After suffering a personal tragedy Abby Sullivan buys a huge old seaside mansion she has never even seen, packs up her life in San Francisco, and moves to Holiday Bay Maine, where she is adopted, quite against her will, by a huge Maine Coon Cat named Rufus, a drifter with her own tragic past named Georgia, and a giant dog with an inferiority complex named Ramos. What Abby thought she needed was alone time to heal. What she ended up with was, an inn she never knew she wanted, a cat she couldn't seem to convince to leave, and a new family she'd never be able to live without.

Nursing a broken heart, Robbie Jordan is trading in her life on the West Coast for the rolling hills of Southern Indiana. After paying a visit to her Aunt Adele, she fell in love with the tiny town of South Lick. And when she spots a "for sale" sign on a rundown country store, she decides to snap it up and put her skills as a cook and a carpenter to use. Everyone in town shows up for the grand reopening of Pans 'n Pancakes, but when the mayor's disagreeable assistant is found dead, Robbie realizes that not all press is good press.

Ainsley Holloway had come to Gooseberry Bay to find answers about her past. She’d come to find an explanation for the dreams that haunted her after the death of the cop who’d both rescued and raised her. And she’d come to identify the family she couldn’t remember but knew in her heart she’d once belonged to.

In the gentle coastal town of South Cove, California, all Jill Gardner wants is to keep her store - Coffee, Books, and More - open and running. So why is she caught up in the business of murder? When Jill's elderly friend Miss Emily calls in a fit of pique, she already knows that the city council is trying to force Emily to sell her dilapidated old house. But Emily's gumption goes for naught when she dies unexpectedly and leaves the house to Jill, along with all of her problems...and her enemies.

When Lou Prescott bought the bookstore at Holiday Bay, she wanted it to be so much more than a quaint seaside business. She wanted it to be home to the cozy gathering of friends, she knew in her heart, would come together to share their lives, their hardships, and their victories. In Book 4 in the series, Lou receives a package, that by all appearances, seems to contain clues without a mystery. She is stumped as to how to proceed, so she enlists the help of the Tuesday night sleuthing group, who she hopes, will be able to help her to untangle the backwards puzzle she'd been handed.