It’s spring in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Lucy and Connor have moved into their new home, at last, a historic cottage on the Nags Head Beach. Lucy is now happily immersed in her work at the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library, planning her wedding, and decorating the house. But then a dead body disrupts their peaceful new abode.

The first night Lucy’s alone in the house, with the company of Charles, the library cat, she hears sounds. While investigating, they see footsteps in the dust of the unfinished living room, and the door leading outside is open. Lucy's reminded that the house is said to be haunted: forty years ago, the teenage daughter of the owners fled in the night, and never again stepped foot inside her family home.

The sounds have an all-too-human origin. One evening, Lucy and Connor find the dead body of a man in their kitchen. They soon realize he has a long-time connection to their house. Lucy's forced to find out what happened all those years ago and why it’s threatening her happiness today.

Meanwhile, the Classic Novel Reading Club is reading The House of the Seven Gables by Nathanial Hawthorne, a book about another old house full of secrets. Can Lucy find parallels to her own situation in Hawthorne’s fiction before the killer strikes again?