THE TATTERED COVER

A bookstore owner and her pals have more than one mystery to solve.

Nora Pennington is the owner of Miracle Books in Miracle Springs, North Carolina, where she's surrounded by a group of good friends who call themselves the Secret, Book, and Scone Society: Hester Winthrop, a baker; Estella Sadler, a salon owner; and June Dixon, a hotel guest manager. And ever since a fire at her home, Nora’s been living with her partner, Sheriff Grant McCabe. Now she’s thrilled to be hosting her first-ever author evening at Miracle Books. Cozy mystery author Allie Kennedy is promoting her new book, The Dry Bar Murders, and Nora and her staff and friends have their hands full getting ready for that event as well as an upcoming Halloween Fun and Fright Night, which will include activities for kids as well as a demonstration by psychic medium Lara Luz. McCabe, for his part, is trying to catch someone dumping hazardous waste all over town. Nora’s biggest disagreement with McCabe is over his deputy, K9 handler Paula Hollowell, who goes out of her way to be nasty to Nora and her friends. The day of the Halloween event, Lara arrives with her boyfriend, Enzo Russo, and a bad cold. Nora is surprised when Hollowell arrives and even more so when Allie Kennedy shows up, glaring at Hollowell. The psychic readings start well enough, but suddenly Lara turns pale, gasps for air, and dies despite Hollowell’s CPR attempts. A frantic Enzo shoves Nora, giving her a concussion. Lara evidently died from a bad reaction to Narcan—it turns out she had a heart condition that didn't interact well with the drug—and the investigation shows that she’d angered many people by accepting valuable pieces of jewelry that had belonged to the dead, which Enzo sold in his pawn shop.

A meager mystery, but it’s always worthwhile catching up on the interactions between Nora and her friends.