Buried In A Book – TC LoTempio Toni LoTempio

“I’m surprised Phyllis hasn’t told you the story,” she said, tossing a wink in Phyllis’s direction. “It was fate, right, Phyllis?” “If you say so, Maddie.” “I do.” Maddie turned back to me. “I got it at an estate sale. It was sheer luck, actually. The book was inside a leather trunk that both Phyllis and I were bidding on. I won out by two hundred dollars.” She rubbed her hands together gleefully. “When I opened that trunk and found that book hidden inside that ratty sweater, I was ecstatic, let me tell you.

It was the best two hundred dollars I’d ever spent.” “An estate sale, you said?” “Yes. The trunk belonged to Gordon Knight. The man lived here in Austin, and he was a bit of a recluse, I guess you could say. He’d worked as a scientist at Axitrom Chemicals for many years.

Imagine my surprise when I found that book in Knight’s trunk. Who would ever have thought this man, an award-winning scientist who worked on many government programs, was a Poe fan, let alone one of Price and Karloff! And he somehow managed to get them to sign his copy! I tell you, when I saw all those signatures, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”

“It sounds like a fabulous keepsake,” I said. “I’m surprised that Mr. Knight’s heirs let it go.” “Gordon never married and had no children. He had a sister who died, and her daughter was his heir. To be honest, I thought about trying to get in touch with her after I saw the Poe book, but I had so much going on at the time I forgot to ask the gallery for her contact information.

By the time I thought about it again, so much time had elapsed … I just figured she’d seen the book when she opened the trunk and decided to include it.” She shrugged and looked again at Phyllis. “Fate, right? I was meant to have that book.” “It would appear so,” I murmured. “So the book is in perfect condition? No pages missing?” “Pages missing? Why no. All ninety-two pages are there.” “And you mentioned you had the signatures authenticated?”

Maddie’s hazel eyes snapped. “Well, duh! That was the first thing I did. And once I found out they were all genuine—well, I stuck this baby right here in my parlor, under lock and key, where I could take it out anytime in privacy and just simply drool over it.”

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1kitap1.com/en First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2026 by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE. This eBook edition first published in 2026 by Severn House Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited severnhouse.com Copyright © T.C. LoTempio, 2026 Cover and jacket design by Piers Tilbury All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

The right of T.C. LoTempio to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-1528-4 (cased) ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-1923-7 (paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-1529-1 (e-book) This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.

This work is reserved from text and data mining (Article 4(3) Directive (EU) 2019/790). This ebook produced by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd., Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland. The manufacturer’s authorised representative in the EU for product safety is Authorised Rep Compliance Ltd, 71 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin D02 P593 Ireland (arccompliance.com) 1kitap1.com/en Praise for T.C.

LoTempio “A fast-paced mystery with lots of twists and turns …

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 37c187a982e1d97f
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,266,545 bytes (2.162 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781448315284, 9781448319237, 9781448315291
• Pages: 226
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 393.12 minutes
• Total Words: 78,625
• Total Characters: 424,313
• Average Words per Page: 347.9
• Average Characters per Page: 1877.49

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