LET IT SEW (Elizabeth Lynn Casey)

If you have never visited fictional Sweet Briar, South Carolina, you need to give some serious thought to how you are spending your free time!  Casey's wonderful series is full of Southern charm and really endearing characters.  You will fall in love with Sweet Briar librarian Tori and her gang of Southern Sewing Circle ladies as soon as you meet them.

Let It Sew is the 7th in Laura Bradford's (writing as Elizabeth Lynn Casey) Southern Sewing Circle cozy mystery series.  Tori Sinclair, the local librarian, is a transplant from Chicago.  She is engaged to Milo, who teaches third grade, and two of her best friends are 60-something twins Leona and Margaret Louise, who are as different from each other in attitude and appearance as a cougar and a koala.  Also close to Tori are Rose, a sweet elderly woman, and Dixie, Tori's predecessor at the library who was forced into retirement.  With these friends and the other members of the sewing circle, Tori tackles investigations into various crimes that pop up in her quaint Southern town.

In Let It Sew, Margaret Louise is devastated to discover that she has been replaced as head of the town's Christmas Decorating Committee by Councilman Avery Jordan.  Jordan's choice as new head of the committee is a newcomer to town, his own live-in girlfriend, the insufferable Maime Wellington. The sewing circle members, in an effort to save Christmas in Sweet Briar, join the committee, but Maime, anxious to entrench herself in Jordan's heart and in the town of Sweet Briar, is determined to wreak havoc with the town's traditional Christmas activities.  In the midst of Maime's antics, Charlotte Devereaux, a talented artist and one of the sewing circle founders,  passes away.  Charlotte's husband, Parker, reportedly deserted Charlotte and their 2 sons for another woman 5 years before.  Or did he?  When Tori is shown one of Charlotte's drawings she recognizes a tree on the library grounds, a tree that is depicted in the picture as an apparent grave site!

I won't say much more or I'll end up spoiling the book for you.  It's cold outside right now, so it's a great time to spend some quality time relaxing with a cup of tea and a good book.  Try the Southern Sewing Circle mysteries.  I think you'll love them!