Barbara Emodi | Updates

How to be an Older Woman for Beginners

Barbara Emodi — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 06:29:47 -0500

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Read the First Chapter of Crafting a Deadline

Barbara Emodi — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A federal deadline is bearing down on Gasper's Cove: restore the town's crumbling old lighthouse by year's end, or watch Ottawa replace it with a soulless LED tower. While the community argues it out on a storm-strewn beach, Stuart's daughter turns up something the tide was not supposed to give back, a message in a bottle dated 1962 that reads, "Being watched. Help not coming." The coordinates on it point to the exact spot where they are standing. Crafting a Deadline is the eighth book in the Gasper's Cove Mysteries, a warm, funny Canadian cozy series about small-town crafters, the history that washes ashore, and the trouble that comes with it. Here is Chapter One to get you started.

CHAPTER ONE

“Watch yourself!” Stuart’s strong, blue-gloved hand grabbed my arm. “Easy to slip and hurt yourself. Don’t get distracted.”

I caught the tightness in his voice. These days it seemed there was more on his mind, and on the tip of his tongue, than he was ready to share. But the town’s best engineer and I had kept company for a while, becoming what the community considered a couple. I was learning how to do that and be that, so I now understood that if I waited him out, eventually, Stuart would tell me what was bothering him.

But until then, we were together working on a beach, gathering up what the winter storms had thrown there. Who wouldn’t be distracted? The shore was full of surprises. It wasn’t litter we were collecting but remnants of stories sent by the ocean to be read. Some of them innocent. Some not.

Had this saltand sun-faded life preserver saved a life or failed? And what happened to the man with only one foam-soled shoe? Was he connected to the Cyrillic letters on the label of this jar? Or this pair of glasses. Who had worn them? And why was one lens shattered? Details of lives lived. Artifacts. Lost and not expecting to be found. All keeping their secrets to themselves.

Stuart watched my rubber boots find the flattest surface of an algae-draped rock and only then passed me a rusty corkscrew. I took it by the cork handle, the raft that had kept it afloat in the Gulf Stream it traveled to arrive here, maybe from thousands of miles away. I dropped the corkscrew into the collection bag, then bent down and pulled a frayed, faded length of lobster rope free from the rocks. It was braided with strands of seaweed, the float pods strung along it like beads. I shook it free of water and sand and observed the activity on the beach. Among the dozens of volunteers, students, and teachers, I picked out a couple in matching cargo pants, orange vests, and broad-brimmed hats. Heads down, they were diligently showing the high school students how to line up the bags of collected litter in the most precise row possible. This didn’t surprise me. Like his zoologist wife, Margaret-Ann, stockbroker Cyrus Winfield III was freckled, bespectacled, and relentlessly sincere. Walking past them, Duck, our store’s handyman, grinned. When he smiled, Duck’s mouth curled up on one side in a way that reminded me of Elvis Presley, but one whose handsome face had been weathered by life on the North Atlantic coast. As he approached, Duck pointed to the tangle of rope and seaweed in my hand.

“Better hide that quick, before Krista sees it.” He glanced at one of the crafters from the Co-op, her head deep in a litter bag. “You know what she’ll do with it.”

Stuart, stooping to snatch a Tim Hortons coffee cup from a swirl of ocean foam before it floated back out to sea, looked up. “What do you mean?”

I winked at our handyman. “Krista Willett? She makes wreaths out of beach debris—bits of netting, plastic rings from packs of beer cans, Styrofoam, and rope. Not our bestsellers. Tourists don’t like crafts that smell.”

“You got that right.” Duck hopped nimbly over the slimy rocks to stand next to us. He had crewed boats before a time in prison, which he had not deserved but had been a by-product of his birth into the MacDonald clan of crooks. All of this had made him a student of unusual behavior, having seen so much of it firsthand. “You know, Stu, she even tried to make wreaths out of old tires. Only sold the one—to the boys down at the garage.”

“She called them ‘postmodern door décor,’” I added. “Couldn’t give them away, not even at half price. Customers from away want Nova Scotian traditional—quilts, knitted hats, thrummed mittens, driftwood birds, sea glass suncatchers.” I looked at the old wooden lighthouse on the cliff above us. “And lighthouses, anything to do with them, sells like crazy.”

The sharp North Atlantic wind must have carried my words to a cluster of students and a few adults, some presumably teachers, close to us. The clatter of cans and debris tossed into bags stopped. One woman’s head snapped up.

“Did I hear ‘lighthouses’?” She teetered toward us. Unlike the locals, the newcomer was ready for a photo shoot, from the top of her stocking-capped head to the cuffs of purchased knitted socks carefully folded over the tops of shiny new boots. As someone who made all her own clothes, I recognized this as the kind of expensive outdoor readyto-wear that affluent urban folk ordered online and had shipped to their doors before they ventured out to locations as remote as ours. When she reached us, the woman nodded to Stuart with familiarity.

“The Peggy’s Cove lighthouse on the South Shore has nearly a million visitors a year,” she contributed to our conversation. “I took my 97-year-old mother there last year. She loved it.” This was no surprise. The lighthouse was a Nova Scotia icon.

“Everyone goes there but the locals,” a man in workingman’s steel-toed knee-high rubber boots and a flannel shirt muttered to the woman next to him.

The woman from elsewhere gave him a sharp look. “Do the math,” she snapped. “That’s the equivalent of a dollar for every citizen of this province. Not bad when you consider that there can’t be more than 40 people living in that community.”

I was struck by so much detailed information coming from someone tidying up a weather-battered beach, but then I saw the newcomer’s name tag: Dr. Clare Whitehead. She had pinned it precisely, parallel to the Canadian flag embroidered on her pill-free navy fleece jacket, right above Parks Canada, satin-stitched in yellow block letters.

The federal official waited until I had finished reading her chest before she introduced herself by extending a ringless hand.

“I know Stu, of course,” she shared, “but I don’t think we’ve met.” She glanced sideways at Duck, assessed him as attractive, but not in a way to interest a PhD, and continued. “Dr. Whitehead. I’m here on behalf of the federal government as a heritage assessment expert.”

Stuart looked away, apparently fascinated by two sea gulls fighting over the remains of a headless fish above choppy gray waves that would reclaim this beach as soon as the tide came back in.

“Valerie Rankin, manager of Rankin’s General Store here on the island,” I said as I closed my blue-gloved hand over the visitor’s and considered my other credentials. “Part-time sewing teacher, dog owner, first cousin of Darlene Kosoulas, the deputy mayor …” I hesitated and then threw in “… and a good friend of Stuart’s.”

When this got no reaction, I shifted to politeness. “Are you here to assess the stuff we find on the beach?”

Dr. Whitehead laughed, as if humor were a skill she had read about and was trying to learn. “No, no, no. My department received a grant request from your council to restore your lighthouse in response to the federal initiative to replace outdated lighthouses before the end of the year. That deadline is firm, by the way. I make the final recommendations, so I should know. And I do get that the urgency of this program puts communities like yours under pressure. So, I wasn’t surprised to see your council’s ask for a contribution from us for $75,000, and the promise that you would somehow match those funds yourself. But promises are not plans are they? Stu”—she tried to share a smile with him—“filed the engineering report submitted with the application from your municipality. I recognized his name and got in contact a few weeks ago. We have been talking ever since. It was his suggestion I come down and see the structure for myself before I made a call.”

Stuart, done with the sea gulls, gazed off down the beach to watch my golden retriever wrestle a stick from his own Nova Scotia Duck Toller. We were both aware that he had mentioned nothing of this project to me, and come to think of it, neither had my cousin Darlene, the famous deputy mayor. That shouldn’t have bothered me. After all, I wasn’t particularly interested in lighthouses. The idea of anyone living alone, with not one person to talk to and nothing to do but keep a giant light on, was unsettling, even worrying, to me. What kind of person, even in a necessary role, would want to live like that? It wasn’t normal; it wasn’t social; it wasn’t connected; it wasn’t … well, it wasn’t Gasper’s Cove. Perhaps my attitude was why nobody had told me about this plan.

Or was there another reason, something more personal?

I pushed that thought away, sure of only one thing: I would not let this well-coordinated woman even suspect that I didn’t know absolutely everything going on in my community.

“I guess you’re here to see if we can be another Peggy’s Cove,” I said, as if this were a fact I knew and not a question. “And what have you decided?”

Dr. Whitehead, the expert, shook her head and gave Stuart a discreet just-between-us-professionals eye roll. “You can’t compare what you have here to that lighthouse, which is a much more significant structure.”

We all looked up at our own disintegrating 30-foot octagonal wooden tower, with more weathered silver than white painted shingles. These days, it was neither substantial nor impressive. Built during the First World War, when no coast felt safe, it was now unmanned, abandoned by the last lighthouse keeper, who had left in 2014. Since then, it had housed only its single, original, rotating electrical light, left to guide seafarers home.

“We’re at a crossroads here,” Dr. Whitehead told the gathering crowd of debris collectors around her. “Either we replace the setup with a larger, freestanding, LED structure somewhere on the site and let the old building go.” A few of the onlookers whispered to each other. “Or we refurbish the historical building and upgrade the internal light.” Her eyes were on Stuart. “I’m no fool, you know. I appreciate that you folks have done your best to start repairing this building and that you had plans to do more. But time’s running out. Federal programs run on schedules and results, not intentions. Let’s say it out loud here. You are going to need money, ours from Ottawa and yours here, to make this happen, and whether or not you get those funds will depend on my judgment.” What did this mean? What was this woman trying to say?

Darlene would know. I searched for my cousin’s face and then saw her up on the road, near a dented RV, talking to her husband, George Kosoulas, as he loaded the nowempty coolers into the Agapi restaurant van. I waved to get Darlene’s attention. She saw me, left George, then skidded down the path between the tall beach grass to join us.

“Hello, Clare. What have you decided?” Darlene let her own bag of beach debris drop to the stones. Inside it, I saw a section of an old buoy, a sad collection of cigarette butts, plastic strapping, and what looked like a TV remote. This last find interested me. I often misplaced my own TV controller but had never dropped it in the ocean, or at least not that I was aware. I thought it was interesting that someone else had.

“About what?” Dr. Whitehead responded to Darlene’s question as if she didn’t know, tapping her watch, the kind with a tiny screen that didn’t require winding. “This beach cleanup? Very active.”

Stuart’s paternal pride brought him back into the discussion. “That’s because my daughter, Erin, is in charge of the school volunteers this time. She’s class president.”

“That’s lovely, Stuart.” Dr. Whitehead beamed a smile in his direction before turning it off when she faced Darlene. “But you mean the lighthouse, don’t you?”

Darlene straightened her posture, bringing her eye-to-eye with Dr. Whitehead. But before she could say anything, the man in the plaid shirt and boots pushed past her to face the heritage consultant.

“Bureaucrats,” he pronounced, then whipped his head around to glare at Darlene. “Politicians and”—he gestured to a balding man, new to me, in a municipal government windbreaker—“their lackeys,” he growled. “That building up there”—he gestured at the old lighthouse—“she’s had her day. It’s over. You got that?” Some of the adult volunteers moved in closer to listen. An argument between an Ottawa functionary and Patrick Cormier, formerly of the fishermen’s association, not a man to back away from a fight, and one who often started them to demonstrate that, would be entertaining.

“I guess you think I’m an old fella down here to help gather up whatever our boats have let wash in, but don’t let that fool you. I’m on to ya.” Patrick allowed his outrage to build up to show level. He moved in closer to us and shook an outsize, nicotine-stained finger, swollen with work, time, and arthritis, close to Dr. Whitehead’s face. “Matching funds, you call it? Don’t fool me. That’s Central Canadian code for ‘get a bunch of dumb locals to tax their own selves so you can all build another scenic destination for Air Canada ads.’ And where’s that tax money going to come from? Us. Most folks around here living fish catch to fish catch, paycheck to paycheck. If you figure we’re going to put up with this scheme, and you, you’re dead wrong.”

Behind Patrick, more rubber boots shifted on the sand and the rocks; some moved closer to him in agreement and support, while others drifted away. The lines split, I noticed, between families and friends, which, in this community, was unusual. Only the Winfields remained in the middle, neutral, but curious.

Catherine Walker, former librarian and current co-owner of a bed-and-breakfast with my cousin, Rollie, stepped out of the circle of watchers and into the middle of the disagreement.

“Abandon the lighthouse?” she asked, raising her voice with an over-my-dead-body certainty. “We’ll do what we have to do. We can’t let a century of Maritime history slip away. We need to save our own past.” A few of the mothers and grandmothers of students, busy helping with the cleanup, applauded.

The man in the Greater Drummond and Gasper’s Cove town windbreaker moved forward. The breeze lifted his comb-over vertically. The high schoolers in attendance tried to hide their giggles. “Bruce Bell. Newly appointed heritage and tourism officer, for the municipality,” he said, pleased to use the opportunity of the riveted crowd to introduce himself. “That’s it, isn’t it? Got to balance your cultural symbols and your tourism. There’s a solution somewheres. Will require expertise. That’s why you got me.” The crowd looked confused, raised their eyebrows, and looked away.

“Isn’t that Bruce from parking enforcement?” I whispered to Darlene.

“It is, but he pestered the mayor into a promotion,” she replied, lowering her voice so none of her constituents could hear. “He organized the ribbon cutting at the mackerel festival last spring. Told the mayor he was good with scissors. And he’s willing to continue to work for nothing.”

“Makes perfect sense,” I whispered back.

Next to me, Dr. Whitehead ignored the building conflict. Instead, she consulted the flat, dark screen of her watch, as if searching for her next appointment or messages from the modern world. “None of this is my concern,” she said, as if that fixed that. “My responsibility is to optimize community resource allocation. Whatever decision the federal government makes will be entirely data driven. Nothing else.”

“Data?” Patrick bellowed, pushing Bruce Bell aside, shouting more loudly than was necessary on a beach, but clearly energized by the nodding heads beside him. “You come to my kitchen table and show me and the wife how we’re going to eat data. And to the rest of you”— Patrick’s bushy red and gray eyebrows lowered as he glared at Catherine and the group with her, crafters from the Co-op and members of her book club—“you don’t live off history. Take it from someone who has seen the fisheries in decline for decades but kept at it, worked the most dangerous job in the country, I did. When my hip went out, I kept working, traffic control in the Causeway. Adapt. Deal with the life in front of you. What’s gone can’t be brought back.”

A sudden gust of wind that came out of nowhere broke the silence that followed this manifesto, as if the sea were taking a stand in this debate, although I sensed it was on its own side, and no one else’s. Catherine tried to respond to the old fisherman, but the sharp salty breeze snatched her words away, and we couldn’t hear them. A column of students, their trash bags abandoned, advanced. Then, from farther down the beach, Stuart’s daughter, Erin, ran toward us, her feet crunching on seaweed, popping the pods.

“Dad, Dad,” she shouted, the wind blowing her dark hair into the corners of her mouth. “You’re not going to believe what we found! A bottle with a message in it. We found it in the stones where the cliff is falling apart. Look!” Erin held the bottle up, thick, green glass bubbled and scarred, squat and wide-mouthed, like the ones my granddad used to drink his rum out of. In her other hand was a rolled paper, half letter-size, yellowed, and creased.

The crowd of adults parted, argument on hold, to let Erin get closer to her dad. As she came near us, I felt a twinge of recognition in my chest when I saw in her face the total faith of a child in a parent. Whatever Erin had to tell her father, she trusted he would know exactly what to do.

Stuart took the note from his daughter and, conscious of the faces watching him, but mostly of hers, unrolled it, took his new glasses out of the pocket of his shirt under his orange vest, and read out loud:

December 4, 1962
Being watched. Help not coming.
Daniel B.
44.64° N -63.33° W.

There was ice between my shoulder blades, like a cold finger running down my spine. I shivered and tried to shake it off. On the other side of the group, I saw Margaret-Ann Winfield, wife of the III, watching me. Stuart raised his face to his daughter. Her eyes were wide, expectant.

