The Ninth Place Setting

Eight guests were invited. The ninth place bears a dead woman's name.

Caterer Nora Ellis has spent fifteen years avoiding Briar House, where a fatal fire destroyed her father's reputation and sent him to prison. Returning for a private family dinner is supposed to be a job. Then she finds a place card written in her dead mother's hand-and a chair reserved in the name of Iris Bell, the woman who died that night.

The guest who arrives is Iris's daughter. She wants the truth. So does Nora.

Before dessert, the family patriarch begins admitting what he concealed. Minutes later, he is found dead in his book room. The door has latched shut. A glass vessel turns up among Nora's catering equipment. And a photograph from the kitchen seems to give one guest an alibi.

As investigators examine the new death, Nora and her sister uncover the letters, altered accounts, and convenient silences that helped condemn their father. Someone at the dinner has survived for years by deciding which questions other people are allowed to ask. Now another carefully arranged story is taking shape.

To protect her future and restore her father's name, Nora must separate what everyone remembers from what the evidence can prove.

The Ninth Place Setting is a standalone short psychological thriller for adult readers who enjoy closed-circle mysteries, buried family secrets, and a determined woman confronting the people who shaped her past.