Knot Ready for Murder (A Quilting Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
9th in Series
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Kensington (July 27, 2021)
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages

Synopsis

The ninth installment in the hit Quilting Mystery series by Mary Marks finds sleuth Martha searching for her fiancé’s ex-wife.

One loose thread threatens to unravel Martha’s wedding plans: the groom-to-be married a pregnant teen to save her from scandal thirty years ago—and the marriage was never annulled. Now Crusher’s wife Hadas is coming to LA, along with his sister Fanya. But soon after she arrives, their houseguest goes missing, with her room ransacked and a chloroform-soaked cloth left behind. Could her apparent abduction be connected to her brother’s unsolved death from a hit-and-run six months ago? Martha and her quilting cohorts must find the pattern to solve the twin mysteries and determine if Crusher is still married—or now a widower . . .

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Excerpt

Crusher remained unusually quiet. I should’ve listened to my gut and said something to him first. For the rest of the evening, I sat on shpilkes, waiting for everyone to go home.

Quincy and Noah were the first to leave, bundling their sleeping baby girl in the sweet pink-and-white quilt I’d sewn for her. Uncle Isaac and his helper Hilda prepared to leave with Giselle and her fiancé, Harold. My eighty something uncle patted my shoulder with a hand wobbly from Parkinson’s disease and whispered, “You’ve given me such nachas tonight, faigela.”

I loved it when he called me little bird in Yiddish.

“I’m glad I lived long enough to see you settle down with a real mensch.”

Apparently, my anxiety didn’t pass unnoticed. My sister waited for everyone else to walk out the door, grabbed my arm, and took me aside. “Something’s not right. You’ve been twitchy all evening.”

I lowered my voice. “Not now, G. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I closed the door behind my sister and paused for a breath. Water splashed in the kitchen sink, an indication Crusher was washing the dinner dishes, according to our well-established division of labor. If one cooked, the other cleaned.

With my heartbeat pulsing in my throat, I headed toward the kitchen, compelled by both curiosity and dread.

“I should’ve warned you first, Yossi. I’m sorry for blurting it out like that.”

Without looking up, he scraped table scraps off the plates and stacked them on the counter. The white Sabbath china was a family heirloom we carefully washed by hand to preserve the delicate cobalt blue and gold bands on the rim. “I couldn’t be happier, babe. But I wish you’d spoken to me first. There’s something I need to tell you.”

I moved over to the sink, stood next to him, and gently touched his arm. “What is it, Yossi? You know you can tell me anything. I won’t judge you.”

He turned off the stream of water and turned to face me. I’d never seen him that tortured. “We have to hold off on the wedding for a while.”

“Why? Have you changed your mind about wanting to be married?” A seed of anger took root in my brain, and I took one step backward in order to peer at his face. “Because if you have . . .”

“I haven’t changed my mind. It’s just that I’ve got to do a couple of things before we can make it legal.”

“Like what?”

“Like get divorced.”

I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly. “You’re married?”

About the Author

Born and raised in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, Mary Marks earned a B.A. in Anthropology from UCLA and an M.A. in Public Administration from the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. In 2004 she enrolled in the UCLA Extension Writers Program. Her first novel, Forget Me Knot, was a finalist in a national writing competition in 2011. She is currently a reviewer of cozy mysteries for The New York Journal of Books.

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