9A heartwarming cozy mystery series about losing everything, taking a chance, and starting again. After suffering a personal tragedy Abby Sullivan buys a huge old seaside mansion she has never even seen, packs up her life in San Francisco, and moves to Holiday Bay Maine, where she is adopted, quite against her will, by a huge Maine Coon Cat named Rufus, a drifter with her own tragic past named Georgia, and a giant dog with an inferiority complex named Ramos. What Abby thought she needed was alone time to heal. What she ended up with was, an inn she never knew she wanted, a cat she couldn't seem to convince to leave, and a new family she'd never be able to live without.In book 8 in the series, Abby's agent asks for help when the house she was going to rent to host a writers retreat becomes unavailable. After a bit of discussion, Abby agrees to have the retreat at the inn. The seven writers who will be staying at the inn for the week long event are new to publishing and Kate hopes the mentor she has hired to run things will be able to provide the valuable tips these new authors need. Of course what she doesn't know is that Abby has a past with this particular mentor, and when all is said and done, fireworks of one sort or another are likely. Meanwhile, Georgia has started taping her new cooking show, Abby is worried about the approaching blizzard, and Colt has a murder to solve, after six men get together for a friendly poker game but only five of the six men make it to the end of the night alive.