THE SECOND CHANCE ANTIQUES MYSTERIES

• The Clock Struck Murder

• A Stitch in Crime

• Mirror, Mirror, Murder

Rapid Release Trio · Cozy Mystery · Clean / closed door · 3 books · 65K each · 1st person

Complete three-book planning package, 521 pages: three premises, three codices, every chapter of all three books outlined and prompted, a launch kit for each book, plus the series bible, rapid-release launch plan and box-set strategy — already written. One buyer only. When it’s claimed, it’s gone.

A three-book paranormal cozy mystery series — three books fully built, ready to publish back-to-back, and designed to keep going long after Book 3.

Every antique has a story. Some of them are still telling it.

Shelby Kincaid spent fifteen years catching liars for an insurance company. She believes in paper trails, documented losses, and things she can prove. She comes home to Persimmon Gap, North Carolina — a Blue Ridge town of orchards, switchback roads, a Saturday flea market, and a diner with the best view in the county framed on every wall — for exactly one summer, to sell her late grandmother's antique barn. Then her grandmother looks back at her out of a cracked vanity mirror and says, "Well. It took you long enough."

Zell Kincaid left behind four hundred chairs, a leaky loft full of quilts, and a leather ledger of fifty haunted objects — each holding a ghost who can't move on until an old wrong is put right. One object wakes in each book. Its ghost witnessed a present-day murder tied to its own past, and it can tell Shelby what it saw, heard, and smelled — in fragments, never a name. The rest is up to her.

The cases are never solved by ghosts alone. Shelby cracks every one the way a fraud investigator would — following the money, pulling public records, auditing a ledger, spotting a staged scene and a lie nobody asked for — and the ghosts witness, confirm, and wait. Every clue is planted on the page before she lays out her claim file, and she lays it out in the same chapter in every book. The fair-play rule is written into every document in the package.

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The Books

Book 1 — THE CLOCK STRUCK MURDER

Shelby has a plan: clear the barn, sell the land, gone by Labor Day. Then a jittery picker sells her a walnut mantel clock, begs her to hide it for a few days, and turns up dead on her barn floor the next morning — the clock's hands stopped at 3:17. When Shelby winds it, a courtly voice from inside the case says, "It was 3:17 and forty seconds, madam, if one wants to be exact." The watchmaker who built the clock died in 1957, in a "fall" down stairs he built himself.

Inside the clock's pendulum is half of a 1957 land deal that would cost the county's richest family a mountain and kill a resort before it's built. Shelby follows the paper trail to a courthouse filing nobody thought to read, a yellow price sticker on a floor she'd swept the night before, and the sweetest woman in the church choir. The trap is set in the dark barn. At 3:17, the clock strikes a chime it was never built to make.

Spring Blue Ridge setting · former fraud investigator sleuth · inherited haunted antique barn · ghostly grandmother in the mirror · a haunted clock as the only witness · a 1957 death reopened · slow burn with the furniture restorer across the barn lot · fair-play clue architecture · clean · first kiss in the final chapter

Book 2 — A STITCH IN CRIME

It's July, and the whole county is out for the Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention. Shelby finally finds the second object in the ledger — an 1880s wedding-ring quilt, and the gentle ghost of the young mother who made it. Adelaide Coggins was accused of stealing the church-roof money in 1889 and died with her name in ruins. When her great-granddaughter, a nine-time blue-ribbon quilter, asks to show the quilt at the convention, Shelby says yes. The next morning, the quilter is dead under a toppled rack in the exhibition hall.

The sheriff sees an accident. Shelby sees a staged scene. And Adelaide, hanging ten feet away all night, saw a silver thimble she'd know anywhere — it belonged to the woman who called her a thief 137 years ago. This is the book where Shelby's old job pays off in full: forged heirlooms, self-appraised insurance values, and a doctored 1889 account book she gets to audit against the bank's own ledger. Meanwhile, the man across the barn lot works up the nerve to play the fiddle in public for the first time since his wife died — and the book ends with Zell's vanity stolen and her mirror silent.

Summer festival setting · quilt-show murder · haunted heirloom witness · forgery and fraud · a 137-year-old injustice set right · established couple facing new stakes · a cliffhanger that sells Book 3 · fair-play clue payoffs and new plants · clean · kisses on the page

Book 3 — MIRROR, MIRROR, MURDER

Six weeks after the theft, Shelby finds Zell's vanity in an online catalog: Lot 212 at the Whitlock Hall estate auction, a grand old mansion on a cold mountain lake, listed as "original to the house." At the preview she lays a hand on it and hears Zell — faint, fading, far from home — and a second voice beside her: a girl who drowned in that lake in 1948. Zell made her a promise fifty-eight years ago. Then the auctioneer is murdered in the ballroom, ten feet from the vanity, and the sale is moved to Halloween.