“How creepy is that? What do you think?” she asked, waiting to be told that it wasn’t creepy at all, that the message had a logical explanation. She fixed on the only objective piece of information. “Those numbers? Dad, what do they mean?”

Her father looked unsettled. This worried me.

“It’s sort of an address,” he explained carefully to his daughter. “Longitude and latitude, the coordinates for a place.”

“Really?” Erin asked. “Can it tell us where the note came from? Can we look it up?”

“No need to,” said Stuart, the weekend sailor. “I know it. It’s the exact location where we are now. Right here, on this point. Gasper’s Cove, Nova Scotia.”

Crafting a Deadline, Gasper's Cove Mysteries Book 8, releases in October 2026 and is available to preorder wherever books are sold. Preorder it here.

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Read the First Chapter of Crafting a Knock Off

Barbara Emodi — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Craft shows can be dangerous. Valerie Rankin learns exactly how dangerous when the lights go out at the Thirteenth Annual Gasper's Cove Spring Craft Show and only a trolley piled with vintage quilts saves her from a nasty fall. Waiting on the other side of it is Louise Haggerty, a big-city "sustainable fashion" designer who has come to little Gasper's Cove hunting for local quilts and linens to upcycle, and who has her eye on Valerie's Crafters' Co-op. Never risk competition, she says, when you can choose collaboration. Valerie is not so sure. Crafting a Knock Off is the seventh book in the Gasper's Cove Mysteries, a warm, funny Canadian cozy series about small-town crafters, the value of handmade things, and the trouble that follows when outsiders come to cash in. Here is Chapter One to get you started.

CHAPTER ONE

Craft shows can be dangerous.

Deadly.

I should know.

The signs told me to stay safe at home.

Dark clouds pressed down on the street outside, promising nothing good. One shoe had disappeared overnight. While I looked for it, I spilled my coffee on the outfit I had made for this day, a silk jersey I couldn’t afford—dry clean only, now ruined. I changed into my backup, a rayon dress everyone had seen before, and that made me look matronly. Toby, my golden retriever rescue, positioned himself between me and the door. I tried to reassure him and reached for my keys on the little vestibule table where they rested between drives. Where had they gone? Run off with the shoe?

Oh, the warnings were there. Whispering to me like they sometimes did.

Did I pay attention?

Of course not.

How could I? This was the end of May, the last chance to sell winter-made crafts before the first full moon in June, the official start of the Nova Scotia gardening season, which would consume everyone’s weekends. The importance of the Thirteenth Annual Gasper’s Cove Spring Craft Show overrode any distractions or omens. My cousin Darlene would be at the booth in the arena now, waiting for me.

But how would I get there? Where were my keys?

I searched. First in logical places, like pockets, then in illogical ones, like behind the 40-year-old smocked cushions inherited with the house from my aunt. I even looked under the whisk and wooden spoons in a kitchen drawer. I gave up. In my experience, lost things were found when they were ready.

It couldn’t be rushed.

Until then, I had an emergency. I had one option left. I took it.

I called Stuart.

“Are you out and about?” I asked casually, as if I were passing the time. Stuart was a friend, and one I thought about more than I liked to admit. I didn’t want it to be too obvious that he was also evolving into my Mr. Reliable. “In the car, maybe?”

“I’m on my way to the yacht club for a meeting.” There was a pause while Stuart listened for what I hadn’t said. “You can’t find your car keys again.” This was a statement, not a question. “Where do you want to go?”

The yacht club was at one end of the island, the arena at the other.

“Nowhere,” I lied. “I’m fine.”

“The show. It’s today, isn’t it? Wait for me in front of the house. I’m turning around.”

Stuart hung up before I could say, “Don’t bother.” Or “Thank you.”

Gasper’s Cove arena hosted craft shows every spring and fall. In small Nova Scotian communities, hockey rinks are often used for any gathering too large for a living room or a church basement.

The arena was not a perfect venue. Cold and drafty, its disguise as an exhibition hall was questionable, but it was big enough to hold the throngs of shoppers, craftspeople, and retailers who poured in from the local area, the rest of the province, and even New England. For many artisans, sales from the shows were a major source of income. This mattered. Traditionally, forestry and fishing had dominated Nova Scotia’s economy. But recently, tourism, with its appetite for crafts, was catching up. The Gasper’s Cove Crafter’s Co-op had a booth at both the pre-Christmas show and this one, marking the end of winter. The spring event was my favorite. To me, the rows of tables displaying what creative people had made over the cold, dark months were as much a confirmation of the persistence of life as the spring tulips.

It didn’t take Stuart long to pick me up and get me to the rink. The old building was nestled like a giant weathered turtle at the end of Front Street, not far from our family store, Rankin’s General Store, on the side of the road away from the water, and near where the remnants of the town petered out. Stuart knew his way around the arena’s parking lot. He bypassed the big public doors out front and drove me straight up to the exhibiter’s entrance at the back of the building. He parked near the loading-dock doors, next to a diagonal row of panel vans, one with Sparky’s Electrical painted on its side.

“Looks like Jimmy’s working today,” Stuart said, noticing the truck. “I hope Sparky’s paying him overtime.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said, then regretted it. Sparky Bailey was the only electrical contractor in town. He ran his business with the combination of nonchalance and greed that monopolies tended to encourage. I suspected that Sparky paid his employees just enough to make them show up at work, and not much more. Jimmy MacNeil, Stuart’s favorite nephew, was Sparky’s best young electrician. I knew Stuart worried about Jimmy, his sister’s son. He didn’t need me to confirm that Jimmy could have done better than settle for a future with the local contractor.

Stuart sighed. “Jimmy needs to stand up for himself. I can’t do it for him.” He looked over at the box of pottery mugs on my lap. “Why don’t I give you a hand taking those in?”

I considered the offer, and Stuart. He had on his new windbreaker with “President” embroidered over the yacht club logo. His dark curly hair was still damp from the shower, and he had even tried to part it. I had diverted him on his way to his first meeting as the club’s new president. Stuart was never late for anything. He shouldn’t be late for this. Not because of me.

“No. You go.” I hoisted the load of mugs myself and got out of the car before Stuart could help me. “I’ve got Darlene in there. She’ll help me unpack.”

“I don’t know, Valerie,” Stuart said, doubtfully, “that box looks heavy.”

“Go. I’ll be fine.” I got out of the car and closed the door on his protests.

Stuart hesitated, then drove away, his tires crunching on the gravel, his eyes on me in the rearview mirror.

The box weighed more than I had admitted. I shifted it to one hip to free up a hand to pull open the metal door to the arena. The door, weary, dented, and battered by decades of hockey sticks and boys horsing around, protested. I noted a paper sign—“Authorized Exhibitors Only!”—taped over “Player’s Entrance.” I knew the arena would be hockeychilly inside, despite the flooring laid over the ice and the bunting and promotional banners draped over the rink’s boards to hide the penalty boxes.

Stepping through the doorway was like walking into a freezer. Inside, I adjusted my box, pushed my handbag farther up my shoulder, and moved across the landing to the steep concrete steps down to the center of the arena, where it would be warmer once the crowds showed up. Behind me, the door opened, then shut, with finality. Other exhibitors, with their own loads, lined up around me. First in line, and conscious of them, I moved forward to the stairwell.

I lifted my foot. It skidded on the wet tread of the first step.

I tried to shift my box again so I could grab the handrail.

But before I could find it, there was a loud crack overhead.

The lights went out.

I stopped still, my foot raised. The steps in front of me disappeared.

The box loosened in my arms. The weight of the pottery inside pulled me forward.

I wobbled.

Someone rushed down the stairs past me. Instead of offering the helping hand I expected, they shoved me into the wall. I caught the smell of mothballs and thought of wool. Distracted, I felt my balance go. My shoes slipped.

I fell, throwing my collection of hand-turned coffee mugs ahead of me. I heard them bounce down the stairs, smashing as they went, ricocheting down over the concrete steps. One last time, I tried to find the handrail. It had vanished. My fingers skidded over the painted blocks of the wall. Out of control, I covered my face with my arms, as I fell faster than I could think. Instinctively, I braced myself, closed my eyes tight, and waited for a messy end, smashed into the concrete floor of a converted ice rink.

Instead, I made a soft landing into a pile of …

Quilts.

The lights went on.

I was stretched out full length, belly down, surrounded by broken pottery, but safe. Unhurt. I lifted my head to get a better look at what had broken my fall. I had, by some miracle, by the intervention of some angel who knew how to sew, landed not on a hard, unwelcoming arena floor but onto a trolley stacked with quilts. The one under me I recognized immediately as a double wedding ring, handstitched and meticulously pieced. Reflexively, I smoothed the fabric. Judging by the wear and the small motifs of the fabric, it had been made in the 1950s or earlier, maybe in the 1940s. Some of the fabric in the borders looked like feed-sack cotton. The handiwork and intervention of other women in another time had saved me.

My world made sense again.

I sat up.

A firm grip helped me to my feet.

“My quilts!” A tall blond woman in a crazy quilt jacket inspected my landing place through turquoise framed glasses. “Good,” she muttered to herself, “no blood.” She flashed me a smile and flared her eyelash extensions. “And you? Are you alright?”

“Fine,” I said, looking at the shattered mugs on the concrete floor. “Better than my pottery. When the lights went out, I guess I tripped.”

The woman looked up into the arena’s rafters. She was annoyed but trying to be gracious, even though she didn’t have the time for it.

“The electrical system in this building is a disgrace. This is the third time this morning this has happened. A decent show brings in outside power. All we have here is some kid who doesn’t talk. But then again, where am I?”

“Gasper’s Cove, Nova Scotia?” I offered. It was my turn to be gracious. My mother had brought me up to be polite to strangers, even rude ones.

“Right. ‘Last Gasp’ they called it at the hotel over in Drummond.” She waited for me to laugh along with her. “That’s funny,” she explained.

I looked down at the wedding ring at my feet. The hand quilting was impeccable, every stitch regular, undoubtedly done years ago by a fisherman’s wife during long, lonely, worried evenings.

“Beautiful work,” I said. I felt it was time to talk about what locals did, not where we were. “Are you a collector? Here to sell?”

The woman held out her dolman-sleeved arms for inspection. She was thin under the colorful padded jacket and dressed all in black. She wore a turtleneck, a long narrow skirt, and high-heeled boots with toes so pointed, they would be useful for stepping on spiders in corners.

“Louise Haggerty,” she announced, as if her name explained everything. I searched my memory for information on any Haggertys I knew and came up blank. “The designer,” she elaborated. “Montreal. Toronto. New York. Palm Beach?”

So many cities? My first thought was that the Haggertys must be a big family, then I caught myself.

“Designer?” I asked. “You mean clothes? I sew too. I teach classes.” We had something in common. I’d work with that.

Louise lowered her arms, possibly in defeat.

“Sustainable fashion. We upcycle original textiles into unique pieces. No two are the same. I collect handembroidered linens and quilts.” She looked down at the trolley at her feet. “I let the pieces inspire me. I usually don’t do these shows myself.” She exhaled all her second thoughts. “But my marketing man suggested I come up here. I thought, why not? I am always looking for sources. Like the ones you fell on.”

Louise Haggerty had my attention. These quilts were from here? Who from? I wondered. Homes up and down the shore all had quilts like these. I’d be interested to know who was selling. I’d find that out. Not much got past my crafting network.

“Sorry,” I said, putting out my hand. “Valerie Rankin. I’m here with the Crafter’s Co-Op. We have a booth.”

“Ahh, I’ve heard of you,” Louise let her hand float over mine without touching it. “You manage that store, don’t you? Rankin’s General? You run a crafter’s thingy out of the second floor, am I right?”

“That’s me. If we make it, we sell it. Got a great bunch of knitters, carvers, quilters … ”

“Right,” Louise cut me off. “That’s why my guy must have you in his export-focused sights. He said as much. Murray Nunn. Wider markets are where the real money is. But speak to me before you sign anything.”

Sign what? What was this woman she talking about? I had just fallen down a flight of stairs in a hockey arena. I had broken some of my best merchandise. I was wearing my second-best outfit. Somewhere inside this arena, I had a cousin in a craft booth looking at her watch and wondering where I was. I had passed my capacity for excitement and new information somewhere down along the seventh or eighth step. I had real things to do.

“Great to meet you,” I said as politely as I could, while I moved toward the double doors into the exhibit hall. “I’ll be sure to drop by and see your clothes. I have a lot to set up. I’ve got to get to my booth.” Show staff had arrived and were sweeping up the shards of broken mugs.

Louise slapped her hands on the handle of the trolley and moved past me. She seemed determined to do her best to use it like a quilt-stacked battering ram to get through the crowd and closer to the door.

“Brilliant,” she said. “Let’s catch up when we can. Grab a coffee.” The other exhibitors parted to let her by. “Never risk competition when you can choose collaboration,” she tossed back.

I watched Louise disappear into the show.

That sounded to me like good advice.

Or maybe another warning.

I wasn’t sure which.

Crafting a Knock Off, Gasper's Cove Mysteries Book 7, is available in paperback and ebook wherever books are sold. Find it here.

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Read the First Chapter of Crafting a Cold Case

Barbara Emodi — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It is February in Gasper's Cove, the tourists are long gone, and Valerie Rankin is finally about to cast on a pair of socks for herself when the text arrives: Emergency. Get here ASAP before I kill somebody. It is from level-headed Catherine, which is exactly how Valerie knows it is serious. Someone has moved into the Bluenose Inn and shows no sign of ever leaving. Crafting a Cold Case is the sixth book in the Gasper's Cove Mysteries, a warm, funny Canadian cozy series about small-town crafters, long winters, and the trouble that comes in from the cold. Here is Chapter One to get you started.

CHAPTER ONE

I picked up the brand-new ball of sock wool. I settled into my chair. I’d walked the dog, talked to my store, texted the family, done the breakfast dishes, and put in a wash. I had saved this yarn, bright pink and turquoise, for a gray day.

It was February. Christmas was over. The spring birthdays were months away.

This pair was for me.

I picked up my needles to cast on.

Next to my cup of tea on the side table, my phone beeped. I put down my needles and looked at the screen. Emergency. Get here ASAP before I kill somebody.

What?

I tapped back.

Catherine Walker, ex-librarian and bed-and-breakfast commander-in-chief, never lost her cool. She was as good at that as I wasn’t. I knew in my heart that if terrorists ever kidnapped me and locked me up in outer Siberia, it would be Catherine who would find me and set me free. Of course, that would come with a talking-to about my reckless behavior, but I knew she wouldn’t leave me unsaved. That something had rattled her scared me.

What’s going on? I tried again.

Tell me. I added. No response. ASAP. That meant now.

On my way.

I pressed end and jumped out of my chair. I threw my wool and needles into my knitting basket, ran over to the hall closet, and pulled out my insulated winter coat, fair isle tuque, and thrummed wool mittens. Toby, my golden retriever, watched me dress. I didn’t usually move this fast.

“Don’t worry,” I reassured him. “I’ll be back soon. Everything is fine.”

Toby sighed and lay down. He didn’t believe me. I didn’t blame him.

I closed the front door behind me. Behind it, I heard Toby run over to the couch to watch me leave from the bungalow’s picture window. I grabbed the railing and stepped down. I’d put salt on the steps, and I was glad of it now. They were icefree, unlike the path to the driveway, or what I could see of the street. There had been some melting during the day, but at 4:30 in the afternoon, the sun was beginning its slow exit. Not long until it would freeze and be slippery again. I’d be careful driving on the Shore Road.

I sat in the driveway before I left, running the car to let the engine warm up. There was still no message back from Catherine. I turned up the heater and tuned in to the local station, CKGC.

… and now for the weather. The current wave of arctic air is lifting folks, with temperatures to climb near to above freezing over the next few days, starting in the morning. Until then, don’t forget to dress up and make sure those pets are not left outside too long. As always, frostbite and hypothermia can happen this time of year. But that’s February in Nova Scotia, and we’re used to it.

