The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of
drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries,
published by Penguin/NAL. Molly’s short stories have appeared in
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine since 1990.
After twenty years in northeast Tennessee, Molly lives with her family in
Champaign, Illinois.
Yarn shop owner
Kath Rutledge is at a historic farm in Blue Plum, Tennessee, volunteering for
the high school program Hands on History. But when a long-buried murder is
uncovered on the property, Kath needs help from Geneva the ghost to solve a
crime that time forgot . . .
Kath and her
needlework group TGIF (Thank Goodness It’s Fiber) are preparing to teach a
workshop at the Holston Homeplace Living History Farm, but their lesson in
crazy quilts is no match for the crazy antics of the assistant director,
Phillip Bell. Hamming it up with equal parts history and histrionics, Phillip
leads an archaeological dig of the farm’s original dump site—until one student
stops the show by uncovering some human bones.
When a full
skeleton is later excavated, Kath can’t help but wonder if it’s somehow
connected to Geneva, the ghost who haunts her shop, and whom she met at this
very site. After Phillip is found dead, it’s up to Kath to thread the clues
together before someone else becomes history.
Blurb for series:
The Haunted Yarn
Shop Mysteries follow the adventures of Kath Rutledge, a textile preservation
specialist, who inherits her grandmother’s fiber and fabric shop in Blue Plum,
Tennessee, finds herself investigating murder with a group of avid needlework
artists called TGIF (Thank Goodness It’s Fiber), and ends up with a depressed
ghost on her hands. Kath inherits a couple of other things she never expected –
her grandmothers secret dye journals and an odd ability to “feel” a person’s emotions
by touching a piece of clothing.
Excerpt from
Plagued by Quilt:
Chapter 1
“But where
will we find the real story? Where
will we find the dirt? Where . . .”
The end of Phillip Bell’s question disappeared as he paced the stage in the
small auditorium at the Holston Homeplace Living History Farm, hands behind his
back. The two dozen high school students in his audience tracked his movements
like metronomes. I watched from the door, where I could see their faces.
Phillip, who
couldn’t have been ten years older than the youngest student, screwed his face
into a puzzle of concentration as he continued pacing. He brought one hand from
behind his back to stroke the neat line of beard along his chin. If he hadn’t
been dressed in a mid-nineteenth-century farmer’s heavy brogues, brown cotton
trousers, linen blouse, and wide-brimmed felt hat, he would have looked like a
freshly minted junior professor. The students’ reactions to him were as
entertaining as Phillip himself.
Without
warning, Phillip jerked to a stop, swiveled to face the students and flung his
arms wide. “Where?” he asked. “Where
are the bodies buried?”
Startled,
the teens in the front row jumped back in their seats. The boy nearest me
recovered first. He slouched back down on his spine, stretching his long legs
out so his feet rested against the edge of the stage. He smirked at his
neighbor, then turned the smirk to Phillip.
“In the
cemet—” the boy started to say.
Phillip
flicked the answer away. “No, no, no. Not the cemetery. Boring places.
Completely predictable.”
“Unlike
Phillip Bell,” a woman’s voice said behind my left ear. “Full of himself, isn’t
he? What a showman.”
I glanced
over my shoulder to smile at Nadine Solberg. She’d crossed the carpeted hall
from her office without my noticing. She didn’t return my smile. She was
watching Phillip as raptly as the students and gave no indication that she
expected an answer to her comment. I turned back to watch, too.
“No,”
Phillip said to the students, “there’s someplace better than cemeteries. That’s
beside the fact that no living Holston—or anyone else—is going to let us dig up
his sainted Uncle Bob Holston or Aunt Millie Holston from the family cemetery.
And you can bet that is chiseled in
stone. Not chiseled on a gravestone, though.” The students laughed until they
realized Phillip wasn’t laughing, too. When their laughs died, he turned and
stared at the boy who’d brought up cemeteries. “You aren’t a Holston, are you?”
The boy
started to open his mouth, then opted for a head shake. Under Phillip’s
continued stare, the long legs retracted and the boy dropped his gaze to the
open notebook in his lap.
Phillip
looked around the room. “Are any of you Holstons? Last name? Unfortunate first
name? Anyone with a suspicious H for
a middle initial?”
Students
shook their heads, looked at each other.
“Just as
well,” Phillip said. “The Holston clan might not like what I’m about to tell
you. Have you got your pencils ready? Take this down. Two words. Two beautiful
words describing some of the most interesting places on earth. Some of my
favorite places. Much less predictable than cemeteries.” He turned a pitying
look on the formerly smirking boy. “And that makes them so much better than cemeteries. Where are we
going to find the real stories? Two
words. Garbage dump. Yes sir, I love a good old garbage dump. ‘Old’ being the
operative word.”
“Will your
ladies and a crazy quilt be able to compete with Phillip and his garbage dump?”
Nadine asked in my ear.
“I think we
can hold our own, although ‘crazy’ might be the operative word in our case. Is
Phillip always ‘on’ like this?” We watched as he described the contents of a
nineteenth-century household dump in loving detail.
