A Halloween séance. A dead man. And one very suspicious batch of soap.

At forty-five, Ellen Marsh has learned that running a handmade soap shop in a tiny Vermont town requires three things: patience, good ventilation, and the ability to ignore gossip.

The last one is proving difficult.

Crookshaven is in full Halloween mode, and Ellen’s shop, Soap & Séance, is overflowing with pumpkin soaps, protection oils, and tourists looking for a little seasonal magic. Ellen would be perfectly happy selling Bonfire Weather bars and eating cider doughnuts until November.

Then the lights go out during a séance at historic Wrenfield Manor. When they come back on, historical society president Walton Griggs is dead. Unfortunately, nearly everyone in Crookshaven had a reason to dislike him.

Even more unfortunately, Ellen’s raffle basket is sitting suspiciously close to the crime scene, a valuable brass ship’s bell has vanished, and one of her grandmother’s Clarity soap batches has done something it has never done before. It refused to set.

Ellen’s inherited magic has always been more nudge than prophecy. Her soap won’t name a killer, summon the dead, or solve a murder for her. At best, it reacts when someone nearby is hiding something. And someone in Crookshaven is hiding a lot.

With her baker best friend supplying pastries, the sheriff supplying repeated warnings to stop investigating, and the whole town supplying more gossip than evidence, Ellen starts following the clues.

Because the dead may not be talking, but somebody’s lying.

Amazon