A.J. Alanson

June Faust knows the world isn’t black and white, real bad guys are rarely caught, barely punished and never reform, and to live in the grey area, one needs to cut a lot of deals. This is why she built her fantasy, but this time, the former Treasury agent-turned-innkeeper, will work one moonlighting case too many. June left off chasing cheats, liars and thugs, for the bucolic life on the coast of Maine. After a decade of separation, except for a contract here and there to pump up her struggling coffers, she’s kept that old world perfectly partitioned off from her new life. June's dragging the Admiral Inn and its staff over the finish line at the end of their best season ever, when Director Ramone Delgatto, an old friend of June’s late husband, and fellow agent, calls for a last minute favor. She soon discovers evidence that Ramone’s big city case intersects, not only with her beloved local candidate for state office, but all of Moorewicks Bay may be caught in a snare. Now, as much as she has tried to leave behind the old June, she might just need to embrace the part of herself she tried to bury in order to protect her town - preferably without her sweet, nosy neighbors getting wise. While June searches for clues and bad actors, The Admiral Inn shifts into a higher gear. June’s inn has too much business, her events are raising too much money, and finally given the tiniest opening into her life, Ramone is becoming way too “helpful.” June needs to reunite who she used to be with who she is now, and admit that she wants more if she’s going to stop The Devil in the Donations, but how far is she willing to go to save the people she’s come to call family?

For June Faust, Treasury agent-turned-innkeeper, discovering the past is just a matter of research, but knowing the meaning of the past, well, that’s something altogether different. With their busiest year nearly in the books, she and the staff of The Admiral Inn have no time to slow down before a family reunion checks in, dragging with them an alternate history, a hidden agenda, and the key to unlocking the mansion’s secrets. After a decade of financial white-knuckling and on the brink of success, June’s ownership of the mansion itself is suddenly called into question. Adding that bitter morsel to the bustling holiday season, June finds herself caught in the strange stage play of a family reunion, stalked by the criminal mastermind from her last moonlighting case for her old agency, confused by the meddling of her former boss, and taunted by the ghost of Admiral Nilsen, himself. Always having been the cat in her former career, June has an eerie feeling she’s become the mouse. Now that her business is posting its first profits, her growing circle of family, friends, and even the townsfolk of Moorewicks Bay are depending on her for their livelihoods. Even if she can’t tidy up all the loose ends from the year, June needs to solve the most important case of her life - who owns The Admiral?

For ten years, the buck stopped at June Faust’s desk. Even before owning The Admiral Inn, June’s investigative prowess at Treasury burnished her reputation for solving thorny problems. After early retirement, and an impulse bid on a government auction site, she had needed every ounce of grit and grey matter to turn a derelict old mansion into a profitable business. But her renovations missed the hidden passage behind a bookcase.With that door now open, a century of secrets keeps spilling out into the lives of June and her community. Caverns, coves, and tunnels under the estate hold a history of a smuggling empire, hidden heirs, and an irreparable tear between father and son. Until she knows what it all means, she desperately needs the secrets to stay hidden, but with a discovery this big, word spreads like wildfire.June needs help and everywhere she turns, great people step up. With her innkeeping, investigating and even her finances, someone inserts themselves to pick up the slack—only June’s always been in charge. Her misgivings aren’t about taking help from time to time so much as she’s realizing she needs to pick a permanent team and trust others. And Director Ramone Delgatto, soon to be retired from her old agency, has his hand up the highest.While the people around her do their jobs, they need her to do dig into the decaying old journals of the Admiral himself to find the identities of the six victims found buried in an underground chamber. Her estate has become a treasure hunters’ siren, a politician’s photo op, and a crime scene. Any one of her unwanted guests could sink them all.

