Suzanne Macpherson pens a new novel, ‘The Forever Summer.’

Suzanne Macpherson’s latest novel begins when a pivotal character drops dead in the produce aisle of a local market as the plucky heroine looks on.

Macpherson herself hasn’t witnessed such an event, which may or may not amount to murder.

But a year and a half ago at the Bainbridge Safeway, she had an experience spooky enough to give her pause.

“I looked down the aisle, and there was a cart rolling down the aisle all by itself,” she said. “And I thought, ‘whoa.’”

As a working parent raising kids on the island, Macpherson spends a lot of time at Safeway, and “The Forever Summer” fell firmly into the “write what you know” camp.

That’s part of why Macpherson likes signing books there.

While she tours the usual circuit of local bookstores, Safeway proved such a friendly and successful venue for the release of her last novel that she’ll stage a repeat this weekend for the launch of “The Forever Summer.”

Mac­pher­son has written this and each of her six other novels under the romance umbrella, but the shopping cart incident nudged her in a different direction.

“The Forever Summer” depicts a “Blithe Spirit”-esque triangle comprised of fictional Market Foods employee and single mom Lila Abbott, stoic-yet-steamy reporter Lucas Griffin and the ghost of Lucas’s ex-wife, Emily Ruth, who even in the afterlife is up to no good.

Did Emily Ruth’s undignified demise result from trace amounts of peanut in the Cheez Whiz snack she sampled at the grocery store? Or was it something else?

Lila, with her affinity for ghosts, is enlisted to help find out. Mystery ensues.

Macpherson said she’s been questioned for not making romance center stage in this novel.

But she wanted to stretch a bit, especially after dipping her toe into the mystery pool by contributing to the 2006 women’s mystery anthology “Sugarplums and Scandal.”

She also wanted to showcase Port Gamble, a town she loves both for its history and its purported status as the most haunted town in Washington state.

Still, this latest effort remains accessible to her core fan base and true to her own interests as a writer.

“For me, it always has to be light,” she said. “I’m not that hardcore – I’m not a CSI watcher.”

Lila, like all Macpherson’s heroines, possesses a sharp sense of humor to match her adorableness. If her propensity for seeing ghosts pulls her into the central mystery – and into Lucas’s arms – fundamentally, she just wants to live a normal life.

Macpherson can relate. She herself spent time as a single mother, and even now, happily married and with two of her four children grown and out of the house, she remains engaged in that constant series of trade-offs necessary to raise kids and get her work done, hopefully with a modicum of creativity and enjoyment sweetening the mix.

It’s this ordinary yet complex day-to-day female characterization that interests Macpherson. Though at the same time, she admits that crafting Emily Ruth’s nasty ex-wife character was the most fun part about the novel.

“I think my heroines are the strongest things in the book,” she said. “I sometimes get criticized for not having alpha males – they’re all sort of calm, steady types.”

Having challenged herself with new genre elements in “The Forever Summer,” which she calls “a good transition book,” Macpherson wants to broaden her scope by developing a novelistic voice that isn’t so bound by publishers’ demands for a romantic formula.

In doing so, she hopes to make the leap from mass market romances to trade fiction.

But she says she’ll probably always have a little fling going on the side.

“The books are very fun,” she said. “And a good summer read.”

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Death by veggies

Suzanne Macpherson signs “The Forever Summer” from 12:30 to 2 p.m. Aug. 5 at the Bainbridge Island Safeway. Find out about Macpherson’s novels at www.suzmac.com.