Under the Holly Tree

Jezzie Kaufman has no idea the Pacific Northwest island where her grandmother lived is the most haunted real estate in North America. She arrives with intentions to bury her dead grandmother, sell the house, and high-tail it back to Florida. But, some force bids her to stay. Another force, however, wants her off that island-dead or alive. Ignoring warnings that Carlotta Johannson's ghost doesn't take kindly to people poking their noses into her business, Jezzie stumbles right into the family's closet-and comes up one skeleton short. She learns that Judge William Johannson, heir to the family estate, arranged for the bodies of six children Carlotta buried in the backyard to be exhumed and re-interred in Bayview Cemetery. Well, five bodies, actually. The sixth grave turned up empty. Superstitious islanders turn a blind eye to whatever secret the town's most upstanding family may be hiding, but Jezzie and her friends at Island Archives can't overcome their curiosity. "Curiosity killed the cat," one islander warns Jezzie. "And it'll kill you, too." Jezzie believes there's no such thing as spooks, but her certainty wanes as oddities whirl around her-Ouija boards with ominous warnings, strange mementos found in the attic, cryptic messages scrawled in old journals. Even her new love interest seems to possess unusual traits. Someone, or something, is going to great lengths to keep Jezzie from exposing what that sixth grave under the holly tree once held. Who can she trust? The psychic who tells her to listen to the music? The Archives manager who is gearing up for the island's greatest historical event ever? Her boyfriend who seems to know her every movement, even when they're not together? If she could only hear the voices of the children calling out, "Red Rover, Red Rover..." Jezzie comes intending to bury a body, becomes engulfed in looking for another one, and ends up finding herself buried Under the Holly Tree.