Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree

'First loves. Second-hand books. Epic adventures'

Absolute perfection. I didn't think I could like a cosy fantasy more than Legends and Lattes (his first) but I did. This book has everything I look for in escapist fiction. Genuinely funny, great characters, small details, high stakes. Romance and scones. I adored it.

From the back

Viv’s career with the renowned mercenary company Rackam’s Ravens isn’t going as planned. Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she’s packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk – so far from the action that she worries she’ll never be able to return to it. What’s a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?

Spending her hours at a struggling bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted. Even though it may be exactly what she needs. Still, adventure isn’t far away. A suspicious traveller in grey, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.

Sometimes, right things happen at the wrong time. Sometimes, what we need isn’t what we seek. And sometimes, we find ourselves in the stories we experience together . . .