Just finished reading...

Dire Threads by Janet Bolin.*

First there was Booktown (in the appealing series by Lorna Barrett). Now, another themed town that I'd love to visit: Threadville.

Protagonist Willow Vanderling has left a stressful job in Manhattan to open an embroidery store called In Stitches in the small Pennsylvania village of Elderberry Bay on Lake Erie. Lured there by her best friend Haylee, who had left the big city grind sometime earlier to open a fabric shop called The Stash. Other stores in the fiber-themed town included Tell a Yarn, owned by Haylee's mother Opal; Buttons and Bows and Batty About Quilts belonging to Opal's best friends Edna and Naomi respectively.

What Willow hadn't realized, however was that the municipal government consisted of people who'd all grown up in Elderberry Bay and knew each other very well. Thus, when Mike Krawbach, the zoning commissioner, threatens to tear down a charming old cottage on Willow's property and she hotly retorts that she'd kill him if he tried, that response is remembered by the town's antiquated police officer "Uncle" Allen when she finds Mike lying unconscious in her back yard.

Convinced that Willow is responsible for Mike's eventually fatal injury, Uncle Allen does little to investigate, even when Willow provides contradictory evidence. This incites Opal, Edna and Naomi to prove Willow's innocence.

This sounds a bit predictable, and it is, but the charm of the women that Haylee calls her "three mothers" and the quirky way they conduct their own investigation make the thought of more books in the series very attractive.

*FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the publisher, who sent me a copy of the book for review purposes.