Posts Tagged ‘An Embroidery Mystery’

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The Stitching Hour
by Amanda Lee

I like how the author likes to give you just enough clues so that you think that you know whodunit but then gives you another clue to let you know that wait a minute it may not be that person after all. She likes to keep you guessing.
~Griperang’s Bookmarks

A full 5 stars for this addition to the Embroidery Mystery series.
~Laura’s Interests

The Stitching Hour:
An Embroidery Mystery

Cozy Mystery
9th in Series
Publisher: NAL (November 3, 2015)
Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0451473844
E-Book ASIN: B00S75OKKQ

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My Review

Some time ago I won a book from this series and had such fun reading it. After that I kept my eye out for more. While I’m all over the place in the series, reading books out of order, it’s nice to grab this new one. That shows, you can jump into these anywhere and easily catch up on past events. The author does a good job of cluing you in quickly in the right places so the story doesn’t become bogged down in the past.

It’s great to be back in Tallulah Falls, visiting Marcy and seeing what’s brewing now. She’s offering all kinds of fun Halloween themed stitching kits and business is brisk.

Then, a new business opens up next door to her shop, The Seven Year Stitch. It’s a haunted house run by an odd couple. The noise is bad for her business. And a murder isn’t any better. A waitress is found dead, one of Marcy’s Halloween key rings discovered under her body, and strange marks on her neck.

Looks like Marcy’s putting on her sleuthing cap again. She’ll need to use all of her wits to solve the murder and clear her name, while not becoming a victim herself.

I love this series. Marcy is independent, determined, and such a genuinely kind woman. Her dog, Angus , a giant Wolfhound, is such a sweetie. And her shop sounds like a place I could spend hours in.

Tallulah falls is a small town and reminds me of the one I live in. Small business owners all work together, supporting each other, and everyone knows all the latest gossip. This connection brings the story to life.

Lots of cherished characters are back, along with some new ones.

The mystery is a fun one with a weird twist. Perfect for a Halloween themed who-dun-it. The culprit isn’t quickly evident, and I had a lot of fun following Marcie around as she dug for clues.

An exciting new chapter in this series and one for all cozy fans.

4 Stars

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Synopsis:

In the latest mystery from the bestselling author of Wicked Stitch, the future of Marcy Singer’s embroidery shop is dangling by a thread…

Marcy’s shop, the Seven-Year Stitch, is one year old this October so it’s time to party in little Tallulah Falls, Oregon. Aside from the Halloween decorations and festive stitching kits and patterns, Marcy’s got all sorts of celebratory swag, including Seven-Year Stitch key rings and goodie bags.

Unfortunately, her new neighbors might spoil the revelry. An eccentric couple has opened a haunted house next door, and all that screaming will certainly scare off customers. But there’s even more to be frightened of after a local waitress is found dead on the sidewalk with mysterious markings on her neck—and one of Marcy’s key rings beneath her. With no time to hem and haw, Marcy must act fast if she hopes to restore the peace to Tallulah Falls…

Gayle

About This Author

 Gayle Trent (and pseudonym Amanda Lee) writes the Daphne Martin Cake Decorating series and the Embroidery Mystery series. The cake decorating series features a heroine who is starting her life over in Southwest Virginia after a nasty divorce. The Embroidery Mystery series features a heroine who recently moved to the Oregon coast to open an embroidery specialty shop.

Author Links

Facebook / Twitter

Purchase Links:

Penguin Random House / Amazon / Booksamillion / B&N

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Follow The Tour

November 3 – Griperang’s Bookmarks – Review

November 4 – Laura’s Interests – Review

November 5 – Melina’s Book Blog – Review

November 6 – Tea and A Book – Review, Guest Post

November 7 – A Chick Who Reads – Review

November 8 – Shelley’s Book Case – Review, Guest Post

November 9 – fuonlyknew – Review

November 10 – 3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy,  &, Sissy, Too ! – Review

November 11 – readalot – Review

November 12 – View from the Birdhouse – Review

November 13 – Books Are Life – Vita Libri – Review

November 13 – Bubble Bath Books – Review

November 14 – WV Stitcher – Review, Guest Post

November 15 – Book Babble – Review

November 16 – Back Porchervations – Review

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Thanks so much for visiting fuonlyknew and Good Luck!

To see all of my giveaways click on the lucky horseshoe below!

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I have another fun cozy mystery to share with you!