This was not news. I turned the radio off and backed out of my driveway. What was Catherine’s emergency?

When I arrived at the Inn Catherine co-owned with my cousin Rollie, everything looked normal from the outside. The old sea captain’s homestead, a massive dark-red Victorian three-story structure, windows and doors defined by elaborate woodwork skillfully carved by the same craftsmen who had built schooners, stood on three acres above the North Atlantic. The take-your-breath-away view was beautiful in the summer, but now the winter sea under the cliffs at the end of the property was wild and gray. The fair-weather months, May to late October, were when the bed-and-breakfast did most of its business. Guests this time of year were infrequent. As far as I knew, the only occupants of the Inn this month were Rollie, Catherine, and the Inn’s overweight, much-indulged, gray cat, Dusty. Catherine had no problem keeping Rollie and Dusty in line, so if she was on the verge of murder, someone else was involved. I wondered who they were.

I pushed the Inn’s heavy oak door open and stepped into the entry to find out. I took off my coat, pushed my mitts and hat down into a sleeve, and hung it up on one of the hooks on the faded, cabbage-rose wallpaper to the right of the door. The reception desk was empty.

“Catherine?” I walked down the long, high-ceilinged hall to find her, past the pictures of the stern, mono-tinted faces of the community’s past schooner captains, successful boat builders, pirates, rumrunners and a few politicians. That last group was out of place, memorable as they were, for ambition, not skill or nerve.

“It’s me, Valerie,” I called again. “I got here as fast as I could.”

No answer.

This didn’t feel right, not right at all.

I heard a noise. Banging at the end of the hall. Metal on metal. Angry sounds from behind a closed door. I ran down and opened the door to the kitchen.

Inside, the Bluenose Inn’s front-desk manager was on the floor, surrounded by cookware.

“Catherine? What’s going on? What’s the emergency? Why the pots?” I noticed the reference-desk librarian turned innkeeper had a measuring tape in one of her hands, a pencil behind her ear, and what looked like a detailed map, or battlefield diagram, in her lap.

My friend and my cousin’s love interest glanced up at me. She looked like she wanted to cry. This horrified me. I had never seen tears in Catherine’s eyes before. She wasn’t the type. Losing composure was my job, not hers.

Catherine didn’t answer. Instead, she pulled a twisted tissue from the sleeve of the cotton turtleneck she wore under her quilted vest and blew her nose loudly, like an old man. The noise startled me. Catherine was an accomplished quilter, the kind who felt the more pieces the better, with a competitive twelve hand stitches per inch. Self-control was her middle name, but now she was too upset to speak. Instead, she held up a paper for me to read. I took it from her damp hand and sat down on a kitchen chair. There were no words, only a diagram of shelves, the dimensions carefully marked with double-headed arrows. I stared at Catherine. It looked to me as though the crumpled woman on the floor was measuring her cookware and plotting its placement on the shelves. I was shocked. If locked in a kitchen with a tape measure for a hundred million years, I’d never think to do this.

“Is this your crisis?” It was my turn to be at a loss for words. “The pots?”

Catherine grabbed the edge of a counter and pulled herself to her feet. “No. I just find organizing is the only thing that calms me down when I’m losing it. Like when I have trouble sleeping, I lie in bed at night and arrange things in my mind. Do you ever do that?”

“Never,” I answered truthfully. I tried again. “What’s got you so upset?”

“The prepper,” she said. “He’s down in the basement with Rollie right now, in the dark, with the pipes. Every time we turn around, he is watching us. He says he’s preparing for the end of time. Here. In my bed-and-breakfast.” She pressed her forehead against a kitchen cupboard and sniffed. I’d never seen Catherine this distressed. Not even the time she arrived at a quilting get-together without her quarter-inch foot.

“You have to tell me more,” I said. “Who are you talking about?”

“Someone I brought here. It’s all my fault. He’ll never leave, I can feel it.” Catherine dragged herself over to a chair and collapsed. ”He’ll be here forever, waiting for disaster,” she said. “Unless I can find a way to make him disappear.”

I knew what to do.

Crafting a Cold Case, Gasper's Cove Mysteries Book 6, is available in paperback and ebook wherever books are sold. Find it here.

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Read the First Chapter of Crafting a Getaway

Barbara Emodi — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A tourist tells Valerie Rankin that Gasper's Cove is the best-kept secret in the country, and for once the marketing is about to catch up with the truth. A glossy wellness retreat is opening on the island, promising to put the little Nova Scotia town on the map. But Valerie has learned that when outsiders arrive promising to fix a place that was never broken, trouble is rarely far behind. Crafting a Getawayis the fourth book in the Gasper's Cove Mysteries, a warm, funny Canadian cozy series about small-town crafters, the treasures hiding in plain sight, and the trouble that comes to visit. Here is Chapter One to get you started.

CHAPTER ONE

The woman leaned forward over the counter. She handed me a grey baby cardigan.

“For my neighbor’s granddaughter.” She looked past me to the big semicircular window and its view of the sea. “This place is the best-kept secret in the country,” she sighed. “Do you know how lucky you are?”

“I hope so,” I said. I took the small sweater and folded tissue paper over the tiny garter stitched cuffs, pearl buttons, and miniature buttonholes. “Do you mean the store? It’s been in the family for generations. We always sold tools and fishing gear. The crafts are new.” I slid the little package into the brown bag I had stenciled with Crafters’ Co-op, Gasper’s Cove, Nova Scotia. I couldn’t believe how popular these grey baby clothes were with tourists. We made them because they sold, but our older knitters couldn’t figure out why. If people don’t want pink and blue what was wrong with yellow, turquoise, or even melon they asked? Something more cheerful like the babies themselves.

My customer passed me a hundred-dollar bill. On her left hand was a stone so substantial it was set deep into the gold, no need for a pronged setting to amplify its size. On her right hand were even more shimmering stones, tokens of affection and maybe guilt, marking birthdays and anniversaries I thought. But I saw no family ring, like the ones local women wore with a birthstone for each member of the immediate clan. I felt sorry for her.

“Your store’s a hidden treasure,” the woman agreed, “but so is everything else. The coast, this island, I didn’t know places like this still existed.” She ran her fingers over the smooth contours of a hand-carved driftwood bird. “You know, I used to make things myself. Years ago,” she sounded wistful. “ I want to get back into it. Maybe the retreat will help.”

The retreat? This got my attention. I’d organized the Crafter’s first one for next month. Was this lady one of our students? I was thrilled. I’d ask her name and look her up on the list.

“I think you are going to enjoy yourself,” I said, gushing more than I intended. “August is a lovely time of year. We’ve got great workshops. Quilting, knitting, rope weaving…”

Shadow, the store cat interrupted me. She jumped up onto the counter and reached across to bat a cross-stitched bookmark onto the floor. Leaning over the edge she studied it, pivoting her beautiful ears backwards so she wouldn’t miss any of this conversation.

“August?” The woman was puzzled. “You’ve got that wrong. It’s next week. My husband’s here for meetings. I decided to show up, surprise him, and do something for myself.” The clasp on an ostrich leather handbag snapped open. “Here let me show you,” she said smoothing out a computer print-out with her fancy hands so I could read it:

Escape to beautiful Gasper’s Cove!

Learn new creative skills from local experts at a Crafter’s Retreat

Starting Monday, July 8th

Monday: North Atlantic knitting. Thrumbed mitts with Bob Willett.

Tuesday: Gifts from the sea. Woven reclaimed lobster rope wreaths with Sylvie Kulberg.

Wednesday: Quilting at the Cove. A table runner with Catherine Walker.

For further information please contact Valerie Rankin

“It sounds great doesn’t it?” My visitor’s face gleamed with retinol, excitement, and hope.

“Terrific,” I said, forcing a smile. I needed time to think. Shadow smirked and jumped down to stick handle the bookmark across the store’s hundred-year-old floorboards. “You wouldn’t want to miss something like that,” I muttered. I felt seasick. This woman was here a month early. How had that happened? What was I supposed to do?

My customer, now my student, was oblivious to my panic.

“Hey,” the woman said, snapping her glittering fingers. “I have an idea. You’re crafty,” she waved a black linen arm around the Co-op. “Why don’t you come too? Maybe they have space. Call this Valerie Rankin person and find out.

Do you know her?” I nodded.

Yes, I did.

She was me.

* * *

The customer’s name was Laura Wallace. By the time she left, I knew that her husband was Parker Wallace, head of East-West Media, and that he was in Nova Scotia to explain to small rural newspapers that his take-over was the best thing that ever happened to them, despite what anyone else might say.

I also learned from Mrs. Wallace that her husband’s meetings were to be held at the Inn, a venue I knew almost as well as I knew I was not hosting a craft retreat there next week. The Bluenose Inn was owned by my cousin Rollie Rankin and Catherine Walker, the town’s former librarian who had gone into business with Rollie to keep herself busy while she waited for him to propose.

The ramifications of the scheduling disaster washed over me in waves. Who else thought the retreat was next week, not in August? What if other students showed up at the Inn next week for workshops that didn’t exist? Who would trust someone to run classes if they couldn’t keep the dates straight?

There was only one thing to do.

This was an emergency.

As soon as Mrs. Wallace left, I called Darlene.

Darlene was a cousin on my mother’s side and my best friend. If I was in trouble, she would know how to get me out of it. She always did. Every time.

Darlene picked up on the first ring. She listened calmly while I told her what had happened.

“How do I fix this?” I asked her. “I had such big plans. It’s a huge mess.”

“Give me a second while I think,” Darlene said. This wouldn’t take long. My cousin was good on her feet. She had lots of practice from decades spent standing behind the chair in her basement beauty salon and then from the doorto-door campaigning that had made her deputy mayor.

“First, how did you miss this?” she asked. “Weren’t you keeping track of registrations?”

“I was. Sort of,” I pulled the book with the names of those who had signed up for the workshops out of a drawer. “I have it all here. The receipts from everyone who came into pay. I’m looking at it now. All the dates are for the first week in

August. Exactly when I told Catherine we’d be there.”

“That’s good,” Darlene said. “But what about this woman? You said she had something printed off the computer?”

“Yes, she did.” Then it hit me. “Oh no. The town. I sent them the information for the website. You know ‘Things to see and do in Gasper’s Cove’? Did I get that wrong?” I pulled the Co-op’s old laptop toward me and clicked on the page.

“Oh shoot,” I said. “That’s the problem. I must have made a mistake when I filled in the form. Switched the months and dates, put them in backwards. It’s dealing with tourists. I get used to the American way, date, month, and year. Not like we do it in Canada month, date, and year. I changed August 7 to July 8.

What an idiot.” I had ignored numbers my whole life. This was their revenge.

I signed in and I clicked the registration button. This was worse than I thought. “I don’t believe this. There are four women signed up for next week. What am I going to do? The Inn’s already booked for some corporate thing with this guy Parker Wallace. Plus, Catherine’s my quilting instructor, she’s going to be busy. I can’t do next week. I don’t have the teachers and I don’t have the space. But I can’t just cancel on these ladies. That will kill my reputation before I even have one.”

“Relax. So, you made a mistake. Big deal,” Darlene said. “This might be better than you think.”

“How’s that?” I asked. My cousin was an optimist. But if there was a bright side to this situation, I couldn’t see it.

“It’s obvious.” I could tell Darlene was proud of herself. “You find a way to make this next week work. Don’t worry about space, I’ll find you something in the municipal offices. Make sure this first group gives you rave reviews. That way you can advertise the next session as ‘back by popular demand.’ So popular you had to run two, not one, sessions this summer.”

No wonder Darlene had made it in politics. I knew I had been spun but it gave me a sliver of hope. The waves of anxiety were now only ripples. “You can find me a nice place?” I asked.

“A great place,” Darlene said. “I’ll pull strings. Now remind me. Teachers?

Who are they? You’ll need to get them organized too.”

“Okay. Sylvie’s making wreaths out of reclaimed lobster rope,” I began.

There was silence on the other end of the line except for the sound of meowing in the background. Darlene had a large and floating population of rescue cats. I had lost count of how many.

“Reclaimed rope?” she asked. “You mean from boats? Where does Sylvie get that?”

“From some guy with a blimp who’s mapping algae. He says it’s dumped, washed up all up the coast. He sees it from the air and goes and picks it up.” I explained. “He’s part of Sylvie’s eco network. They met at the Great Beach CleanUp. Her rope wreaths sell, much better than the ones she made out of plastic debris. Don’t knock it.”

“I won’t.” Darlene kept moving. “Who else you got? “

“Next month Catherine is doing a table runner. It’s cute, waves and little whales.” Who could teach that workshop now? “And Bob Willett is doing the knitting class. Mitts, you know the ones with the wool roving inside.”

“Right. Nothing warmer,” Darlene paused. “I didn’t know Big Bob knit.” I heard tiny pellets dropping into tin bowls. The meowing stopped.

“He does, very well. And he dyes his wool with something called rescued lichen. It’s an idea he came up with himself,” I added.

“Sounds like something he’d do,” Darlene said. In a community full of eccentrics Big Bob was respected as the master of them all. “Alright, this is the plan. I find you a space; you round up the teachers. Then let those four ladies know where to go for the workshops and tell them there has been a change of venue. But just in case I would also run out and have a word with Rollie and Catherine. Someone might show up on Monday by mistake. They need to know the town advertised something at the Inn that isn’t happening there. But get things organized first. Catherine is someone you go to with a solution, not a problem.”

“She’s not going to understand this,” I said. “Catherine doesn’t like the unexpected. She likes the alphabetical. She’ll kill me when I tell her what happened.”

“I doubt it,” Darlene said. “No one gets killed over an innocent mistake.”

Crafting a Getaway, Gasper's Cove Mysteries Book 4, is available in paperback and ebook wherever books are sold. Find it here.

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Read the First Chapter of Crafting an Alibi

Barbara Emodi — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When the three sharpest nonagenarians at Seaview Manor invite Valerie Rankin to tea, she expects butter tarts and gossip, not a business proposition. Joyce, Bernadette, and Minnie have something valuable to sell, something they have kept hidden for years, and they need Valerie's help to quietly turn it into cash for their small army of grandchildren. There is just one small problem with the goods: they stole them. Crafting an Alibi is the fifth book in the Gasper's Cove Mysteries, a warm, funny Canadian cozy series about small-town crafters, secrets that refuse to stay buried, and the trouble that finds good people anyway. Here is Chapter One to get you started.

CHAPTER ONE

“We need cash,” Joyce said, prim and upright in her seasonal cardigan, knitted maple leaves accented by a gold cat brooch she’d worn for sixty years. “And fast.”

“We have a business proposition for you,” Bernadette added. “We have no one else to ask. You’re my great-niece. I told the girls you’ll keep this a secret.”

Next to her, Minnie, the third member of the group, nodded. “That’s right. We know people say you’re quick to fly off the handle, but we know you never let anyone down. And not many folks would understand our situation. We think you will.”

I put my china teacup down. I laid the tiny silver spoon on the saucer. This was not what I had expected when the ladies of Seaview Manor invited me for tea.

“I am not sure I understand,” I said. I’d known these three women my whole life. Each of them must be close to ninety. If I was going to get more information, I would have to be delicate about it. “Isn’t everything here covered?” I asked. “By the province and your Canada pensions? Accommodations and meals?” What financial worries would these ladies have at this stage of their lives? The community had and would always take care of them. We’d built the Manor so our seniors could stay with us, here on Gasper’s Island. No one wanted grandparents too frail to live with family to go across the causeway to Drummond or, even worse, somewhere else down the road in mainland Nova Scotia.

Minnie waved my question aside with her hand, her rings loose on her fingers. She’d dressed up for this meeting in a well-preserved red wool flannel jacket she’d made herself. Above her covered buttons, a rhinestone brooch and heavy clip-on earrings glinted in the sun that slid in sideways from windows that faced the bright waters of the North Atlantic.

“We’re fine, thank you,” Minnie said, snapping the crimson bows of her lips shut. I had insulted her. “The money’s not for us, it’s for the young people.”

