Lucy Stone, wife, mother and newspaper reporter in Tinker’s Cove, Maine has her hands full. Along with taking care of her family and her demanding job and trying to coax her garden into flourishing, she has also taken on the task of helping to plan the town’s annual Halloween party. Then Diana Ravenscroft—a professed witch—arrives in town and opens Solstice, a shop that sells jewelry, candles, and crystals, as well as providing psychic readings. Lucy agrees to attend a reading with three of her pals even though she does not believe in the supernatural, which she calls “hocus pocus.” Then many of Diana’s prophesies come to pass, and Lucy becomes unnerved. Walking her Lab one afternoon in the woods behind her house, Lucy happens upon the burned body of a man manacled to a tree.