Every thread from Books 1 and 2 comes due. The Richmond collector who has been buying up ledger objects for years is finally on the terrace in person. A salted auction, a 1948 inquest, and a family saying repeated over two bodies seventy-eight years apart lead Shelby to the killer. And the whole town of Persimmon Gap passes a coffee can to buy Zell back. Readers finally learn why Zell kept the ledger — and in the last chapter, the man across the barn lot moves in with his fiddle and one chair. Then a fifty-first entry appears in the ledger, in Shelby's own handwriting.

Autumn leaf-season setting · ghostly grandmother in peril · murder at a grand estate auction · a 1948 drowning reopened · the trilogy's questions answered · the whole town rallies · moving in together · trio arc closed, series hook opened · fair-play mystery architecture · clean · kisses on the page

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Why This Series Sells

A proven category, entered at a fresh intersection. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Cozy > Paranormal carries a sales-to-competition ratio of [ADD], with an average of [ADD] daily sales per top-20 title against [ADD] competing titles. This series sits where the paranormal and Crafts & Hobbies cozy shelves meet — antiques, estate sales, and quilting qualify every book for both — and Book 2 leads with the quilting audience to widen the series' reach.

A series engine readers understand on page one — and know will keep going. A ledger of fifty haunted heirlooms, one freed per book. Readers who love long-running cozy series see that promise immediately, and it's the reason they'll buy Book 2 the same night. After Book 3, forty-seven entries remain, plus an awake rocking horse and a mysterious fifty-first entry — so this package doesn't end where the trilogy does.

A sleuth with a real professional edge. Cozy readers love an amateur with a skill that matters. A former insurance fraud investigator reads paperwork, follows money, and spots a staged scene — giving Shelby credible sleuthing authority without a badge, and giving every book a satisfying, paper-trail solve instead of a lucky guess.

A ghostly grandmother readers will recommend the series for. Salty, bossy, loving Zell lives in the cracked vanity mirror and steals every scene she's in. She's the character readers quote — and the series' biggest question is about her.

Three seasons, three community events, three promotional windows. A spring Dogwood Festival, a summer fiddlers' convention and quilt show, and an October estate auction on Halloween give each book its own season to sell in — and put the finale squarely in the fall window when paranormal cozy readers are most active.

A romance that grows up across the series. Wary neighbors become a couple by the end of Book 1, go public in Book 2, and build a home together in Book 3. Clean throughout, steady rather than will-they-won't-they, and always serving the mystery.

A complete, tracked internal timeline. Each book mapped chapter by chapter in its Codex, across one year from April to November. The Series Bible tracks the full timeline from 1865 through the final page and maps every planted thread to its payoff.

Built for rapid release specifically. The whole package is engineered around a 4–6 week release cadence: a write-ahead schedule so no pre-order date is ever missed, back-matter cross-promotion updated at every launch, a Book 1 price pulse at each new release, a Books 1–3 box set with an exclusive bonus story — and a ready plan for rolling straight into a second trio.

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Tropes by Book

The Clock Struck Murder — Inherited Haunted Antique Shop · Ghostly Grandmother Sidekick · Big-City Woman Comes Home · Sleuth with a Professional Edge · Haunted Object as Witness · Historical Wrong Behind a Modern Murder · Slow Burn with the Craftsman Next Door · Fair-Play Clue Trail · Clean · First Kiss

A Stitch in Crime — Quilt-Show Murder · Summer Festival · Haunted Heirloom Witness · Forgery and Fraud · A Name Cleared 137 Years Late · Meeting His Family · He Plays Again · Cliffhanger Ending · Clean · Kisses

Mirror, Mirror, Murder — Stolen Heirloom Recovered · Ghostly Grandmother in Peril · Murder at a Grand Estate Auction · 1948 Drowning Reopened · The Whole Town Rallies · Trilogy Questions Answered · Moving In Together · Series Hook · Clean · Kisses

Heat level: Clean throughout — mild language, no gore, kisses on the page and nothing more.

