Fiction Review

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Lisa Gardner and guest host Isabella Maldonado. Gardner’s latest Frankie Elkin novel is Kiss Her Goodbye. There are signed copies of the book available in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/46WuHiS

Here’s the description of Kiss Her Goodbye.

A New York Times bestselling author returns with the latest installment in the addictive Frankie Elkin series, in which Frankie is called to Tucson, Arizona, to find a missing Afghan refugee, whose friend suspects she is in grave danger—before it is too late. “Timely and completely gripping.” (Louise Penny, New York Times bestselling author)

Recent Afghan refugee and young mother Sabera Ahmadi was last seen exiting her place of work three weeks ago. The local police have yet to open a case, while her older, domineering husband seems unconcerned. At the insistence of Sabera’s closest friend, missing persons expert Frankie Elkin agrees to take up the search just in time for a video of Sabera to surface—showing her walking away from the scene of a brutal double murder.    

Frankie quickly notes there’s much more to the Ahmadi family than meets the eye. The father Isaad is a brilliant mathematician, Sabera a gifted linguist, and their little girl Zahra has an uncanny ability to remember anything she sees. Which given everything that has happened during the girl’s short life, may be a terrible curse.

When Isaad also disappears under mysterious circumstances and an attempt is made on Zahra’s life, Frankie realizes she must crack the code of this family’s horrific past. Someone is coming for the Ahmadis. And violence is clearly an option.

When everything is on the line, how far would you go to protect the ones you love? Frankie is about to find out.

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Lisa Gardner, a #1 New York Times bestselling thriller novelist, began her career in food service, but after catching her hair on fire numerous times, she took the hint and focused on writing instead. A self-described research junkie, she has transformed her interest in police procedure and criminal minds into a streak of internationally acclaimed novels, published across 30 countries. Her novel, The Neighbor, won Best Hardcover Novel from the International Thriller Writers.  She has also been honored for her work with animal rescue and at-risk children.  An avid hiker, gardener and cribbage player, Lisa lives with her family in New England.

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Check out Lisa Gardner’s conversation with Isabella Maldonado.

Oline Cogdill recently reviewed Daniel Miller’s The Red Letter for the “South Florida Sun Sentinel”, and allowed us to use her review. You can order a copy of the book through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/45dTvBC

Book review: Murder mystery, believable characters drive ‘The Red Letter’

‘The Red Letter’ by Daniel G. Miller; Poisoned Pen/Sourcebooks; 352 pages; $17.99

Daniel G. Miller delivers an energetic private detective novel with a solid police procedural, bits of Korean culture and visits to New York neighborhoods in “The Red Letter.”

It also works well as a story about a new business getting off the ground and the challenges that entails.

Life has taken a turn for the better for Hazel Cho. Her boutique private investigative firm has finally taken off, her staff is tight-knit, and she and her business partner have thrown a terrific opening party. She’s deeply in love with a nice man, who even has her parents’ approval; he’s also a strong candidate for New York mayor. And her relationship with her family and friends has never been better.

What she doesn’t want is a case that one of her closest friends wants her to take. Father Kenneally, a well-respected Catholic priest, was poisoned, with his death captured on camera inside St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in Lower Manhattan. A young man who did odd jobs and errands for the priest was soon arrested, his fingerprints found on a red envelope containing an odd Bible verse inside the priest’s desk.

Hazel’s reluctance stems from her personal knowledge of the priest. Hazel knew him to be compassionate, involved with an unblemished reputation. She fears that an investigation may prove the priest had a dark side. But she changes her mind after visiting in jail the young man accused of the murder. The case takes a turn when more people who seem to have nothing in common are poisoned, each of whom possessed a red envelope containing similar verses.

A brisk plot keeps “The Red Letter” moving as Miller, who lives in Delray Beach, takes the reader to myriad New York streets teeming with believable characters. Miller invests unique personalities into each of Hazel’s staff and her business partner, Kenny, at C&S Investigations.

Hazel and crew will be most welcomed back.

