What a surprise to see a book set in my own state, so fun to recognize places in the book. The author catches me every time no matter what she writes, this a interesting mystery with a touch of history and I am looking forward to more in this series.

This is the first book in this authors new series. I did enjoy the story line. I was hooked and wanted to know more about the secretive owner of the factory and the history of his story. Guess I will have to read the next book in this series

Katherine Hamilton is a damn good hospitality manager at a large hotel in Boston. When a friend of hers from high school asks her to return to their hometown to help see if she can use the old house just outside town to revitalize the now failing town. Katherine decides to give her opinion but is going to leave it at that... until her job is suddenly made redundant. As she starts to think more about what saving the Barton mansion could mean for her town, she gets more and more excited. Too bad her high school nemesis is still in town. And doubly too bad same nemesis is found dead on the front porch of the mansion.

I liked the world building in this book though there was a somewhat forced effort to cross paths with Connolly's other series. The ending though was... less than satisfying. I mean, the reason for the murder, really? We haven't seen this is in SO MANY books in the past. It's a sad, overworn stereotype. It dropped the book a full star for me.

Regular Sheila Connolly readers probably won't be disappointed.



Two and a half stars

This book comes out June 26

As a fan of Sheila Connolly's apple orchard and museum mystery series, I was happy to see that she has started a new one. This is an exceptionally interesting series, a mystery with a history lesson thrown in. Kate has just been downsized from her job as a hotel manager when she is asked by her friend Lisbeth to come back to her small hometown in western Maryland which has fallen on hard times and see if she can figure out how to get the town back on its feet. The jewel of the town is a Victorian mansion formerly owned by Henry Barton, a local factory owner. Kate gets the idea to turn the whole town into a Victorian themed village but when she visits the mansion she finds the murdered body of her former high school enemy Cordelia. Kate also finds another mystery, in the form of letters from Henry Barton to his cousin Clara which allows the author to bring in some of the characters from her museum series when Kate goes to Nell to have the letters authenticated. The history lesson comes in the discussion of Clara Barton and her fascinating work trying to uncover what happened to missing soldiers after the Civil War. There is mystery, history, and a touch of romance in this wonderful story and I highly recommend it.