Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club Returns in The Impossible Fortune — See the Cover! (Exclusive)

Richard Osman is returning to his beloved Thursday Murder Club series — and not a moment too soon!

PEOPLE can exclusively reveal the cover of The Impossible Fortune, the series’ fifth installment forthcoming this fall from Pamela Dorman Books.

The book series follows four members of an English retirement village: Elizabeth, a former spy; Joyce, a former nurse; Ibrahim, a psychologist and Ron, a retired union leader. The group form an armchair sleuthing group called the Thursday Murder Club to investigate unsolved cases, but the quartet somehow always finds itself entangled in real-life murders too. 

The series, which has sold over 15 million copies worldwide since it debuted in 2020, includes the novels The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice, The Bullet That Missed and The Last Devil to Die.

In The Impossible Fortune, the four retirees become wedding planners, which cuts into their investigation time. But when Elizabeth runs into a wedding guest in trouble, and a kidnapping and death overtake the festivities, the club must solve the case — before it’s too late.

Though the last book in the series was published in 2023, Osman says that the wait will be worthwhile for fans.

“The Thursday Murder Club gang have had an extremely busy few years, and it felt right to let them have a few months off to rest and recuperate,” the author tells PEOPLE. “The events of The Last Devil to Die were pretty momentous, and it felt the right time to give them a break."

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“But now, it’s great to be back with the old gang: more murders, more mysteries, more lemon drizzle cake,” the author adds. “The whole thing starts with a wedding, and it’s about luck and chance and what life throws at you.”

The Thursday Murder Club is also taking on a new life on screen, with a film adaptation of the first novel to hit Netflix this summer from Stephen Spielberg's production company Amblin Entertainment. Osman tells PEOPLE that the star-studded cast even played into an Easter egg in the new novel.

“I was writing The Impossible Fortune after spending the summer going down to the set of the film adaptation, and I had to forget that Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley were playing the team, and listen to the characters themselves,” Osman says of the film adaptation.

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“I do a little bit in the new book, where Ron and Ibrahim start the scene talking about who their favorite Bond is. And Ron says, 'Oh, my favorite Bond is Pierce Brosnan'. And I told Pierce Brosnan about that when I visited the set, and yeah, he approved!”

The Impossible Fortune will be published on Sept. 30 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.