Hadley Carroll Mysteries

Quilter Hadley Carroll thinks her life can't get any worse after being demoted from reporter to newspaper courier and having her fiancé, Matt Ackerman, dump her without explanation. But then, while chucking a sack of newspapers into the Ohio River in Paducah, Kentucky-known as Quilt City-she finds Matt's body snagged under the transient dock. She knows she'll never find peace if she doesn't figure out why he left her and who killed him, so she gets to work. As QuiltWeek Paducah, the largest quilting event in the world, approaches, then fills the small town with 30,000 textile connoisseurs, quilters turn up dead. Paducah's mayor tries to instill calm as citizens panic, protests flare up, and visiting quilters flee by the thousands. Despite grieving the loss of Matt, Hadley perseveres, strengthened by her troubled upbringing and aided by her weekly quilting group. She uses her investigative skills and impressive intellect to solve the murders, to bring peace back to her hometown, and to get a good night's sleep-finally.

After performing a daring rescue of a fellow quilter during a robbery at a Walmart in Paducah, Kentucky, also known as Quilt City, journalist and mayoral candidate Hadley Carroll vows to bring the perpetrators to justice after the heist turns tragic. Then, a seemingly unrelated murder and two ominous messages cause Hadley to ask the staff at Paducah Pulse, her weekly newspaper, to find answers. Amid the turmoil, Hadley and Detective Brandon Green finally enjoy their first date at Barbecue on the River, the city's largest annual event, only for mayhem to disrupt the festivities. Now, employing the diligence and perceptiveness that helped her solve the Quilt City murders, Hadley investigates the killings that follow, connecting the invisible dots. As Paducah panics, the Pulse staff sheds light on a wide-ranging conspiracy. Hadley tangles with her nemesis and mayoral opponent, Nick Stoddard, and endures various threats. But she's determined to solve the crimes and to nurture her budding relationship with Brandon. At least that's her plan.

During a weekly Paducah Quilters Quorum session, Hadley worries about her looming deadline for the cookbook she's writing, the pain her best friend is in, her depressed young housemate, and the Paducah mayoral race she's favored to win against her nemesis-corrupt businessman Nick Stoddard. Then she learns that fellow quilter Donna considers the death of a coworker to be suspicious. Adding to her concerns, Hadley will meet the family of her beau, Detective Brandon Green, that night, and her younger sister, Jenny, will arrive for a visit, bringing three kinds of trouble with her. But then bricks shatter Hadley's windows, transforming worry into danger. Just when Hadley fears her burdens will cause her to crack up, people in and around Paducah die in what could become a major public health crisis. She steels herself and enlists the services of private eye Garrett Hunt. They investigate the murders, but when her family's secrets emerge from her late mother's trunk, Hadley questions who she is and whether her future is doomed.

Hadley Carroll's big weekend plans include visiting the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, with her friends and newfound family, watching an action scene being shot downtown for a Hollywood adventure film, celebrating a birthday, and quilting in Paducah Quilters Quorum. But Hadley, a journalist and the mayor of Paducah, receives bad news from Ashley, the eighteen-year-old who lives with her, and from Dakota, Hadley's best friend. Then, when the movie stunt goes terribly wrong and the crimes that follow threaten to tear the city apart, Hadley and her usual entourage set out to catch the criminals. But the stakes grow higher and the stresses become personal when someone close to her goes missing, and Hadley finds herself in unfamiliar terrain when the system breaks down. She solicits assistance from private-eye Garrett Hunt and from her boyfriend, Detective Brandon Green, but this time justice may elude them all.

In this fifth installment of the award-winning Hadley Carroll Mysteries, Hadley consoles her friend and fellow quilter, Dakota, after the defense attorney is injured and a bystander is killed in front of Dakota's law office in Paducah, Kentucky, the Quilt Capital of the World. Hadley and her staff at the Paducah Pulse newspaper must report on the murder, but a severe ice storm renders investigation impossible when power lines collapse and cell towers freeze. She hunkers with her friends and staff in the Pulse office after the governor issues a shelter-in-place order. As the mayor, Hadley has her hands full trying to coordinate rescue efforts, organize building repairs, and oversee debris removal. Then, a building collapses, a family crisis arises, and additional crimes further frazzle her psyche, forcing Hadley to buck up and rally her troops, determined to convict the perpetrators of multiple crimes-all while planning her wedding.