Bernadette leaned forward, the fringed tie of a crocheted vest skimming the surface of the tea in her cup. “Between us, we have twenty-three grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”

Joyce picked up the teapot and poured. Minnie put another butter tart on my plate. It looked homemade, the top of a crispy raisin visible in a crack of a filling made of butter, brown sugar, and eggs.

I was being bribed. It was working. I took a bite and listened.

“And that’s not counting the nieces and nephews, and some of them are grandparents themselves,” Joyce continued. “It all adds up.”

“You bet it does,” Minnie nodded. “Birthdays, Christmases, graduations, bridal showers, christenings. These days, cards cost more than the five dollars you put in them.”

“And the cats,” Joyce reminded the table. “Let’s not forget the SPCA.” She pushed her chair back, and as if it had been waiting for an entry line, a rangy gray cat jumped up on her lap.

“Who’s that?” I asked. “It looks like Shadow’s cousin, exactly the same shade of gray.” Shadow was our store cat who lived down at the family store I managed, Rankin’s General. Originally brought in to chase away visiting mice, Shadow spent most of her time dozing on the quilts we sold upstairs in the Crafters’ Co-op.

“He could be related,” Joyce agreed. “Gasper’s Cove cats tend to be gray. Passed on, one generation to another, all got the same look about them.”

“Like us,” Bernadette observed. “Valerie here’s got the Rankin eyes, one blue and one green. Dark curly hair. A touch of the fey, the curse to feel premonitions. Our childbearing hips. There’s a word for it. What is it?”

“Genetics,” I said, reaching out to stroke the fine, soft gray fur. I wouldn’t have described my figure quite like that. “I didn’t know you had a cat in here.”

“Maybelline sent him,” Joyce said, referring to a longgone black cat I had seen in Joyce’s tearoom and alteration shop when I was a child. In those days, Joyce used to read the leaves in her customers’ cups. She claimed that Maybelline had been her spiritual guide and that, one way or another, the cat had never left her.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. It was the best I could do. “What’s this one called?”

“Max Factor,” Joyce said, as if stating the obvious. “He’s a boy.”

“Keeps us all company,” Bernadette said. “Now, back to the money. Family costs,” she looked sideways at Minnie, “and some of us have inventor grandsons.”

“A good investment.” Minnie was proud. “Big Bob is a thinker. Why did you think Alexander Graham Bell spent his summers here and moved to Cape Breton when he retired? Nova Scotians are deep thinkers. We have given the world its best ideas.”

“And those are?” Joyce asked, giving me a wink. I had a feeling this was not the first time they had had this conversation.

I was right. Minnie was quick to answer. “One, we invented the portable ironing board. Two, a man in Halifax came up with the idea for backup lights for cars. Three, well, three was the big one.”

“Which was? Don’t tell me it was something Bob came up with,” Joyce said, teasing Minnie for my benefit.

“No, it wasn’t his idea,” Minnie admitted. “It could have been, but someone else got there first.” She paused. “Number three is hockey. Invented in Windsor, Nova Scotia, 1800.”

“You got a point there. That’s one idea that caught on,” Joyce conceded. She scanned the empty dining room for eavesdroppers. “This is all very educational for Valerie, but we should get back to business. Our proposal.”

“I’m listening,” I said, distracted and impressed by the butter tart. It wasn’t easy to make a pastry strong enough to contain a heavy filling and keep it this flakey. “Who made these?” I asked.

“My niece,” Joyce answered, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’ll get her to make you some. But listen. We have inventory we want to unload.”

“Something we’ve been hiding for years,” Bernadette added.

“Keeping it for emergencies,” Minnie said.

“We didn’t want to touch the capital.” Joyce reasserted herself as chief negotiator. “But at our age, with our expenses …”

“It’s time,” Bernadette interrupted. She had the most grandchildren. “You are the only person we trust to sell it.”

“Sell what?” I asked. Did they mean at the store in the Crafters’ Co-op? What were we discussing? Knitted socks? Tatted doilies?

“We’ll get to the what in a minute.” Bernadette looked to her partners for reassurance before she continued. “But whatever we tell you today has to stay between us.”

I looked outside at the view. It was a beautiful crisp day, one of the last of the summer. Perfect for a dog walk. Toby and I could drive to the north shore of the island and walk the beach. Agreeing to sell mitts shouldn’t take long.

“Between us,” I promised.

“Good,” Joyce said. “Because there’s one little problem with our goods.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

Joyce hesitated.

Minnie stepped in. She’d never had a business like Joyce, but she’d run a household for more than half a century on a fisherman’s wages. She wasn’t shy about talking dollars.

“What we’re looking to get onto the market is valuable. But the thing is,” she sighed, “we stole it.”

Crafting an Alibi, Gasper's Cove Mysteries Book 4, is available in paperback and ebook wherever books are sold. Find it here.

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Read the First Chapter of Crafting with Slander

Barbara Emodi — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The province wants to merge tiny Gasper's Cove with its bigger, brasher neighbour across the causeway, and Mayor "Mighty Mike" Murphy is racing to seal the deal. So the crafters of the Rankin's General co-op do what they do best: they fight back with stencilled signs, cross-stitched campaign buttons, and a candidate of their own. Valerie Rankin just wanted to run her family store and finish her sewing. Now she is a campaign manager. Crafting with Slander is the third book in the Gasper's Cove Mysteries, a warm, funny Canadian cozy series about small-town crafters, big-town politics, and the trouble that follows both. Here is Chapter One to get you started.

CHAPTER ONE

“Who has some dynamite? We’ve got to blow up the causeway.”

Annette LeBlanc slammed her phone down onto the Co-op counter. “Time we cut them off,” she said.

“Dynamite? Where are we going to get that?” I asked. I saw that the screen of her phone was now cracked. “Be practical.”

Annette stared at me while she thought. “Can’t you make explosives yourself? I remember something about baking soda and vinegar … ”

“That’s for sinks,” I reminded her. “For a big explosion, you need the real stuff.” I refocused. “But hang on. Why are we doing this?”

Sylvie interrupted before Annette could answer.

“If we can’t get explosives, how about a human chain?” she asked. Sylvie picked up the phone and read. “We can hold hands and block the road. No one gets in or out.”

Annette shook her head, bouncing the beach waves of her blond wig. “We can’t do that. My kids’ orthodontist is in Drummond.”

Sylvie considered this setback. “How about a giant knitted barrier with a button-up gate for emergencies? We could use up all that cheap acrylic.” She had once yarn-bombed the parking meters downtown with hand-knitted scarves. A graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Sylvie was a high-concept thinker.

But I was the manager. And we were crafters, not terrorists. “Give me that phone,” I said, prying it out of Sylvie’s hand. “What’s going on?”

As soon as I saw the headline, I knew.

The Towns of Gasper’s Cove and Drummond to Merge

Mayor Mike Murphy Seals the Deal

I could smell coconut hand cream behind me. My cousin Darlene had moved in to read over my shoulder. “That man lies like a carpet,” she sputtered. “He said it wouldn’t happen.” The coffee in Darlene’s hand splashed onto a display of stained-glass suncatchers. I reached for a paper towel. Darlene was on the Gasper’s Cove town council. If a merger was in the works, she would know. I sighed. The clean-up session I’d organized with the Co-op’s crafters was over. Dusters were down, outrage was up.

“Look what happened when they joined Musquodoboit with the Harbor.” An older volunteer’s voice shook. “It was a disaster.”

The room agreed. They’d heard the stories and repeated them now.

“Seniors couldn’t pay the new taxes. Lost their houses.”

“Cars got $50 tickets for parking on the street in a snowstorm.”

“The school closed.”

“It killed the place.”

“Turned Musquodoboit into a donut town. Good stuff on the edges. Hole in the middle.”

“They merge us, and the Agapi restaurant will be gone.”

“Put in an Olive Garden instead.”

“Replace this store with a Walmart.”

“Can’t do that, this is a heritage property.”

“All right then, they’d build a Walmart next door, just as bad.”

The group went silent. The Crafters’ Co-op was on the second floor of my family business, Rankin’s General, on Front Street, Gasper’s Cove, Nova Scotia. The store, like the street, hadn’t changed in 120 years.

“Mike can’t do this,” I argued. “Who gave him the right?”

“Those idiots at Province House, that’s who,” Darlene snapped. “The stupid government is offering $200,000 to municipalities willing to absorb smaller communities. The province is calling it rationalization.”

“Mike sold us out? For money?” I was shocked. I knew the mayor of Drummond. “Mighty Mike” Murphy was a classic back-slapping rural politician. Up to now, I had considered him harmless. “He can’t do that. We’re different towns,” I said.

Annette took her phone back. “That could change.” She started to read out loud. “Listen to this.”

As directed by the province, amalgamation can occur after a joint municipal election. The new councils would then decide whether they want to proceed as one or two towns. In a surprise move, Mayor Murphy has called for an election to accelerate the process of joining the communities.“I know what people want,” Murphy said. “Let the people vote. They’ll get behind whatever I think is best. You’re looking at the next mayor of a bigger, better, stronger municipality. Good as a done deal.”When asked by reporters what the expanded town would be called, Mayor Murphy said his preference would be DUM, Drummond United Municipality. Pressed on what the citizens of Gasper’s Cove would think of the new name, Mayor Murphy’s response was definitive.“They’ll get used to it.”

By the time Annette had finished reading, Darlene’s face was as red as her hair. I could see the wheels whirling behind my cousin’s blue eyes. I held my breath. What Darlene said next would be significant. She was as close to a real politician as anyone we knew.

“You know what this means?” she asked us. We didn’t, but waited to find out. “Once an election is called, the whole council is disbanded. That’s the system. Everything will be up to the new council and the new mayor. We need someone who won’t let this happen to run against Mike.”

“Maybe, what’s-his-name Nickerson,” I suggested. “The senator’s son. I heard he’s interested in the mayor’s job. He might knock out Mike.”

“Nickerson?” Darlene bristled. “Don’t trust him. He’s a bigger-is-better kind of guy.”

“It’s out of our hands then,” Annette said. “Who else is there?”

I had a queasy feeling in my stomach. I was afraid of what was coming next.

“Me,” Darlene said. “I will.”

I took off my work apron and put it on the hook behind the counter. I moved slowly as I tried to put together the right words. Darlene wasn’t up to this challenge. Couldn’t she see that?

“Look, you are an excellent hair stylist and great crocheter,” I began. I pointed to a display of her potholders as proof. “Besides, they already made you town councillor for this part of the island,” I reminded her. “Mayor of the whole thing is different.”

“Different? How?” Darlene asked. I knew that testy tone. I looked around to the rest of the group for support.

“To run for mayor, you need big money and connections,” Annette said, backing me up. “You need signs. You need buttons. You need speeches. You need workers.” She put her hand on Darlene’s shoulder and shook it, as if trying to jiggle in some common sense. “Think about it. You don’t have any of that. Dynamite would be easier.”

“We are talking about being taken over by Drummond.” Darlene moved out from under Annette’s hand. “You know what they’re like.”

We knew.

Only ten minutes apart, Gasper’s Cove, Nova Scotia (population 2,000) had absolutely nothing in common with Drummond (population 5,000). Over here, we had history, craftspeople, and artists. Over there, on the other side of the causeway, they had an outlet store, a call center, and a tire plant. Even worse, for decades, the citizens of Drummond had called us the Last Gaspers from Last Gasp. If they thought we hadn’t heard them, they were wrong.

I knew when I was defeated. Darlene had been standing up to bullies ever since we were kids.

“I’ve got an idea for signs,” one of our members said, breaking the silence. “Stencils. I did a border on a bedroom once. It’s not hard.” A couple of her friends nodded; stenciling had been big in the 1990s. Many of them still had the brushes down in the basement.

Our best baby-clothes knitter, Tilly Ferguson, put up her hand. Working small was her specialty. “What about campaign buttons?” she asked. “They’d be like coasters with a pin on the back. I could get the girls at church to start cross-stitching.”

Darlene suddenly looked taller. “I can talk,” she said. “I can make speeches. And for a campaign manager”—she elbowed me in the ribs—“I’ve got my relatives.”

I didn’t say anything. Instead, I moved away to the big semicircular window. I looked out over the water. I couldn’t do it. I already managed a store, ran the Co-op, and was behind in my sewing. I wasn’t even sure I had voted in the last election. I stalled. I pretended to admire the view.

On the street below, I saw a car towing a tent trailer pull up next to the wharf. Ontario plates. A young couple got out. The man was about the same age as my sons. I thought that I recognized him—he must be home for a visit. Across from him, the young woman posed in front of a pile of lobster traps. The young man held up his phone and took a picture. The couple both studied the phone and laughed, no doubt posting for the benefit of friends in Toronto.

I remembered then that Darlene had come to the house to do my hair the morning after the last of my children left home. I turned around.

“If there’s no one else,” I said. “I’ll do it. I’ll try.”

Darlene reached across the counter and crushed me in a hug. I could feel the relief in her body. Then, a shadow passed across her face.

“What will I wear?” she asked, stricken.

“I have your measurements,” I reassured her. I sewed, she didn’t. “We’ll figure it out.”

Across from us, Sylvie worked her way to the front of the group. She smelled strongly of fish. No wonder her seaweed cosmetics were hard to sell. “I’ll help with the signs,” she said. “But I have one question. What will they say?”

We looked at each other. Our minds went blank.

Then, it came to me like a vision. I could see it as if it were floating in the sky, above the waves. In big letters.

“DUM is DUMB,” I blurted. “VOTE DARLENE.”

There was silence while everyone considered this idea, then applause. I felt proud. I had coined my first political slogan.

“Perfect,” Darlene said. It was done.

“Mighty Mike has no idea who he is dealing with,” she whispered to me.

No, he didn’t.

But neither did we.

Crafting with Slander, Gasper's Cove Mysteries Book 3, is available in paperback and ebook wherever books are sold. Find it here.

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Read the First Chapter of Crafting Deception

Barbara Emodi — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When a length of yellowed silk turns up in a bin at the Recreate and Recycle Depot, Valerie Rankin's sewing eye knows it is something special: a World War II parachute, the kind wartime brides once cut down into wedding dresses. But this one travelled a long way to a small town on the coast of Nova Scotia, and the story of how it got here reaches back to a secret buried aboard a gold ship in 1939. Crafting Deception is the second book in the Gasper's Cove Mysteries, a warm, funny Canadian cozy series about small-town crafters, the treasures hiding in plain sight, and the trouble that comes looking for them. Here are the Prologue and Chapter One to get you started.

PROLOGUE

Hms Emerald, September 1939

Ordinary Seamen Jones and Mowat stared down.

“This is the top-secret mission? Bars of soap?”

“Don’t be daft, mate. Don’t you know gold when you see it?”

“Gold? That’s the cargo going across the Atlantic to Canada. What for?”

“Where have you been? There’s a war on. Her Majesty’s government needs to buy arms from the Yanks.”

“Well, my lad, what’s the big plan? It was your idea to drop the crate to see what was in it. What do we do now? We can’t nick it.”

“True enough. They’ll count the bars for sure. But hang on, what’s this? There’s a pouch underneath, at the side. Almost missed it.”

“Come on, what do you see? What’s in it?”

“Not sure. Looks like some old rubbish jewelry to me, but if it wasn’t valuable, it wouldn’t be here. Get a move on, help me nail these boards back.”

“You’re keeping it?”

“Safekeeping’s more like it. I know just the spot we can stow it until we dock in Halifax. Some blokes there will buy anything. Might as well have something for our troubles,” Mowat said.

Jones smiled and picked up a hammer.

No one would ever know.

CHAPTER ONE

“How about this? Voodoo knife, gently used?” Annette’s flowered pen was poised above a card.

“You are a genius,” I said. “Do it. How else are we going to get rid of an old carving knife?” That settled, I reached into the bin of textiles, my specialty, and pulled out a cotton rectangle. “Now who would donate a tea towel with rust stains on it?” I asked the room.

