Showing results by narrator "Margaret Strom" in All Categories

With two yarn retreats in the bag, Casey Feldstein is looking forward to running her third one at Cadbury by the Sea's Vista Del Mar hotel on the Monterey Peninsula. This time, each knitter will get a Mystery Bag of knitting materials to turn into a personal project. But Casey gets tangled up in another retreat at the same hotel, when the organizer and his wife have a very public spat.

My name is Nora Black, and I'm 51 years young. At least that's what I tell myself, when I'm not having hot flashes; my knees don't hurt; and I can find my reading glasses. I'm also the proud owner of a salon called Scents & Scentsability in the small resort town of Garden Cove, where I make a cozy living selling handmade bath and beauty products. All in all, my life is pretty good. Except for one little glitch.

Merry's career as a New York City stylist has crumbled, but her passion for muffins has helped her rise upstate in Autumn Vale. Everyone in town loves the tasty treats. Still, she would like to return to her glamorous life. Besides, the upkeep of Wynter Castle is expensive, and Merry's cup isn't exactly overflowing. So in order to bring some prospective buyers into the mix, Merry whisks together a spooky soiree and decorates the castle with dashes of fabric and a sprinkling of spiderwebs.

The Tarzana Hookers are a motley crew of women, all of whom are not afraid to speak their minds. Except Sheila, a timid, anxiety-ridden crocheter in desperate need of money, who sells her beautiful scarves at a local consignment store. When the owner stiffs Sheila, the boisterous ladies rally to her support. Then the shop owner is found dead. Molly Pink ignores the warnings from her homicide-detective boyfriend and sets out with her stitchmates to clear Sheila's name.

Molly Pink and her crochet group, the Tarzana Hookers, are thrilled when one of their own gets a shot at the spotlight - but Molly soon learns that life in the entertainment biz can be deadly.... The crochet group's informal leader, actress CeeCee Collins, has a movie out, and she's scheduled to appear on a famous talk show. Molly and the girls are excited to tag along, but when one of the Hookers is ejected from the audience for her excited behavior, she manages to drag Molly along with her.

Guiding Rory through crocheting-for-beginners will have to wait, as Molly suddenly has to untangle the mysterious death of a new Tarzana Hookers member. Marianne Freeman and her live-in companion, Connie Richards, haven't exactly been gabby since they joined the Hookers, but Connie's voice is silenced permanently when she is electrocuted while walking on a wet lawn—electrified by an old radio plugged into a faulty extension cord.

Knitting and crocheting books are selling like crazy at the bookstore where Molly works, so to keep the customers coming, she sets up a series of classes where the Tarzana Hookers can pass on their skills to others: a Yarn University. The only problem is the teacher of the most popular seminar—Sheila—is getting a massive case of stage fright about being in front of a crowd.

Mr. Peter has lived across the street long before Kay moved into her house, and over the decades, the collection of old washing machines, lawn mowers, and refrigerators in his front and back yard has reached the point where it's nearly impossible to find the front door. The man is an eccentric recluse, but how can anyone dislike a kindly person who loves old pottery and dinnerware, and slips Taco, the cat, chicken sandwiches every chance he gets? Evidently someone disliked him - disliked him enough to kill him.

Rat Island rises from the icy gray waters of the Bering Sea, a mass of volcanic rock covered with tundra, midway between Alaska and Siberia. Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks of seabirds, the island gained a new name when shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the nesting birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of other remote islands around the world, a massive - and massively controversial - wildlife rescue mission is underway.

A new disease is emerging as the leading killer of North Americans. Scientists are predicting that within eight years, brain disease will kill or disable more people than cancer and heart disease combined. Given this shocking new research, we urgently need to know how to protect and improve our brain health. In Boost Your Brain Power in 60 Seconds, Dr. Michelle Schoffro Cook aims to turn this prediction around with her prescriptive - and proven - plan.

