Wordfest presents Nita Prose

Wordfest presents Nita Prose

What a gift to be able to celebrate The Maid's Secret, the final instalment in the international bestselling Maid series, with its effervescent creator Nita Prose. And because Nita loves Calgary as much as Calgary loves Molly Gray, she's travelling to be with us on April 8, the worldwide publication day. Expect the most insider-y of insider events, as Nita and Wordfest's Creative Ringleader dive into all the pop culture influences, research nuggets, and memorable anecdotes that helped Molly, Gran, The Regency Grand and all our favourite supporting characters come to life. This event includes an audience Q & A and book signing, fuelled by Owl’s Nest Books. You can pre-order the entire series here.

We are grateful to Penguin Random House Canada for making it possible to connect you with Nita Prose.

About The Maid’s Secret

When a daring art heist takes place at the Regency Grand, Molly’s life is threatened. The question is who’s out to get her, and why? Long-buried secrets will be revealed in this intriguing and heartwarming novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid and The Mystery Guest

Molly Gray’s life is about to change in ways she could never have imagined. As the esteemed Head Maid and recently promoted Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel, good things are just around the corner, including her marriage to her beloved fiancé, Juan Manuel, only two months away.

But Molly’s entire existence is upended when a film crew descends upon the hotel to shoot the hit reality TV show Hidden Treasures, starring popular art appraisers Brown and Beagle. On a whim, Molly brings in a shoebox containing a few of her gran’s old things for appraisal, and much to everyone's surprise, one item turns out to be a rare and priceless treasure. Instantly, Molly is both a multi-millionaire and a media sensation—the world’s rags-to-riches darling—until the priceless piece vanishes from the hotel in the boldest, brashest antiquities heist in recent memory.

The key to the mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly’s gran. For the first time ever, Molly learns about Gran’s true-to-life fairytale, a young girl to the manor born, the only child of a wealthy magnate. But when Gran falls head over heels in love with a young man her parents deem below her station, her life is thrown into turmoil. As fate would have it, the greatest love of Gran’s life is someone Molly knows quite well… Together with her friends, Molly combs the past and the present to catch the thief before looming threats against her become real.

A spirited heist caper and an epic love story, The Maid’s Secret is a spellbinding whodunnit that will capture and warm your heart. 

About Nita Prose

Nita Prose is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid, which has sold more than two million copies worldwide, The Mystery Guest, and The Mistletoe Mystery. A Good Morning America Book Club pick, The Maid won the Ned Kelly Award for International Crime Fiction, the Fingerprint Award for Debut Novel of the Year, the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and the Barry award for Best First Mystery. The Maid was also an Edgar Award Finalist for Best Novel.

Instagram/Threads: @nitaprose
Website: nitaprose.com

About Host Shelley Youngblut

Shelley Youngblut is the CEO & Creative Ringleader of Wordfest. She was the recipient of the 2020 Calgary Award for Community Achievement in the Arts and the 2018 Rozsa Award for Arts Leadership. She also won the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Western Magazine Awards. Youngblut was the founding editor of Calgary’s award-winning Swerve magazine and has created magazines for ESPN, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Nickelodeon, Western Living, and The Globe and Mail. She was also a former pop-culture correspondent for ABC World News Now and Canada AM.

Bluesky: @youngblut@bsky.social
Instagram: @youngblutshelley

Be Curiouser

• My mother’s tall tales made me angry. But then I learned the truth. -Toronto Star
• Shop Talk: How Nita Prose wrote a bestseller in shifts, working at dawn and dusk. -CrimeReads