Annette put down her pen and moved in for a closer look; as manager, she was in charge of quality control. “Hydrogen peroxide, that’s what you need. Those are old blood stains, but that will take them out. Trust me, I have boys.”

“How about we sell them together? The knife and the bloody tea towel. Make them a set?” Catherine suggested. For the town librarian, she was an unexpectedly inventive volunteer. It was her idea to attach quirky note cards to our hard-to-identify items before we put them out on the shelves of the Recreate and Recycle Depot.

“Sure. Can you do that, Darlene?” I asked my cousin and best friend. There was no response.

I waved my hand in front of Darlene’s unfocused eyes. “You okay?” I asked. Our shift was almost done, and then I was back to the Crafter’s Co-op. We had to keep moving.

Darlene shook her henna waves and met my eyes. “Sorry, I have a lot on my mind.”

“Like what?”

Darlene reached for a folding chair behind our communal worktable and sat down. “My mother is trying to kill me,” she said.

“What? Why would you even say that?” This made no sense. All the time I was growing up, I thought my aunt Colleen was the perfect mother. I’d wanted to live in her house instead of in the spotless order of mine, her home had a different project in every room—a glue gun plugged in on the kitchen counter, a pattern pinned to fabric on the ping-pong table in the basement, unconnected granny squares on the backseat of the car, and half-done mittens on the arm of the recliner. Colleen seemed incapable of not making things, but as I got older, it became clear to me that women like her did crafts precisely so they didn’t kill anyone. In her case, that would have been my uncle, a charming man who did “this and that,” and her seven reckless just-like-their-father boys. I was sure Colleen wasn’t out to murder her daughter, the only responsible member of the family besides herself.

Darlene stared up at the metal trusses in the ceiling of the building, here on the edge of Drummond’s industrial park, and sighed.

“It’s the move,” she said. “I’m down to my last nerve. Now that Dad’s gone, Mom can’t keep living alone at the end of that road. Coming into town is for her own good. But I swear, by the time we get that house cleared out, there will be nothing left of me.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I ignored it. This was more important.

It buzzed again.

“Can you be specific?” Catherine asked. “What’s the problem?”

Darlene swept her eyes around the jumbled mess of the Depot’s intake room as she struggled to explain. “The house is like this place, but worse. She saved everything.”

I picked up some lace yardage and pulled it straight along the measuring tape on the side of the table. Darlene’s mother taught me to sew when I was eight. I still used those skills in the sewing classes I taught. What could I say in her defense?

“Maybe your mom doesn’t want to see her whole life lined up in garbage bags along the road,” I suggested. “She was raised when it was a sin to waste anything. Tell her to donate. Look around here.”

Annette agreed with me. “Listen, that’s what we did with Mom’s jewelry collection. She sold Avon for forty years and owned every piece of jewelry they ever put out. We gave up trying to figure out what to do with it, so we took our pick and brought the rest in here. It just made sense.”

Darlene stared at the bins around us, filled to the top with remnants of fabric, beads, craft loom bands, faded embroidery transfers, tufts of wool roving, and abandoned quilt pieces.

“You don’t get it. Mom wants to dole it out. She’s obsessed. Do I want the plate the Girl Guides gave her when she was commissioner in 1967? Do I want the flannelette for the pajamas she cut out when I was six?” Darlene’s eyes went glassy with tears. Catherine pulled a neatly folded tissue out of the pocket of her jeans, the denim faded along the pressing marks down the legs, and handed it to her.

Darlene sniffed. “If I say no, I don’t want it, she says someone might, it’s still good, hangs up, and phones the boys. Then, my brothers call me to say make her stop bugging us. I can’t take much more of this.”

Catherine snorted in a very un-librarian-like way. “It’s always the daughter who gets stuck with the work,” she said, with the authority of someone who had been there herself. “Nothing causes trouble in a family like possessions. Two of my aunts are still not speaking because one of them sold my grandmother’s Singer Featherweight.” We considered this. Maybe the angry aunt had a point; those machines had a beautiful straight stitch.

“It’s so hard being the only girl,” Darlene continued, her hands twisting purple rickrack into a looped figure eight between her French manicured fingers. “The boys are useless. They only did the garage in case Granddad hid booze in there during his rum-running days, but that’s it.” Her voice rose with desperation. “Mom keeps saying, ‘I’ll make a pile.’ Do you know how many piles there are in that house? If we ever had to call the paramedics, all they’d find would be a little old lady buried under a thousand tiny balls of leftover yarn.”

“There’s your answer right there,” Catherine said. “You’ve just got to get through to her that what she gives away might be useful to someone.”

Catherine was right. “Good point,” I said. Why, just past the doors of this room, customers were waiting to buy donated sewing machines, checked by someone named Ralph, “working moderate, foot pedal not too bad,” bundles of old National Geographics, a fur stole with one mink eye missing, and matted wigs. No one should ever underestimate the creative consumer’s ability to see potential in just about anything.

Darlene was unconvinced. “I’ll talk to her, not that it will do much good.”

I started to argue but was interrupted when Annette tossed a loose cloud of fabric onto the middle of the worktable.

“Val, you’re the sewing teacher. What’s this? Silk?” Annette asked, spreading out a large thin sheet of yellowed fabric, tightly woven, with flat-felled seams along its length.

“Hang on,” I said, moving quickly across the room, a prospector spotting a gold nugget in a stream of polyester remnants. I reached out and rubbed an edge between my thumb and fingers. “I think you’re right. It’s silk.”

“It’s made into something. What is it?” Darlene asked. “A sail?”

Catherine raised her glasses from the chain around her neck and lifted a corner of the fabric to have a closer look. “No, it’s not a sail. Do you know what this is? It’s an old parachute from the war. The harness has been cut off, but look, it still has a few of the D rings.”

I stared at her. “Are you serious? A parachute? How do you know?”

“I’ve seen these in books,” Catherine said, letting her glasses fall onto her Liberty print blouse. “I’m sure that’s what it is, from World War II. The men brought the parachutes home, and the girls made wedding dresses from them. My mother’s sister was married in one. She used the same parachute that saved her fiancé’s life when he was shot down. They had to sew appliqués over the bullet holes.”

This was our heritage, resourceful women. “Just think, it was the only fabric they had to work with,” I said. “Kind of sad and happy at the same time. But how did something like that end up here, in a small town on the coast of Nova Scotia?”

Catherine shrugged. “Who knows? Bit of a mystery. But the point is, we can’t put this out to sell. It’s an artifact. I’ll take it,” she said, reaching for the fabric. “I’ll find out where we should send it. They’d know at the Archives in Halifax.”

“Hang on,” Darlene said, no longer interested in her mother’s move. “Do you think we’re looking at a tragic love story?” she whispered, laying a reverent hand on the fabric. “Maybe some bride saved this silk for a wedding dress she never made.” She bent down. “Look, there are numbers and a word stenciled on the hem at the bottom. It’s blurry, but I can still read it. ‘Fairy’ something. How sweet is that?”

“Very sweet,” I said, cutting Darlene off. My cousin’s three marriages had not ended well, but she remained a romantic, something I’d left behind a long time ago. I was more intrigued by the parachute’s strange arrival in this room. “If only objects could talk,” I said. “I wonder who dropped this off.”

“I can ask,” offered Annette. “We take donations every Tuesday. Next time she’s in, I’ll ask the lady who handles it if she knows anything.”

“Would you?” I said. “There’s a story there, and I’d love to know what it is.” My phone buzzed in my pocket again. Who was trying so hard to reach me?

I pulled out my phone and looked down. There were six texts from Rollie, another cousin, and manager of Rankin’s General, our family store over in Gasper’s Cove. Bad news. Found Waldo.

Waldo. That would be Wally Butt from “Wally’s Authentic Celtic Tours,” a man as famous for fabricating the facts he told tourists as for getting lost. The locals had nicknamed him “Where’s Waldo” Butt. But where had Rollie found Waldo? Good news. He brought friends.

Rollie meant customers. One of Wally’s tours had landed at the store. Bad news. They’re running around in the Co-op.

Rats. Rollie had no idea how to work the vintage cash register on the second floor. Need more hands on deck. Polly at school.

Not good. Thirteen-year-old Polly, the store’s unofficial helper, wouldn’t be there until the bus dropped her off at 3:30, and Donald “Duck” MacDonald, our ex-con handyman, was probably waiting out the tour’s visit down in the basement with Shadow, the store cat.

There was no need to listen to the voicemail. Rollie, a lovely man but no retailer, was alone with a liar on wheels and tourists rifling through our crafts.

I tapped back as quickly as I could.

Hang on.

Don’t let anything happen.

On our way.

I looked at all the donations still to be sorted, and then at Darlene. “Crisis across the causeway,” I whispered.

Darlene did a mental translation—she knew this meant time for a Rollie rescue. “Let’s hustle,” she said, grabbing her purse from behind a stack of jackets and following me out the door to the parking lot out front.

Once we were settled in the car and Darlene had snapped on her seatbelt, she looked over at me. “There’s a name for it, on the tip of my tongue,” she said.

Distracted, I flipped on my left turn signal, ready to turn onto the road that led over the water to Gasper’s Cove. Fifteen minutes tops and we’d be there. How much could happen in fifteen minutes?

“Name for what?”

“Like my aunt’s chair,” Darlene said.

Where did that come from? “Chair? Darlene, you have a lot of aunts, and they have a lot of chairs.”

“Frank’s wife, that aunt, you know, the fancy one in her entry? They found it on the beach, set up on the rocks like someone had been sitting there and got up and walked away,” Darlene persisted. “You know what I mean, don’t you? A thing that washes ashore, and they never know where it came from? What do they call it?”

“Not a clue,” I said, which was true.

Darlene held her bag tightly on her lap and stared out the window down at the water on either side of the short land bridge we called the causeway that connected the town of Drummond to our little community.

Her head snapped up. “Got it. I remember,” she said, pleased with herself.

I looked over.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Ghost gear,” Darlene said. “They call it ghost gear.”

Crafting Deception, Gasper's Cove Mysteries Book 2, is available in paperback and ebook wherever books are sold. Find it here.

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Read the First Chapter of Crafting for Murder

Barbara Emodi — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Valerie Rankin has come home to Gasper's Cove, a small coastal Nova Scotia town where the fishery has slowed and just about everyone makes something: they knit, crochet, carve, sew, throw pots. Her plan is simple. Get all those crafts out of people's houses and into a co-op on the second floor of the family's general store. How hard could it be? Crafting for Murder is the first book in the Gasper's Cove Mysteries, a warm, funny Canadian cozy mystery series about ordinary people, the things they make, and the trouble that finds them anyway. Here is Chapter One to get you started.

CHAPTER ONE

Gerry Richards, CKGC Gasper’s Cove’s “Voice of the Waves”, spoke into the mic, but his eyes were on me.

“Valerie Rankin, are you saying you tricked the province into believing in a business that doesn’t exist, selling merchandise you don’t really have?”

He sat back and waited.

The roots of my hair prickled, hot under the tight leatherette headset. The tiny wood panelled room closed in on me. It smelled of Old Spice and burnt coffee. The last time I’d been in a radio station I was working as a night cleaner at the CBC offices in Halifax. When my third cousin here said he could set up an interview because the announcer owed him rent, he didn’t tell me it was going to be this hard.

“Gerry, it’s not the way it sounds. The Department of Tourism wanted businesses owned by women for the ‘Out and About’ guide. I went online and applied. Wasn’t expecting to hear back, to be honest.” Had this man never had nothing to lose? Never done anything on impulse?

“You told them about a grand opening of some kind of crafter’s co-op, am I right?” Gerry was awfully smug for a man in a one room radio station above the Credit Union on Front Street, in an office chair missing one wheel, duct tape holding it all together.

“Look, this is rural Nova Scotia,” I said. “All I want is to get crafts out of people’s houses and into a central location.” How hard could it be? “Everyone in Gasper’s Cove makes something. It’s all there is to do, now the fishery’s slowed down. We knit, crochet, carve, sew, make pots, jewelry.” I looked up at the foam egg cartons stapled to the ceiling.

Gerry leaned towards me, pilled fleece vest, zipped and straining over a worn poly-cotton shirt. As a garment sewer, I knew this was a tough body to dress well. Gerry wasn’t even trying.

“Where’s this co-op of yours, this consignment shop thing, located?”

“It’s not exactly located yet Gerry. We’re in the process of setting it up on the second floor of our store, you know Rankin General, down the street.”

“Not ready?” Gerry let his rich baritone linger, letting the folks at home appreciate the gravity of my situation.

“The space will be ready, no problem,” I said. “We’ve just got to clean it up a bit and start collecting crafts.”

“How do you propose to do that?” Gerry asked.

“I’ve told my sewing students to spread the word,” I said, catching Gerry’s smirk at the mention of what, to him, was a mundane, female, activity. “We’ve put up notices around town, and I thought anyone listening can contact me.” The next part I’d rehearsed. Speaking slowly and carefully I recited my cell phone number and email address and asked anyone interested to drop off samples at the store.

It was a relief when Gerry turned from me to his mic, raised a finger for me to wait, listened to something only he could hear, and flicked a switch. The faint beat of the “Guess Who” echoed in the room.

I was done.

Sliding his headset off and down his neck, Gerry reached for mine. “The warden’s got a bigger head than you, more ways than one, had to adjust this. First time doing radio?” he asked, as he leaned into me, brushing his hands over my hair as he freed me from the earphones. He’d had bacon and onions for lunch.

I tried to keep steady in my own tippy chair. “I’ve been in studios before, but only behind the scenes.”

“Thought so. Got to do these community interest spots, but investigative journalism is more my beat. Plus, I’ve got a face for radio,” Gerry chuckled, enjoying the worn joke. “I send young Noah out to do the human-interest stuff. He’s off now covering the plot to replace the crossing guard at the school with a bucket of flags. Technology, displacing the honest worker,” Gerry paused, waiting for a reaction.

“What’s next? Robots for teachers?” I asked, weakly attempting humour.

Gerry stared at me in silence. Wit was his job, not mine. “Whatever. I handle the big stories. Had the warden in to talk about himself a while ago, didn’t get what he expected.” Gerry looked pleased with himself as he walked his chair over closer to me.

“We’ll air this in the next day or two. Why don’t I have you in every week over the next month, help build momentum? With my help, you might pull this off.” The announcer reached out a moist hand to squeeze my wrist and held on. “We’ve been like ships passing in the night, Val. You left for the city about when I moved here. Now you’re back, we should go out for beer, make up for lost time,” he leaned in. “Talk business.”

I’d rather replace a zipper in a pair of jeans I thought. “Sure. Maybe. When I’m not so busy.” I said, extracting my arm from Gerry’s grip, my watch catching on the heavy links of the gold-plated bracelet on his wrist. Pulling myself free, I stood up too quickly, and knocked a chair, with a crash, onto the studio floor.

And I left.

But before I closed the door behind me, I turned and looked back. There he was, the “Voice of the Waves” himself, classic rock in the background, electrical cords tangled around his feet, a broken chair in his hands.

My mind snapped a picture. I’d remember this.

Crafting for Murder, Gasper's Cove Mysteries Book 1, is available in paperback and ebook wherever books are sold. Find it here.

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Read the Introduction and First Essay from HOW TO BE AN OLDER WOMAN FOR BEGINNERS

Barbara Emodi — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For anyone who ever went looking for the So You Want to Be an Older Woman manual and came up empty: here it is, more or less. How to Be an Older Woman for Beginners is a collection of essays about getting older, drawn from my Substack of the same name. Written on dog walks and posted from a kitchen table in Nova Scotia, these are dispatches from the far bookend of life, the one nobody hands you instructions for, delivered with humour and a strong suspicion that karma is, in fact, a thing. Here are the Introduction and the first essay to get you started.

INTRODUCTION

Growing up in the sixties in a small town on the Canadian prairies, I spent considerable time at the local library, a decommissioned bank building on the main street. There I looked for guidance on how to live in a world beyond my own immediate experience. I read British books about children who went to the seaside (I didn't see the ocean until I was eighteen), built tree houses (all I knew were pliable, windbreak poplars), and made bonfires (something only the local farmers did when it was time to burn off the fields).

