The Lighthouse Widow
(2026)(The fourth book in the Sand Dollar Detective series)
A novel by Marin Wilder
He notarized this whole town’s secrets for forty years. Now he is dead at the foot of the lighthouse, and nobody is sorry.Gordon Pyle was a notary public.
For four decades he handled the paperwork nobody reads—the deeds, the affidavits, the quitclaims, the line at the bottom of the page—and sat across a small warm desk from half of Sand Dollar Cove on the worst afternoon of their lives.
He was correct, and he was thorough, and he charged what he charged.
That the town is not sorry is the first thing the Sand Dollar Detective Club notices, and it is the thing that will not let them alone: not one person will say a kind word about a man nobody can name a reason to hate.
Retired schoolteacher Beth Walker taught half this town, and half this town still tells her the truth.
Her daughter is coming to the Cove for Thanksgiving after years of silence, and Beth finds she is less afraid of being turned away than of being seen.
It is why she is the one in the chair when a man of ninety-one stops talking about boats and starts talking about the night of the 1988 storm.
A teacher. A journalist. A retired detective. A nurse. A librarian. A forensic tech. A realtor. An innkeeper.
Eight women. A page of ruled lines in a dead man’s hand. Thirty-one ordinary names that lead nowhere on paper—which may be exactly the point.
And a question Sand Dollar Cove has spent thirty-eight years refusing to ask out loud.
The Lighthouse Widow is the fourth novel in The Sand Dollar Detective Club, a warm, witty, fair-play coastal mystery series for readers of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club, Elin Hilderbrand, and Louise Penny.
Every book solves its own mystery completely and can be read on its own. Together, the novels unravel the one secret this town would do anything to keep buried.
Expect clever clues, genuine emotional stakes, strong female friendships, and a seaside town you’ll want to return to again and again—with no gore, no gratuitous violence, and no cliffhanger on the central mystery.
For four decades he handled the paperwork nobody reads—the deeds, the affidavits, the quitclaims, the line at the bottom of the page—and sat across a small warm desk from half of Sand Dollar Cove on the worst afternoon of their lives.
He was correct, and he was thorough, and he charged what he charged.
That the town is not sorry is the first thing the Sand Dollar Detective Club notices, and it is the thing that will not let them alone: not one person will say a kind word about a man nobody can name a reason to hate.
Retired schoolteacher Beth Walker taught half this town, and half this town still tells her the truth.
Her daughter is coming to the Cove for Thanksgiving after years of silence, and Beth finds she is less afraid of being turned away than of being seen.
It is why she is the one in the chair when a man of ninety-one stops talking about boats and starts talking about the night of the 1988 storm.
A teacher. A journalist. A retired detective. A nurse. A librarian. A forensic tech. A realtor. An innkeeper.
Eight women. A page of ruled lines in a dead man’s hand. Thirty-one ordinary names that lead nowhere on paper—which may be exactly the point.
And a question Sand Dollar Cove has spent thirty-eight years refusing to ask out loud.
The Lighthouse Widow is the fourth novel in The Sand Dollar Detective Club, a warm, witty, fair-play coastal mystery series for readers of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club, Elin Hilderbrand, and Louise Penny.
Every book solves its own mystery completely and can be read on its own. Together, the novels unravel the one secret this town would do anything to keep buried.
Expect clever clues, genuine emotional stakes, strong female friendships, and a seaside town you’ll want to return to again and again—with no gore, no gratuitous violence, and no cliffhanger on the central mystery.
Perfect for readers who love:
- Coastal mysteries and buried small-town secrets
Strong female friendships and found family
Older protagonists with real lives, losses, and histories
Fair-play mysteries you can solve alongside the characters
Clean, suspenseful crime fiction without gore
Character-driven mysteries where the people matter as much as the puzzle
A long-running series with a deeper mystery unfolding across every book
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for Marin Wilder's The Lighthouse Widow