Roxy Gleason, an innkeeper by trade and a bibliomancer by birth, has lived in the same small town on the Susquehanna River in Central Pennsylvania for her entire life. Tradition is strong here. Roxy understands the rules and is willing to play by them most of the time. She runs the Charmed Inn, which has been in her family for decades.

The inn is all set to host a writers' professional business weekend that's been planned down to the very last hand-folded napkin, and Roxy is ready for the influx of creatives. She knows she'll have a lot of different and sometimes unusual personalities to deal with, but this is a yearly function, so she's not expecting anything to go awry.

Her expectations are completely tanked when she finds a dead body on her daily walk by the river's shore. Owen Schultz had checked in for the conference a few hours ago, and she'd last seen him having tea with her aunt in the dining room.

How did he get down here on the ferry, and who killed him?