After a few years of city life, Jordan Poteet returns to his small hometown of Mirabeau, Texas, to work as a librarian. Yet his quiet domesticity is shattered when he locks horns with Miss Beta Harcher, the town’s prize religious fanatic, in a knock-down drag-out battle over censorship.

When Jordan finds her murdered body in the library, he learns that Beta dead is much more dangerous than she ever was alive. Not only for poor Jordy, whom the police are itching to throw the book at, but for countless others. In fact, thanks to a cryptic list the police find stashed next to her fanatical heart, Beta Harcher has the whole town in a death grip…