SHEAR TERROR

What do you do if a woman is found stabbed to death by shears engraved with your name?

If you’re Abbey Chandler, you realize that you have to launch your own investigation yet again. Abbey left Los Angeles to live with her aunt Sarah in small-town Hideaway Grove, where Sarah’s bakery is a Main Street favorite. Abbey’s business of specialized tote bags has not taken off, so she works part time at the local visitor center. When she arrives early for work one morning, Abbey spills tomato juice on herself; Paige Easton, who arrives a few minutes later, screams when she sees Abbey, thinking she’s bleeding. Eleanor Franklin, the center’s most reliable staffer, is unusually late for work—and then Abbey finds her dead body in a bin of lost-and-found clothing. It’s hard for the sheriff, who’s not fond of Abbey, to believe she’s innocent when her engraved sewing shears are buried in Eleanor’s chest, and even Deputy Zack McKenna, her sorta boyfriend, is worried. Harriet Griffith, Abbey’s boss, is eager to keep the murder as quiet as possible so as not to ruin Hideaway Grove’s reputation as a friendly tourist town. Eleanor seems to have been well liked around town, known for helping people out, but once Abbey starts digging she finds that Eleanor actually had quite a few enemies. On top of the murder, Abbey finds that there have been high-end lost-and-found items going missing from the center. Before she loses her job and is arrested for murder, Abbey pulls out all the stops to discover the real killer.

All the cozy requirements of romance, plenty of suspects, and a warm small-town vibe.