Early Reviewers

Widowed Nora Bell returns to the small Ohio town of Briar Creek expecting to settle her late aunt’s estate, reopen the family letterpress shop, and quietly decide what comes next.

Instead, she finds an antique sampler hidden inside an estate-sale trunk, a missing auction ledger, and evidence that her aunt had been investigating a decades-old family secret.

The sampler appears ordinary until Nora notices its mismatched initials, reversed stitching, and a nearly invisible name worked into the border. With help from Eli Yoder, a guarded Amish widower and auction clerk, she follows a trail of altered records, private letters, disputed land, and a concealed adoption.

Then an appraiser connected to the sampler is found dead.

In a community where silence is often mistaken for peace, Nora must determine who is protecting an old sorrow—and who is willing to kill to keep the truth folded away.

The Secret in the Sampler is a warm, Amish-adjacent cozy mystery featuring historical clues, rural community secrets, a resilient widowed sleuth, and a gentle, chaste slow-burn romance.