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 25 in the series, it's Christmas in Holiday Bay and the whole town has pitched in to make it the best one yet. The inn is booked solid for the entire month between Thanksgiving and Christmas which means that Abby and her staff are working long hours to deliver the old fashion seaside Christmas they promised. As can be expected, there are a few glitches along the way but overall things seem to be right on schedule until a storm blows in, the lights go out, and one of the guests ends up dead.