Always With a Book

First line: As the clock ticked down on her senior year in high school, Laurel McBane learned on indisputable fact. From the inside cover: Laurel McBane has always relied on her hands for support, especially when her dream of attending culinary school was almost ruined by her parents’ financial problems. Now Laurel is repaying the kindness of her friends by creating extravagantly luscious tiers of cakes and other confectionary delights…

First line: Ask Birdie how she got here and she’ll pretend she doesn’t remember. From the back cover: Birdie Baker has always dreamed of becoming someone else. At twenty-two, she leaves behind her small-town, small-time life – walking out on her pastor husband and deeply evangelical parents – and boards a bus to Los Angeles. Seven years later. Birdie’s life in Hollywood is far from golden. Stalled at the margins…

First line: Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down  into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time…

First line: The first police car went by at 9:23 according to the clock on the microwave. From the back cover: A Recipe for Murder! 5 families living on Peregrine Circle 1 flowered curtain tieback 1 missing child 1 body in the field Mix with a long list of suspects and top with two very different detectives. Increase heat until only the truth remains. Award-winning author Josi S. Kilpack introduces…

First line: First: I got fired. From the back cover: Sarah Harper isn’t sure if the stupid decisions she sometimes makes are good choices in disguise – or if they’re really just stupid. But either way, after forwarding an inappropriate email to her entire company, she suddenly finds herself out of a job. So she goes home to Houston – and her sister, Mackie – for Thanksgiving. But before Sarah…

First line: The day I decided to change my life, I was wearing sweatpants and an old oxford of Peter’s with a coffee stain down the front. From the inside cover: Lanie Coates’s life is spinning out of control. She’s piled everything she owns into a U-Haul and driven with her husband, Peter, and their three little boys from their cozy Texas home to a multiflight walkup in the Northeast.…

First line: Making up a boyfriend is nothing new for me. From the back cover: When Grace Emerson’s ex-fiance starts dating her younger sister, extreme measures are called for. To keep everyone from obsessing about her love life, Grace announces that she’s seeing someone. Someone wonderful. Someone handsome. Someone completely made up. Who is this Mr. Right? Someone…exactly unlike her renegade neighbor Callahan O’Shea. Well, someone with his looks, maybe.…

First line: The woman was fruitful. From the inside cover: When a Georgia senator’s daughter is found murdered, and her body drained of blood, Eve enters the world of a serial murderer – a twisted psychopath whose name is on Eve’s shortlist of killers who might know something about her missing daughter, Bonnie. But when Eve receives a terrifying calling card in the form of a single goblet of blood,…

First line: Wednesday morning, a not-so-perfect June day, I turned over the Open sign at my yarn store on Blossom Street. From the inside cover: Knitting and life. They’re both about beginnings – and endings. That’s why it makes sense for Lydia Goetz, owner of A Good Yarn on Seattle’s Blossom Street, to offer a class called Knit of Quit. It’s for people who want to quit something – or…

First line: “Anya is all right now,” said my daughter’s advisor, “but you need to come pick her up please.” From the back cover: Old money and tradition are the hallmarks of the St. Louis prep school that Kiki Lowenstein’s daughter Anya attends. But the elite academy is stamped with scandal when Anya finds the dead body of teacher Sissy Gilchrist in its elegant theatre. Even worse, Anya might have…

First line: “All we’re missing is a corpse.” From the back cover: All it took was one scone. When the hot-tempered (and widely hated) hobbyist Yvonne Gaynor eats a tainted pastry at Kiki’s scrapbooking crop party, it triggers an allergy that leads to Yvonne’s death. Even worse, the police suspect foul play when they realize that someone tampered with the treats and swiped the victim’s allergy medication. An expect at…

First line: Two days before Thanksgiving, a man doesn’t think about dying. From the back cover: Mousy housewife Kiki Lowenstein has two great loves: scrapbooking and her young daughter, Anya. But her happy family album is ruined when her husband, George, is found naked and dead in a hotel room. As Kiki tracks down George’s murderer, she discovers his sordid secret life. Cruel taunts by George’s former flame compel Kiki…