Nimble Needle Mystery

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 . . .

It's been a little over a year since Shelby started managing Nina's Nimble Needle following her office-romance and career implosion. Next, Shelby is excited to oversee two well-known needlepoint designers who will be participating in the town's first two-week-long arts festival . . . Laura Bitters and Paul Bardo have each stitched up one-of-a-kind pillows that should be big wins for the Nimble Needle at the festival's auction . . . until the pillows vanish amid a sudden string of shoplifting incidents. Laura proves highly anxious, while Paul is an egomaniac who believes Laura has been stealing his customers for years. But things go from bad to tragic when Laura behaves oddly at the auction dinner, then collapses-dead. Resolved to piece together the truth, Shelby rallies her personal team, including her sister, Jessica, her friend Deb, and Jake, her potentially more than a friend. As an extra twist, a magazine reporter arrives with unsettling-yet useful-dirt that includes Laura and Paul. What unravels is a skein of suspects, long-held resentment, bitter jealousy, and betrayal, from which Shelby will have to pull the one crucial thread tied to the killer: a murder-worthy motive . . .