There´s no place like home for the holidays, even if home is sleepy, beachside Brigid´s Island, NC. During this season for giving, the town wakes up to a welcome throng of shoppers--and Beach Reads is no exception. But bookseller Summer Merriwether´s Christmas cheer turns to cringing fear when she uncovers a deadly secret about her late mother--a 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 Brigid´s Island thirty-five 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 Summer´s memories of her usually cheery mother at all.
Tidings get worse when Summer learns of her long-lost biological family´s involvement in the crime...and still worse when the life of the book´s author is threatened. With the help of Hildy´s 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.