Quilters will especially enjoy Daheim's 17th cozy (after 2004's Alpine Pursuit
) to feature Emma Lord, publisher of the Alpine Advocate
, the weekly newspaper of rural Alpine, Wash. When Genevieve Bayard, who grew up in Alpine, returns for a visit after a long absence, Annie Jeanne Dupré, the gentle, heavy-handed organist at St. Mildred's, decides to hold a welcome-back party for Gen and the other members of their old quilting group. Gen's sudden death at the party (from eating poisoned cheesecake, an autopsy later reveals) upsets everyone, but Emma's House & Home
editor, Vida Runkel, who was absent at the time of the murder, is unusually disturbed and starts to behave strangely. Break-ins, a stranger in the local motel, burned quilt patterns, an anonymous letter, suspicious medications and another death compound the mystery. Daheim sympathetically portrays the small mountain town and its denizens, particularly Emma and her brother, Ben, a priest who's serving as St. Mildred's interim rector. Readers will also be enticed by the food and drink the characters often turn to for comfort. Agent, Maureen Moran. (Apr. 26)
