Christmas is just weeks away, but what Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree discovers at Faye Anne Carmody's house is far from festive: a dazed Faye Anne covered with blood. Her no-good husband, Merle-Eastport's butcher and least-liked citizen-is nowhere in sight. Nowhere, that is, until Jake finds his body-wrapped in his own butcher paper. It looks like an open-and-shut case, but Jake isn't convinced. Then another resident turns up dead, and Jake knows the trail...

Since she bought her rambling fixer-upper of a house, Jacobia Tiptree has gotten used to finding things broken. But her latest problem isn't so easily repaired. Along with the rotting floor joists and sagging support beams, there's the little matter of the dead man in Jake's storeroom, an ice pick planted firmly in his cranium. Not much happens in her tiny Maine town, but that's about to change. Jake's unknown guest turns out to be local boy turned...

Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree's leisurely summer dreams involve rebuilding the front porch of her Maine fixer-upper and shingling the leaky tool shed out back. That's why she's hired the avenging angel of household hygiene, Bella Diamond, to keep her house-and her teenage son Sam-in tip-top shape. But when Bella confides in Jake that she's been receiving death threats, Jake has two choices: find out who is frightening the hapless housekeeper-or risk losing...

Spring has sprung in Eastport, Maine, and in Jacobia Jake Tiptree's 1823 Federal style fixer-upper, that means a housecleaning so thorough even the skeletons in the closet get polished! But nothing can prepare Jake for what she'll uncover: a trio of mysteries certain to make her usual home repair projects seem as simple as scraping paint. What do an old book hidden in Jake's cellar, the appearance of her ex-husband's ghost, and the murder of her housekeeper's...

As a toddler, in a room illuminated only by the flames of a fallen candle, Jacobia Tiptree watched a man kill her mother. Jake once believed that man to be her father. Now, thirty-five years later, as the real killer's long-delayed trial is about to begin, the defendant has vanished. Jake tries to distract herself from murder with constant attempts to keep her 1823 Federal-style fixer-upper from tumbling down on her head. But when her best friend's...

Renovating her husband's long-neglected woodland cabin in Maine, Jake and her friend, Ellie, are vengefully targeted by an escaped prisoner who takes advantage of flooded road conditions.