Old bones and a twisty new mystery make for a delicious pageturner from USA TODAY bestelling cozy author Karen MacInerney!

The air at Seaside Cottage Books is tinged with autumn, and bookseller Max Sayers is helping her friend Denise Wilmington start a new chapter by turning the abandoned shop next door into a cozy coffee house. But when the two women dig up a decades-old rhododendron by the front walk, they uncover a grisly secret entwined with the bush’s roots: a woman’s skeleton, buried with a gold ring.

But Max doesn’t have time to dig up dirt on old bones. The next day, a famous Maine author’s bequest to the Snug Harbor library vanishes within hours of arriving. Then Max’s assistant Bethany and her boyfriend Devin discover the head librarian—and Devin’s new boss–strangled with a phone cord behind the circulation desk.

Suspicion quickly darkens the crisp fall air. Was Bethany’s boyfriend, who had no love lost for his new boss, behind the library director’s untimely death? Or is a darker, older plot hidden in Snug Harbor’s leafy streets? When a curious Max finds herself the subject of the next attack, the plot arc becomes terrifyingly clear. It’s up to Max to find the villain, and fast… or her next chapter may be her last.

When fledgling bookseller Max Sayers agrees to host Snug Harbor, Maine’s new mystery writers’ group, she envisions filling Seaside Cottage Books with literary conversation, warm, fresh-baked cookies, and a community to support her assistant Bethany’s mystery writing dream. But the group has barely begun its second meeting when local author Reginald Blakely accuses young Bethany of plagiarizing his novel.

The next morning, Reginald turns up dead in the bookstore, a letter opener plunged into his chest and the store’s antique inkwell smashed. When police learn that Reginald threatened Bethany just the night before, Max’s beloved assistant rockets to the top of the suspect list.

As Max struggles to clear Bethany’s name, she discovers that some old roots in Snug Harbor run deeper–and are more twisted–than she ever dreamed possible. And the murder in the bookstore is eerily similar to an unsolved murder that happened almost 100 years ago.

Can Max clear her assistant’s name in time? Or will she–and Seaside Cottage Books–be the killer’s next victim?