A HOUSE TO DIE FOR

A realtor reluctantly returns to her old home only to become embroiled in a deadly game of deceit.

When her tough aunt Jane, the Florida realtor who’d come north to raise her after the death of her parents, sold the family home on Hurricane Island, Darby Farr fled for California. Now Tina, her aunt’s assistant, begs her to return to finalize a multimillion-dollar deal for the sale of a stately oceanfront estate Jane had set up before slipping into a coma. Upon her arrival, she’s confronted by Soames Pemberton, a drugged-up ex-SEAL who warns her to leave the island. The real-estate deal becomes a lot more complicated when Dr. Emerson Phipps is found murdered on the grounds of Fairview, the estate he’d coveted even before it was inherited by Mark and Lucy Trimble. Phipps was an old college friend of Mark, who’d wanted Phipps to buy the place because he didn’t know that his old buddy had raped the teenaged Lucy, now a recovering drug addict and talented painter. Further complications follow apace. Peyton Mayerson, who’s supposed to be buying Fairview, arrives on Hurricane Island with her handsome Italian boyfriend and some secrets of her own. Pemberton turns up at the town board meeting with a deed restriction that may scuttle the sale. More people die. Darby had better figure out what is going on before she’s added to the list.

Doudera’s debut is a welcome addition to the genre, chock full of danger and romance.