"Meg and Michael's annual holiday celebration is well underway, with a throng of out-of-town relatives staying at their house. Hosting these festivities is a little harder than usual--they have to relocate all the events normally held in their library, currently occupied by Roderick Castlemayne, the irascible wildlife artist who's creating twelve paintings of birds to illustrate Meg's grandfather's latest nature book. Then someone murders Castlemayne...