Those Enid Blyton-era books, housed in the children's department in the old bank's basement, next to the giant safe, always made me feel inadequate. But a sympathetic librarian noticed me, and no doubt feeling the claustrophobia of her own underground workplace, gave me special permission to go upstairs and borrow adult books.

It was there on the main floor of grown-up publications, under the vaulted ceiling and among the Corinthian columns of the building's pre-retirement life, that I discovered the mesmerising 600s (Applied Science) and the 700s (Arts and Recreation) of the Dewey Decimal system. In those rows of books, I found exactly what my ten-year-old soul sought: manuals for life outside the dusty city limits defined by the last street, where my family lived.

The best books, the ones I hungered for, all had titles that started the same way: So You Want to Be a Bee-Keeper, So You Want to Build Your Own Seaworthy Boat, So You Want to Spin the Wool of the Black-Faced Sheep.

I didn't know what my future would hold, but I knew I wanted to be ready for it, so I read. In 1962, I already suspected life would require more from me than my Brownie Darning Badge.

The years that followed didn't require many of those library-learned skills, but the you-can-figure-it-out, how-hard-can-it-be? attitude they expressed stayed with me and defined who I became. Usually, this approach has been all I needed, that is, until I approached the other bookend of existence. The mature, post-retirement, senior years.

Where were the So You Want to Be an Older Woman books when I needed them?

Nowhere I could find.

Instead, I picked up manuals for responding to tough times by climbing mountains or rowing across the Atlantic. How-tos on how not to lose muscle mass or mental marbles. Manifestos of spunk (written, I suspected, by women in bright glasses and turquoise lace-up boots), that were both exhausting or exhausted; I wasn't sure which. Like most women, I had spent my life meeting impossible standards. Measuring up and making the best of it. Delivering, compensating as a matter of course, serving myself last at every buffet.

What I didn't need now was a postscript disguised as yet another job description.

But what did the alternative look like? For someone like me? A person making it up as she went along, fortifying herself only with humour and a strong suspicion that, yes, karma was a thing?

Where were the instructions for that life?

I decided that the book I wanted to read was going to be one I wrote myself. And I did that in a Substack column called, How to Be an Older Woman for Beginners. A selection of those essays is collected here.

In many ways, this book is a shared journal, a record of thoughts about this stage of life, mulled over on a dog walk, written and posted when I get home.

This project was nurtured by reader reactions expressed in both posted comments and personal emails. This ongoing connection has reassured me that, whatever this stage of my journey brings, I am not travelling the road alone.

There is nothing ordinary about ordinary women. I'm one myself. I know.

My readers have brought me here. I hope some of these words land somewhere useful or at least make us both smile. After all, these decades call on us to be both wise and brave, but they never ask that we do it alone, or without humour. Let's chat about that.

THE DEMOTION
(from Part One: Job Reassignment)

I am in the hallway. This is the only place where there is room for the table. I am alone with five hundred envelopes and five hundred fundraising letters.

In another part of this building, some of the kids I taught are at work. One is the director of communications.

I retired. Time to volunteer, I thought. There is an annual telethon. I could help. I know the producers. I know the anchors. I have worked with the reporters.

The woman who brought me to the hall appears.

“You know the lady who usually does this has a system. Two piles,” she says. “She'll be back next week.”

I won't be.

Later on my morning walk, I pass a woman from the neighbourhood. I don't know her well, but I recognize her from events at the school when my children were little.

“Do you want someone to walk with you?” she asks. She used to organise mile-long street sales year after year. Then they stopped. I wondered if she had moved. “My husband doesn't walk.”

“How are you these days?” I ask.

“You know, getting older.” She is my age. “Let me give you my phone number.” She reaches for a pencil and paper in her pocket. She writes down half of her phone number and looks up at me. “What's the rest of it? I don't phone myself.”

When I go home, I put her phone number under a magnet on the fridge.

I wasn't expecting this. Every other stage of my life, I figured it out. That's what I will try to do now.

How to Be an Older Woman for Beginners is available as an ebook, exclusively on Amazon and free to read in Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback wherever books are sold. Find it on Amazon here: [ADD AMAZON LINK]

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Read the First Chapter of Memo to Murder

Barbara Emodi — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Meet Heidi Macdonald: twenty-seven years old, living in her parents' basement, unable to drive, and somehow just hired as a research and communications officer for the Official Opposition in a Nova Scotia legislature that has no idea what it has let in. Memo to Murder is the first book in the Unintentional Sleuth Mysteries, a comic Canadian cozy mystery series set in the world of provincial politics, where the memos are dull, the politicians are duller, and an accidental amateur sleuth is about to find that Question Period is the least of anyone's problems. Here is Chapter One to get you started.

CHAPTER 1

“Tell us about your research experience.”

The man with the blue and white provincial flag pinned on his lapel leaned back in his chair. He had a scholar’s long, pale fingers, and a bureaucrat’s comfortable paunch. As Chief of Staff, Trevor Mackay had better things to do than interview junior staffers. His job was to take care of elected members in the House of Assembly, not to hire temporary staff. Already he knew this young woman in the wrinkled dress wouldn’t last long. None of them did. Some quit. Others disappeared. He never asked why, or where they went.

In her chair near the door, Heidi shifted and tried to think. After her exit interview at the call centre, when the manager reminded her, the job was to sell product, not run a helpline, she’d applied for every position advertised. The next interview, after this one, was for a booking clerk at a pest control company with technicians who drove tiny cars with giant mouse ears on the roofs. She hoped they employed cats.

“Research?” Heidi repeated. This man was clearly the boss. She should say something intelligent. “I was published,” she offered. It was true. “In Threads magazine.” They had put out a call for readers’ opinions on sewing machine attachments. She’d responded. Her submission, all six hundred words of it, was in issue 45, volume 7. The editor sent her a free copy. She gave it to her mother for Christmas.

“Treads? As in tires? Like on roads?” Ralphie Porter, representative from the most rural riding in the province, woke up. He reached for his takeout coffee and sloshed it over his copy of Heidi’s resume. “We need someone on that file.” He slurped from a paper cup, adding wet stains to his tie.

“True enough,” the Chief of Staff admitted. He eyed the representative from up the shore. Ralphie was a man Trevor would cross the street to avoid, if he could get away with it. But since politicians like this one paid his salary, Trevor arranged his features in what he hoped was a thoughtful expression.

Ralphie patted his jacket looking for a pen, gave up, pulled a toothpick and a tiny tin of breath mints from an inner pocket of his sagging Harris tweed jacket.

“If they call the election for July, we should be ready,” Trevor admitted. Voters complained about potholes. Insurance companies filed claims. A tourist bus had refused to cross a scenic bridge. The driver said it looked unsafe. Roads were an issue, and it was the job of the Official Opposition to embarrass the party in power. Question Period, when the Legislature was in session, was the best place to do that. But whenever Ralphie, the Opposition transportation critic, staggered to his feet in the House to ask a question, he fumbled and the government benches snickered. Ralphie blamed the staff for writing him lousy questions. Trevor was responsible for staff.

Furtively, the Chief of Staff pretended to look at the folder in front of him but used this as an excuse to check his watch. It was time to be decisive and get out of this room. “Someone who knows about vehicles wouldn’t hurt,” he admitted. At least this girl looked harmless, unquestioning, which was better than the rest of the candidates. Plus, she was published, which was something. Trevor Mackay was a snob. He turned to the woman in outsized, black-rimmed glasses who had led Heidi into the room.

“Cindy, can you do the paperwork?” he asked.

Cindy Russell, Trevor’s Executive Assistant, and in her mind the gatekeeper of all civilization, glared at her immediate supervisor, telegraphing her extreme disagreement with this decision. Trevor ignored her, stood up, hugged the folder to his chest, and left.

“Excellent,” she called after him. There was no way this girl would last long. “Good call,” she tossed out to the empty hall.

Cindy sighed and reached a dry hand across the boardroom table and shook Heidi’s hand. Her eyes lingered on the new hire’s unpainted nails and the pet hair in her dress. “Welcome aboard. Ms. Macdonald. You are now a research and communications officer with the province’s Official Opposition.”

* * *

“How is this going to work again?” Lauren asked. “I mean, have you ever voted?”

“Of course I have,” Heidi said. She hoped her sister wouldn’t ask her who for, or when. “Who doesn’t vote?”

“Did they look at your resume?” Lauren raised her spoon and stabbed it into the froth of her grande lavender oat latte. Lauren’s own resume included an early acceptance into medical school. She had tried to fix Heidi’s up, changing her sister’s role as a cleaner at their grandfather’s drugstore to “a leadership role as a key member of the property management team.” It was an improvement. But still.

“Not sure they understood it,” Heidi confessed. “But I aced the interview.”

Lauren refolded her used napkin along its crease lines and laid her spoon on top of it to signal she was done. She flicked her flat-ironed auburn hair over her straight shoulders and realigned. “How long is the probationary period?”

Heidi had an answer for this. Cindy had gone over this at least three times when Heidi signed the papers.

“Two months.”

Lauren’s eyes glided around the coffee shop as she considered strategies. Her sister was completely unqualified for the position, but it was a job. With pension and benefits.

“William,” she said, pronouncing the name that solved all problems. “He works for a minister. Economic and Rural Development. He can explain how government works.”

Heidi gagged on her peppermint tea. She would rather stick darning needles in her eyes than be lectured to by her sister’s boyfriend. William Armstrong, never Bill, Billy, or Will, had cornered her last Easter dinner to explain the finer points of squash and sailing, his biceps tight in his polyester golf shirt. Polyester. He had stood between Heidi and the desserts on the counter, lecturing and making her miss the round two call for blueberry pie. She had not forgiven him for that.

“No thanks,” Heidi said. It felt odd to be sitting here, inactive, listening to her sister talk. Usually, when she was in a coffee shop, she knitted. A person could get a whole cardigan done if they made the most of every small corner of time.

Lauren stared at her sister and re-positioned. “What exactly do they want you to do?”

“Research. Write questions for the members to ask the government in the House. You know, put them on the spot, find dirt. Expose corruption.” Heidi was aware of making this up as she went along. She had often been on the spot herself. She figured she could do this job by instinct. “I can Google anything I need to know. How hard can it be?” she asked.

Lauren didn’t answer and instead picked up the bill. She slapped down her American Express card and assessed her sister. Heidi wore a linen dress she’d made from a pattern in a Japanese pattern book. It was creased and baggy. Heidi must have got the instructions wrong. She didn’t read Japanese. She also didn’t drive, was twenty-seven, and lived in their parents’ basement.

Lauren would take her sister shopping before dropping her back at the house. They were all worried about Heidi. William was too.

She had to do something.

Memo to Murder is available as an ebook, exclusively on Amazon and free to read in Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback wherever books are sold. More here.

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Read the First Chapter of Last Stitch Effort

Barbara Emodi — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Christmas has come to Gasper’s Cove. Krista Willett only meant to deliver poinsettias, not to be talked into sewing forty-seven elf hats for the school concert, and certainly not into another murder. Across town, Kenny McQuarrie has a resized ring, a plan to propose, and three credit cards that have all, somehow, just been declined. Here is the first chapter of this festive Nova Scotia cozy mystery.

All she could see of the body were two legs.

The rest was under the wooden lid.

There, on the black and white keys, he was folded away. Only his striped socks and black pointy boots had escaped the closed top of the piano.

Krista knew how the Elf on the Shelf felt. Christmas was going to be the death of her, too.

“Mrs. Willett?” the voice asked. “Did you hear me?”

Krista refocused. She looked at Patricia Taylor. The music teacher was new to Gasper’s Cove. The parents thought she was there to teach their children. Miss Taylor thought she was Nova Scotia’s answer to Andrew Lloyd Weber. She assumed the school was on Broadway.

“Yes, I did,” Krista admitted. She tried to block out the memory. The classroom was too warm. It smelled of wet winter clothes. “You asked me to make forty-seven elf hats. By next week.”

Miss Taylor lifted her clipboard from one bony, flannel knee and carefully drew a line across a list. A few stray hairs escaped from the tight French roll of her shoe-polish black hair. She pushed the strands behind one ear. Stress mixed with excitement radiated from her body.

Krista moved back in her chair. She felt its hard wooden rungs press into her spine. She was at the school to deliver poinsettias, not to be conscripted into sewing for the holiday concert.

Miss Taylor pulled her lips back over her teeth in a version of a smile.

“I want this concert to be memorable,” she said, leaning forward. “I’ve lined up a reviewer. That famous author. You know the one with the voice?” The blank look on Krista’s face surprised her. “The one who reads A Christmas Carol every year on CBC radio?”

It clicked. Thomas Reilly. The man who’d made his reputation selling nostalgia for a Nova Scotia that had never existed —heavy on the quaint, but light on the quirkiness, intrigue, and wit of the real place. His books sold well outside the province.

“I know who you mean,” she said. “What about him?”

“He does an annual feature on holidays on the East Coast. A different community every year. I made a list. I wrote him an email. I told him it was our turn.” Her voice became wistful. “They love everything he writes in New York.” The big-city schools would want her after this. Maybe even Halifax. Not New York, but headed in the right direction. One step at a time. She raised her chin with pride. “We’re sold out.”

“Sold out?” Krista asked. “Isn’t the gym always full?”

Miss Taylor laughed. “No. There’s mould in the gym. It’s shut down for remediation. Whatever that is.” Those sweaty children and their damp socks, she thought. They were to blame. “We’re performing at Seaview Manor this year,” she said. Thank goodness the author was related to the man who ran the place. It might make him kinder about the venue.

“The Manor?” Krista was surprised. “My husband’s grandmother lives there. “The seniors will love a sing-along with the kids.”

“A sing-along? You’re joking.” The music teacher was scandalized. “Not in my production. There’s no time. The music is all arranged. Seventeen pieces, three hours, not counting the intermission.” She paused, imagining her success, visualizing the press release she had written and would send out after the concert. Patricia Taylor’s Music Puts Gasper’s Cove on the Map.

She paused, remembering she was not alone in the room. “How hard would it be to make snowflake costumes?” she asked. “Ones that sparkled, maybe with lights?”

Krista chose her words carefully. This was her boys’ teacher. Both Billy, the trombone player, and Sammy, on flute, were on probation for various reasons with this educator. “Maybe you can find someone else to do that,” she suggested. “I’m working for Harry Sutherland, delivering floral arrangements.” She had to get this conversation away from more sewing. “That’s the reason I’m here.”

“The flowers. I forgot,” the music teacher said. “Of course. But since you have a sewing machine. But if you don’t have the time, I understand.” Her teacher’s stare made it clear she wouldn’t understand at all. Too much was at stake. “But we need those hats. And your boys volunteered you,” she added, knowing that this would clinch the deal.

Krista’s heart sank. As a matter of policy, Sammy and Billy usually didn’t want her anywhere near the school, much less involved with their activities. They believed deep in their souls that the less their mom knew, the better. The concert would give Krista an opportunity to find out more about her sons’ secret life outside her house, and she knew it.

* * *

“In that case, how can I say no?” she asked. “It’s Christmas.” Kenny pushed the door of the Halifax jewelry store open. The wreath jingled. This was the beginning of the rest of his life. After today, he would no longer be on the outside, looking in. Soon, he would be one of the husbands, stopping on the way home from work to buy flowers at the Foodmart on Valentine’s Day. Soon, he would be one of the men who left right after bowling. “I’d love to have a beer,” he’d tell the guys, “but the wife’s got dinner waiting for me at home.” After today he would think of himself differently and not be the same person at all.

“Can I help you?”

The girl behind the counter was the jeweller’s daughter. She had the same eyes and the same thick, dark hair. She looked calm, organized, and efficient. What would she think of a middle-aged man, in to pick up an engagement ring?

