The Island

Beth Anderson is spending a weekend on an island with her brother and her niece when a walk along the beach turns up what looks like a human skull. She thinks at once of the retired couple who vanished off the island's coast a few months before. A stranger walks toward her, she panics, and she covers the skull over. When she goes back later, it has disappeared.

Only her niece saw it, so Beth has nothing to show the authorities. Her brother treats the missing skull as a good story and she tells it that night at a bonfire and camp-out, to a group of vacationers. Among the listeners is Keith Henson, the charming stranger from the beach. Everyone writes her account off as an overactive imagination.

Then Beth hears someone moving outside her tent, and she is sure her fears are justified. She sets out to gather solid evidence for the police and starts digging into where the skull came from. Wherever she goes, Keith Henson turns up. He says he is looking out for her safety, but she suspects he has other reasons.

When a body washes ashore, Beth sees that she may need more help than she expected. This is a romantic suspense mystery on a holiday island, with a heroine nobody believes and a stranger she cannot read. Someone wants her to stop asking questions.