Do you knit or crochet? If you do, What are on your needles now? Have you always wanted to learn?
Late summer blooms in beautiful Sea Harbor, Massachusetts, and while a harvest thrives, Izzy Chambers Perry and the other Seaside Knitters will need to cast on their sleuthing skills to save a local farm. Unfortunately, finding a killer can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. . . .
Seaside Knitter Birdie Favazza has long loved knitting, but lately she’s taken on a new challenge—making a family farm operational again. With help from friends, Lambswool Farm is now up and running, with thriving crops and grazing sheep. In addition, the farm will host rustic, six-course prix fixe dinners plated by local chefs and served on a gorgeous restored harvest table, decorated to perfection with colorful knitted vegetables crafted by Izzy Chambers Perry, her aunt Nell, and the other Seaside Knitters.
But on the night of the first meal, everything spins out of control when one of the guests, Seaside Harbor’s family physician, becomes fatally ill. It seems that behind Dr. Alan Hamilton’s friendly bedside manner was a man with enemies and secrets.
Soon the town is gossiping and pointing fingers at all possible suspects—including the women at Lambswool Farm. Now the Seaside Knitters must join together to uncover the truth in Dr. Hamilton’s complicated past—and restore peace to town and country alike.
About Sally:
Life.....It's been a meandering, interesting journey that began in Manitowoc, WI, a town on the shores of Lake Michigan. There my father built ships, my mother stayed home, and my sisters, brother and I lived an easy small-town life. After high school, I moved to St. Louis (college); then Bloomington, IN (graduate school); and several other places along the way. Jobs included working in public television—with Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood just down the hall; teaching Latin, creative writing, and philosophy; and very early along that journey, living in St. Louis as a Catholic nun. A checkered past, of sorts.
After marrying a nice Jewish man whom I met in graduate school (my mother always said she had named me Sarah for a reason), a job brought us to a small town (Prairie Village), attached to a big city (Kansas City) and the home we still live in.
And it was here that my writing life took root.
The seeds to writing a novel—-or rather 'finishing' a novel—were planted in a sandbox in a park, not far from our Prairie Village home. It was there I met another newcomer to the area, Adrienne Staff, a woman who would become a life-long friend. While our children played together in the sand that day, I learned that not only was Adrienne as hungry for friendship as I was, but both of us loved to read and write and had drawers filled with unfinished novels. In no time at all we decided that perhaps the key to finishing a novel (at least, in our case) was to write a book together. A match made in heaven--a nice Jewish girl from New York and an ex-nun--certainly a pair with diverse experiences to spare! We'd hold one another to the task and we would complete a book and rid ourselves of the awful unfinished novel curse.
And so we did. Soon after finishing our first book, we found our wonderful agent, Andrea, and went on to publish a dozen or more novels together.
Years later friendship again played a huge role in my publishing life—this time in the person of Nancy Pickard, who invited me to help her with a mystery she was working on. Nancy turned a blind eye to the fact that I had never written a mystery—and together we sat and drank coffee and talked and wrote and rewrote, examined red herrings and twists and turns, and talked some more. And we finished the mystery.
After that, I was hooked! Now not only did I love to read mysteries, I loved to write them, too. How fortunate I was to have learned from a pro—and then to have lucked into my first mystery series, The Queen Bees Quilters mysteries.
A couple of years and three mysteries later, my life took another marvelous turn: my first grandchild! And along with baby Luke was born a new mystery series, The Seaside Knitters mysteries. (Grandchildren....knitting....it was meant to be.) Luke's parents live in a charming seaside town on Cape Ann, just north of Boston. A perfect place for a mystery series. And a perfect place for the series' author to visit OFTEN—to research plots, check out life on the dock, eat lobster—and to watch Luke, his now five-year-old sister Ruby, and his brand new brother Dax grow and thrive.
And more grandchildren followed right here in Kansas City. All together there are now six amazing little people who fill our lives and hearts and keep me writing mysteries.
It's a good life.
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