Turned down for this year's Nobel Prize, forty-two year old genetics pioneer Grace Farrington is known for her 'Farrington Fusions': sudden understandings that solve intricate DNA mysteries. She is content with her quiet life of work, until she discovers the new Director of ORR is the man who stole her research years ago Knowing that Dr. Charles Theodore Marshall will be doing his damnest to discredit anyone he considered 'disloyal', she realizes that her position and those of her friends are in jeopardy. Hating Marshall, she wants to run again, instead Grace decides to stay and fight. Unfortunately, when a member of the staff is murdered on the octagon research boat, Grace finds herself chief suspect. She is further implicated when following an1830's witch's Curse of Three, two more people die. While hunting for the murderer, she finds herself becoming romantically entangled with an old money patron and a red necked colleague. Grace must utilize all her scientific reasoning and her eclectic group of friends (researchers, seance buddies, cops, and some other slightly eccentric New Englanders) to solve the Oyster River Harbor murders before she's arrested.