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A 120-year-old secret. A body in the woods. And the only woman in Vermont who knows exactly where to look.

Margaret "Maggie" Penhallow spent twenty-five years as a professional archivist hunting other people's ancestors. Now, freshly divorced and newly relocated to the charming small town of Millbrook, Vermont, she's opened The Genealogist's Cottage — determined to build a quieter life one census record at a time.

Her first client walks in on her very first day.

Hank Whitford is seventy-two, soft-spoken, and carrying a century-old Bible with a letter hidden in its back cover — a letter addressed to his grandfather, accusing the family of erasing a daughter from their family tree. He wants the truth. Maggie wants to help.

Three days later, Hank is found dead in the woods behind the Old Burying Ground. The official verdict: a fall.

Maggie doesn't believe it for a second.

Armed with a Certified Genealogist credential, an extraordinary cat named Cromwell, and access to the 1900 U.S. Federal Census, Maggie begins pulling at the threads of the Whitford family tree — and finds that someone cut them deliberately. A young woman committed to an asylum at nine years old. A page sliced from a probate record. A hidden photograph in a dead man's pocket. And a farm worth over a million dollars that someone very much wants to sell.

The deeper Maggie digs into the archives, the closer the killer gets.

Perfect for fans of Richard Osman, Louise Penny, and Diane Mott Davidson.

The Buried Branch is a warm, witty, and intellectually satisfying cozy mystery where the clues are hidden in census records, and the resolution is as genealogically real as it is emotionally true.

Readers are saying:

"Maggie Penhallow is the amateur sleuth I've been waiting my whole reading life for — smart, funny, and completely unstoppable."

"I stayed up until 2 a.m. and didn't regret a single minute. Then I went and looked up my own family's 1900 census."

"Finally — a cozy mystery that treats genealogy like the real, fascinating, powerful tool it actually is."

The Millbrook Genealogy Mystery Series

Book 1: The Buried Branch — A 1903 letter. A hidden daughter. A killer who has been waiting a hundred years.

Also includes: A real, usable genealogy research guide at the back of the book — featuring the actual techniques Maggie uses, so you can search your own family tree.

Clean read. No graphic violence. No explicit content. Slow-burn romance thread across the series.

Start the series today — your ancestors are waiting.

The Buried Branch: A Gripping Small-Town Genealogy Mystery with Hidden Family Secrets

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