Death Pays the Rose Rent — Valerie S. Malmont

Lickin Creek, Pennsylvania, is light-years from New York City, where Tori Miracle earned her first fifteen minutes of fame as a novelist. Now Tori and her two cats have come to Lickin Creek to visit her friend Alice-Ann--and to attend the town's annual Rose Rent festival honoring Alice-Ann's obnoxious husband, Richard. Generations earlier, Richard's ancestor, worried about the state of his soul, allowed churches to build on his land in exchange for one red rose as rent. Now the town has made it an annual celebration. But Alice-Ann is celebrating something else: She's about to divorce Richard--until Richard turns up dead, his body adorned by a single red rose.

Now Tori is being pulled into a homicide investigation spearheaded by an unnervingly handsome cop, crowded with aristocrats, wanna-bes, and some ghostly presences of the past. In fact, all of Lickin Creek, from its historic castle to its labyrinth of Civil War -- era tunnels, is haunted by vets, including the one that won't stay dead and buried--and hasn't stopped killing yet.