Haunted House Murder

Meier, Hollis, and Ross’s enjoyable third holiday-themed anthology (after 2018’s Yule Log Murder) collects three long haunted house stories, each set in coastal Maine. In Meier’s “Haunted House Murder,” Tinker’s Cove reporter Lucy Stone tries to befriend her standoffish new neighbors, whose house emits strange sounds and lights, without success. She comes to consider asking the police to intervene. In Hollis’s “Death by Haunted House,” Island Times newspaper office manager Hayley Powell becomes suspicious of the quirky Salinger family that has moved into the abandoned house next door when the realtor disappears after a public argument with one of the Salingers. Finally, in Ross’s “Hallowed Out,” Julia Snowden, of Busman’s Harbor, investigates the murder of an actor reenacting the murder of Prohibition-era gangster at a local diner. The well-drawn main characters, not the spooky goings-on, are the main attraction. Cozy fans are in for a Halloween treat. [em]Agents: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency (Meier); Michael Bourret, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (Hollis); John Talbot, Talbot Fortune Agency (Ross). (Sept.) [/em]