Death By Beach Read
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
Librarian Lucy’s new historic house comes with a lot of baggage and family secrets. Can she put them to rest or will a killer bring Lucy’s family to their downfall, in the 9th Lighthouse Library mystery.
It’s spring in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and Lucy and Connor have moved into their new home at last, a historic cottage on the Nags Head Beach. The house needs a lot of renovations, but they worked hard over the winter to get it ready. Lucy is now happily immersed in her work at the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library, planning her wedding, and decorating the house. That is, until a dead body disrupts their peaceful new abode.
The first night Lucy’s alone in the house, with the company of Charles the library cat, she hears sounds. Investigating they see footsteps in the dust of the unfinished living room, and the door to the outside is open. Lucy's reminded that the house is said to be haunted: forty years ago the teenage daughter of the owners fled in the night, and never again stepped foot inside her family home.
But the sounds have an all-too-human origin and one evening Lucy and Connor find the dead body of a man they don’t even recognize in their kitchen. They soon realize he has a long-time connection to their house. Lucy's forced to find out what happened all those years ago and why it’s threatening her happiness today.
Meanwhile, the Classic Novel Reading Club is reading The House of the Seven Gables by Nathanial Hawthorne, a book about another old house full of secrets. Can Lucy find parallels to her own situation in Hawthorne’s fiction before the killer strikes again?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Life couldn't be sweeter for librarian Lucy Richardson and her fiancé, Connor McNeil, the mayor of Nags Head on North Carolina's Outer Banks, in Gates's breezy ninth Lighthouse Library mystery (after 2021's Deadly Ever After). After a winter renovating their historic beach cottage, the couple have moved into their new home. Even rumors that the cottage is haunted don't disturb Lucy. By coincidence, Lucy's library book club is reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's eerie The House of the Seven Gables when Lucy hears odd noises her first night alone in the cottage. Gossip about how one of the cottage's last residents fled the house screaming about a ghost doesn't help ease Lucy's fears. Neither does the dead body Lucy and Connor find splayed on their kitchen floor. What drew the dead man to their cottage, and why are other unsavory characters suddenly interested in a house that sat empty for decades? Lucy must solve her own haunted house mystery if she and Connor are to live happily ever after. Sprightly prose matches distinctive characterizations. Cozy readers will enjoy spending time with book lover Lucy and her friends.