Wicked Stitch is the 8th book in the Embroidery Mystery Series but you don’t have to have read the other books to enjoy this one.

I started this series with the fifth book and then read the 7th book before reading Wicked Stitch. I plan to go back and start from the beginning. I’d like to be there when Marcy first moved to Tallulah Falls.

Enjoy my review.

And don’t forget to enter the giveaway!

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Wicked Stitch
by Amanda Lee

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A great cozy mystery…
~Bab’s Book Bistro

Wicked Stitch:
An Embroidery Mystery

Series: Embroidery Mystery (Book 8)
Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Signet (April 7, 2015)
ISBN-13: 978-0451467409
E-Book ASIN: B00MNN7GXQ

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 My Review

It’s good to be back with my friends in Tallulah Falls. There’s big doings going on. The town is hosting the Renaissance Fair and all of the business owners are setting up booths to ply their wares and dressing up in period costumes.

Marcy plans on displaying some of the blackwork embroidery she’s been working on along with some other stuff from her shop, The Seven year Stitch.

Everything is going swimmingly until Marcy visits the booth next to hers. The booth belongs to her nemesis, Nellie, who just recently opened up a needlework shop right next door to Marcie’s and even copied her interior decorating.

Trying to once again mend fences, Marcie visits Nellie’s booth only to find her collapsed on the floor, a scarf wound tightly around her neck.

Marcy calls her boyfriend,detective Ted Nash, to report what she found and she’s quickly cleared as a suspect. Well almost. Nellie’s sister, Clara, swears Marcy killed her. The two sisters never liked Marcy from the moment she moved to Tallulah falls and made her life miserable.

Marcy and Ted put their heads together to try to solve the murder, along with an arson case that might be connected. Marcy’s booth gets trashed, people get assaulted, and a killer roams the crowds, invisible is his costume.

It’s never dull in Tallulah Falls. For such a small town, there’s always trouble and poor Marcy seems to always land in the middle of it.

All of the usual characters are back, the good and the bad. I swear those sisters, Nellie and Clara, are meaner than snakes. I was as enraged as Marcy to learn that Nellie had set up shop right next door to her, plying a lot of the same merchandise, trying to steal her customers, and copying her interior decor. I guess it could be considered a compliment and I have a feeling Marcy wouldn’t lose many customers to mean old Nellie.

Not that I’d wish Nellie dead. The obvious suspect would be Marcy. I know Marcy can handle herself and she’s gotten really close with Ted. Their romance is steaming along and they had me giggling and sighing. They are so sweet together. And Marcy’s Irish wolfhound, Angus, is as adorable as ever. I love when the author gives an animal a part in their story. There’s a sweet little rabbit too and Angus adores it. Unfortunately, it belongs to Nellie. I think play dates will be unlikely.

Once the killer was revealed, and it was a surprise to me, I felt the ending was a bit rushed. I would have liked a little more action. It was over so quickly. Perhaps I just didn’t want it to be the end yet.

Spring is here and summer will soon follow. I’d recommend this as a fun mystery to read while sitting outside taking in the fresh air or lounging by the pool. I’m looking forward to visiting Tallulah Falls again.

4 Stars

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Synopsis:

When murder strikes the small town of Tallulah Falls, embroidery shop owner Marcy Singer isn’t afraid of getting into the knitty-gritty to clear her own name…

For most small-business owners in Tallulah Falls, the upcoming Renaissance Faire is a wonderful way to promote their specialty shops. For Marcy’s nemesis, Nellie, and her sister Clara, it’s an opportunity to finally put Marcy and her shop, the Seven-Year Stitch, out of business. Apparently the sisters like to keep their grudges all in the family and have set up a competing booth right next to Marcy’s at the Faire.

When Clara is discovered dead in her own booth—strangled by the scarf she had almost finished knitting—Marcy becomes the prime suspect. Now she has to do whatever it takes to keep her reputation from unraveling and get to the bottom of a most deadly yarn…

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GC4

About This Author

Gayle Trent (writing as Amanda Lee) writes the embroidery mystery series. The series features a heroine who recently moved to the Oregon coast to open an embroidery specialty shop. Marcy Singer left her home in San Francisco, along with the humiliation of being left at the altar, in order to move to Tallulah Falls and realize her dream of owning her own shop. She takes along her faithful companion, a one-year-old Irish wolfhound named Angus O’Ruff. She makes many new friends in Tallulah Falls, but she also makes a few enemies. Thankfully, her best friend Sadie MacKenzie and her husband Blake run the coffeehouse right down the street from Marcy’s shop, the Seven-Year Stitch; and Detective Ted Nash always has her back. Gayle/Amanda lives in Virginia when she’s not inhabiting the fictional world of Tallulah Falls.