The latest video event at the Poisoned Pen featured Barbara Peters, owner of the bookstore, in conversation with Sarah Stewart Taylor and Archer Sullivan. Taylor’s latest book is Hunter’s Heart Ridge. Sullivan’s debut mystery is The Witch’s Orchard, the First Mystery Club pick for August. There are signed copies of both books available in the Webstore. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Here’s the description of Hunter’s Heart Ridge, the sequel to Agony Hill.

In this sequel to Taylor’s lyrical series debut, Agony Hill, Detective Frank Warren and his formerly CIA-connected neighbor Alice Bellows return to investigate the death of a diplomat.

It’s November of 1965 and the second weekend of Vermont’s regular deer season when Vermont State Police detective Franklin Warren is called out to what looks like an accidental shooting at The Ridge Club, an exclusive men’s hunting and fishing club for congressmen, diplomats, judges, and titans of industry: a former ambassador has been shot while out hunting. With the war in Vietnam picking up speed on the other side of the world, Warren quickly realizes that many of the club’s members are powerful men who may have ulterior motives and connections in high places.

While Warren’s suspicions about the club members build, his neighbor Alice Bellows is throwing a dinner party, preparing for Thanksgiving, and worrying about her pregnant friend and fellow widow, Sylvie Weber, whose due date is coming up. When Alice’s old handler and friend, Arthur Crannock, unexpectedly shows up in Bethany, Alice begins to wonder whether his presence has anything to do with the death at the hunting club.

As an early season snowstorm bears down on Bethany, knocking out power and phone lines and blocking the roads, Warren and his assistant, Trooper Pinky Goodrich, are trapped at the Ridge Club, likely along with a killer, and Alice, increasingly fearful that her past in the intelligence world is no longer in the past, will have to act fast to save Sylvie and her baby.

Sarah Stewart Taylor’s historical series combines the intricacy of a satisfying mystery with keen observation of a time and place during great transformation and upheaval.

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SARAH STEWART TAYLOR is the author of the Sweeney St. George series, set in New England, the Maggie D’arcy mysteries, set in Ireland and on Long Island, and Agony Hill, the first in a new series set in rural Vermont in the 1960s. Sarah has been nominated for an Agatha Award and for the Dashiell Hammett Prize and her mysteries have appeared on numerous Best of the Year lists. A former journalist and teacher, she writes and lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries.

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Here’s your introduction to the debut, The Witch’s Orchard.

A ninth-generation Appalachian, Archer Sullivan brings the mountains of North Carolina to life in The Witch’s Orchard, a wonderfully atmospheric novel that introduces private investigator Annie Gore.

Former Air Force special investigator Annie Gore joined the military right after high school to escape the fraught homelife of her childhood. Now, she’s getting by as a private investigator, and her latest case takes her to an Appalachian holler not unlike the one where she grew up.

Ten years ago, three little girls went missing from their tiny mountain town. While one was returned, the others were never seen again. After all this time without answers, the brother of one of the girls wants to hire an outsider, and he wants Annie. While she may not be from his town, she gets mountain towns. Mountain people. Driving back into the hills for a case this old—it might be a fool’s errand. But Annie needs to put money in the bank and she can’t turn down a case. Not even one that dredges up her own painful past.

In the shadow of the Blue Ridge, Annie begins to track down the truth, navigating a decade’s worth of secrets, folklore of witches and crows, and a whole town that prefers to forget. But while the case may have been forgotten, echoes of the past linger. And Annie’s arrival stirs someone into action.

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ARCHER SULLIVAN is a ninth generation Appalachian. She’s moved thirty-seven times and has lived everywhere from Monticello, Kentucky to Manhattan, New York and from Black Mountain, North Carolina to Beverly Hills, California. Her work has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Tough, Shotgun Honey, Reckon Review, Rock and a Hard Place, and The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2024.

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Enjoy the conversation with Barbara Peters, Sarah Stewart Taylor and Archer Sullivan.

Let’s start with a quote about Scott Carson’s latest book, Departure 37. “Horror meets coming-of-age in this thrilling novel in which forgotten Cold War mysteries make a terrifying reappearance, from a writer Stephen King has called “a master.”

