A Good Home For Murder
(2026)(The third book in the Nora Hale Cozy Mystery series)
A novel by Audrey Alden
Everyone came to Harbor Paws Week for happy endings. Someone brought murder.
Grace Harbor has gone all in for the sweetest celebration of the season. Blue ribbons flutter on Main Street. Water bowls sit outside shop doors. Families crowd the maritime museum lawn to meet adoptable dogs, take pictures, and ask about Mabel, the gentle rescue everyone has fallen for.
For Nora Hale, the museum’s public programs director, it should be a busy week, not a dangerous one.
Keep visitors moving. Keep the schedule standing. Keep Piper, her fox-red dog, from treating every bowl in town like it was placed there just for her.
Then Brenna Kline is found dead near the museum lawn.
Brenna had the final say over the hard choices. She could approve a home, delay a placement, stop a public announcement, or tell someone they had to let go.
The easiest explanation arrives before the shock has settled: Mabel’s foster loved too hard. A public argument went too far. Grief pushed past the line.
Nora doesn’t buy it.
Something at the scene feels wrong. A witness is holding back. A generous smile starts to look less kind. And the closer Nora gets, the more Harbor Paws feels like a bright little celebration with a shadow tucked underneath.
With Piper beside her, Nora follows the cracks through café whispers, harbor paths, and the museum grounds everyone keeps trying to make cheerful again.
Because Mabel wasn’t the danger.
She was the reason a secret finally turned deadly.
And in Grace Harbor, finding a good home can still lead straight to murder.
Genre: Mystery
Grace Harbor has gone all in for the sweetest celebration of the season. Blue ribbons flutter on Main Street. Water bowls sit outside shop doors. Families crowd the maritime museum lawn to meet adoptable dogs, take pictures, and ask about Mabel, the gentle rescue everyone has fallen for.
For Nora Hale, the museum’s public programs director, it should be a busy week, not a dangerous one.
Keep visitors moving. Keep the schedule standing. Keep Piper, her fox-red dog, from treating every bowl in town like it was placed there just for her.
Then Brenna Kline is found dead near the museum lawn.
Brenna had the final say over the hard choices. She could approve a home, delay a placement, stop a public announcement, or tell someone they had to let go.
The easiest explanation arrives before the shock has settled: Mabel’s foster loved too hard. A public argument went too far. Grief pushed past the line.
Nora doesn’t buy it.
Something at the scene feels wrong. A witness is holding back. A generous smile starts to look less kind. And the closer Nora gets, the more Harbor Paws feels like a bright little celebration with a shadow tucked underneath.
With Piper beside her, Nora follows the cracks through café whispers, harbor paths, and the museum grounds everyone keeps trying to make cheerful again.
Because Mabel wasn’t the danger.
She was the reason a secret finally turned deadly.
And in Grace Harbor, finding a good home can still lead straight to murder.
Genre: Mystery