A Holiday Yarn: A Seaside Knitters Mystery

Death puts a damper on the Christmas festivities in Goldenbaum's engrossing fourth cozy featuring Izzy Chambers and the other members of her Sea Harbor, Mass., knitting circle (after April 2010's Moon Spinners). When "controversial fashion editor" Pamela Pisano turns up dead with a pistol in her hand on the snow-covered back porch of the Pisano family estate, Ravenswood-by-the-Sea, it appears a clear case of suicide. Particularly distraught is Mary Pisano, Pamela's cousin, who recently inherited Ravenswood and is in the process of converting the house into a bed-and-breakfast. When a painter Mary hired falls to his death off a ladder onto some granite rocks, this accident is more than a little suspicious. Of course, a killer is at work, and the knitters must tap old memories and old police records before they can bring the mystery to its unexpected conclusion. (Nov.)