Christmas cheer turns to cringing fear in this second Beach Reads cozy mystery starring bookstore owner Summer Merriweather.
With the help of her late motherâs book club, Summer tries to solve a decades-old mysteryâand save the life of an endangered cozy author.
Thereâs no place like home for the holidays, even if home is sleepy, beachside Brigidâs Island, North Carolina. During this season for giving, the town wakes up to a welcome throng of shoppersâand Beach Reads is no exception. But bookseller Summer Merriwetherâs Christmas cheer turns to cringing fear when she uncovers a deadly secret about her late motherâa secret someone will kill to keep.
When the local library hosts a cozy mystery panel discussion, Summer learns that one of the authors on the panel based her book on an actual murder that shook Brigidâs Island 35 years before. Worse, she soon learns that her dearly missed mother, Hildy, took a disturbingly deep interest in the case, going so far as to collect clippings and keep a journal of the dark doings. This doesn't jibe with Summerâs memories of her usually cheery mother at all.
Tidings get worse when Summer learns of her long-lost biological familyâs involvement in the crime . . . and still worse when the life of the bookâs author is threatened. With the help of Hildyâs plucky book club, Summer puts her scholarly smarts to work on protecting the cozy author and solving the decades-old murder.
But this ghost from Christmas past may still be deadly in the present, and if she can't find the killer, Summer's future will be brief.