Carly’s Books

The Founders Lantern Festival didn’t go as planned. Instead of canapés and hobnobbing, the gala is riddled with a leak, a lantern, and the festival’s biggest donor face-down in the rosemary.

Welcome to the Harborview Inn. 

Ruby Bradshaw is back in Gull Harbor to take over the inn from her parents after fifteen years away. The festival was supposed to double as the inn’s grand reopening gala. Instead, Ruby finds herself a suspect in a murder investigation.

Sixteen-year-old Emmy is her mom’s sidekick and the level-headed one in the mother/daughter amateur sleuth duo. She carries a notebook and notices everything.

As clues pile up, the evidence points more and more toward Ruby. Ruby knows she’s being framed. Emmy knows they’re running out of time. 

If they can’t solve the mystery quickly, the next light to go out might be theirs.

A suspicious guest. A sealed box. And one very inconvenient murder. The sleepy little town of Gull Harbor, Maine, is about to get a wake-up call.

Ruby Bradshaw thinks the worst is behind her. Renovations on the Harborview Inn are underway, and business is booming, thanks to a murder in the herb garden last month.

Then a stranger checks in, asking odd questions. Workers find a box hidden inside the walls. And an antiques dealer from the next town over is found dead, his shop ransacked.

Ruby and her teenage daughter Emmy would love to leave the investigation to the police. Except that the police found evidence linking the inn to the murder. Suddenly, the crime feels much closer to home.

As Ruby and Emmy go into amateur sleuth mode, they uncover clues to a decades-old crime and a secret someone is willing to kill to protect. But some secrets were meant to stay hidden.