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Scott Carson (a pseudonym for Michael Koryta) for a virtual event to discuss his new novel. There are a few signed copies of Departure 37 left in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4fzpYWz

Here is the description of Departure 37.

On a clear October day, the American skies empty after hundreds of pilots refuse to fly, triggering a complete ground stop as authorities seek to explain an act of baffling coordination that the pilots insist was anything but planned. The pilots received disturbing, middle-of-the-night calls from their mothers, and each mother had a simple and urgent request: do not fly today.

There are a few concerning elements to the calls. None of the mothers remember making them—and some of the mothers are dead.

While the nation’s military chiefs and artificial intelligence experts mobilize in search of answers, a sixteen-year-old girl named Charlie on the coast of Maine watches a strange, silvery balloon drift across the water and toward her home—a place she loathes. Her father’s dream of opening a craft brewery on an old airfield has been a disaster, and all she wants is an escape back to Brooklyn.

She’s about to get much more than that.

Her new home is ground zero for a story that begins at a remote naval base in Indiana during the winter of 1962, when a physicist named Martin Hazelton discovered something extraordinary—and deadly. All Hazelton wanted was time to seek an explanation, but pressure from both American and Russian actors forced him into a perilous race.

Moving between the two characters and timelines, Scott Carson deftly weaves Cold War espionage with contemporary terror in a story that explains why #1 New York Times bestseller Joe Hill has declared himself “a fan for life.”

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Scott Carson is the pseudonym of Michael Koryta, a New York Times bestselling author whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages, adapted into major motion pictures, and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A former private investigator and reporter, his writing has been praised by Stephen King, Michael Connelly, and Dean Koontz, among many others. Raised in Bloomington, Indiana, he now lives in Indiana and Maine.

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This is a very serious conversation with Scott Carson.

Joe Pan recently appeared at The Poisoned Pen to discuss his debut novel, Florida Palms. There are signed copies available in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4mcIGWs

Thanks to Oline Cogdill for sharing her review of Florida Palms as it appeared in the South Florida SunSentinel.

Book review: ‘Florida Palms’ shows a fascinating part of the Sunshine State

‘Florida Palms’ by Joe Pan; Simon & Schuster; 480 pages; $29.99

Award-winning poet Joe Pan confidently delivers an uncompromising look at the criminal underworld of Central Florida in his fiction debut “Florida Palms.”

With the Space Coast as the backdrop, “Florida Palms” depicts a setting that would not draw tourists or residents. But even as Pan illustrates a gritty area, he also shows a fascinating part of the Sunshine State shaped by the aerospace industry that elevated the region and now, because of economics, is on the downslide.

“Florida Palms” is devoid of heroes, but works as a coming-of-age tale about two slackers dealing with a lack of jobs, ambition and their own limitations.

Newly graduated from high school, Eddy and Cueball don’t see much of a future. That’s actually all right, in a way. They’d much rather spend their time fishing off the Melbourne Causeway, smoking weed, getting drunk or watching TV. Their goals are less than minimal. The only reason they want a job is because they need cash to buy more booze or weed.

The two are offered a job by Cueball’s father, Bird, delivering furniture for his company. Bird, who was in prison for drug trafficking, seems to be operating a legitimate business. But instead, he’s just found a different way to run drugs.

Cueball and Eddy actually prove to be conscientious workers, making deliveries on time and being careful with the items. Then crime boss Seizer, for whom Bird used to work, sees the perfect cover — hide a new designer drug in the furniture being moved along the East Coast. Cueball and Eddy are unwittingly drawn into the scheme and pulled into a turf war between Seizer’s crew, which includes Bird, and a rival gang.

Pan shifts the focus from Cueball and Eddy to Bird. The teens come to understand the brutality of the business they’re being drawn into and of the men they are working with. Bird begins to take more control of the criminal enterprise as he tries to get more power. His capacity for violence has no limit as Pan unflinchingly delves into darker and darker territory. Pan’s eye for scenery works in tandem with the plot as “Florida Palms” moves from the towns of the Space Coast such as Satellite Beach, Melbourne and Cocoa, down to Miami to Georgia and environs.

