Books by Andrew Forrester

How the Story Goes: A Novel

by Andrew Forrester

In this heartwarming, bookish debut, a young widower of a famous children’s fantasy author teams up with a down-on-her-luck MFA dropout to write the final book in his late wife’s series...and find their own perfect ending along the way.
Whit Longacre has a monumental task and a looming deadline. After his wife, Helen, died of cancer, she left him with their grieving eight-year-old daughter and a surprise in her will: the small task of writing the final book in her mega-popular children’s fantasy series for her legions of waiting fans.
Whit is the author of moderately successful (but well-received!) literary mysteries. He doesn’t have the first idea of how to complete Helen’s beloved series, and his enigmatic wife seems to have left no clues behind on how the story is supposed to end. Writer’s block is one thing, but to fail in fulfilling his wife’s last wish? Whit is guilt-ridden and dodging calls in the school pick-up line from Helen’s publisher and agent as the deadline fast approaches.
Then Whit meets Merritt Pryor, who works at the local bookstore in their small New England town. Merritt has moved back home after a disastrous affair led to her dropping out of her prestigious MFA program. When Whit realizes that Merritt is a superfan of the Greenwood Castle series, they come up with a plan to tackle the book together. For the first time in years, Merritt finds herself falling back in love with writing…and perhaps with the coauthor offering her the opportunity of a lifetime.
But when Whit uncovers a buried secret about Helen’s final wishes, he questions everything about what he and Merritt have created together, endangering the tender, electrifying partnership that has transformed their lives.
Can Whit and Merritt come up with an ending that feels right…for both a beloved series and for their battered hearts?

The Female Detective (British Library Crime Classics)

by Andrew Forrester

In 1864, the British writer James Redding Ware, under the pseudonym Andrew Forrester, published The Female Detective, introducing readers to the first professional female detective character, Mrs. Gladden, and paving the way for the more famous female detectives of the early twentieth century, namely Miss Marple and Nancy Drew.

Mrs. Gladden's deductive methods anticipate those of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, who would not appear for another twenty years--and like Holmes, she regards the regular constabulary with disdain. But her energetic and savvy approach to solving crimes is her greatest appeal, and the reappearance of the original lady detective is sure to captivate a new generation of crime fiction fans.

In 2012 The Female Detective was made available to the general public for the first time since its original publication; the British Library is now reissuing this foundational crime novel as part of its Crime Classics series.

The Female Detective

by Alexander McCall Smith, Andrew Forrester, Michael Ashley

Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder

"Literary ancestor to Miss Marple, Lisbeth Salander and Nancy Drew" --Guardian

'Miss Gladden', the first female detective, is a determined and resourceful figure, with ingenious skills of logic and deduction. Pursuing mysterious cases, she works undercover and only introduces herself as a detective when the need arises. Her personal circumstances and even her real name are never revealed. This obfuscation makes sense, considering that when The Female Detective was first published in 1864 there were no official female detectives in Britain--in fact, there were no women police officers either (and would not be for another 50 years). And the novel itself was well ahead of its time; further stories and novels featuring women detectives would not be widely published until the turn of the century.