The Secondhand Shop

She has priced other people's endings for thirty years. Her own has just been marked down.

At fifty-two, Carol-Anne Tibbs runs Tibbs & Daughter, Secondhand on the corner of Water and Harbor Streets in Port Ansel, Maine. She sells what is left when a life changes or ends: the watches, the wardrobes, the estate china. When her husband of twenty-eight years leaves her via a forty-one-second message on the shop's answering machine, Carol-Anne finally sells his brown corduroy recliner for twelve dollars, carries her fierce eighty-six-year-old mother-in-law's chowder tray upstairs at noon, and tells no one it hurt.

Then a yellowed cardboard box is left on her step in the night. Inside is a hand-finished ivory duchess satin wedding gown that has never been worn-and a note pinned over the heart signed only M: Please do not sell it to just anyone. I should like it to go to someone who will get to the church.

Upstairs in the rented rooms over the shop is Dr. Arun Raman. Fifty-five, slight, and newly arrived from a massive hospital in Cleveland after a quiet heart attack in a parking garage, Arun cannot find the fuse box, trips over the hall mat every day, and apologizes to dropped potatoes. Yet he is the only person in Port Ansel who never tips his head and asks Carol-Anne how she is holding up-and the one man who offers her a single dollar bill to turn her heaviest grief into a clean trade.

As Carol-Anne and Arun trace the sixty-six-year-old mystery stitched into the hem of the unworn gown, they uncover a history that hits closer to home than Carol-Anne ever imagined-and must decide what is worth letting go, and what is worth keeping for good.

Why readers will love The Secondhand Shop:

• Seasoned, Grounded Protagonists: A slow-burn, closed-door romance between a capable, five-foot-ten 52-year-old shopkeeper and a gentle, observant 55-year-old small-town doctor.


• A Moving Mystery Within a Love Story: Follow the thread of a 1950s couture wedding dress, a chipped blue willow gravy boat, and a sixty-six-year-old secret between sisters.


• Unforgettable Coastal Maine Cast: Full of dry New England wit, a sharp-tongued mother-in-law who communicates by thumping her cane on the floor, and a harbor community that rallies when it matters most.


• Standalone Read: Book Six in The Harbor Street Novels, complete with a guaranteed happy ending and no cliffhanger.