Perfect for fans of: Juliet Blackwell, Alice Kimberly, Barbara Allan, Elizabeth Craig

WHAT'S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE

Three complete books, fully developed — not architected and waiting. Everything below is written, prompted, and ready to drop into your workflow. And unlike a closed trilogy, this series is built to keep going: the package maps the open threads and a ready engine for Books 4, 5, and 6.

Per Book (×3)

⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ validation with dual-category positioning, three-title competitive analysis with differentiation, and full mystery architecture — victim, suspects, red herrings, killer, clue trail, and the historical wrong behind the modern crime — locked before a single chapter is written

⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible per book: first-person sleuth with core wound, greatest fear, fatal flaw, and full arc; love interest, victim, and every suspect profiled with motive, alibi, and dialogue style; each book's ghost with a complete life timeline and distinct voice; complete supporting cast with example dialogue; settings with full sensory detail across smell, sound, weather, and texture; chapter-by-chapter timeline with exact days and dates; the complete rules of the haunted ledger; voice guidelines with example passages for the sleuth, the ghostly grandmother, the love interest, and every key player; clean-heat guidelines; series seeds labeled for later books; and a full consistency checklist with fair-play clue placement mapped to the chapter

⭐️ Chapter-by-Chapter Outline — every chapter plus epilogue per book, with a minute-by-minute "night of the murder" reference so every alibi holds, three scene breakdowns per chapter, emotional beat, key dialogue, sensory texture, ending hooks, connection to the next chapter, and word-count targets totaling 65,000 words per book

⭐️ AI-Ready Chapter Prompts — 81 copy-paste generation prompts across the series, one per chapter and epilogue, each fully self-contained for a fresh chat: full story and character context, voice guide, the ghost rules, the exact clues to plant and what must not be revealed yet, emotional-beat direction, the chapter's decision, clean-content rules, and an ending-hook line for every chapter

⭐️ Marketing Copy — back-cover copy, full Amazon listing with categories and 7-keyword strategy, 50-word short description, newsletter announcement with three subject-line options, reader magnet concepts with landing-page copy, full social suite (Instagram feed post with hashtag set and a four-slide story sequence, Facebook post), reader targeting profile, series marketing copy, and a genre-matched Ideogram cover prompt with cozy-cover conventions — designed so the three covers read as a matched spring, summer, and fall set

⭐️ Market-Matched™ Brief — market snapshot across primary, secondary, and tertiary categories, a "why this will sell," competitive positioning with comp titles and differentiation statements, a keyword-strategy table with rationale for all 7 KDP keywords, and launch positioning including pricing, cover direction, KU enrollment guidance, and release cadence

Series-Level

⭐️ Series Bible — complete shared-world continuity document: a side-by-side series-at-a-glance table; the series questions and their strict reveal order book by book; every recurring character tracked across all three books; the master timeline from 1865 through the series close; every location with its fixed details; the haunted ledger's complete rules and a table of every entry named so far; a seed-and-payoff tracker following every planted thread from introduction to payoff chapter; the romance arc beat by beat; a full name registry; series-wide style rules; and an open-ended engine for Books 4–6 — every unresolved thread, three ready second-trio concepts, and the rules for extending the series

⭐️ Rapid-Release Launch Plan — publish order and 4–6 week spacing; a seasonal release calendar matched to the books' own spring, summer, and fall settings; a write-ahead drafting schedule; pre-order strategy for each book; pricing pulses across the trilogy; back-matter cross-promotion updated at every launch; a repeatable launch-week checklist; a seven-email newsletter sequence; box-set timing; and a plan for rolling straight into a second trio

⭐️ Series Page & Box Set Strategy — series positioning and one-line pitch; ready-to-paste Amazon series-page description and reading order; a complete author-website series page; series back-matter pages, including a "The Ledger Isn't Finished" page that keeps readers waiting for Book 4; box set title, description, pricing, launch timing, keywords, and front- and back-matter assembly notes; an exclusive box-set bonus story concept that bridges into Book 4; Ideogram prompts for a three-book series image (with a version for uploading your own finished covers) and a portrait box-set cover; and social and newsletter copy for the box-set launch

⭐️ Step-by-Step How-To Guide — full package overview and recommended reading order; the exact chapter-prompt-to-manuscript method; guidance on using the Series Bible to stay consistent while drafting Books 2 and 3; when to deploy each marketing and brief section; special drafting notes for every book; a quick-reference table mapping every component to its use; and answers to the questions authors ask most — including how to keep the series going after Book 3

One buyer. This series is exclusively yours.

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