Lemonade and Lies

Lemonade and Lies is the second Peridale Cafe cozy mystery by Agatha Frost. The whole village is invited to a garden party at the manor for a mysterious special announcement. Nobody expects it to end with a man thrown to his death from an upstairs window.

The house belongs to Julia South's estranged father, which puts her family at the centre of the case and turns every eye in Peridale toward her. Julia investigates while managing two complications of her own: a blossoming romance with Detective Inspector Barker Brown, and the increasingly strange behaviour of her young lodger, Jessie.

The book deepens the series' ongoing threads — Julia's fractured family, her cafe, and the village's habit of expecting her to do the police's work — inside a tight, self-contained mystery.