Due or Die

Life in Briar Creek, Connecticut has settled into a comfortable rhythm for library director Lindsey Norris: her crafternoon group meets weekly to knit, eat and argue about books, and the library is finally running the way she wants it to. Then a stray puppy turns up in the book drop, the outgoing president of the Friends of the Library makes a scene at the annual meeting, and by morning he is dead.

His widow, Carrie Rushton, is the newly elected Friends president and the obvious suspect. The evidence stacks against her, but neither Lindsey nor the crafternooners believe she killed him. As a nor'easter knocks out the town's power and tears through the library's storage shed, Lindsey works the case between candlelight and generator hum, with an inconveniently devoted puppy named Heathcliff at her heels.

The second Library Lover's Mystery keeps Jenn McKinlay's small-town cast front and centre — the sniping selectmen, the loyal staff, the ferry captain — while Lindsey follows the threads of the Rushtons' marriage back to the person who wanted him gone.