Pan excels at making the reader care about Cueball and Eddy, who start out as naive, harmless slackers. It’s almost heartbreaking as they succumb to the lure of what seems to be easy money and drugs. They will need every bit of inner resolve to survive.

While other authors have used the Space Coast for individual scenes, this region of Florida remains an untapped area for mystery writers. Although a bit of trimming would have enhanced the story, “Florida Palms” ushers in a new talent.

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If you’d like to see Joe Pan’s conversation with Patrick Millikin from The Poisoned Pen, you can watch it here.

Barbara Peters recently welcomed J.T. Ellison and Megan Miranda to the Poisoned Pen. According to Peters, both books are set in the world of dark academia, and they have a lot in common. Ellison’s latest book is Last Seen. Miranda’s new book is You Belong Here, currently number 5 on the New York Times Bestseller list. You can order copies of both books through the Webstore. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Here’s the description of Megan Miranda’s You Belong Here.

Memories fade, but on this campus, legacies are never forgotten…or forgiven. A new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Megan Miranda.

Beckett Bowery never thought she’d return to Wyatt Valley, a picturesque college town in the Virginia mountains steeped in tradition. Her roots there were strong: Beckett’s parents taught at the college, and she never even imagined studying anywhere else—until a tragedy her senior year ended with two local men dead, and her roommate on the run, never to be seen again…

For the last two decades, Beckett has done her best to keep her distance. Then her daughter, Delilah, secretly applies to Wyatt College and earns a full scholarship, and Beckett can only hope that her lingering fears are unfounded. But deep down she knows that Wyatt Valley has a long memory, and that the past isn’t the only dangerous thing in town…

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Megan Mirandais the New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls; The Perfect Stranger; The Last House Guest, which was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick; The Girl from Widow Hills; Such a Quiet Place; The Last to Vanish; The Only Survivors; and Daughter of Mine. She grew up in New Jersey, graduated from MIT, and lives in North Carolina with her husband and two children. Follow @MeganLMiranda on X and Instagram, @AuthorMeganMiranda on Facebook, or visit MeganMiranda.com.

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Here’s the summary of Last Seen.

From New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison comes a twisted psychological thriller about the bonds of family and the disconnect between memory and the truth.

Come here. Come closer.

Halley James knows her marriage is over. But she’s not prepared for the rest of her life to fall apart too.

No one can hear you. No one can help you.

She just lost her job at the forensics lab. Her dad needs emergency surgery. But the biggest blow comes back home in Marchburg, Virginia, where she discovers her mother didn’t actually die in a car crash. Her mom was murdered—and her father lied about it all these years.

I have nothing to hide from you. Are you hiding something from me?

Since she was six years old, it’s been Halley and her dad. Now, she doesn’t know what to believe. Desperate for the truth, Halley chases down a lead in Brockville, Tennessee. But all there is not as it seems. Brockville’s utopian charm hides a chilling darkness. And Halley’s search for answers threatens to expose an unspeakable reality.

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J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty psychological thrillers and domestic noir novels, as well as the Emmy Award–winning cohost of A Word on Words on Nashville PBS. She also writes contemporary fantasy as Joss Walker, whose titles include the award-winning Jayne Thorne, CIA Librarian series. With millions of books sold across thirty countries, her work has earned critical acclaim, prestigious awards, and multiple TV options.

J.T. lives with her husband and twin kittens—one of whom is a ghost—in Nashville, where she’s busy crafting her next suspenseful tale.

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Enjoy the conversation with J.T. Ellison and Megan Miranda.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, welcomed Dan Fesperman back to the bookstore. Fesperman has appeared either in person or virtually at the bookstore since his first book came out in 1999. Peters calls Fesperman “An American John LeCarre”. There are signed copies of his new book, Pariah, available in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/3H2Mk65

Here’s the description of Pariah.

