A dead recluse. A locked library. A collection of rare books someone has already begun to steal.

When rare-book specialist Alex Whitaker inherits Tidewatch House from a reclusive great-uncle she never truly knew, she expects a difficult cataloging job, not a murder investigation.

Perched above the fogbound coast of Maine, Tidewatch is home to the Whitaker library, a private collection built over sixty years by the elusive Cornelius Whitaker. Thousands of volumes line its shelves: early imprints, maritime records, old maps, private ledgers, and books arranged not by title or subject, but by the hidden logic of Cornelius's mind.

To Alex, the library is more than an inheritance. It is a message.

The first signs are small. Missing volumes. A suspiciously low appraisal. A book turned face-out where no book should be. A solicitor who knows too much. A local historian searching for a map that may not officially exist. And then the discovery that someone has been inside the locked east wing before Alex ever arrived.

When a body is found, Alex realizes the Whitaker collection is not merely valuable. It is dangerous.

As she deciphers Cornelius's notes, marginalia, ledgers, and carefully placed clues, Alex uncovers a conspiracy rooted in rare books, stolen provenance, and a historical secret powerful people have killed to protect. But the deeper she reads, the clearer one thing becomes: Cornelius did not leave her Tidewatch because she was family.

He left it because he believed she could finish what he started.

Atmospheric, intelligent, and richly layered, Notes in the Margins is the first book in a rare-book mystery trilogy perfect for readers who love coastal secrets, old houses, literary clues, amateur sleuths, and mysteries where every object has something to say.

Because in the Whitaker library, the truth was never hidden.

It was shelved.