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.

In book 17 in the series, Abby joins Colt as he investigates the death of a local man who died after eating pudding dosed with poison during a community dinner. Was the man targeted or was the poison in the pudding a random act set into motion by a madman intent on murder?

Meanwhile, Thanksgiving is only a few days away and several guests who've visited the inn in the past return to spend the holiday with Abby, Georgia, and the rest of the Inn at Holiday Bay family. In addition to the return cast, a couple is looking for their runaway granddaughter and another is trying to make the best of things after tragedy struck his family.