After the annual parade of Christmas presents in Tinker's Cove has ended, Lucy Stone and her daughter Elizabeth are ready to ring in the new year in style. Elizabeth has won mother/daughter winter makeovers in Manhattan from Jolie magazine! But the all-expenses-paid trip is bound to have some hidden costs—and one of them is murder. . .

After finally arriving at the offices of Jolie, meeting their fellow makeover candidates, and being treated to a fashion show, Elizabeth is enamored of the extreme outfits and stick-thin models—while Lucy's having some misgivings. The pampering is nice and the glitz and glamour of haute couture is bizarrely fascinating, but bitterness and aggression lurk behind Jolie's hipper-than-thou façade. And things turn downright ugly when self-absorbed fashion editor Nadine Nelson falls mysteriously ill and then dies. . .

Lucy saw first-hand some of the backstabbing going on at Jolie. And the red-hot rumor mill soon reveals that the cliquish connection among the magazine's cabal of high-style executives has stirred up plenty of bad blood over the years. But this Manhattan murder mystery hits too close to home when Elizabeth gets rushed to the hospital with symptoms that are disturbingly similar to Nadine's. Now, it's up to Lucy to dress down a killer before the ball drops in Times Square. . .