"Sane people are boring," Sabrina Dunsweeney tells her friends when they try to convince her that she is crazy to travel to tiny, isolated Comico Island to recover from a cancer scare and the sudden loss of her mother.

Sabrina, who has a tendency toward hypochondria and very bad cooking, soon meets Lima Lowry, the tallest tale-teller on the island. He tells her all about the pirate Walk-the-Plank Wrightly, who died three hundred years ago and who has recently made a cameo reappearance in Sabrina’s rose garden.

Lima invites her to a campaign fund-raising tea party at the prestigious Tittletott House, where Sabrina is surprised to find the stoic islanders clutching monstrous, neon teapots as they begin a mass stampede toward the lone bathroom, spurred on by an unexpected ingredient in the chocolate scones. It seems someone is determined to ruin Brad Tittletott’s campaign for the most coveted title on the island, president of the sanitary commission. Everyone is sure it’s the crazy Wrightlys, who have hated the Tittletotts for centuries, but could it be a member of Brad’s own family?

Then Sabrina finds the ghost—now truly dead—in her rose garden and she is soon drawn into a maze of deadly islander intrigue!