Death by the Book

He spent fifty years writing about the moment of death. He just wasn’t there for his own.


For the first time since she inherited a haunted house and a Whiskey Row wine bar, Lorelei Cosgrove’s life is quiet. She’s cut back her hours at Copper State Cellars, her best friend Celeste has moved to Prescott and is shaking up the bar’s menu, and the only real mystery left is Jude Marsh, the former priest turned bookseller who cooks Lorelei dinner, remembers her favorite books…and hasn’t made a single move.


Then Desmond Larkin comes to town. The celebrated author wrote the books that got Jude through his crisis of faith, and Desmond’s signing at Marsh & Hollow is the biggest event of Jude’s year — right up until the moment when Jude goes to pick Desmond up at the historic Hassayampa Inn and finds him dead in his bed. The police call it a heart attack. He was seventy-six and had a bad heart, so there’s nothing to see here.


Except Desmond doesn’t haunt his hotel room. He shows up in Jude’s stockroom, standing next to the boxes of books he never got to sign, with no memory of how he died and a great many questions about Lorelei’s gift. He's thrilled to finally have a research subject. Lorelei would settle for a motive.


Because Desmond's final manuscript has vanished, and it’s the kind of book that could have unmade everything he ever wrote. Suddenly, there’s no shortage of suspects: a grieving daughter, an anxious assistant, a retired psychologist with a thirty-year grudge, and a famous near-death survivor who seems awfully eager to help. And then there’s Jude, who argued with Desmond the night before he died and won’t tell anyone why.


Desmond spent his whole life looking for proof that the dead could speak. Now he has it.


The trouble is, Lorelei’s the only one who can hear him.