Amish quilt series continues
with ‘Murder, Simply Stitched’
Though her India Hayes mystery series seems to have been suspended after two installments, Tallmadge author Amanda Flower is rolling right along with her two Amish mystery series: There are, so far, three Knox County-set Appleseed Creek novels, and the Amish Quilt Shop Mysteries, written under Flower’s pen name, Isabella Alan, now have a second installment: Murder, Simply Stitched.
In the first book, Murder, Plain and Simple, Angela Braddock, who inherited her Amish aunt’s Holmes County quilt shop, moved from Dallas after a broken engagement, determined to start her life over. She encountered hostility from the shop’s neighbor, a woodworker who believed he was the rightful owner to her property and who was found dead in her storeroom.
In Stitched, Angie, having established both her property rights and a little crush on the handsome sheriff, is at the local auction where some of her aunt’s valuable quilts are being sold. Wanda, a dictatorial township trustee, arrives at the baked-goods booth run by Angie’s friend Rachel to declare that the commercial bakery planned by Rachel’s husband will not be approved. An appeasing Rachel offers Wanda a fried pie; minutes later, Wanda is found dead, the apparent victim of an allergic reaction.
Angela goes into detective mode, spending more time sleuthing than stitching, but never forgetting that Sheriff Mitchell is pretty darn cute. Studying the incomprehensible township ordinances of Rolling Brook may be more dangerous than tracking a killer.
Murder, Simply Stitched (368 pages, softcover) costs $7.99 from Obsidian, a division of Penguin. The series started in August 2013 with an e-novella, and the third full-length entry in the series, Murder Most Scrumptious, will be released in December, to coincide with Angie’s parents bringing her ex-fiance to Ohio just in time to make a shambles of Christmas.
Woman describes Jewish childhood
The community of Trochenbrod, Poland, doesn’t exist anymore, and its empty fields aren’t even in Poland; they now are in Ukraine. Betty Gold, now 83, was a 12-year-old resident of Trochenbrod when she and a small group escaped the fate of 4,500 others by hiding behind a false wall in a storage shed. All but 33 of the Jewish townspeople were machine-gunned a mile away by a Nazi death squad.
In Beyond Trochenbrod: The Betty Gold Story, Gold, who now lives in Beachwood, works with Cleveland teacher Mark Hodermarsky to describe her happy childhood and explain how she, her parents and brother, and a dozen others came to escape the massacre to the nearby forest, where they lived for more than a year, sometimes starving in a dugout bunker; sometimes freezing in an open marsh. They were rescued, to a degree, by Russian partisans who put them to hard labor.
How Gold came through this terror and hardship to a new life sponsored by relatives in Cleveland is a powerful story that she tells area students in her work as a docent at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood.
Beyond Trochenbrod (124 pages, softcover) costs $19.95 from Kent State University Press.
Events
Cuyahoga County Public Library (Middleburg Heights branch, 15600 E. Bagley Road) — Maury Feren, the remarkable 98-year-old Produce King of Cleveland, talks about his career as a greengrocer and his books My Life So Far and Wheeling and Dealing in My World, 7-8:30 p.m. Monday. Registration required; call 440-234-3600.
Cuyahoga County Public Library (Beachwood branch, 25501 Shaker Blvd.) — New York doctor Barron Lerner, author of The Good Doctor: A Father, A Son and the Evolution of Medical Ethics, reads from and signs his book, 7-8 p.m. Wednesday.
Visible Voice (1023 Kenilworth Ave., Cleveland) — Comedian Scotch Wichmann reads from his book Two Performance Artists Kidnap Their Boss and Do Things With Him, billed as “the first performance art novel by a performance artist,” 7-9 p.m. Wednesday; Sandy Rozelman, author of You’re Gonna Laugh and Who Said Jews Aren’t Funny?, reads from her work, 6-8 p.m. Saturday.
Discount Drug Mart (6148 Dunham Road, Maple Heights) — Charles Ramsey recalls his part in the rescue of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, and signs his book (with Randy Nyerges) Dead Giveaway, 4-5 p.m. Thursday.
Akron-Summit County Public Library (Nordonia Hills branch, 9458 Olde Eight Road, Northfield) — Gail Ghetia Bellamy signs Cleveland Summertime Memories: A Warm Look Back, 7-8 p.m. Thursday.
Wayne County Public Library (220 W. Liberty St., Wooster) – Brimfield Police Chief David Oliver talks about social media and signs his book No Mopes Allowed, 7-8:30 p.m. Thursday.
Liquid (1212 W. Sixth St., Cleveland) – Charles Ramsey signs Dead Giveaway at the over-21 club, 7-10 p.m. Friday.
Akron-Summit County Public Library (Richfield branch, 3761 S. Grant St.) — Richfield author Florence Heckel Russell, author of Heading South: Tales From the RV Trail, signs her books from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, during the library’s book sale.
Cuyahoga County Public Library (Parma branch, 6996 Powers Blvd.) — Romance author Victoria Roberts (Temptation in a Kilt, My Highland Spy), addresses the Northeast Ohio chapter of the Romance Writers of America on Making Your Setting Believable, 11-2:30 p.m. Saturday. Guests welcome, but please RSVP with the chapter president at cathrynzak@gmail.com.
Discount Drug Mart (4170 Fulton Road, Cleveland) — Charles Ramsey signs Dead Giveaway, noon to 1 p.m. Saturday.
Learned Owl Book Shop (204 N. Main St., Hudson) — Ravenna author Fred Tribuzzo talks about and signs American Sky, his eloquent memoir of life as a private pilot, 1-3 p.m. Saturday.
— Barbara McIntyre
Special to the Beacon Journal
Send information about books of local interest to Lynne Sherwin, Features Department, Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309 or lsherwin@thebeaconjournal.com. Event notices should be sent at least two weeks in advance.