A Nimble Needle Mystery Series

It’s been a hectic holiday season in small town Glen Lake, North Carolina, and after managing her mom’s busy needlepoint shop, Nina’s Nimble Needle, Shelby Phillips is looking forward to a relaxing January–but a killer has different plans…

All of Gwen Lake is ready for a month of restoration–including the actual lake. Every January, the lake level is lowered for dock repairs and other maintenance. This year, however, an unwelcome surprise surfaces: a woman’s body…bound with what appears to be needlepoint thread, likely from the Needle’s “Holiday Magic” supply… 

To add to the shock, the victim is wearing one of the local yacht club’s famous doubloon replicas around her neck, meaning she’s a Gwen Laker. Still, who is she? Helen Thompson, creator of the doubloons, retired history teacher, and talented Needle regular, would know best, but unfortunately, she’s on a treasure hunting cruise. 

Shelby is looped into the case when a quirky bit of information enables her to help identify the woman…as Helen herself. Why would anyone hurt sweet, widowed Helen? It’s a knot Shelby and the shop’s stitching group, “Not Your Average Grannies,” aka the NYAGs, intend to untangle. 

The pattern gets more intricate when Shelby helps Helen’s grumpy stepson and his vexing daughter clear out her craft-filled home–and unravels a trove of secrets. To crack the case, Shelby will have to keep her discoveries to herself. And when two nosy true-crime podcasters show up, she’ll need to throw them off the trail, with help from the NYAgs, and the one man she may want a future with—unless a killer snips it short.

When 30-something graphic artist Shelby Phillips reluctantly returned to her small hometown outside Asheville, North Carolina to manage her mother’s needlepoint shop, she thought it was temporary. But getting entangled in murder investigations has a timeline of its own…

It’s been a little over a year since Shelby started managing Nina’s Nimble Needle following her office-romance and career implosion, and Shelby’s mom has finally handed her the reins—technically, at least. Next, Shelby is excited to oversee two well-known needlepoint designers who will be participating in the town’s first two-week-long arts festival . . .

Laura Bitters and Paul Bardo have each stitched up one-of-a-kind pillows that should be big wins for the Nimble Needle at the festival’s auction . . . until the pillows vanish amid a sudden string of shoplifting incidents.

To add to the knot in Shelby’s stomach, Laura proves highly anxious, while Paul is an egomaniac who believes Laura has been stealing his customers for years. But things go from bad to tragic when Laura behaves oddly at the auction dinner, then collapses—dead.

Soon after, Shelby makes a shocking discovery in Laura’s room at the local inn. Then tests reveal that Laura was poisoned. Resolved to piece together the truth, despite the police chief’s determination to keep her on the fringes, Shelby rallies her personal team, including her sister, Jessica, her friend Deb, and Jake, her potentially more than a friend. As an extra twist, a magazine reporter arrives with unsettling—yet useful—dirt that includes Laura and Paul.  

What unravels is a skein of suspects, long-held resentment, bitter jealousy, and betrayal, from which Shelby will have to pull the one crucial thread tied to the killer: a murder-worthy motive . . .

When thirty-something Shelby Phillips returns to her quiet hometown just outside of Asheville, North Carolina, she reluctantly takes over her mother’s Nimble Needle needlepoint shop—and gets entangled in a murder investigation…

It’s only temporary. That’s what Shelby tells herself when she returns to excruciatingly harmless Gwen Lake after her promising graphic arts career implodes. Her plan is as simple and fool-proof as a tent stitch: manage the family needlepoint shop during her parents’ month-long RV vacation. It’s not as if they’re retiring . . . right?

When Shelby becomes responsible for hosting a trunk show with local vendors, she’s determined to pull it off. Even if that means dealing with former classmate Kat Katsaros, a rising entrepreneur specializing in needlework scissors. Kat has changed since high school—and she’s angling to take over the Nimble Needle herself. The tension unspools when Shelby makes a terrible discovery on the morning of the event: Kat’s dead body.

Shelby can’t believe the death was an accident, and she’s set on exposing the killer. She finds help in a new friend, a potential crush, and the surprising support of her sister and the Nimble Needle stitchers. Still, Shelby must move quickly to stop the crafty culprit before her maybe not-so-temporary new life in Gwen Lake comes apart at the seams . . .