“I called?” Kenny began. “I’m here for meetings, down from Gasper’s Cove.” This girl didn’t need to know that. He was prattling on, trying to normalize his nervousness. She was so young; he felt so old. “I left a ring to be resized last month. Your dad said it would be ready. I am going to propose this Christmas. That’s when my parents got engaged.” This was more detail that didn’t matter to anyone but himself.

The young woman smiled politely. “That’s so sweet,” she said, and then, more professionally, “Your name?”

“Oh sorry. MacQuarrie.” Kenny tried to hide his excitement. “It’s my mother’s ring.”

The clerk nodded and pulled open a drawer beneath the counter. Kenny studied the display under the glass. On the right were watches, brighter and more garish than anything he would wear, with more dials and numbers than he had on the dashboard of his car. Next to the watches, on the left, were the wedding ring sets, with two vertical rows of men’s rings to match. He’d get himself a ring too, like modern men did, unlike his father, who never wore rings because they got in the way at work. Annette could help him pick one out.

The young woman stopped walking her fingers through the drawer and pulled out a white paper bag. She laid it down on the counter and carefully spread out a large square of navy-blue velvet. With reverence, she opened the bag and slid its contents onto the pile of the fabric.

The ring looked the same, only brighter. Kenny knew it was different, though, made smaller to fit Annette’s hand. He had gone to Annette’s mother to find out what her ring size was. To his surprise, Pauline had been thrilled to be contacted and quick to share that it wasn’t right for a single mother, her daughter’s age, to be on her own when most of the good ones were taken. Kenny took this statement as her blessing on their marriage.

Kenny looked down at the dark velvet. “It looks perfect,” he said. The ring sparkled, it twinkled. He handed over his credit card and waited for his receipt, lost in his thoughts. What now? He couldn’t simply go next door, knock, and ask his neighbour to marry him. Maybe they should go for a drive, stop at the Look-off. Or go for dinner at the Agapi, and he could propose after dessert. Or take Max for a walk, and somewhere along the coastal trail he could suggest they all become a unit. There was so much to consider.

The clerk coughed gently behind her hand.

“I am so sorry, sir. Your Visa has been declined.”

There had to be some mistake. Kenny paid off his balance every month. This was worth an angry call. In the meantime, he reached into his wallet. He had two more cards. The Mastercard he used at Costco and a low-balance card he kept for online purchases. He didn’t believe a man could ever be too careful.

“Try this,” he said, sliding the Mastercard across the glass.

They both waited.

“Looks like this one has been declined too.” The girl looked at the clock on the wall. She wanted to go for lunch early if she could.

Kenny felt his face grow damp. He handed over the last of his cards.

This time, the clerk didn’t say anything. She inserted the card, read the message on the screen, and put the machine down. She reached across the navy-blue velvet, picked up the ring, slipped it back into the little white envelope, dropped it into the drawer, and closed it.

The look in the girl’s dark eyes was not the same anymore. “I am sure there has been some mistake,” she said. “The ring will be here when you are ready.”

Mortified, Kenny walked stiffly out through the doors and onto the sidewalk of Quinpool Road. He knew he should go to the instant teller down the street, withdraw the money, and go back in, like a kid at the corner store sent home for more change. But he couldn’t face that girl again. Not now. His hands shook. He dropped all three cards onto the pavement. A teenager on a skateboard swerved around him, shot the board out from his feet and up to under his arm in one smooth ballet movement and stopped.

The kid bent down, picked up the cards, and handed them to Kenny. “Here you go man, don’t want to lose those,” he said cheerfully. Kenny stuffed the useless pieces of plastic back into his wallet.

The skateboarder slammed the board back onto the pavement and, with both feet close together, hopped on. “Have a good one!” he called out as he sailed away down the street.

Kenny watched the kid disappear around a corner. It was too late for that.

Keep reading. Last Stitch Effort is available as an ebook, exclusively on Amazon and free to read in Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback. You can find it here.

Last Stitch Effort is one of four seasonal Gasper’s Cove novellas. All four are collected in Gasper’s Cove Quick Cozies Books 1–4: Witty and Whimsical Nova Scotia Amateur Sleuth Mysteries, available as an ebook, a print anthology, and an audiobook.

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Read the First Chapter of Potions and Notions

Barbara Emodi — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It is October in Gasper’s Cove, and at Seaview Manor a tea party of formidable seniors has turned to their favourite subject: who’s next. Colleen, who sorts costumes at the recycle depot and helps out at Rankin’s General, is a practical woman who thinks all this talk of witches, wandering cats, and death coming in threes is nonsense, right up until it isn’t? Here is the first chapter of this Halloween Gasper’s Cove cozy mystery.

Chapter 1

“The thing is, who’s next?”
Colleen knew where this conversation was going. Once again, death was on the agenda.
“You’re right. We’re at two, aren’t we?” Bernadette said, looking over the floral rim of her china cup. It was Wednesday afternoon in a corner of the deserted dining room of Seaview Manor. She was happy when her daughter joined her friends at their weekly tea party.
Here we go, Colleen thought. Death comes in threes. They all believed it. Colleen settled in to listen. She raised her own cup. The aroma, sharp but soothing, caught her off guard. This was no ordinary tea. She took a sip. There was something familiar about the taste, but she couldn’t place it.
“What is this?” Colleen asked.
At the other end of the table, Joyce Evans answered, “Nothing special, just a little extra sage,” she said. “Sage is for wisdom. That’s where the name comes from.”
“A different tea every week,” Colleen’s mother said to her, putting an oatcake on her plate. “But I want to know. Apart from Paddy Kelly on the second floor, who else passed?”
“Bobby, you know Mac’s Border Collie,” Minnie Weekes said. Min was well informed and well dressed. Today, she had a new perm in her lavender hair and a necklace with button earrings to match.
“Oh no,” Colleen said. She remembered the collie, a classic tricolour. “But he was old, wasn’t he?”
Joyce looked up. “Seventeen. Practically unheard of for a dog that size. He was getting lame,” she added. Joyce had sewn gold buttons onto her shirt. Colleen had a vague memory of Joyce’s tearoom off Front Street in Gasper’s Cove, attached to her small alterations business. Colleen wondered if these tea parties at the Manor were Joyce’s idea.
“What happened?” Colleen asked. “He was a lovely dog.”
“He was looking out the window and saw a cat. He was the only dog I knew who could herd cats,” Bernadette said, chuckling. “The cat looked back at him, and Bobby keeled over right there. He died of the excitement in less than a minute. Fell off the couch, took the afghan with him.”
“Poor old boy,” Minnie said. “At least he went in his own home.”
“A blessing, wasn’t it?” Bernadette mused. “Who do we think is next?”
Colleen felt uneasy. This was nonsense. And it didn’t seem to her to be healthy talk for women at the end of their own lives.
“Come on, ladies, what are you? A coven?” she teased, hoping to divert the conversation.
The tea party seniors glanced at each other.
“What exactly do you mean by coven?” her mother asked.
“Witches,” Colleen explained. She looked at the paper silhouettes of pumpkins taped to the walls of the dining room, “like at Halloween.”
Bernadette paused as if waiting for permission to speak. A few of the women moved their heads slightly. Why not? They seemed to agree. After all, Colleen, in her sixties, would be one of them soon.
“Be careful about what you say about witches,” Bernadette told her daughter. “In the old days, every community had one.”
“Come on, Mom,” Colleen protested. “Those were old wives’ tales.” Immediately, she wished she could take her words back. Here she was, sitting in a circle of old wives. “Witches weren’t real,” she added, trying to recover. Colleen was a practical person and proud of it.
The women ignored her.
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Joyce said tartly. “Witches came over on the boats from Scotland with everyone else. They were needed. Someone had to enforce the rules.”
“The rules?” Colleen asked. Her mother and her friends, she decided, were losing touch with reality.
“Hard times,” her mother explained. “Everyone had to be decent, pull together.” It was important that her daughter understood how life was then. “If you didn’t, it would get back to the witch. Things would happen.”
One of the ladies, Annie something, had arrived late and eased herself away from her walker and into a chair. “If a man cheated a neighbour, the next morning he’d get up and find his cattle keeled over in the field,” she said.
Minnie nodded; she’d heard of that happening. “A well, that was another big one,” she reminded the group. “Cross a witch and it would suddenly dry up.”
“That, or the water would become so bitter you’d be afraid to drink it.” Bernadette fingered the call button that hung from a cord around her neck, remembering.
“But the worst thing you could do was break someone’s heart,” Minnie continued. “My very own grandmother knew a fisherman one time. He dumped a girl on her wedding day. The next time he went out to fish, a squall took him. Out of the blue, he went down with his boat.” The women murmured; they knew this story. “The thing is, the day he was lost, the sea was as flat as glass. No word of a lie.”
“So, you’re saying these witches kept everyone on the straight and narrow?” Colleen asked. Did they really believe this? She considered the present world and all its troubles. “Where are they now?”
“Around,” Joyce said. “Only quieter. Just ask Maybelline.”
“Maybelline?” Colleen was confused. “Do I know her?”
“You sure do,” Joyce said. “She used to follow you home from school when you were a little girl. Don’t you remember? Black as mascara.”
Bernadette laid a soft hand on her daughter’s arm. This was her mother’s code for saying nothing. “Maybelline,” Bernadette said brightly. “Haven’t seen her for weeks. How’s she doing?”
“Oh, you know that cat,” Joyce laughed. “Comes and goes as she pleases. Shows up when she’s hungry, gives me the news.”
“She came to my door,” Annie said. “Thursday. But she didn’t want to come in. Too bad, she’s always good company.”
“Don’t take it personally,” Joyce said. “Maybelline has a lot going on, particularly this time of year.” She waved a thin hand at the paper jack-o’-lanterns on the wall. “She has her rounds.”
Colleen looked at her watch. Annette, her manager at the Recreate and Recycle Depot, would wonder where she was. “Ladies,” she said, standing up. “I hate to leave you, but I have people waiting for me.” The women looked at her with interest. It had been a while since they’d had obligations to keep.
“My daughter,” Bernadette said with pride, “has two jobs. Down at Rankin’s General part-time, and at that recycle place on Fridays. She’s in charge of sorting the donations and clothes that come in.”
“Clothes from strangers?” Joyce asked, concerned. “You be careful now, never know where they’ve been.”
“True enough,” Colleen said. “But we’re busy these days. People are in looking for costumes.”
“Costumes,” Minnie sniffed. “The fuss they make nowadays. They spend good money on store-bought dress-up, decorating the houses, pretend witches hanging from the trees in the front yards…”
“That’s right,” Bernadette agreed. “I sent my kids out with pillowcases and dressed up in sheets to be ghosts.” She’d had nine children, including Colleen, and hadn’t had time to fuss.
“But we made candied apples, remember?” Minnie pointed her knuckled fingers with their loose wedding rings at Joyce. “You made those special popcorn balls. All the kids went to your house first.” The ladies laughed. For a moment Colleen glimpsed the housewives these women had been, long before they’d lost their own kitchens.
Joyce gave herself a minute to bask in her reputation as a champion popcorn ball maker, then leaned forward into the group. “They’re buying Halloween these days,” she said. “They forget what it’s about.”
The women exchanged looks. They knew exactly what Joyce meant.
“What are you saying?” Colleen asked. She looked at the faded eyes around her. Somehow, this was no longer just a group of old women passing the time.
Her mother spoke first. “You never know who’ll come out of retirement, do you?” Bernadette asked. “You never know.”
Keep reading. Potions and Notions is available as an ebook, exclusively on Amazon and free to read in Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback. You can find it here.
Potions and Notions is one of four seasonal Gasper’s Cove novellas. All four are collected in Gasper’s Cove Quick Cozies Books 1–4: Witty and Whimsical Nova Scotia Amateur Sleuth Mysteries, available as an ebook, a print anthology, and an audiobook.

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Read the First Chapter of Inspection Deception

Barbara Emodi — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 1

It is summer in Gasper’s Cove when an excavator digging a new water line turns up a skeleton wearing a town inspector’s windbreaker. Kenny McQuarrie, the municipal inspector, is a quiet man happiest with his files, his rules, and his bulldog Max, and he is exactly the wrong person to be handed a secret. Asked to find out who the dead man was, he quickly discovers his own boss would rather he didn’t. Here is the first chapter of this Nova Scotia cozy mystery.

Skeletons don’t drop out of the sky along the coast of Nova Scotia.

Not very often.

It is even rarer for this to happen on a person’s own street. And even more unusual if the skeleton is dressed exactly like you are. Wearing a municipality of Gasper’s Cove, Nova Scotia navy windbreaker, muddy but intact, with the town crest, a lobster and herring entwined, on the chest.

As he stepped closer to the trench, Kenny McQuarrie accepted this was not going to be just another day on the job. Strange things sometimes showed up in digging—spoons, broken pottery, the odd bike wheel—but nothing like this. Nothing in his inspector’s course covered what to do when the bucket of an excavator caught a buried tarpaulin, raised it up, and unrolled a dead body like some giant unwelcome present into the dirt.

As soon as the remains fell, the excavator operator turned off the machine. He climbed down out of the cab and walked over to stand beside Kenny. Both men stared down into the ditch. All they wanted was to put in a new water line from the street to the house.

“You better call the police,” the operator said, who wished he had called in sick. He should have said yes when his brother asked him to go out on the boat.

Kenny nodded. His phone was already out of his pocket.

* * *

When the RCMP cruiser pulled up, Kenny was relieved the detachment had sent Wade Corkum. He didn’t know the female officer driving the vehicle, but he knew Wade. He and Wade were in the same bowling league at the Starlite Lanes. As the only two men in the league without families, they often talked after a game, before they each got into their cars to drive home alone.

This morning Wade was in his summer uniform, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police/Gendarmerie Royale du Canada badges sewn to the short sleeves of his grey shirt. When he arrived, he strode up to the edge of the trench, looked down, and gave them his professional assessment.

“Dead body,” he said. “Looks like it was buried here, and you guys dug it up.”

“Not my fault.” The operator looked out at the water. His brother had made the right choice to go fishing.

“We know that,” Kenny said, searching for a fragment of routine to hold on to in the unsteady circumstances. He kicked a lump of mud with his foot, as if encouraging it to tell its secrets. “They put in this street thirty years ago. Whoever this is was likely buried then.” He didn’t mention the jacket. Neither did the other two men.

The female officer, her name tag said Nolan, walked up. She took the excavator operator off for a statement, reassuring him that his unearthing of a person who had been in the earth was not his fault. Kenny, because he was, in some sense, also an official, helped Wade lay out the Crime Scene Tape around the site. Then he waited until the ambulance, more squad cars, and the unmarked medical examiner’s van arrived. Only then did the RCMP officer mention the jacket.

“We’re going to have to dig deep on this one,” Wade said, then catching himself. “Sorry, that was poor taste. What I mean is that there is an obvious connection to the town. There has to be a record somewhere of who this is. Can you help us with that, Kenny?”

Kenny was already ahead of him. He knew he was often underestimated. He understood that his stolid appearance, short and broad, with a jowled face like his bulldog Max, made him look like a plodder, but he wasn’t. He had a quick mind he could rely on, diligent on detail, and excellent at making connections other people missed. That was why he was such a good inspector. He was ready for Wade’s question.

“I’ll go in and pull the files. We still have the job reports,” he said. “I’ll find out who worked here and get back to you.” It was a relief to reel this upsetting situation back into systematic procedure, something he knew how to do. He looked down the short street to his own house, separated from this one only by Annette LeBlanc’s. Max had been walked. Kenny could go to the municipal offices immediately and get to work.

“That would be great,” Wade said. “This all has to be confidential, of course.”

Kenny was mildly offended. Didn’t Wade know he was a trusted civic employee too?

“Just between us,” Kenny said. “Not to worry.”

