No One Leaves The Castle
No One Leaves The Castle
By Christopher Healy
Agatha Christie meets the Brothers Grimm in an unexpected, hilarious, and wholly original new fantasy-mystery from the beloved author of The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom.
The Lilac. The bard songs say that she’s the world’s most fearsome bounty hunter. That there’s no criminal she can’t catch, no mystery she can’t solve.
None of that is true. Yet.
In reality, the Lilac is just a kid, and the bard who wrote all that is her best friend, Dulcinetta. But the Lilac has set her goals on becoming the best bounty hunter in the Thirteen Kingdoms—and when a priceless artifact goes missing from the home of famed monster hunter Baron Angbar, the Lilac and Netta are eager to apprehend the thief and make a name for themselves.
But when their investigation brings them to a dinner party at Castle Angbar, and they meet the Angbar family and their servants and guests—an unsavory group of nobles, mages, and assorted creatures, each more shady than the last—the Lilac begins to wonder if the reward is worth the trouble.
And that’s before the dead body is discovered.
Now everyone is magically sealed inside the castle—and there is a murderer among them. If the Lilac wants to make it out with her reputation intact, it’s going to be up to her to figure out who the killer is. But everyone in the castle—even the Lilac herself—has secrets to hide, and as the walls literally start to close in around them, the Lilac worries that her first job as a bounty hunter may be her last. . . .
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'In this frenetic, tongue-in-cheek whodunit, Healy blends magic and pandemonium with a locked-room murder mystery, invoking familiar Agatha Christie flair while throwing in copious amounts of dry humor.' — Publishers Weekly
'If Agatha Christie ran the funniest D&D campaign in the world, it would be this book. Unforgettable characters and a laugh on every page.' — Adam Gidwitz, New York Times-bestselling author of A Tale Dark & Grimm
'Take a perfectly-crafted locked-room mystery, set it in a whimsical fairy tale world with a cast of captivating characters, and lace the whole thing with Christopher Healy's rare wit and you get the remarkable alchemy that is No One Leaves the Castle. Every twist and turn is an absolute delight.' — Anne Ursu, award-winning author of The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy
'A humorous and heartfelt whodunit teeming with unforgettable characters, wacky magic, and nonstop twists. I laughed from chapter to chapter, clue to clue, up to the very last page.' — John David Anderson, author of Posted
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Healy is the author of The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, as well as its two sequels, The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle and The Hero’s Guide to Being an Outlaw. He is also author of the historical sci-fi adventure trilogy, A Perilous Journey of Danger & Mayhem and the picture book, This Is Not That Kind of Book. His books have appeared on the IndieBound Indie Next List, Amazon’s Best books of the Year, Kirkus’s Best Young Adult Books, and the New York Times Notable Books list. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two children, and a little fluffball that he’s pretty sure is a dog. You can visit him online at www.christopherhealy.com