The False Sleeve

A garden party. A fatal glass of cordial. And a trail of stitches someone wants Cora Bell Fontaine to follow.

Spring has dressed Savannah in azaleas, Easter finery, and charitable intentions. Sixty-four-year-old dressmaker Cora Bell Fontaine knows how much trouble can hide beneath a respectable appearance. But when Mrs. Imogene Pritchard's false sleeve arrives in her workroom, she expects a family embarrassment-not a murder.

Then a founder of the Ladies Floral Relief Circle is found dead in a garden pavilion, and the evidence feels uncomfortably familiar.

Thread from Cora's own workroom. River sand caught in a hem. A sleeve secured with the very stitch she taught a young Black apprentice.

The clues are almost too easy to read. And someone is counting on Cora to read them wrong.

Officials welcome a tidy explanation. So do the society women who have spent years trusting Cora with their clothes while resenting everything she knows about their households. To challenge their story, Cora must question the one thing she has always relied upon: her own good eye.

With her friends following whispered questions and suspicious papers through Savannah's genteel circles, Cora begins to uncover a forged inheritance and an old insurance payment. Meanwhile, family tensions and Zeke's growing place in her everyday life leave little room for the unwelcome arrival of Samuel.

Someone has carefully arranged the evidence. Someone understands how Cora thinks. And unless she can find the flaw in their handiwork, her finest skill may help a murderer get away with it.

The False Sleeve is the fifth Cora Bell Fontaine Mystery-a historical cozy set in 1927 Savannah, featuring a sharp-eyed senior sleuth, enduring friendships, dry humor, and secrets stitched into every seam.