 

Author  Links

Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Goodreads

Purchase Links
Amazon B&N Book Depository Kobo Google Play

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Thanks so much for visiting fuonlyknew and Good Luck!

To see all of my giveaways click on the lucky horseshoe below!

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Amanda Lee’s Embroidery Mystery Series is so fun. I’ve read one other book in the series and was excited to get a chance to read Thread End.

Please, enjoy the excerpt and my reviews.

And don’t forget to enter the giveaways! Yep, there’s two!

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Thread End

by Amanda Lee

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Thread End:
An Embroidery Mystery

Series: Embroidery Mystery (Book 7)
Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Signet (June 3, 2014)
ISBN-10: 0451467396 / ISBN-13: 978-0451467393
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MY REVIEW

I live in a small coastal town and we have a lot of small shops like The Seven Year Stitch. I enjoy wandering around, looking at all of the colorful items and usually walk out with things I didn’t plan on buying. It’s also fun to chat with the other folks and catch up on the latest news.

There’s a few things I look for in a cozy mystery. First, the cover art. It’s perfect for this series. I like how the author features  Marcy’s wolfhound, Angus, on the covers. I’m a huge dog lover and he adds a lot of humor and genuineness to the story.

The title is important also. It has to be catchy and fun. Thread End is perfect, as someone does meet their end.

There need to be colorful but flawed characters. Marcy is definitely flawed. She’s a magnet for dead bodies. Seems like, for such a small town, she ‘s always stumbling across a new victim.

There also has to be a theme, like the embroidery shop. I enjoy reading about the shop and how Marcy runs it and converses with her customers.

Next is the romance. Marcy and sexy Detective Ted Nash are getting serious and Marcy finally gets to meet his mother.

Finally, there’s the mystery. The author gives you a shady victim. He’s an art thief, and when the museum is robbed you’d think of him first. But that doesn’t work as Marcy finds him rolled up in one of the tapestries, dead, behind her shop.

There are plenty of suspects, with new characters and old. I had such fun sniffing out the clues. There are a lot of red herrings before you begin to get an idea who the culprit is.

What charmed me the most was the little details. Like Marcy waiting to put on her bright red lipstick until after she kisses Ted hello, or remembering to let her dog, Angus, in and out periodically throughout the book. These small things make the story come to life. They ground you in real life events.

The author also is very good at sprinkling in the back story of characters and past events without bogging down your reading. She casually mentions things in just the right places so you aren’t left wondering. That’s why I say you can read this series in any order. But I’d recommend starting at the beginning so you meet each new character as they are introduced and experience them as they grow.

If you like a good cozy mystery, I highly recommend Thread End and the rest of this series. They’ll tickle your funny bone, sharpen your sleuthing skills, and warm your insides with the enchanting romance.

4 STARS

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Synopsis

Marcy can’t wait to see the new exhibit at the Tallulah Falls museum on antique tapestries and textiles, including beautiful kilim rugs. But her enthusiasm quickly turns to terror when, the day after the exhibition opens, she discovers a dead body behind her store, the Seven-Year Stitch, wrapped up in a most unusual fashion.

The victim appears to be a visiting art professor in town for the exhibit. Did someone decide to teach the professor a lesson, then attempt to sweep the evidence under the rug? Along with her boyfriend, Detective Ted Nash, Marcy must unravel an intricate tapestry of deception to find a desperate killer.

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A Book Excerpt

I’d stayed up too late the night before; but even sleep deprived, I was chipper as Angus and I pulled into our usual parking spot outside the Seven-Year Stitch. I had seen Vera and Paul only briefly at the museum exhibit, so I supposed Vera would be in sometime today. I hoped she would anyway. It would be fun to relive the evening with her…going over the pieces we’d liked best. I wondered if she’d made the collector any offers. I grinned. Knowing Vera, she probably had.

I hopped out of the Jeep and snapped Angus’s leash onto his collar. He jumped out and sniffed the sidewalk while I unlocked the front door. As soon as we got inside, I took the leash off. Angus bounded over to the sit-and-stitch square where he’d left his favorite toy—a Kodiak bear Vera had brought him back from a trip she’d taken a few months ago.

