Natalie Travers had only just had her house in Brighton converted into flats, and installed five sets of tenants, when her younger brother Julian sent her an appeal for help. Newly deserted by his wife of one year, he was finding it impossible to cope single-handed with his work, with the running of the house and with the care of his baby twins, Rowena and Randall. Natalie’s elder brother, Maurice, and his wife Freddie, were strongly opposed to Natalie’s going to the rescue.

Margaret Winterbottom, 89, has lived on Garnon Crescent her entire life—except for a few years she never talks about. She knows all the neighbors: their lives, their hopes, their heartbreaks. Only recently, Margaret’s memory isn’t what it used to be. She’s sure Barbara, her best friend and neighbor, told her something very important . . . but what? When Barbara is found dead in an apparent homicide, Margaret is determined to recover the missing memory.

The young man with the shock of white-blond hair lay spread-eagled on the floor, surrounded by fallen books. His hand reached out to the scattered pages, as though he was trying to tell her something. But who is he? How did he come to be killed in Flora’s ordinary little bookshop? Flora finds out he was staying at the Priory Hotel, and when the gardener suddenly dies in its beautiful grounds only a few days later, she is certain that something untoward is happening in her quiet village by the sea.

When Isobel Shadow discovers a dead body in the middle of her bookstore, she and her sister Freya are thrown into a whirlwind of danger and mystery. With the police breathing down their necks and a killer on the loose, they are desperate to solve the crime before they become the murderer’s next victims. As Isobel and Freya use their sleuthing skills to uncover the murderer and protect the small town of Willowdale, Rhode Island, they uncover a secret about themselves that will change their lives forever.

Jennifer "Jen" Dalton is an author and educator at Clarion University in Virginia. She loves her job, but some of her petty coworkers look down on her for writing genre fiction. As members of the English department, they wish to encourage students to pursue higher literary aspirations. When a humiliating confrontation between an uppity professor and one of Jen’s students, Mia, escalates, no one thinks much of it. Until his dead body is found along with evidence incriminating Mia.