Gunns & Roses
by Karen Kelly
Annie Dawson is hard to intimidate. She has stood up to thieves, con men and murderers in the three years since she came to live in Stony Point, Maine. But even she has to shudder when an eagle attacks her and her friends. It seems someone is intent on scaring her away from the answer to her latest mystery.While looking for a basket in the attic of Grey Gables, the Victorian home she inherited from her maternal grandmother, Betsy Holden, Annie discovers a Celtic sporran containing several ferrules, the silver fittings of a set of bagpipes. Annie knows her lineage hailed from Scotland, but neither of her grandparents had told her about the sporran or the ferrules.Annie takes her latest mystery to the Hook and Needle Club, the needlework group that has helped her many times in the past. The thread of the mystery leads Annie and several of her friends to the Highland Games, an annual celebration of Scottish heritage. That’s when the going gets tough. The close-knit clans the group finds at the games appear friendly at first blush, but then close ranks when Annie and Ian Butler, the mayor of Stony Point, ask too many questions. What is the mysterious link that puts everyone on edge? The answer is as mournful as the drone of bagpipes. Join Annie and her Hook and Needle Club friends as they take the high road while someone else is taking the low road in this latest mystery from Annie’s attic.