Nostalgia can be deadly. It’s wintertime in Foggy Point, Washington, and tourists are as scarce as gold-plated thimbles at a thrift store. The denizens of the town decide that a colorful 1960s-themed festival is just the event to bring people out and get them moving and, hopefully, spending their money in the community. Clad in bellbottom jeans, granny dresses and afro wigs, the Loose Threads quilt group is excited to participate in the associated quilt display. All, that is, except Jenny Logan, the only member who has an authentic quilt from that era. Reluctantly, she agrees to display and talk about her quilt. A costumed participant is shot in front of Jenny’s quilt. Coincidence? Or is the quilt’s past endangering its owner’s future?

Make Quilts Not War (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery)

Literature & Fiction

SACHITANO, ARLENE

Literary

Zumaya Enigma

Too bee or not to bee Daphne Lee-Lee is a rock-and-roll mom whose band, Bob’s Brain Freeze, has finally made it big. Back from tour, she’s glad to return to normalcy and attend the national spelling bee in Los Angeles, where her 13-year-old daughter is one of the competitors. But “normal” is over way too soon and the mayhem begins when Daphne gets into a tussle with the spelling bee mascot, leading to a serious case of double murder in a skanky old hotel. Daphne knows she’s not the one who choked the life out of two victims, so who could the perpetrator be? The good-looking, smooth-talking lawyer that’s been giving her way too much undivided attention? His soon-to-be ex-wife? Or is it someone else? Join Daphne on yet another wild ride as she takes us on a first-person tour in the second in a series of her patented misadventures.

I Murdered the Spelling Bee (A Daphne Lee-Lee Misadventure)

Dager, Wendy

Humor & Satire

Pet quilts are the project of the day for Harriet Truman and the Loose Threads. Local veterinarian Aiden Jalbert decides to set up an animal kennel for the local battered women’s shelter and asks the quilters to sew bedding for it. Harriet is soon drawn into the world of domestic violence when Loose Thread Sarah Ness calls from the emergency room, where she’s landed as a result of a vicious beating by her fiancé Seth Pratt. Sarah initially refuses to consider going to the shelter but is forced to change her mind when she wakes to find Seth dead beside her in bed. Is Harriet’s friend a killer, or did someone else want Seth dead? Will Harriet put herself in the killer’s sights if she tries to figure it out?

A Quilt in Time (Harriet Truman)

Contemporary

A quilting conference brings Harriet Truman face-to-face with a past she had been happy to forget. Then she learns the quilter staying at Aiden Jalbert's house is an old flame whose real agenda might not involve needle and thread. Then the old flame is found dead in Aiden's temporary living quarters, and all the evidence points to him. Unless Harriet and the Threads can track down the real killer, Harriet's blooming romance may wither on the stem.

Crazy as a Quilt (A Harriet Turman/Loose Threads Mystery)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

What happened to Amber? Loose Thread DeAnn Gault is happy her younger half-sister Molly has come home to visit Foggy Point, even after she asks Harriet Truman and the quilting group if they will make quilts as a reward for two $10,000 donors to the Carey Bates Missing and Exploited Children Center. The charity is near and dear to Molly’s heart, as she herself was a kidnap victim when she was five. But Molly has another agenda--she wants Harriet to figure out what happened to her friend Amber, who was kidnapped with her but never found. After Harriet’s Aunt Beth is injured in a car accident that may have been sabotage, the group wonders: Will someone go to any lengths to keep the secret of Amber’s disappearance? Or has Molly’s current work pursuing human traffickers made them a target?

Disappearing Nine Patch (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery)

Father Juan Ibarra is a Franciscan friar in California. He also happens to be a physician. He has been sent to the territory to bring some relief to the native Californians, who are suffering terribly under the imposed rule of the Spanish Empire, particularly from introduced disease. Father Juan is asked to perform a routine autopsy on a young Indian woman. To his dismay he discovers that she was murdered. As he and Major Eduardo Carrillo, the commander of the Monterey Presidio, investigate the death it develops that the young woman was an unwilling concubine to the governor of California. Further, she had recently been threatened by the governor’s wife. It turns out sexual infidelity is not the governor's only failing. He has been dealing under the table with the captain of an American ship in the harbor, and the dead woman served as a courier in financial dealings between the governor and the Americans, all to the detriment of the King. An Incidental Death in Monterey follows Father Ibarra’s investigation from an accidental drowning to a murder to a murder with the governor as the prime suspect. Ultimately, it becomes a case of discovering, too late to prevent another tragedy, exactly what took place.

An Incidental Death in Monterey (The Mission Murders)

O'Hagan, John J.

What could possibly go wrong at an appliqué conference? If you’re Harriet Truman and the Loose Threads, just about anything. First, a drunken groom accosts Harriet in the hotel bar, and his outraged bride-to-be decides Harriet is making moves on her man. The next day, Jennifer storms into a “getting to know you” conference party and slugs her hard enough to crack an eye socket. No wonder, then, that Harriet is suspect number-one when Bridezilla turns up dead, and thing go downhill fast. It’s up to the Loose Threads—again—to figure out who did what to whom before and save not just Harriet but her best friend Lauren as well.

Double Wedding Death (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery)

It seemed like a simple project—make quilts for foster kids getting close to aging out of the system and teach them some useful skills as well. Granted, the foster parents aren’t the most pleasant people, but Luke and Sincere and the others have already had tough lives and say they can handle it. Things get complicated, though, when a reality-TV show gets permission to film the kids and track down their relatives. Foster parent Paul Holloway is murdered, and the “relatives” the TV crew introduces are more than odd. Then, when the producer’s assistant is killed, too, it’s clear there’s some deadly going on—and the kids are the targets.

Quilts Make a Family (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery)

In the air there's a feeling of…murder?
Harriet Truman is looking forward to creating happy Christmas memories with her husband James and their new foster son Luke. She and the rest of the Loose Threads are also delighted to see their special quilts displayed throughout the downtown in festive store windows. But a shocking murder disrupts the joy of the season, and when another body turns up, and then Harriet and Luke only just manage to escape a black-clad attacker, it’s clear all isn’t holly-jolly in Foggy Point. And then there’s Harriet’s new horse…

The 12 Quilts of Christmas (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery)

What do knitters Permelia O'Brien and Betty Fitzandreu have in common besides a love of knitting? Both have been betrayed by their husbands. Permelia moved to town when her husband left her for a much younger woman. Her new apartment is over the town morgue and when she finds Betty's husband's hat in the parking lot after Ed Anderson's body is brought in it quickly becomes clear that Betty's husband wasn't just cheating with another woman. He had a whole other family. Still, that doesn't explain why someone murdered him, and as Permelia and her new friends dig deeper into the mystery, it becomes clear the killer isn't finished yet.

Double Knit (A Permelia O'Brien Mystery)

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Books by Zumaya Enigma