DEATH BY AUCTION

A charity event goes south when the master of ceremonies dies.

In Death by Jack O’Lantern (2019), Abby McCree got roped into chairing yet another event on Snowberry Creek’s gobsmackingly stuffed calendar of festivals, fairs, and fundraisers. Now she has to make good on her promise to handsome Tripp Blackston to run a charity auction, selling dates with the community’s most eligible bachelors and bachelorettes for the benefit of a local veteran’s association. Considering all the work it’s been to plan the auction, Abby is pretty pleased with the result. She’s persuaded Seattle radio personality Bryce Cadigan, a Snowberry Creek boy made good, into emceeing, and she’s optimistic that she’ll snag Tripp in the auction to squire her to the veteran’s ball later in the month. Too bad she’s outbid by chic out-of-towner Valerie Brunn, who turns out to be Tripp’s ex-wife. Even worse, she rushes out to the parking lot to give Cadigan his check after the auction to find him dead. Still reeling from “the shock of stumbling across another dead body,” Abby faces challenges that only a plucky divorcée who’s moved to a small town after inheriting a rambling old property from a relative can handle. She has to prevent Tripp’s ex from staying with him in his one-bedroom cottage while the police investigate Cadigan’s murder, even if it means putting up the high-maintenance Valerie in her own home. Then she has to solve the case so she can send Val packing back to LA.

Sold—but only to die-hard fans of the formula.