The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)
Precociously morbid Flavia de Luce, eleven years old in 1950, loves chemistry and poison, and when she finds a dying man in her garden, who breathes his last word into her face, instead of being terrified, she thinks, "This is by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life." You know exactly what kind of book it's going to be just from that one sentence.
I'm not a huge mystery-novel fan, but I very much enjoyed this book. The whole thing is very enchanted and nostalgic, and it's chock full of quaint Britishisms, all filtered through Flavia's grim but still innocent point of view. The effect is a trip into a past that never really existed, a fantasy England full of everything we Americans wish was true about England. And once I got into the thing, as happens with all books with good atmosphere, I just wanted to go there and stay for a really long time. I'll definitely be picking up the rest of the books in the series (four more I believe) when they're eventually published.