Death by Beach Read: A Lighthouse Library Mystery

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. Agent: Kimberly Lionetti, BookEnds Literary. (June)