Her Cranky Aunt

Wren Nakamura's wedding is off, her apartment is gone, and her only option is her great-aunt Ardith — the crankiest retired rare-books cataloguer in the Pacific Northwest. Aunt Ardith has opinions about everyone. She has publicly threatened the developer who wants to turn her failing bookstore into a boutique hotel. When he turns up dead in the alley behind the shop with Ardith's walking stick beside him, Ardith is arrested — mostly because she refuses to explain herself to anyone, including the police. Wren has a librarian's brain, a box of uncatalogued estate papers, and nothing left to lose. What she finds is a predatory scheme that buys heirs' inheritances out from under grieving families, and a soft-spoken business partner the whole town trusts. At the library's annual book sale, Wren sets a trap of paper and camera. Somebody in Ashwood is about to reach for what isn't theirs.