Christmas is anything but quiet in Alpine, Washington, after a body turns up in a cave and Emma Lord and her beau, Milo, are stalked by a killer.

Retired publisher Susan Ryeland is running a small hotel on a Greek island with her long-term boyfriend. But life isn't as idyllic as it should be: exhausted by the responsibility of making everything work on an island where nothing ever does, Susan is beginning to miss her literary life in London - even though her publishing career once entangled her in a lethal literary murder plot. So when an English couple come to visit with tales of a murder...