It's spring in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and Lucy and Connor have moved into a historic cottage, a house that is allegedly haunted. Lucy is working at the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library, planning her wedding, and decorating the house—until a dead body disrupts their peaceful new abode. In her ninth case (following Deadly After After), Lucy must track a killer, but also discover the origins of the rumored hauntings, and she might find a clue in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables.