Zoey Kane is known around Riverside for making bad decisions when it comes to auctions and real estate investments. When her savvy daughter, Claire, learns her most recent purchase is eighty acres on the haunted, desolate side of town, she is simply flabbergasted. Amazement takes over the entire community and beyond, however, when a one-hundred-year-old mansion is discovered deep within trees.

When the Kanes transform Hillgate Manor into a popular hotel, things don't go according to plan. On top of all the strange noises after midnight, room number 10 becomes notorious for scary happenings, and Gothics replace the swank out-of-towners who head for the hills. Someone or something doesn't want it to be a success. Messages on a mirror demanding, "Find more clues, find more clues!" convince the mother and daughter they must solve a string of riddles—that reveal haunting secrets, skeletons and murder—before it's too late.