To help save her family's floundering Starlit Bookshop, newly minted PhD Emma Starrs agrees to plan a mystery-themed dinner party for her well-connected high school classmate Tabitha Baxter. It's a delightful evening of cocktails and conjecture until Tabitha's husband, Tip - hosting the affair in the guise of Edgar Allan Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin - winds up murdered. In a heartbeat, Emma and her aunt Nora, a famous mystery writer, become suspects. Someone in this charming artistic community has murder on the mind, and if Emma cannot outwit the killer, she and her beloved aunt will land behind bars, to walk free nevermore.