I relocked the door. I still had about half an hour until the shop opened, and I liked to have the shop tidy and restocked when customers started coming in. The first order of business every Saturday morning was to take the trash out. The sanitation truck ran at noon every Saturday, so all the shops on our side of the street scrambled to get their garbage out to the receptacles before then.

Fortunately for me, the Seven-Year Stitch didn’t generate a lot of trash…especially when compared to MacKenzies’ Mochas. That shop produced more garbage in a day than the Stitch did in a week. In fact, Blake had to take their garbage out twice a day—double bagged so the food scraps wouldn’t attract bears.

I was thinking about bears, Blake, Sadie, and how Sadie had talked me into coming to Tallulah Falls and opening my shop—for which I would be forever grateful—when I stepped out the back door with my bag of trash. I tossed the bag into the bin, turned, and then gasped as I saw something lying against the wall.

For the world, the…thing…looked like the kilim Reggie had admired so much last night at the exhibit. But it couldn’t be…. Could it?

I crept closer. It was the rug—I recognized the colors and the unmistakable patterns. But what was it doing here?

I took another step toward the rolled up kilim and saw that it was badly stained. Had someone bought it, got something all over it, and left it here for the sanitation crew to dispose of? Surely not.

Maybe Vera had bought it, gotten it stained, and then left it here at the back of my store to see if I could clean it. No, that didn’t make any sense to me either, but I was really grasping at straws.

I took one more step closer and nudged the rug with my foot. I wasn’t about to touch such a valuable kilim until I found out why it was lying outside my shop.

When I pushed it, the rug rolled slightly. Then I spotted something…a hand! And the hand was attached to a body…that was attached to a face…a face that looked vaguely familiar.

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Gayle

About The Author

Amanda Lee, also writing as Gayle Trent, is a full-time writer living with her family in Southwest Virginia. She writes the embroidery mystery series as Amanda Lee and writes the cake decorating series and the Myrtle Crumb series as Gayle Trent.

 

 

 

 

Author Links

http://www.gayletrent.com/, http://www.gayletrent.com/blog/, http://www.killercharacters.com/, http://fatalfoodies.blogspot.com/, https://twitter.com/GayleTrent, https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/426208.Gayle_Trent

AMAZON BOOK LINK: http://www.amazon.com/Thread-End-An-Embroidery-Mystery/dp/0451467396/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1395856444&sr=1-1

Purchase Links
Amazon B&N

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Other books I’ve read in this series.

I won Thread on Arrival by Amanda Lee from a giveaway on Lori’s blog escape with dollycas.

I fell in love with the soft, pastel colors on the cover art. I love a cover that is, well, cozy.

Click on the cover for my review.

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I have two giveaways today!

You can enter both!

The first one is for a print copy of Thread End (Open Internationally)

To enter, please leave your email address so I can contact you if you win and leave some comment love. Tell us somethin!!

Now for the second giveaway! It’s open Internationally!

$50 Amazon Gift Card

Click on the rafflecopter below to enter.

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Tour Participants

June 1 – Griperang’s Bookmarks – Review,
June 2 – Books-n-Kisses – Review, Interview, Giveaway
June 3 – fuonlyknew ~ Laura’s ramblins and reviews – Review, Giveaway
June 4 – Queen of All She Reads – Review, Guest Post,
June 5 – Brooke Blogs – Review
June 6 – Shelley’s Book Case – Review, Interview,
June 7 – Michelle’s Romantic Tangle – Review, Guest Post
June 8 – rantin’ ravin’ and reading – Review, Giveaway
June 9 – Back Porchervations – Review
June 10 – Melina’s Book Blog – Review, Guest Post,
June 11 – deal sharing aunt – Review, Interview, Giveaway
June 12 – Mochas, Mysteries and Meows – Guest Post, Giveaway
June 13 – Community Bookstop – Review
June 14 – Chloe Gets A Clue – Interview

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The Embroidery Series

The Quick and the Thread (An Embroidery Mystery, #1)  Stitch Me Deadly (An Embroidery Mystery, #2)  Thread Reckoning (An Embroidery Mystery, #3)  The Long Stitch Good Night (An Embroidery Mystery, #4)

Thread on Arrival (An Embroidery Mystery, #5)  15814877  18812364

Go here for more of Amanda Lee’s books.

And go here for Gayle Trent’s books.

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Thanks so much for visiting fuonlyknew and Good Luck!

To see all of my giveaways click on the lucky horseshoe below!

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