Come Shell or High Water | Molly MacRae
When widowed folklorist Maureen Nash visits a legendary North Carolina barrier island shell shop, she discovers its resident ghost pirate and the mystery of a locals untimely death . . . As a professional storyteller, Maureen Nash cant help but see the narrative cues woven through her life. Like the series of letters addressed to her late husband from a strangerthe proprietor of The Moon Shell, a shop on Ocracoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina. The store is famous with shell collectors, but its the cryptic letters from Allen Withrow, the shops owner, that convince Maureen to travel to the small coastal town in the middle of hurricane season. At the very least, she expects shell get a good story out of the experience, never anticipating it could end up a murder mystery . . . In Maureens first hours on the storm-lashed island, she averts several life-threatening accidents, stumbles over the body of a controversial Ocracoke local, and meets the ghost of an eighteenth-century Welsh pirate, Emrys Lloyd. To the untrained eye, all these unusual occurrences would seem to be random misfortunes, but Maureen senses there may be something connecting these stories. With Emryss supernatural assistance, and the support of a few new friends, Maureen sets out unravel the truth, find a killer, and hopefully give this tale a satisfying ending . . . while also rewriting her own.