A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for Best First Novel“Debut novelist Tector captures European life and her characters beautifully as she interweaves the perspectives of four women seeking fulfillment and success in this satisfying adventure. Keep an eye on this author.” —BooklistAlice Ahmadi has never been certain of where she belongs. When she discovers a famed emerald necklace while interning at a...

Ottawa, January 2010. Canada’s historic Dominion Archives. Junior archivist Jess Kendall is struggling to find her footing in her new role. Her colleagues undermine her, her boss hates her, and her only romantic prospect hides a whiskey bottle in his desk. Desperate to make a good impression, her luck begins to change when she discovers a series of mysterious letters chronicling life in Paris at the start of the Great War. Thinking she has landed her ticket to career advancement, she dives...

It’s a stormy summer day when Ottawa coroner Dr. Cate Spencer is called to the scene of an alleged suicide. Inside a narrow vault in the Dominion Archives’ nitrate film storage facility—kept separate from the rest of the collection due to its dangerous combustibility—officers pressure her to rule the death a suicide. When parts of the scene don’t add up and a deliberately set spark threatens her life, she suspects that this death might be a murder. Her tough façade masks a deep compassion ...

When Alice Ahmadi discovers a famed emerald necklace while interning at a struggling Parisian magazine, she is plunged into a glittering world of diamonds and emeralds, courtesans and spies, and the long-buried secrets surrounding the necklace and its glamorous former owners. When she realizes the mysterious Honeybee Emeralds could be her chance to save the magazine, she recruits her friends Lily and Daphne to form the “Fellowship of the Necklace.” Together, they set out to uncover the rom...