Twanged — Carol Higgins Clark

Regan Reilly plans to spend her Fourth of July week vacationing in the Hamptons at her parents' home and also with her best friend, Kit, who has a share in a group house. A last-minute phone call, however, casts Regan's trip in a new light. Brigid O'Neill, a rising country star, has been getting frightening "love notes" and she hires Regan as her bodyguard for a Fourth of July concert in Southhampton. Brigid plans to play a fiddle given to her in Ireland and said to have magic powers. She later learns the rest of its legend -- whoever takes it out of Ireland will have an accident or face death.

Brigid and her band are invited to stay at Chappy Tinka's oceanfront compound. Tinka, heir to a thumbtack fortune, and Bettina, his ditzy wife, are social climbers trying to get on the Hamptons "A" list. But the Hamptons elite is not impressed by thumbtacks or the tacky castle the Tinkas call home. Chappy's solution: build Chappy's Theatre by the Sea, where he will produce plays starring himself and perform with Brigid's magical fiddle. But first, he must steal it.

At Chappy's castle, Regan encounters a cast of characters including Chappy's bumbling sidekick and accomplice, Duke; Bettina's live-in guru, "Peace Man"; and a feng shui specialist obsessed with rearranging furniture.

A guest found floating face-down in a pool at Chappy's welcoming party for Brigid is only the first in a series of ominous incidents. As Brigid's Fourth of July concert nears, it looks as if the cursed fiddle should be shipped back to Ireland -- Express Mail! It's Regan's job to hold the curse at bay and fend off Brigid's pursuers.