Keys to Love — Dorothy Brenner Francis / Dorothy Francis

“I need your help…I am being forced to sell Allamanda House… I feel threatened.” So read the urgent letter from her grandmother in Florida to Allison Blue, a pretty commercial artist based in New York. More than a little worried, Allison requested a job transfer, said good-bye to Ron Baker, the handsome physician who wanted to marry her, set out for Key West.

But Allison was hardly prepared for the strange appearance of Allamanda House, or the stranger goings-on of its inhabitants, her grandmother's boarder. The huge, once beautiful house had fallen into disrepair and was chocked by an overgrown jungle of plants. Snakes coiled in the uncapped cisterns, and someone as threatening as the reptiles inhabited the house, for no sooner had Allison moved in than someone soaped a threatening message on her mirror.

But who? Could it be Jason McKillum, the schoolteacher with the smoldering dark eyes? Or was it Ryan Bell, the lighthearted captain of a fishing boat? Both men seemed strangely, urgently eager to buy Allamanda House. And without knowing which one to trust, Allison felt a pull of attraction to both.

There were other boarders, too, and any one of them might have some mysterious reason to hasten Allison's departure from Key West. Allison was determined to stay. But soon the frightening incidents took on a new and more frightening tone, and Allison found herself fighting for her life against an implacable enemy!