The Whispering Loom — A Whispering Loom Mystery, Book 1

Some secrets are woven too deep to stay buried.

When widowed textile restorer Elara Voss settles in the sleepy Cotswold village of Weavers End, she wants nothing more than a quiet life mending old cloth and keeping her grief to herself. She did not come here to make friends. She certainly did not come here to catch a killer. But Elara has a gift she has spent most of her life pretending not to have — she can read the story hidden inside a piece of fabric. The knots, the dyes, the mended seams, the single thread chosen by candlelight long ago: each one remembers the hand that made it, and the truth that hand was trying to keep. A made thing never forgets. And Elara, whether she likes it or not, has always been able to hear what the cloth is trying to say.

Then the powerful Harrow family arrives at her door with a commission that changes everything.

They want Elara to restore an ancient tapestry — a beautiful, decaying heirloom that has hung in the great house for two centuries. It should be the finest work of her career. Instead, the moment her fingers move across the old wool, she feels it: something wrong woven into the very structure of the piece. A name that was never meant to be read. A face hidden beneath a face. A quiet, deliberate lie, stitched two hundred years ago and guarded carefully ever since by a family with everything to lose.

Days later, a man is pulled dead from the millpond.

The village calls it an accident. Elara knows better. Because the tapestry has begun to give up its secret — the story of a woman written out of history, a true wife buried in the dark so that a forged one could take her place, and a murder the Harrow family has spent two hundred years, and more than one life, keeping hidden. The dead man learned the truth. Now he is gone. And Elara is asking exactly the questions that got him killed.

With the help of her sharp, fearless young apprentice, Lily Hollis, and the watchful patience of Inspector Hale, Elara begins to unravel a pattern of murder woven across generations — one knot, one thread, one buried name at a time. She does not chase criminals across rooftops. She sits very still, and she looks, and she refuses to let a lie stand once she has seen the truth beneath it. But the closer she comes to the heart of the pattern, the more dangerous Weavers End becomes. Someone in this pretty, peaceful village will do anything to keep the old lie intact. They have killed to protect it before — and they have no intention of letting a grey-haired weaver with too-clever eyes bring it all into the light now.

To catch a killer who has hidden in plain sight for two centuries, Elara will have to trust her eyes, her needle, and the quiet courage she thought she had buried with her husband — before the pattern closes around her for good, and Weavers End claims one more name for the dark.

THE WHISPERING LOOM is the first book in a charming new 1920s cozy historical mystery series, perfect for readers who love clever amateur sleuths, close-knit English villages, vintage craft and old-world atmosphere, and a fair-play puzzle with a satisfying, well-earned ending. There is no gore here, and no bad language — just tea by the fire, a village full of secrets, a heroine impossible not to root for, and a mystery you'll want to solve one thread at a time.

If you love Golden Age detective fiction, classic village whodunits in the grand old tradition, and cozy mysteries with a warm heart and a clever hook, you have found your next favourite read. Each mystery stands complete on its own — but Elara, Lily, and the good people of Weavers End have a way of getting under your skin, and you'll want to stay for every book.

So pull up a chair by the loom. Pour yourself something warm. Elara Voss is waiting, and the cloth has a great deal to say.

Everything remembers. You've only to know how to listen.

Book 1 of The Whispering Loom Mysteries.