Last Light at Tern Point

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She holds the keys. He came to take them. Somebody else already has a copy. Hallie Sorensen runs the tiny museum of Pell Harbor, Maine, and she holds the keys to Tern Point Light. The day after Labor Day, the government sells the lighthouse at auction. Her little historical society, run by a retired teacher in a bow tie and fed by a church pie committee, means to buy it and keep it open to everyone. Then Nate Whitaker drives up from Boston. He is an architect, he is seasick, he puts mayonnaise on a lobster roll, and he has come to survey the tower for the man who wants to turn it into a luxury inn. On his first morning, he finds that somebody has been loosening the railing forty feet above the rocks. Somebody else has a key. The great glass lens in the town museum no longer throws rainbows. A report says the tower is falling down, and it isn't. And the Society's money is not where it should be. With the auction clock running down, an enemy from Boston turns out to be the only person in town who can read a set of plans, and a very bad sailor ends up in a lobster-boat race. Last Light at Tern Point is a warm, funny Maine romance: enemies to lovers in the fog, a real mystery with a deadline, a lobsterman grandfather of eighty-one who will not stay off the water, and a church pie committee run like a cartel. For readers who want: • Enemies to lovers with a clock ticking • A small-town mystery with the money in plain sight • Maine at the end of summer: fog, lobster rolls, a boat race and a lighthouse • A whole town of characters, including a Newfoundland dog who is afraid of gulls • A happy ending that has to be earned A standalone novel with a happy ending. Sensual, not explicit: one love scene, implied and never described. Mild language. A grandparent's death before the story begins; danger at sea.