The whispered word

Nora Pennington, bibliotherapist and owner of Miracle Books, discovers a young woman hiding in her shop — bruised, barefoot and dressed in hospital clothes. The stranger calls herself Abilene and clearly needs a new beginning, and Nora and the other three members of the Secret, Book, and Scone Society take her in.

Miracle Springs, North Carolina, is a town that trades on healing: hot springs, a spa, and shopkeepers with their own methods. But a customer dies under suspicious circumstances, a second death follows, and the timing points back to the society's mysterious guest. Meanwhile a newcomer named Griffin Kingsley opens a consignment business that profits from the town's hard times.

The Whispered Word is the second book in Ellery Adams' Secret, Book, and Scone Society cozy mystery series, in which four friends and a green new sheriff have to sort fact from fiction before a killer closes another victim's story.