Lori Reynolds thought she’d never return to the home where she spent her teenage years, but her sister Kay’s death from a fall down a staircase, changes all that. Having recently spoken with her sister on the phone, and knowing how worried Kay had been about all the strange things happening in her house, Lori suspects that her sister’s fall was anything but an accident and she resolves to investigate. Now that she has arrived for Kay’s funeral, she is caught up in the very family battles that she had tried to avoid when she left seven years ago. From Kay’s husband, Trevor, to his daughter from a previous marriage, Selena, to Lori’s first love and now Selena’s husband, Marc, to Trevor’s brother, Derek, to Selena’s grandmother, to Trevor and Kay’s daughter, Amber, the tension runs high. Then it really explodes when Trevor’s first wife, Jocelyn, decides to make an appearance. Did any of these family members have a motive strong enough to kill Kay? And if so, what was it? Kay moves closer and closer to the truth behind her sister’s fatal fall.
When Indigo Tea Shop owner Theodosia Browning is invited by Doreen Briggs, one of Charleston’s most prominent hostesses, to a “Rat Tea,” she is understandably intrigued. As servers dressed in rodent costumes and wearing white gloves offer elegant finger sandwiches and fine teas, Theo learns these parties date back to early twentieth-century Charleston, where the cream of society would sponsor so-called rat teas to promote city rodent control and better public health.
A TRAGIC DISAPPEARANCE
The Book's the Thing 