When Nikki's husband of 20 years decides that he wanted a different life in Los Angeles it spawns a new life for her as well. Leaving behind Atlanta and her journalism career there, she and her college-bound son move to the small and tightknit town of Maple Hills, Vermont. With a bustling tourist season, the thriving community seems the perfect place to set up her new chocolate shop...yet opening day proves more deadly than profitable.

A hit and run right outside her shop door leaves a man dead and questions swirling. When the victim is identified as Steven Denforth, the most hated and reviled man in town, it resurrects the fissures that had recently torn Maple Hills apart. It seems that when Denforth first came to town, the quiet man bought the local paper, then proceeded to publish damning articles about some of the communities' most prominent members - secrets that no one should have known about.

Now he is dead and everyone is a suspect, including Nikki. As both a former reporter and an FBI consultant, Nikki instinctively knows the dirt in Maple Hills is piled high and if she doesn't get to the bottom of it, and to the murder, then her stay in the quaint Northern Town may very well be short lived.