by Peggy Baseman

Marla Stone's nine-acre island estate just off the coast of Massachusetts known as Stone's Throw has sadly fallen into disrepair. The estate's twenty-four-room French Normandy mansion, guesthouse, stables, cabanas, and various outbuildings are showing their age. Marla earns only a paltry sum teaching cooking and birdsong identification classes in her home, and she's having trouble maintaining the elegant way of life to which she had always been accustomed. Even Acumulada, her loyal maid of thirty years, has agreed to work without wages.

Marla's financial salvation arrives in the form of Jack Trumpet, CEO of Conglomotron. He appears on her doorstep one day, asking her to co-host a lifestyle television show with his wife, Barbie Lee. Barbie Lee's dearth of talent is only part of the problem. The real difficulties surface when she is discovered dead, facedown in a bowl of gazpacho at Marla's dinner party.

As guests-all of whom have a motive for murder-are stranded on the island by a rainstorm, they question who among them is capable of the grisly murder. With the bridge out, roads closed, phone lines down, and electricity out, the frightened guests must survive another night in the house . and another night with the killer.