Murder at the Harbor Museum
(2026)(The first book in the Nora Hale Cozy Mystery series)
A novel by Audrey Alden
Grace Harbor should be celebrating…
Museum public-programs director Nora Hale has pulled off the kind of booking that can put Harbor Point Maritime Museum on the map: a sold-out evening with Rafe Calder, the hometown memoirist who turned local history into national fame.
Instead, his return unsettles the town.
Some residents are delighted to claim him. Others go watchful and withdrawn the moment he steps into a room. Because beneath the charm, wit, and polished nostalgia is a man who has spent years reshaping the past—and helping himself to what was never his.
Then, after one glittering night at the museum, Rafe is found dead on the harbor-side path behind the inn.
Nearly everyone is ready to call it a tragic accident.
Nora isn’t buying it.
As sympathy curdles into whispers, she follows a trail of silences, old wounds, and carefully managed lies through museum corridors, waterfront shops, and families with every reason to keep the truth buried. With her fox-red tolling retriever, Piper, at her side and half the town determined to preserve a prettier version of events, Nora must uncover who wanted Rafe stopped before morning—and why so many people are willing to protect the wrong version of him.
In Grace Harbor, memory is a point of pride. Murder is what happens when the past refuses to stay polished.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Museum public-programs director Nora Hale has pulled off the kind of booking that can put Harbor Point Maritime Museum on the map: a sold-out evening with Rafe Calder, the hometown memoirist who turned local history into national fame.
Instead, his return unsettles the town.
Some residents are delighted to claim him. Others go watchful and withdrawn the moment he steps into a room. Because beneath the charm, wit, and polished nostalgia is a man who has spent years reshaping the past—and helping himself to what was never his.
Then, after one glittering night at the museum, Rafe is found dead on the harbor-side path behind the inn.
Nearly everyone is ready to call it a tragic accident.
Nora isn’t buying it.
As sympathy curdles into whispers, she follows a trail of silences, old wounds, and carefully managed lies through museum corridors, waterfront shops, and families with every reason to keep the truth buried. With her fox-red tolling retriever, Piper, at her side and half the town determined to preserve a prettier version of events, Nora must uncover who wanted Rafe stopped before morning—and why so many people are willing to protect the wrong version of him.
In Grace Harbor, memory is a point of pride. Murder is what happens when the past refuses to stay polished.
Genre: Cozy Mystery