Publication Date: October 6, 2026
During the winter of 1950 in the small Cotswold village of Great Rollright, amateur sleuth Gemma Brown starts to suspect that the town’s best baker, Ursula Beurton, is a Soviet spy, tumbling her headlong into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse that ends with a decision that will lead her to the Undercover Bookshop and change her life forever.
Recently moved to the English Cotswolds, Gemma Brown desperately wants to create the kind of idyllic life she’s read about in her favorite mystery novels, with herself as the leading lady. But fitting in proves difficult as Gemma is more adept at solving mysteries and setting up the village’s first bookstore than she is at baking cakes or grasping social niceties. Nevertheless, she finds a friend in Peggy, a young woman recently moved to town herself, and Ursula Beurton, who is not only the village’s best baker but an enigmatic figure who sparks controversy in the small-town gossip network.
As Gemma spends more time with Ursula, she begins to suspect all those novels are affecting her thinking. The oddities she starts to notice must be her imagination because, if not, they point to something far more dangerous than winning the local baking contest or being placed on the church committee. Could her neighbor be a real spy?
Following her instincts and a few skills learned through fiction, Gemma soon becomes embroiled in an international intrigue involving the village’s mysterious benefactor, Lady Marchmont, MI5, and the KGB. In an unexpected twist, however, Ursula asks Gemma for a favor which may endanger all their lives as their next chapter unfolds in Gemma’s new venture, the Undercover Bookshop.
Set in a small village in the Cotswolds, England, The Undercover Bookshop by Katherine Reay spans November 1949 through June 1950, and although the war has ended, it still overshadows their lives. Surprisingly, both the epilogue and prologue take place in 1991 in London.
Gemma moves from London and takes a position in a small shop specifically because of the free room and board in a small bed-sit, in addition to the salary. She loves mysteries and books, which play an important role in the story, as does her amateur sleuthing. But from day one, she gets into trouble more than once, whether rearranging the inventory when it was perfectly fine the way the owner has the store organized, talking too much to customers when they already know what they came in to buy, having a baking disaster or two, or creating havoc wherever she goes. Her attention to detail, which most others don’t notice, is amazing.
The book pays close attention to those details, and the descriptions are lovely and easy to visualize. There’s also a romance once Gemma can string more than two words together. She and Charlie make a nice couple, and he’s a policeman and bounces ideas and cases off her. Ursula, a German woman who seems to have a dubious past, has kindly said she’ll teach Gemma to bake when asked. But when Gemma suspects she’s a spy based on clues she picks up, no one can foresee the danger she puts herself in, especially when she gets hurt.
The story moves faster when she’s in spy mode, but it still has unexpected twists from unexpected sources and situations. I love how The Undercover Bookshop is finally brought into the story. The ending gives closure, and a surprise happily-ever-after happens just before.
The Undercover Bookshop is a romance as well as a mystery, including spies. It has intrigue and clues on both sides, with red herrings. 
Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author of several novels and one work of nonfiction.
For her fiction, Katherine writes love letters to books, and her novels are saturated with what she calls the “world of books.” They are character driven stories that examine the past as a way to find one’s best way forward. In the words of The Bronte Plot’s Lucy Alling, Katherine writes of “that time when you don’t know where you’ll be, but you can’t stay as you are.”
Katherine holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University, and after several moves across the globe, lives outside Chicago.
