Some traditions are meant to be preserved. Others are deadly to unearth.

Small town festival. Tradition versus innovation. Family legacy secrets. Mysterious sabotage. Deepening relationships. Murder at the celebration.

After successfully establishing her walking tours, Tourism Director Ellie Summers faces her biggest challenge yet: co-chairing Millcrest Falls’ sesquicentennial Harvest Festival. Balancing traditional elements cherished by lifelong residents with modern attractions to draw tourists requires diplomatic skills Ellie never knew she had—especially when working with Margaret Freeman, descendant of the town’s founding family and guardian of festival traditions for over twenty-five years.

Margaret Freeman has reluctantly agreed to collaborate with Ellie, but when she’s found drowned in the apple-bobbing barrel following a heated committee meeting about modernizing the event, suspicion falls on Ellie’s enthusiastic assistant, Sabrina Townsend, whose innovative ideas were repeatedly shot down by Margaret.

As Ellie investigates to clear Sabrina’s name, she uncovers a web of century-old secrets: • Margaret recently changed her will to donate the historic Freeman estate to the town instead of her nephew • Caleb Freeman is secretly facing financial ruin and needed his inheritance • A decades-old rivalry between Margaret and town historian Eileen May involved a festival scandal in 1975 • The “traditional” festival contains elements invented in the 1940s but presented as colonial-era customs • Someone is sabotaging festival preparations with increasingly dangerous “accidents”

When Ellie discovers a hidden compartment in the Heritage Barn containing a vintage festival recipe book with coded margin notes, she realizes Margaret was about to reveal something that would rewrite the town’s history—and potentially destroy certain families’ standing in the community.

“The most dangerous thing about traditions,” Eileen confides, “isn’t preserving them—it’s discovering who invented them, and why.”

With the festival days away and decorations being vandalized, Ellie must decode the historical mystery while planning a celebration that honors the past while embracing the future. Her growing relationship with Finn Sullivan provides personal support, but solving this case will require confronting the very meaning of authenticity in a town built on carefully curated history.

FESTIVAL OF DEATH is the second book in the Millcrest Falls Tourism Mystery series. While it follows the events of previous books, it is designed as a completely standalone mystery that can be enjoyed without having read the earlier entries in the series.

Tropes you’ll love: small town festival setting, generational family secrets, inheritance disputes, historical conspiracies, deepening romance, and a killer who will do anything to preserve the status quo.

Each book in the Millcrest Falls Tourism Mystery series features a complete mystery while building character relationships across the series.