A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)

by Brittany Cavallaro

an auction of my great-great-great-grandfather’s literary agent’s—Arthur Conan Doyle’s—things.

My mother cut me off, saying, “Jamie, if you try to do anything like that before you turn eighteen, I will sell every last one of your books in the night, starting with your autographed Neil Gaiman.”

Ha! Good to know that Jamie Watson is also a Gaiman fan.

She patted me on the shoulder and took off down the path, leaving me behind, both charmed and insulted. The side effects of hanging around Charlotte Holmes.

I’d never been so turned off in my life.

I can tell you right now that you’re wearing all black, and that Jamie Watson is annoyed with you. I have eyes watching you right now. THAT IS NOT SPYING THAT IS SHODDY AMATEUR DEDUCTION AND IT IS INCORRECT, she replied furiously. She was, of course, wearing all black.

Charlotte Holmes is human.

I watched Holmes finish her calculus problem set in the ten minutes between concluding some frothy, smelly experiment and picking up her violin for a spin through Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata as if it were “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Charlotte Holmes wasn’t innocent. She was imperious, and demanding, with a self-destructive streak that ran as wide as the Atlantic.

A final note on Watson. He flagellates himself rather a lot, as this narrative shows. He shouldn’t. He is lovely and warm and quite brave and a bit heedless of his own safety and by any measure the best man I’ve ever known. I’ve discovered that I am very clever when it comes to caring about him, and so I will continue to do so.