An adrenaline-fueled thriller about a disgraced comedian-turned-politician who takes on the role of a lifetime: infiltrating a corrupt Eastern European country to spy on their brutal dictator

Hal Knight, a comedian and movie star-turned politician, is no stranger to controversy. But after an embarrassing and humiliating encounter on set, Knight resigns from Congress, quits social media, and disappears to the tiny Caribbean island of Vieques to drink dirty martinis and nurse his wounds. Shortly after his arrival, he is approached by a trio of CIA operatives hoping to recruit him to infiltrate the power structure of Bolrovia—a hostile, Eastern European country whose despotic president, Nikolai Horvatz, happens to be a longtime fan of Knight’s adolescent male humor. Knowing that Horvatz plans to invite the disgraced star for an official visit, the CIA coaxes Knight to accept. Skeptical, but with little to lose, Knight accepts the challenge, sensing this might be his one chance to do something worthwhile, even if no one else ever finds out.

Upon arrival as President Horvatz’s guest of honor, Knight confronts his ultimate acting challenge. What begins as an assignment to keep his eyes and ears open quickly turns into a life-or-death battle of wits, with consequences reaching all the way to Washington. With Pariah, Dan Fesperman has crafted a heart-pounding thriller about espionage, entertainment, and one man’s pursuit of redemption.

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DAN FESPERMAN served as a foreign correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, based in Berlin. His coverage of the siege of Sarajevo led to his debut novel, Lie in the Dark, which won Britain’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for best first crime novel. Subsequent books have won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller, the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers, the Barry Award for best thriller, and selection by USA Today as the year’s best mystery/thriller novel. He lives near Baltimore.

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Enjoy the conversation with Dan Fesperman.

Author Dana Stabenow recently reviewed A Jewel in the Crown by David Lewis. Check out her review below, and then you might want to order a signed copy of the book through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/41fCZPh

A Jewel in the Crown
by David Lewis

The jewel in the crown in this case is not the crown jewels, although the crown jewels are stolen along the way of being hidden in case the Nazis are successful in invading Britain as World War II opens.

No, the jewel in the crown of England in this case is one Caitrin Colline, Welsh and one of the first members of Unit 512, a tippety-top secret organization which recruits only the best and most capable women available for whatever needs doing to win the war. In this case Winston Churchill decides that what needs doing is for Caitrin to pretend to be married to Hector, Lord Marlton (himself an agent of another secret agency) as they drive Britain’s Crown Jewels to a submarine in Scotland for transportation to Canada, there to sit out the war in safety.

Or so he says. They are also ferreting out spies and traitors among Britain’s nobility along their route, as some members of said nobility lean very eastward in their preferences and fully expect that nice Hitler fellow not to invade and even if he does not to dispossess any lords and ladies of their ancestral mansions. 

They would do no such thing. Hitler doesn’t want to fight us; we’re brothers. We negotiate peace; he leaves us alone and turns to fight the socialists and the Russian Bolsheviks in the east. We should help him with that before they come here in a great ugly tide…Instead of shooting each other, we English should be building bridges with the Germans, They are our true brothers, ot the French or the Poles.

Caitrin, as beautiful as she is intelligent, is a wee tad brighter than that and a red hot Socialist besides.

“…after the war, the aristocracy should be, will be, dismantled and the country estates divided up for the people. We will bring an end to centuries of inbred titled parasites doing nothing to validate their existence but feed off the people.”

All, and you knew this was coming, does not go as planned on Caitrin and Hector’s honeymoon trip, or at least not as they were told it was planned, and that’s all I’ll say about that so I don’t spoil. Hector is almost as much fun and almost as smart at Caitrin and together they’re more fun to hang out with than the entire cast of Monty Python. I’ve already order the second book in the series.

Dana

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Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, welcomed a long-time friend, Rhys Bowen, back to the bookstore for a virtual appearance. Today is release day for Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure. There are signed copies still available, and Peters assures readers the bookstore can get more signed copies if they need to do that. https://bit.ly/47la2VA

Here’s the summary of Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure.

