Death Among the Stitches

December 1, 2024
When Annie Sara Hart inherits a property in Franklin, Indiana, she decides to visit the place to satisfy her curiosity, then sell it and get back to her busy Los Angeles life. When she arrives in Franklin, it's dark, and she sees the property is an old schoolhouse that's badly neglected and without water or electricity. At this hour, Annie can only camp out and hope things will look better in the morning--and they do. Franklin is quaint and charming, and the townsfolk seems genuinely friendly and helpful. Then Annie learns that the previous owner of the schoolhouse was murdered, and the murderer was never found. While that puts a damper on things, devoted knitter Annie sees that the place has great possibilities as a yarn shop, tea room, and market for locally made crafts. Now all she has to do is refurbish it, sell it for a solid profit, and head back home. Readers will know long before Annie does what's going to happen, but that doesn't detract from the charm, warmth, sweetness, and--despite the murder and its aftermath--feel-goodness of this delightful cozy.

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Starred review from January 15, 2025
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.

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