Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780425223604
ISBN: 0425223604
Label: Berkley Hardcover
Manufacturer: Berkley Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2008-09-30
Publisher: Berkley Hardcover
Studio: Berkley Hardcover

A special holiday knitting mystery from the national bestselling author of Dyer Consequences—with delicious recipes and knitting patterns!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas for the knitters of Fort Connor, Colorado, who are furiously working on their holiday projects. Juliet, the town’s “little brown wren” librarian, is known for her beautiful handmade Christmas capes, and she has extra reason to be joyful this year—she’s in love. But as soon as she finds happiness, death finds her.

Suspicion falls on a newcomer to the knitting group, but Kelly Flynn and the rest of the crew aren’t convinced of this person’s guilt. It’s up to them to separate the true lion from the lambs— before someone else gets fleeced…

Customer Rating:
Summary: A bountiful holiday treat
Comment: We rejoin Maggie Sefton's Colorado knitting shop friends on Thanksgiving Day, where they are sharing a joyous feast at protagonist Kelly Flynn's house. Discussion is as lively as the clicking of knitting needles throughout the book and traditional Thanksgiving aromas waft delightfully from the pages.

Later on the first day of Sefton's sixth mystery, preparations begin for Christmas as Kelly and her friends gather daily around the House of Lambspun's huge knitting table. They sip coffee so sumptuously described that you can surely smell and taste it, while working busily on hats for the homeless as well as gifts for friends and family.

The unfolding mystery centers around a trio of women in the knitting group. First is Julia, shy town librarian, who has volunteered to lead the children's hat knitting project at a local church. Julia has been dating retired professor, widower, and long time friend, Jeremy Cunningham, and is sensing that their friendship is growing into a permanent relationship. Next, Claudia is a newcomer to the knitting group and the town, a likeable yet rather helpless woman who has been widowed three times. She is actively searching for husband number four and after perusing the field of eligible men in town, Claudia has decided to pursue Jeremy. Then Sheila Miller arrives in town, the daughter of Claudia's most recently deceased husband. Sheila has done extensive amateur investigation and fervently believes that Claudia has murdered each of her former spouses. Sheila is both angry and passionately seeking justice for her deceased father.

On a fateful Monday just a few weeks before Christmas, word spreads around the knitting table that Jeremy has invited Claudia out for lunch and Julia out for dinner. Claudia is heartbroken, while Julia is quietly suffused with joy. But, later that evening, wearing her lovely new diamond engagement ring, Julia is struck by a hit-and-run driver and left dead on the roadside. Gradually, while carefully connecting her novice stitches, Kelly works through the tangle of clues and connects them together also, leading us to the surprising and satisfying conclusion of this well-told holiday mystery.

In addition to the sparkles of the Christmas season inside the House of Lambspun and the vivid yarn descriptions that allow the reader to both see and feel them, Fleece Navidad is a bountiful haven of sights, tastes, and smells, from the ever-present pot of aromatic coffee in the shop to the varied edible and knitted treats generously interwoven throughout the pages. At the end of the book, Sefton also presents us with nine pages of delicious holiday recipes (I highly recommend "Maggie's Cinnamon Rolls") and a generous seventeen pages of Christmas gift patterns (mittens, gloves, a hat, and two Christmas stockings) that, as I write this review, can still be knitted in time for the holiday season.

by Mary Jo Doig
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Cozy for the Season
Comment: Nothing sparks the holiday feeling like a great cozy mystery. FLEECE NAVIDAD by Maggie Sefton attracted me by the clever title. Knitting mysteries are just plain fun and the stitches unravel with the plot.
This one has added extras of great recipes and kitting patterns.
Juliet Renfrow is in the center of controversy until she is kill by a hit & run driver wearing Juliet's trade mark cap. Kelly Flynn and friends are off on a capers when a new-comer to their group is suspected of being the driver who fled.
Join them for the holidays.
Nash Black, Travelers and Writing as a Small Business

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Easy Mystery
Comment: I really enjoy the characters this author has created so I enjoyed the book as a whole. I love mysteries, even though I am not very good at figuring out who-did-it before the author reveals it. However, in this book I figured out who the real murderer was shortly after the killing. So if you like being kept in suspense you might not like this book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A very fun read
Comment: I bought this book because I like books about knitting. I don't usually read a lot of mysteries. This one was well worth the time and money. The characters were likeable and interesting and the plot had just enough twist. I liked it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: charming Colorado cozy
Comment: The holiday season has come to Fort Connor, Colorado. Kelly Flynn and her friends befriend the newcomer who has come to the House of Lamb craft shop to socialize. Claudia Miller has moved from Florida to look for husband number four and she thinks she has found her man in Jeremy. Claudia is unaware that he was seeing librarian Juliet Renfrow before she arrived in town; Juliet remains heartbroken.

Another stranger arrives in town, the daughter of Claudia's third husband; she starts spreading rumors that her "stepmother" killed her three husbands. She did her own investigation and found that Claudia took the car and the credit card of the woman living in the same retirement home complex with her. Claudia insists the woman gave them to her; Sheila claims she stole them and the family is considering pressing charges. They cannot ask the woman as she died of natural causes. Jeremy proposes to Juliet who says yes. However, Claudia is in deeper criminal trouble when someone deliberately kills Juliet in a hit and run and the police think she did it.. Everyone condemns her except Kelly who believes someone has woven quite a yarn that she plans to unravel one thread at a time.

Maggie Sefton has written a charming Colorado cozy with an eccentric cast who's off beat humor has the audience chuckling for the most part. Readers are unsure if Claudia is black widow killing a rival or the victim of a clever person; the evidence mounts increasingly towards the former. In fact most fans and the House of Lamb group will believe Claudia is a killer; her only doubter Kelly begins to agree as everything she finds affirms that theory. Fall in the Rockies sounds like fun when Ms. Sefton is the hostess as her latest amateur sleuth FLEECE NAVIDAD is an engaging Rocky Mountain High.

Harriet Klausner

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