When a Hollywood actress buys an old mansion in Haven Harbor, Maine, she hires Angie Curtis to appraise the estate's sizable collection of needlepoint pictures. But the more Angie examines the pieces, the more they seem to point toward a twenty-five-year-old murder--and the murderer.

Henryetta is full of gossip about the arrival of a controversial televangelist, but it's the death of a little old lady on Rose's street that catches her attention. The local police deem her death to be of natural causes, but Rose suspects foul play and so does an unlikely supporter -- the president of the Busy Body Club, her eighty-two-year-old neighbor Mildred.

Boston PI Spenser faces a hot case and a personal crisis in the latest adventure in the iconic "New York Times" bestselling series from author Ace Atkins. The fire at a boarded-up Catholic church raged hot and fast, lighting up Boston s South End and killing three firefighters who were trapped in the inferno. A year later, as the city prepares to honor their sacrifice, there are still no answers about how the deadly fire started. Most at the department believe it was just a simple accident: faulty wiring in a century-old building. But Boston firefighter Jack McGee, who lost his best friend in the blaze, suspects arson. McGee is convinced department investigators aren t sufficiently connected to the city s lowlifes to get a handle on who's behind the blaze so he takes the case to Spenser. Spenser quickly learns not only that McGee might be right, but that the fire might be linked to a rash of new arsons, spreading through the city, burning faster and hotter every night. Spenser follows the trail of fires to Boston s underworld, bringing him, his trusted ally Hawk, and his apprentice Sixkill toe-to-toe with a dangerous new enemy who wants Spenser dead, and doesn t play by the city s old rules. Spenser has to find the firebug before he kills again and stay alive himself."