Murder By Design

Bailey Burke has had a rough six months—it’s not easy thinking your romantic overtures toward your best friend caused him to kill himself. Except that’s exactly what happened. Ryan is very much dead, having shot himself with his own police-issued gun. Guilt and grief shouldn’t cause hallucinations though, but six months after Ryan went into the ground, Bailey is freaking out and swearing his ghost is standing in her kitchen. Which he is…

When a body is found near her historic neighborhood of Ohio City, mimicking the famous Torso Murders, and she starts hearing voices, Bailey thinks she’s really lost it now. Ryan’s ghost is one thing, but a whole gaggle of undead talking to her? No thanks. But Ryan informs Bailey she’s not nuts…she is a spiritual medium. And with him as middleman between the victims and the police, they can give the dead justice and he will finally get his one-way ticket to heaven. 

With Bailey Burke’s design and staging business booming—it turns out tangling with a serial killer is the best advertising ever—she has no time to lament her lack of love life, or wonder where her dead friend Ryan’s ghost has gone. She hasn’t seen him in months, but when she finds a body in a home she’s been hired to stage she’s hounded by the dead man’s ghost.

All Bailey Burke wants for Christmas is to stop seeing dead people. A reluctant spiritual medium, she craves a stress-free holiday with no ghosts popping in and out of her house. But when Bailey does the décor for a huge fundraising party featuring a replica slide from A Christmas Story, no one expects to find Santa’s dead body. In the slide. From three years ago. With the current Santa-for-hire and the dead Santa’s ghost harassing her, there isn’t enough eggnog in Cleveland to save Bailey’s night.

When the bitterly cold days of January descend on Cleveland, Bailey Burke finds her “Put It Where?” home staging business is as frozen as her toes. The only bright spot is the return of her friend Ryan after his, ahem, eviction from heaven. Especially since no other dead people seem to be harassing her in recent weeks. Yet when her grandmother’s bingo buddy turns up frozen solid in a stranger’s back yard, Bailey is the only one who finds the death suspicious.

Bailey Burke, reluctant spiritual medium, escapes the frozen winter with her boyfriend, Detective Jake Marner, and heads south. But in a city like Key West, murder and ghosts don’t take a vacation. A romantic sunset cruise turns not-so-romantic when a body floats by, followed by an abandoned yacht—the passengers missing. So much for searching for her lost shaker of salt. Instead she’s tracking down a killer who has left no clues. With ghosts harassing her at every turn, can Bailey solve the mystery of the floater and get back to sipping a piña colada and soaking up the sun?

Spring has sprung in Cleveland and home stager (and lousy spiritual medium) Bailey Burke is facing all kinds of major life changes. Both her grandmother and her boyfriend Jake Marner have moved in with her, she is contemplating a career change, and Marner’s mother needs her help planning a thirtieth birthday party for him. Party plans include dance lessons for Bailey and Jake. Which would be fun, except their instructor appears to have tangoed with the wrong partner. She’s found dead on the dance floor, a butchered ballroom teacher with multiple stab wounds.