wedding season in Abbotsville, N.C., as bestseller Ross’s airy 22nd Miss Julia mystery (after 2020’s Miss Julia Knows a Thing or Two) opens, and it seems everyone Miss Julia Murdoch knows is contemplating marriage for all the wrong reasons. Christy Hargrove is giving up her dream of being a doctor. Miss Julia’s cherished housekeeper, Lillian, is thinking of hitching herself to a 98-year-old pillar of society just for the status. Helen Stroud has married a man who only seems to need a nurse. And LuAnne Conover, who has just shed herself of a philanderer, has decided she’s not cut out for the single life and is fishing for another husband—any husband. Miss Julia knows it’s best to keep her lip zipped and be supportive, but that’s not her usual modus operandi. Then on top of everything, a naked man is running around town peeping in women’s windows at night, scaring everybody half to death. Newcomers won’t feel lost in this personality-driven cozy in which nothing too bad happens. This long-running series shows no sign of losing steam. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Literary. (Apr.)