All Shell Breaks Loose

Maureen Nash runs the Moon Shell, a seashell shop on Ocracoke Island in North Carolina. Her only company is Bonny, the shop cat, and the ghost of a Welsh pirate who haunts the place. When the local police need a hand with a murder, Maureen has a habit of stepping in.

The trouble starts when Dr. Irving Allred begins telling everyone in town that he is about to buy a genuine haunted sword. Maureen has barely heard the news when a woman walks into the shop carrying that very kind of blade. She came across it on the beach while walking her bulldog, and the steel is stained with something that looks like blood. Maureen knows it is time to call the sheriff's department.

Allred is outraged that the sword is now in police hands, and he is even more rattled to learn that a mystery bidder was competing with him for it. He is certain the weapon will lead him to the ghost he has been chasing. He is not the only one hunting spirits along the Outer Banks, either. A strange visitor has also turned up at the Moon Shell, claiming she can sense the dead, yet she never seems to notice the pirate lingering right beside Maureen.

Then a man who had been camping nearby is found dead on the shore, and Maureen starts quietly helping Captain Rob Tate by digging through the island's maritime history. A murder is not her only puzzle, though. Her own resident ghost has begun seeing ghosts of his own.