The body of a woman washes ashore near a lighthouse where typist and sleuth Fremont Jones of San Francisco is working on manuscripts for local writers. As she searches for clues to the woman's identity, Fremont discovers she was a hostess at parties given by a land developer.

Widowed Will Kempton, a former narcotics cop, flees the hard streets and rough memories of Jersey with his two young children to become police chief of the tiny tourist town of Carmel, California. His biggest headaches in Carmel are squeaky desk chairs, local blowhards, and parking tickets--until a series of murders and frightening intrusions wrecks the idyllic scene. It slowly becomes clear to Will and his outmatched police force that they are dealing...

Sixteen-year-old Carmel, California teenager Suze Simon is a typical high school student except for the fact that she is a "shifter" who can mediate between the living and the dead, and she is in love with a ghost from the nineteenth century.

When the nineteenth--century ghost of Maria de Silva wakes her up in the middle of the night, Suze knows this is no ordinary visitation -- and not just from the knife at her throat, either. In life, Maria was the fianceée of Jesse -- the same Jesse who was murdered a hundred and fifty years before. The same Jesse Suze is in love with. Maria threatens Suze: The backyard construction must cease. Suze has a pretty good idea what -- or rather, who...