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
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
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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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
Go here for more of Amanda Lee’s books.
And go here for Gayle Trent’s books.
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