The Lies that Bind — Karen MacInerney

Books, beach roses... and bodies.Bookstore owner Max Sayers of Seaside Cottage Books is starting to settle into Snug Harbor, Maine when a local playboy plunges to his death… and Max's best friend Denise is on the hotseat for murder. Denise is an obvious prime suspect—the dead man just nabbed the coffee house she'd been planning to buy for years right out from under her—and Max seems to be the only one in Snug Harbor who believes her friend isn't Maine's answer to Lizzie Borden. To top things off, business at Seaside Cottage Books is not exactly putting the store at the top of the Snug Harbor bestseller list. Add in a challenging ex-husband, a mother who's fangirl crushing on her ex's new girlfriend, and a daughter who's boycotting the bookseller's own budding romance, and Max finds herself wishing she were buried in a book instead of a real-life murder mystery. Then Max stumbles across a second body... and realizes if she doesn't think fast, this new chapter of her life may come to a very sudden end.