The holidays are approaching, but Chicago Journal reporter Mark Manning is anything but joyous. His career at the Journal has maxed out, and another birthday has him contemplating his own mortality. Though he’s achieved emotional bedrock with architect Neil Waite, his lover of three years, Manning needs a major life change.

That change awaits him in the idyllic little Wisconsin town of Dumont, where his family’s roots lie. He’s made plans to take over the local paper, to purchase the rambling old house on Prairie Street that he once visited as a child, and to reacquaint himself with his wealthy cousin, Suzanne Quatrain. It’s a dream come true, but as Manning discovers soon after his arrival, the promise of a new beginning is shaded by something sinister, by dark secrets that someone wants left buried. It begins with a series of threatening letters. Then, on Christmas day, under his own roof, a killer strikes. In the words of our hero himself, "This one has it all—deceit, greed, secrets, and lust. Not to mention murder."