After the annual parade of Christmas presents in Tinker's Cove has ended, Lucy Stone and her daughter Elizabeth are ready to ring in the new year in style. Elizabeth has won mother/daughter winter makeovers in Manhattan from Jolie magazine! But the all-expenses-paid trip is bound to have some hidden costs-and one of them is murder....

As excited as Elizabeth is to hit the Big Apple, Lucy's less thrilled to be heading straight into post-holiday shopping crowds in the middle of a flu epidemic. Then again, she has to admit-if only to herself-that her work- from-home personal style could use a bit of an update. And she is looking forward to visiting an old college friend and culture-vulturing it all over town, from museums to budget art-house flicks. Besides, how often do opportunities for sophisticated mother/daughter bonding on someone else's dime come along, anyway?

After finally arriving at the offices of Jolie, meeting their fellow makeover candidates, and being treated to a fashion show, Elizabeth is enamored of the extreme outfits and stick-thin models-while Lucy's having some misgivings. The pampering is nice (never underestimate the transformative powers of a $500 haircut) and the glitz and glamour of haute couture is bizarrely fascinating, but bitterness and aggression lurk behind the Jolie's hipper- than-thou façade. And things turn downright ugly when self- absorbed fashion editor Nadine Nelson falls mysteriously ill and then dies.

Lucy saw first-hand some of the backstabbing going on at Jolie. And the red-hot rumor mill soon reveals that the cliquish connection among the magazine's cabal of high- style executives-fierce tempered fashionistas Camilla Keith, Elise Frazier, and Nadine herself-has stirred up plenty of bad blood over the years. Numerous staffers, from workaholic assistant Phyllis Finch to oft-maligned photo editor Pablo Prinz, have found themselves at the other end of the trio's sharp claws. To say suspects abound would be an understatement.

But this Manhattan murder mystery hits too close to home when Elizabeth gets rushed to the hospital with symptoms that are disturbingly similar to Nadine's. Now, it's up to Lucy to dress down a killer before the ball drops in Times Square...