Cross-Stitch Before Dying: An Embroidery Mystery
Embroidery shop owner Marcy Singer is about to find out that show biz and sew biz don’t mix!
Marcy’s mom Beverly is the costume designer for a lavish, Bollywood-style production…and she suggests Tallulah Falls as a great place to shoot part of the film. Everyone at the embroidery shop, and around town, is in a flutter that a glamorous movie production is taking place in their midst. But when the star of the film is found murdered, the police suspect Marcy’s mom, who made it no secret she did not care for the diva’s attitude regarding her wardrobe.
Marcy might as well issue an open call for suspects, because the star had a long list of enemies. To save her mom’s career and keep her from accessorizing with handcuffs, Marcy and her friends will need to stitch together the clues to catch one crafty killer who may have designs on Marcy next…
Battered to Death
Daphne Martin’s life is pretty sweet right now—she has a loving boyfriend, a popular cake decorating company, and has recently entered into a cake competition in town. But when she attends a class with a famously ornery celebrity chef, all of that threatens to change. The chef is found beaten to death with a cake stand after his first lesson, and he has more enemies than anyone can count. So it’s a shock to Daphne when she immediately comes under police suspicion. And on top of that, her boyfriend tells her he’s considering a career move—to Kentucky. To a company run by an old girlfriend! And, there’s still the cake competition Daphne has to win.
Daphne will need to put her wits to the test again—with the help of her nosy friend Myra—in order to clear her name, win the competition, and salvage her romance.
When Good Bras Go Bad (Myrtle Crumb Series)
Myrtle Crumb, the sassy sixty-something sleuth from BETWEEN A CLUTCH AND A HARD PLACE, is back. This time she must go undercover in the middle school cafeteria to prove her granddaughter is not a thief. Still, Sunny knows more than she’s telling; and it’s starting to affect her relationship with her grandmother. Is Sunny’s new friend Alicia the theif? If so, how far will Sunny go to protect her? Sunny might be fixing to learn a powerful lesson: that betrayal “is like when a good bra goes bad. First it lets you down, and then that underwire pokes you right in the heart.”
Thread On Arrival
Embroidery shop owner Marcy Singer gets hung up on a tapestry that may lead to sunken treasure and be the motive for murder….
When Marcy’s friend Reggie, Tallulah Falls’ local librarian, asks her to teach an embroidery class as therapy for domestic abuse victims, she gladly agrees. One of the women wants to flee from her abusive husband but is afraid to leave her elderly father-in-law behind. And she thinks Marcy can help.
The elderly gentleman shows Marcy a tapestry his grandmother made, which he believes reveals the location of pirate treasure off the Oregon coast. He’ll move to a shelter, provided Marcy takes the tapestry to keep it safe. But when the police arrive to escort him out, they find the old man murdered and the house ransacked. Does someone want that treasured tapestry desperately enough to kill for it?
The Perfect Woman
Here is another of my out-of-print books available on Kindle for 99 cents!
Between A Clutch and A Hard Place
My out-of-print book, BETWEEN A CLUTCH AND A HARD PLACE, is now available on Kindle for only .99 cents!
The Long Stitch Good Night: An Embroidery Mystery
Although she’s taken an interest in Irish embroidery, Marcy Singer can’t help but abandon her needlecraft when handsome local brewer Todd finds himself accused of murder. Both Todd and his friend Blake’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and neither is talking about what happened. Marcy is determined to stitch together some luck from more than a few four-leaf clovers and prove that the culprit was someone else…
Thread Reckoning
Cupid’s arrow is making its way to Tallulah Falls, Oregon, bringing lots of business to Marcy Singer’s embroidery specialty shop. But the course of true love never has run smoothly….
St. Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, and residents are in a romantic frame of mind. In fact, one blushing bride has commissioned Marcy to embellish her mother’s vintage wedding gown with jewels for her Valentine’s Day wedding. Marcy is delighted–until she finds that the worst bridezillas have nothing on this bride to be. When the bride’s future mother-in-law is found stabbed to death outside Marcy’s shop, matters go from bad to worse….
Killer Sweet Tooth
They say sugar is bad for your teeth, but can it actually kill you? The Brea Ridge police seem to think so when they find cake decorator Daphne Martin wielding an oversized plastic toothbrush over a dentist’s dead body. Daphne moved back to her small Virginia hometown just months ago to open her Daphne’s
Delectable Cakes business and already she’s been mixed up in murder. Now she’s got to prove her sweet innocence again.
After hours of police questioning, Daphne returns home to find Elvis Presley in her driveway. She’s certain she’s hallucinating until the leather-clad hunk orders up a pink Cadillac cake for a convention of the Elvis impersonators. Daphne accepts, but her reporter-boyfriend Ben is suspicious of Elvis’s intentions. Does the King want to make Daphne his confectionery queen? Or is the convention a ruse for a more sinister operation? Daphne’s own investigation into Dr. Bainsworth’s murder, meanwhile, reveals the dentist made as many enemies as he did fillings. Just about anyone could have done him in, but it’s up to Daphne to find the killer—and finish Elvis’s cake—before she’s the one singing “Jailhouse Rock.”
Stitch Me Deadly
In the second book of the series, trouble strikes when an elderly woman brings an antique piece of embroidery to Marcy…and promptly dies of unnatural causes. Marcy is convinced the sampler holds a clue to an even older crime and that somebody may have killed to hide it. Now it’s up to Marcy and her pals–two-legged and four-legged–to unravel this mystery.
Murder Takes the Cake
This book is a rerelease of the book originally published by Bell Bridge and contains new scenes and an additional section titled “Daphne’s Kitchen.”
When the meanest gossip in Brea Ridge, Yodel Watson, dies mysteriously, suspicions turn to recently returned Virginia native and cake decorator Daphne Martin. But all she did was deliver a spice cake with cream cheese frosting–and discover Yodel’s dead body. Now, Daphne must get her hands dirty to help solve the murder and clear her good name before things get any worse. But the small town is brimming with people who had good reason to kill Yodel–and Daphne’s entire family is among them.
The Quick and The Thread
When Marcy Singer opens an embroidery specialty shop in quaint Tallulah Falls, Oregon, she throws a soiree and a Stitch-In. Soon, Marcy’s sign- up sheet for embroidery classes fills up and everyone in town seems willing to raise a glass-or a needle-to support the newly-opened Seven Year Stitch.
Then Marcy finds the shop’s previous tenant dead in the store-room, a message scratched with a tapestry needle on the wall beside him. Now Marcy’s shop has become a crime scene, and she’s the prime suspect. She’ll have to find the killer before someone puts a final stitch in her.
Dead Pan
For the second time in as many months, Daphne Martin finds herself telling a police officer, “I just delivered the cake.”
Several people became sick at Brea Ridge Pharmaceuticals’ annual holiday party for its employees, and one–Fred Duncan–died. Fred’s mother insists on Daphne’s help in learning why Fred died; and since none of the food has yet been exonorated, Daphne feels compelled to find out what made everyone so ill. She’s pretty sure it wasn’t her cake, but she can’t be certain until the police complete the lab results. Was this an accident? Or did someone set out to kill Fred?
Book Two – The Daphne Martin Cake Decorating Mysteries
Gayle Trent
November 2009 * Trade Paperback * 235 Pages * $14.95 * ISBN: 978-0-9841258-4-5
Cozy Food Mystery
Want to learn more about the cake decorating character, Daphne? Take a look at Gayle’s blog posts…