The spirit is willing . . . to catch a killer.

Young widow Penelope McClure and her Aunt Sadie Thornton are making ends met by running their newly remodeled mystery bookshop, a quaint New England landmark, rumored to be haunted. Pen may not believe in ghosts, but she does believe in good publicity—like nabbing Timothy Brennan for a book signing. But soon after the bestselling crime writer reveals a secret about the store's link to a 1940's murder, he keels over dead, right in the middle of the store's new Community Events space.

Who gives Mrs. McClure the first clue that it was murder? The bookstore's full-time ghost, a tough-talking, hard- boiled private detective, who was murdered on the very spot more than fifty years before. Is Jack Shepard a figment of Pen's overactive imagination? Or is the oddly likeable fedora-wearing specter the only hope Pen has to solve the crime? You can bet your everlasting life on it.