Young widow Penelope Thornton-McClure and her old Aunt Sadie are making ends meet by managing a mystery bookshop--a quaint Rhode Island landmark rumored to be haunted. Pen may not believe in ghosts, but she does believe in good publicity--like nabbing Timothy Brennan for a book signing. but soon after the bestselling thriller writer reveals a secret about the store's link to the 1940s murder, he keels over dead--and right in the middle of the store's new Community Events space. Who gives Mrs. McClure the first clue that it was murder? The bookstore's full-time ghost--and PI murdered on the very spot more than fifty years ago. Is he a figment of Pen's overactive imaginatin? Or is the oddly likeable fedora-wearing specter the only hope Pen has to solve the crime? You can bet your everlasting life on it ...