Death Among the Stitches

by Betty Hechtman

Overview

Meet Annie Hart: newly inherited yarn and tea shop owner and reluctant amateur sleuth.

Annie Hart, daughter of Bryan Hart – talent agent to the stars – spends her life getting roped into whatever new task her father needs her to do for his VIP clients. So when she inherits a yarn shop in the small Indiana town of Franklin, she is curious to see what it feels like to have something that is solely hers!

But when her arrival is greeted by the local law enforcement, Annie senses things are not quite as they seem in this idyllic town . . . everyone knows everybody in Franklin yet when it comes to the death of the shop's previous owner, nobody seems sure of anything!

Annie soon discovers that Eleanor Danton was in fact murdered, strangled with her own yarn . . . invigorated by her need to find out the truth, and feeling somehow at home with the friendly bunch of local yarn artists who frequent the shop, she sets out to finding the killer. Much can be achieved over a cuppa and a yarn . . .

Readers who love super cosy culinary mysteries will eat up this new charming cosy mystery series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781448312931
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	01/07/2025
Series:	A Crochet and Crumpets mystery
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	57,062
Product dimensions:	5.79(w) x 8.74(h) x (d)

About the Author

Despite completing a Fine Arts degree, all Betty Hechtman ever wanted to be was a writer. She wrote a weekly column in her college newspaper and later wrote magazine and newspaper pieces, along with short stories and a prize-wining screenplay. Betty had her first novel published in 2006. Since then she has had 20 books published across two cozy mystery series centered on another one of her loves - yarn craft. She lives with her family in Southern California.

Editorial Reviews

★ 2024-12-14
In a neat reversal on tales of fame and fortune in the big city, a pair of L.A. 20-somethings find adventure in rural Indiana.

Every perk Annie Sara Hart enjoys as the daughter of talent agent Bryan Hart comes with a hefty price tag. At 10, she was assigned the task of being best friends with Gray Hanover, the daughter of Bryan’s rich and famous client Camille Constantine, giving her access to a world of wealth and privilege but denying her the opportunity to make her own friends. Now in her late 20s, Annie Sara is still tethered to Gray, working at her Camille-funded boutique. When she inherits a derelict knitting shop in the Midwest from her uncle, she rejects Gray’s whiny claim that she can’t run Malibu Kids without her and demands two weeks off to check out the one thing in life that belongs to her alone. Her plan: assess her holdings, make renovations to render the shop marketable, sell up, come home. But Franklin, Indiana, is a revelation to her—a combination of welcoming and mysterious, with unexpected kindnesses and unexpected blind spots. (The murder of the shop’s previous owner, for example, is all but swept under the rug.) Instead of going home, Annie Sara has Gray shipped out to Indiana, along with a freezer full of restricted-calorie meals and instructions from Bryan and Camille to make sure Gray returns still able to fit into the minuscule jeans required for an upcoming photo shoot. But the young women have their own ideas, and seeing them take root and flourish is groundbreaking. Hechtman joyfully turns many timeworn cozy tropes on their heads. (Instead of an elderly maiden aunt, for example, Annie Sara inherits her windfall from a travel writer uncle who died on an expedition to Peru.) But most of all, she creates characters who are rich, complicated, and altogether human.

If the Booker Prize had a category for cozies, this would be a contender.

Kirkus Reviews