Retired thriller author and current bookshop owner Charley James is preparing for Halloween in her small hometown of Austin, Pennsylvania—what she isn’t prepared for is discovering the body of a woman at the local inn.

Charley recognizes the stranger as a suspicious customer who popped in just to hide a rather peculiar book at her store—did she already know she was about to lose her life for it?

Pursuing this mysterious case, Charley can’t seem to stay out of trouble, and no one knows this better than Detective Hottie, Ian Grant. But Charley has a mind of her own and, together with cat Poe, sets off on another puzzle-riddled quest, unaware that the killer might be someone she knows . . .