The most beautiful week of the year. The most inconvenient dead body.
A dead guest. A missing page. And a secret thirty-seven years in the making.
When foliage tour organizer Phillip Swanson is found dead in the Ridgeway Inn’s beloved library annex, the town of Ridgeway Springs is ready to call it a tragic heart attack. But former archivist Eloise Stevens knows something doesn’t add up. A rare first-edition book appears out of nowhere. A page has been torn from a decades-old guest ledger. And buried in her late father’s private records is a notation that suggests Swanson’s visit was no coincidence.
Newly returned to Vermont to run her family’s historic inn, Eloise never planned to become an amateur sleuth. But as she pieces together old land disputes, forgotten easements, and the quiet connections between longtime residents, she realizes this mystery began long before the autumn leaves turned crimson.
With a retired judge guarding his composure, an antique dealer collecting more than antiques, and a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s history, Eloise must untangle the past to protect the inn’s future.
Because in Ridgeway Springs, some secrets aren’t dead. They’re just pending.