Blindsided by betrayal in pre-WWII England, a woman charts a daring new course in this captivating tale of resilience, friendship, and new love by the bestselling author of The Rose Arbor and The Venice Sketchbook.

Surrey, England, 1938. After thirty devoted years of marriage, Ellie Endicott is blindsided by her husband’s appeal for divorce. It’s Ellie’s opportunity for change too. The unfaithful cad can have the house. She’s taking the Bentley. Ellie, her housekeeper Mavis, and her elderly friend Dora—each needing escape—impulsively head for parts unknown in the South of France.

With the Rhône surging beside them, they have nowhere to be and everywhere to go. Until the Bentley breaks down in the inviting fishing hamlet of Saint Benet. Here, Ellie rents an abandoned villa in the hills, makes wonderful friends among the villagers, and finds herself drawn to Nico, a handsome and enigmatic fisherman. As for unexpected destinations, the simple paradis of Saint Benet is perfect. But fates soon change when the threat of war encroaches.

Ellie’s second act in life is just beginning—and becoming an adventure she never expected.

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Rhys Bowen is the New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty novels, including The Rose Arbor, The Paris Assignment, Where the Sky Begins, The Venice Sketchbook, Above the Bay of Angels, The Victory Garden, The Tuscan Child, and In Farleigh Field, the winner of the Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel and the Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel. She is also the author of the Royal Spyness mysteries and several other series. Bowen’s work has been translated into many languages and has won sixteen honors to date, including multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards. A transplanted Brit, Bowen divides her time between California and Arizona. For more information, visit www.rhysbowen.com.

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Enjoy the conversation with Rhys Bowen as she discusses her latest book.

John Charles from the Poisoned Pen recently welcomed Allie Pleiter to the bookstore. One Sharp Stitch is a Nimble Needle Mystery. There are signed copies of this one, Pleiter’s seventieth book. https://bit.ly/3UP8eg5.

Here’s the description of One Sharp Stitch.

When thirty-something Shelby Phillips returns to her quiet hometown just outside of Asheville, North Carolina, she reluctantly takes over her mother’s Nimble Needle needlepoint shop—and gets entangled in a murder investigation . . .

It’s only temporary. That’s what Shelby Phillips tells herself when she returns to excruciatingly harmless Gwen Lake after her graphic arts career—and the office romance blooming with it—get tossed like rejected design mockups. Her plan is as simple and fool-proof as a tent stitch: manage the family needlepoint shop during her parents’ RV vacation. It’s just a month. It’s not as if they’re retiring . . . right?

When Shelby becomes responsible for hosting a trunk show with local vendors, she’s determined to pull it off. Even if that means dealing with former classmate Kat Katsaros, a rising entrepreneur specializing in needlework scissors. Kat has changed since high school—and she’s angling to take over the Nimble Needle herself. The tension unspools when Shelby makes a terrible discovery on the morning of the event: Kat’s dead body.

Shelby can’t believe the death was an accident. That’s why she’s set on exposing who committed the murder with Kat’s own equipment. She finds help in a new friend, a potential crush, and the surprising support of her sister and the Nimble Needle stitchers. Still, Shelby must move quickly to stop the crafty culprit before her maybe not-so-temporary new life in Gwen Lake comes apart at the seams . . .

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Allie Pleiter is an internationally bestselling author, an accomplished productivity coach, and an avid knitter and needlepointer. In addition to 6 nonfiction books, she has written dozens of popular fiction, mystery, and romance novels with more than 1.6 million copies sold. The creator of The Chunky Method, a time management system, she teaches creative people how to be more productive and productive people how to be more creative through her coaching practice and nationwide speaking engagements. She also is a regular speaker within the crafting and knitting community, appearing at yarn and craft shops as well as national events including Stitches Midwest, Vogue Knitting Live, and the Wanderstitch Cruise onboard Norwegian Cruise Lines. An alumna of Northwestern University, she is a member of Sisters in Crime, the American Needlepoint Guild and the National Speakers Association. She lives with her husband and adorable dog near Charlotte, NC, and can be found online at AlliePleiter.com.

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Enjoy John Charles’ interview with Allie Pleiter.