By February in New England, everyone’s just plain ‘gettin’ busy’ because they’re sick of winter. When a fog of romance settles over Moorewicks Bay, June Faust discovers the twinkle scape isn’t confined to couples. The townsfolk blush giddy when a developer strolls into town selling dreams, the local 'nose for news' pulls her chair up close when she catches the scent of a mysterious discovery under June’s estate, and the annual Sweetheart Dinner at The Admiral Inn attracts more than Cupid.Between off-season renovations above ground, compounding lies below ground, and a swindler downtown, June and her staff are preparing to open for the new season when one more suitor comes to call. Both Ramone, the Director, and Ramone, the man, are incensed by June's secret admirer, but not enough, it seems, to step both feet over her threshold.She knows Ramone must come to see her as more than a construct of his unrequited love if he hopes to transition to The Admiral Inn. Conversely, June needs to find a way to protect her town without them ever really seeing her at all. And since she can’t rewrite the past, she must find a way to bend the perceptions of a crime boss just enough to keep her people, and herself, safe.While the fat cherub empties his quiver, June finds herself risking her future with Ramone (and more than a little pride), to pry him away from his job. In her attempt to save the good townsfolk from themselves, she inadvertently places The Admiral Inn and its staff on the line. But ultimately, June discovers the attentions of a cold mastermind will hurt much more than a measly arrow through the heart.

The Innkeeper’s You are responsible for your guest's safety and comfort, from check-in to check-out. But what if your rooms are closed for renovation…and you take in a stranded mother and child…and that opens the door to the evil that is hunting them? June takes on her first business expansion, the renovation of an abandoned hotel, but soon discovers the Innkeeper’s Code has a whole other meaning. She’d been through this process once, with her auction-find mansion turned bed and breakfast, but she’s learning hard luck and neglect don’t erode these architectural masterpieces. Dirty little secrets eat them from the inside out. Amidst the construction crew brawls, booming dining receipts, and the distraction of the man in the next room over, June is deftly managing The Admiral Inn with her amazing team and support from her adopted small town, but pixy dust is an allergen. June’s suspicions begin to itch as she discovers hidden agendas and closely held secrets all around her. And June’s been hiding something as well - especially from her new lover, Treasury Director Ramone Delgatto. To save her two guests, the fact that June has a criminal mastermind on speed dial could be a good thing. Sometimes, to fight evil, one needs a bigger devil.

A little demolition on a century-old hotel can be cathartic - bagging up the past and ripping off the bandages to put things right. June Faust started her inn just like this, a decade ago, renovating the derelict Admiral Nilsen’s mansion on the edge of town, but when she agrees to help her new partner clean up his bargain buy in her adopted town of Moorewicks Bay, she pulls back the curtain, or carpet in this case, on a previously unknown crime scene. As the lurid past of the hotel tumbles out of hidden safes and little black books, June discovers the sins of three generations are embedded in the cracked plaster and peeling wallpaper - and no one wants the truth stirred up. With The Admiral Inn’s high season in full swing and Ramone Delgatto, her partner in business and…other things…acting sketchy, June pushes to finally renovate the ballroom of her mansion as her restaurant becomes desperate for expansion. But her house was built by pirates and what do pirates do? Bury things. While all of Moorewicks Bay’s past is rolling over to expose its scaly underbelly, whether anyone wants to look or not, June must balance her expanding business, her growing little empire, and the hearts of her beloved townsfolk against justice for one unknown soul. But just as the men who built her house have left her yet another secret hidden in her ballroom to clean up, the men around June keep pressing her back into the life of an investigator she left behind. When June pulls at the cold threads of a forgotten tragedy, the web reaches back in time to the very construction of the hotel and forward to today’s pillars of the community trying to outrun the past. To minimize the damage the truth carries with it, for herself and for her people, June must determine when she’s dressing a fresh wound, picking at a scab that refuses to heal, or just itching an old, forgotten scar.

Buy a house, a square of land, maybe a garage. Paint a little, mow a little, live a lot - unless it’s The Admiral Inn. June Faust discovers her mansion on the rugged coast of Maine doesn’t simply share the majestic Laurelhead with the defunct lighthouse, but rather both halves belong to her estate - by hook, by crook and by murder. May bookings are maxed, her staff has doubled and her ‘yes’ to Ramone’s marriage proposal has fallen flat, but a century-old death must be solved for June’s messed up world to survive. When a VIP arrives with cowboy boots and big ideas, June gropes for anything to protect her estate with one hand while stiff-arming her overreaching guest with the other. June’s brilliance for ferreting out facts needs to work better on moldy journals and maps than it does on romance. She will need Ramone, her found family and even an annoying new friend to turn the ill-gotten gains of Laurelhead into something good. Not that she wants to own a broken lighthouse, she has to, because if the ugly truth of its original owner’s demise comes to light, June could lose The Admiral Inn.