Blueberry Muffins & Blackmail

Early summer has arrived in Maplewood, and Emily Harper is ready for open windows, bright mornings, and trays of blueberry muffins cooling in the pie shop.

The town's Summer Reading Kickoff should be one of the gentler weekends of the year. Ben Carter is setting up a sidewalk book sale, the Community Center is hosting a Blueberry Breakfast, and Emily has promised two very different muffin batches: classic, unglazed muffins for Ben's book tables and lemon-glazed muffins for the crowded breakfast room.

Then Celia Ward is found dead in the Community Center reading room.

A retired teacher and the driving force behind Maplewood's summer reading program, Celia had spent weeks organizing a newly donated collection of books. Almost immediately, a blackmail note appears to offer an easy explanation for her death - and a Maplewood Books bag makes Ben look far too close to it.

Emily knows Ben has reasons to be angry about the accusation.

She also knows something about the muffin tucked inside that bag.

Ben's entire order was unglazed.

With Lila's dry humor, Mrs. Collins's inconvenient memory, June Parker's event records, and Tom Bennett's careful verification close at hand, Emily follows a trail of disputed books, volunteer access, false assumptions, and one piece of staged evidence through Maplewood's sunlit streets.

Because sometimes the most convincing story is the one someone builds after the truth has already gone wrong.