In the early 1960s, the head of a prominent New York City Child Development Center and a psychiatrist from Columbia University launched a study designed to track the development of twins and triplets given up for adoption and raised by different families. The controversial and disturbing catch? None of the adoptive parents had been told that they were raising a twin - the study's investigators insisted that the separation be kept secret.

There's nothing the Tarzana Hookers love more than doing a good deed. They're so preoccupied with crocheting and selling scarves, teddy bears, and blankets to raise money for the local park that they don't even notice the brown paper bag at the end of the table - until it's too late to find its owner. Unable to resist a good mystery, they open the bag and find a note that speaks of remorse, a diary entry of the sorrow of parting, and a complicated piece of filet crochet that offers an obscure clue in pictures.

Rose Donovan looks for the good in everyone. With her sister-in-law, Peg, that sometimes requires a lot of searching. Even a sixty-something former nun like Rose has her limits, and gruff Peg Turnbull sure knows how to push them. But after forty years of bickering, they're attempting to start over, partnering up to join the local bridge club. Peg and Rose barely have a chance to celebrate their first win before one of the club's most accomplished players is killed in his home. As the newest members, the sisters-in-law come under scrutiny and decide to start some digging of their own.

The yarn retreat group visiting scenic Vista Del Mar has already planned their own activities, so part-time dessert maker and retreat host Casey Feldstein is looking forward to a stress-free weekend. But the rustic locale is also playing host to a mindfulness retreat for Silicon Valley start-up entrepreneurs along with a flock of bird-watchers, and soon everyone at the resort is getting wound up. And when Casey discovers the dead body of one of the tech gurus on the rocky shore of the Pacific, she begins to suspect that what looks like an accident is actually a calculated murder.

Independent study programs aren't for the "best" students; they are populated by students at their best. Geraldine Woods offers a practical, step-by-step guide based on her experience designing and directing the much-admired independent study program at the Horace Mann School. Under the supervision of teachers, students embark on a remarkable variety of projects and become teachers themselves, conducting seminars with their peers along the way to preparing their final product—which could as easily be an interactive website or musical composition as a research paper.

Her crochet group, The Tarzana Hookers, is working overtime for the holidays - but Molly Pink is having trouble finding time to crochet so much as a snowflake. The bookstore where she works is adding a yarn department and planning a huge launch party where the mysterious author of a popular series will reveal his or her true identity. But before the author appears, another person disappears. The husband of Molly's neighbor is missing. When a suicide note arrives, it appears the husband has jumped off the Catalina Ferry - but Molly smells something fishy.

Eager to show some town spirit, Casey Feldstein finds herself fluttering back and forth between setting up a yarn retreat, baking, and helping out at the Cadbury by the Sea festival. But when a former butterfly queen is found dead with a knife in her back after a Bless the Butterflies service, Casey must set her loom aside to hook a killer with a score to settle.

Molly's been handed the reins for this year's creative retreat - an exhilarating weekend out on the Monterey Peninsula, complete with crochet classes. Unfortunately for one teacher, though, the breathtaking scenery is where she'll take her last breath. Now Molly will have to find a new instructor, and, if she can squeeze it in, solve this murder - with the help of her pals from the Tarzana Hookers.

Casey Feldstein has her hands full with preparations at the Vista Del Mar hotel on the scenic Monterey Peninsula as another yarn retreat begins. The retreaters will be thrown for a loop this time, learning the trendy art of arm knitting and finger crocheting. But not everyone is enthusiastic about trying something new, and Casey is forced to come up with an alternative craft for her less adventurous pupils. Things go from worst to worsted when a travel writer from a neighboring retreat group is found dead in his room among a sea of feathers.

The Tarzana Hookers' Yarn University has been a big success, and the classes have drawn in a slew of new crochet devotees. A less welcome arrival is the boxy monstrosity in the yard behind Molly's house. She hasn't met her new neighbors, but when she sees a couple struggling on the balcony and later spies what looks like someone lying on the ground, Molly wastes no time calling in her ex, homicide detective Barry Greenberg.