Private investigation isn't on the list of a southern belle's most desirable accomplishments - but it's saved Sarah Booth Delaney's Delta homestead. Now all she has to cope with is its bossy antebellum ghost who is determined to save Sarah - from spinsterhood. Then comes the perfect social occasion: Lawrence Ambrose's dinner party. . . .Ambrose, once a famous man of southern letters, is planning a comeback: a delicious tell-all with a bitchy ex-model as his and "biographer. and " As he taunts his dinner guests with the news that his book will blow the lid off Zinnia's darkest secrets, it becomes plain that each and every guest has a secret - and wants Ambrose to keep it. When the morning-after mess includes a bloody corpse and the manuscript of the biography disappears, Sarah Booth goes digging for answers. But many who hold them are six feet under - or soon will be - and if she doesn't tread carefully, she could join them any day now. . . .