* * *

The truth was, Kenny was happy to go back to the office, particularly when it was closed to the public on the weekend. Next to the bungalow he shared with Max, or out in the woods birdwatching, he felt most at home in the Gasper’s Cove Municipal Offices building. He loved the order of his workplace. He enjoyed its industrially cleaned and shiny green linoleum floors and the “No entry without Authorization” sign over the door he walked through because he had the authority. But most of all, he loved his own office down the end of the hall. From it, he ran what he secretly thought of as his empire. There he made sure anything constructed, out of wood, brick, earth, rock and gravel, within his jurisdiction, was as safe and well documented as in any municipality in Nova Scotia, and maybe anywhere east of Montréal too.

He would apply that diligence to his research mission for the RCMP. Kenny was happy to be useful but disappointed to see he would not be alone to do it. A large RAM truck was in the municipal lot when he pulled in, parked in the spot marked “Chief Operations Officer.” This was a complication Kenny didn’t need. The truck belonged to his immediate supervisor Harvey Carter, a man whose mission in life was to interfere with Kenny’s systems. Harvey had come to the job from the big city and maybe that was the problem. More political than capable, the manager had his own ideas of who counted and who didn’t. At council meetings, the man was a charmer, quick to enquire about the councillors’ hobbies, weekends and children, and smooth at presenting the work staff had done as if it were his own. His employees knew a different Harvey. The boss they knew vetoed requests for new office chairs, banned birthday cakes in the lunchroom, and exercised his power to approve vacations like a guillotine— ready to fall and divide two weeks off in August into one at the end of November, and one at the beginning of February. No one invited Harvey home for dinner and the man was a newcomer, and this was Gasper’s Cove. That was unusual.

With his boss in the building, Kenny knew he had to be quiet. So once inside the door, he tiptoed behind the reception desk, put his briefcase down softly on her desk, eased open the drawer where the keys were kept, and gently extracted the one marked “Archives.” The room with old records was at the end of the hall. Harvey’s door was closed. Kenny walked past it as quietly as a man with his wide feet could. The key jangled in the locked door but was easy to turn. Kenny reached in, turned on the light in the small windowless room, and looked up at the high metal shelves. Somewhere in these dusty files, he would find the information Wade needed. Gasper’s Cove wasn’t a big place; 2,000 people tops, an island connected by a causeway to the larger town of Drummond on the mainland. It shouldn’t be hard to locate the building reports for the address where the body was found. Kenny hesitated. With Harvey on the premises, should he look at the files here or take them home? He made up his mind. When he found the folders for the year he needed, he tucked the bundle into his briefcase and he turned to leave.

Harvey was standing in the open door of the archive room, blocking his way.

“McQuarrie? Why are you here on the weekend?” Harvey was dressed in shorts, a pullover, and deck shoes. He looked like a man who had stopped in on his way to the yacht club. “Trying to fix up a mistake when no one is looking?” he asked, his attempt at a joke undone by the sneer on his face. His eyes were on the briefcase in his employee’s hand.

Kenny struggled for words. He never lied to anyone. He remembered his promise to Wade. Just between us.

“I don’t make mistakes, or try not to,” he answered. “But maybe someone did. It’s worth finding out.” Satisfied that he said neither the truth nor a lie, Kenny pushed past his boss, headed to the lobby, tossed the key on the desk, and rushed through the glass doors out to the warm air outside. Behind him, he heard Harvey call out his name. Kenny ignored it. Something felt off. Why was Harvey in the office today? His boss liked to come in late and leave early. Harvey wasn’t a working on the weekend kind of guy. Was he crazy or had there been something vaguely threatening about the way Harvey had stood in the Archives door?

Was it possible his boss was interested in the identity of the dead inspector, too? Or did he already know who it was?

Keep reading. Inspection Deception is available as an ebook, exclusively on Amazon and free to read in Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback. You can find it here.

Inspection Deception is one of four seasonal Gasper’s Cove novellas. All four are collected in Gasper’s Cove Quick Cozies Books 1–4: Witty and Whimsical Nova Scotia Amateur Sleuth Mysteries, available as an ebook, a print anthology, and an audiobook.

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Read the First Chapter of Panic in the Pansies

Barbara Emodi — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Spring has finally reached Gasper’s Cove, the small Nova Scotia town at the heart of Barbara Emodi’s cozy mysteries, and Krista Willett needs a job that gets her out of the house and away from her son’s report card. What she lands is a season at Harry Sutherland’s pop-up garden centre in the Foodmart parking lot, a boss with a shady past, and the kind of trouble that turns bedding plants into a crime scene. Here are the opening pages of the first Gasper’s Cove Quick Cozy.

Chapter 1

I was a failure. The papers in my hand said so.

My Family by Billy Willett (C-)

My dad is famous. He is a First Responder and one time he pulled a man out of a car just before it caught fire. His picture was in the newspaper. He was on TV. He saves a life every day. My dad’s twin brother, Big Bob lives with us. Bob invented the iPhone, but Apple beat him to it. Bob knows how to turn on the TV from another room. My mom wipes the counters. P.T.O

Riveted, I’d turned the page to see what else the oldest of my two sons said about me. She uses a green sponge or a pink one.

was a failure. The papers in my hand said so. My Family by Billy Willett (C-) My dad is famous. He is a First Responder and one time he pulled a man out of a car just before it caught fire. His picture was in the newspaper. He was on TV. He saves a life every day. My dad’s twin brother, Big Bob lives with us. Bob invented the iPhone, but Apple beat him to it. Bob knows how to turn on the TV from another room. My mom wipes the counters. P.T.O Riveted, I’d turned the page to see what else the oldest of my two sons said about me. She uses a green sponge or a pink one.

I looked out the window. Across the way, the McCarthers glared back as they cleaned up the debris winter had left behind. Most of it was broken branches from the unpruned trees on my side of the fence. By the end of the day, the sticks would be neatly bundled, tied with string, and lined up on the curb, an advertisement to the neighbourhood of who took care of business and who didn’t. Later, I’d bring in the laundry left out overnight in the rain and see the McCarthers out with weed diggers attacking the dandelions that grew from the gauzy seeds the wind blew from my yard to theirs.

Did they know I tried? I had two boys: a husband who worked shifts, and a brother-in-law who’d moved in and never moved out. Did they understand it was hard enough to take care of what was in my house without worrying about what was going on outside?

I put my hands back into the salted cabbage and pounded it with my fists, coaxing it to release brine. I heard the front door slam open. There was a thud when the doorknob hit the wall, where it would deepen the dent already there. The original inventor of the iPhone was home. From the sound his shoes made as he ambled down the hall, I knew Bob hadn’t put them on the mat as requested. He stopped at the kitchen door, poked his shaggy blond head in, and lifted his nose to sniff like a Labrador Retriever at a Thanksgiving dinner.

“Do I smell onions? Sauerkraut?” Bob asked. “My intestinal flora thank you. Did you know fermentation produces both pre-and probiotics? Let me explain.”

I cut my brother-in-law off. I was in no mood for an hour-long lecture.

“Sort of. It’s Curtido, sauerkraut from El Salvador. I’m trying to change things up around here.” I sat down in a kitchen chair. I needed more than a new recipe; I knew that now. “But fermenting isn’t a career, is it?” I asked Bob. “I have to find a real job outside this house.” I got up and pushed Billy’s essay back down to the bottom of the bin. “But what am I going to do?”

“Why don’t you go back to the hospital?” Bob asked. I’d been working in medical records when I’d met and married his twin brother, Jason, one of the paramedics.

“Position redundant. Records are now in a province-wide online system.”

Bob looked thoughtful, then cunning. “I could use a research assistant,” he suggested. “I have a number of ideas in pre-prototype.” He stopped, noting the skeptical look on my face. “You’ll be compensated when the company is sold. Don’t you wish you’d been paid in Microsoft shares in the 1990s?”

“Going to pass,” I told him. “No offence, but I need a real, not a working-for-the-relatives type job.” Surely, I had more value than a counter wiper and an intestinal feeder.

Bob looked hurt, then quickly rallied, as he always did, onto the next scheme. He walked over to the counter and ate raw shredded cabbage with his hands, holding it high and dropping it into his open mouth and all over my clean floor. Then he snapped his fingers, sending cabbage fragments across the room.

“Got it. A solution.” Bob liked to have an answer for everything. “I was at the boat club, working on a tidal pressure measurement system, private project, keep it to yourself, and I ran into Harry Sutherland. He’s looking for some help.”

“Harry?” I asked, opening the cupboard. “Here, eat over this.” I handed my brother-in-law a plate. “The guy who left council because of the expense scandal? The same one who drives the Zamboni at the rink in the winter and pours beers at the yacht club in the summer? That Harry?” I shook my head. “No way, I’m not working for him, whatever he’s doing.”

“Hear me out,” Bob said, a man with a shaky reputation coming to the defence of one of his own. “Harry’s going into business for himself, something to do with the environment, ecological responsibility, things like that. Not here in Drummond, across the causeway in Gasper’s Cove.” He gestured at the wreckage of my cabbage-covered counter. “You’re good on food security. It can’t hurt to give him a call, and see what’s up.”

I reached into the sink and squeezed the green sponge in my hand. I turned around.

“What’s Harry’s number? Do you have it?”

* * *

This was not what I expected. Over the phone, Harry said his business was in a prime corner location, but I didn’t know that meant a square space on the asphalt at the back of the Gasper’s Cove Foodmart parking lot. But there it was, temporary metal fencing up for the season, bags of sheep manure, peat moss, and fertilizer stacked to frame the entry of the garden centre like sandbags before a flood, ready for the onslaught of weekend gardeners, amateur landscapers, and optimists convinced they could grow their own food.

Harry had been wary when I’d called. “You’re sure?” he’d asked. When I’d assured him I was, we’d agreed to meet near the corral for shopping carts, next to a plastic banner on the fence that read “Sutherland Nurseries: Time to Spring for New Plants.”

As soon as I arrived, Harry got down to business. A small man with sandy hair and blue, fish-like eyes, Harry faced me, shoulders back, chest out, defiantly establishing an authority the world might not give him otherwise.

“It’s only seasonal,” he began. “This is Nova Scotia. Folks want to get the bulbs in, the annuals in the planters, and the vegetables in the ground by the first full moon in June. That’s when the window of opportunity slams shut.”

He was right, of course. The summers in the province were short but spectacular, unless it rained in July, as it often did.

“Seasonal is fine,” I said, thinking of the sponge.

“Minimum wage?”

“Okay.” I had my eye on a carboy for fermenting cider. Those things didn’t come cheap.

“Hours? Week-to-week?” Harry had the face of someone who was used to having it laughed at.

“No problem.” Big Bob, mumbling about needing the boys as focus group participants, had volunteered to watch them when I worked.

“No overtime?” Harry asked.

“Suits me,” I answered.

“Thirty minutes for lunch?”

“I eat fast,” I said, because it was true.

“How are you at eating in your car?”

“I do it all the time,” I said.

Harry’s look of suspicion faded into disbelief.

“This is a competitive position,” he said, pulling himself up to his full 5′ 5″. “You’re one of the stronger candidates. But one last thing.”

“Shoot,” I said.

“What do you know about gardening?”

This was a trick question. Did he know the McCarthers? All I could think of were the two African violets on my end table and the row of shocking pink flowers I planted under my big picture window. My father said even a moron could grow petunias.

“Vegetables are my specialty,” I said, remembering the cabbage, “and I love the smell of soil when the snow melts.”

Harry nodded and looked past my shoulder to the parking lot. “That your truck?” he asked.

“It is.”

“You drive it to work? Could you do the odd special delivery? After hours? For a couple of extra bucks?”

Did he say more money? “Don’t see why not.”

Harry put out a gnarly hand, dirt deep under his fingernails. “You’re hired. Welcome aboard. Now let’s go meet the rest of the team.”

Keep reading. Panic in the Pansies is available as an ebook, exclusively on Amazon and free to read in Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback. You can find it here.

Panic in the Pansies is one of four seasonal Gasper’s Cove novellas. All four are collected in Gasper’s Cove Quick Cozies Books 1–4: Witty and Whimsical Nova Scotia Amateur Sleuth Mysteries, available as an ebook, a print anthology, and an audiobook.

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Read the First Chapter of Sew Over It

Barbara Emodi — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to Gasper's Cove, a small town on the coast of Nova Scotia that doesn't quite exist but will feel awfully familiar to anyone who lives somewhere like it. In this first Gasper's Cove cozy mystery, sewing teacher Valerie Rankin just wants her fledgling sewing school to get off the ground. Then a sewing machine salesman turns up dead in the store parking lot, and Valerie and her Seaside Sewists put down their seam rippers and start detecting. Here are the opening pages to get you started.

Prologue

Who would have thought it would be this easy?

And so fast too.

There she was. Head down, fifty feet from the turnoff to her own house. The driver caught a glimpse of her from the bend and knew immediately who it was.

Hard to believe the luck of it. The one last loose end, walking along the Shore Road. Not paying any attention at all, trusting her feet to take her home.

She didn't hear the car.

To the right, a drop of two hundred feet down to the North Atlantic, the sea close, the ice from the cliffs like fingers reaching for the water. Only a bureaucrat would think a two-foot-high guardrail would save anyone from the rocks and cold surf below. An accident waiting to happen. There was a reason the two of them were alone on this road tonight. It had to be done.

The driver dimmed the lights. Just like always, for the sake of oncoming traffic. Then reached out again and clicked them off.

The road went dark.

The woman was across from the house when the lights flared back on. Her face, white and surprised, turned to look back. Then she did what anyone would, she moved away. As fast as she could, tripping, off balance. Too late to stop herself from arching over the rail, from skidding down over the crust of the snow, through the bushes to the edge. The black night took her.

Too easy.

Chapter One

We were on the way into town along the Shore Road, when a horn blasted through the car like a siren and cut through our conversation. My seatbelt tightened against my shoulders as I looked into the rear-view mirror. Behind us, far too close, were the huge headlights and grille of a Nova Scotia Department of Transportation salt truck. In it, I saw the grim face of a driver struggling to control the massive vehicle on the ice. The truck swerved, bumped into the snowbank on the hillside to the left, then careened back over in front of us. A curtain of snow and salt hit the windshield and a slew of slush slapped up against the door. I gripped the steering wheel and held on as the road in front of me vanished. Then the wipers made a pass, and then another, carving fans through the ice and snow on the windshield. A small window appeared, and I lowered my head, peered through it, and found the road again. Ahead, the truck's red taillights barrelled away out of sight, horn still blaring.

Beside me, my cousin Darlene let out a breath. "That was close, Valerie Rankin. You can't drive like this on a highway, my dear. Too slow is as dangerous as too fast."

"It's this stretch of road," I tried to explain. I knew I'd drifted over the white line to move away from the sheer drop of the cliff beside us. I hated heights. I lived in a bungalow. I didn't wear high heels. And I didn't like to drive this road, not this time of year. "I was just trying to be careful."

Darlene reached over and patted my shoulder with her mittened hand. "My girl, you got to relax. This isn't worth getting us nearly run over for. It'll be fine. What's to worry? How hard can it be?"

How hard can it be?

That was Darlene's life motto; it sure wasn't mine. This morning was only a couple of tables of sewing projects on display in an old general store, but to me, it was a very big deal. This was the first time I'd organized something public like this. I didn't know what I was doing. Darlene didn't know what worry was. Most of the time, life didn't have the heart to let her down. My cousin could enjoy herself, even in the middle of events that would knock most of us back. For instance, when her third husband left her, Darlene announced at least now she could get a cat. She liked cats. Knowing a Darlene steadied a person.

"You've done harder things, Valerie Rankin," my cousin continued. "Brought kids up on your own, moved back home to the island. This is sewing. What you do best. Look at this beautiful top you did for me."

I looked sideways at Darlene's crossover V-neck; I'd made it as a sample when I taught "Knits without Fear." The press-on stars on her nails matched its colour and I detected a shimmer of gold dust along her cleavage. My cousin was a great supporter of special events and had helped me organize this one.

"Tell me again what everyone is going to do," I asked, fishing for reassurance. I had invited a travelling sewing machine Rep. for the morning. I needed a discount on some classroom equipment.

"We've got our best stuff to show today, don't worry." Darlene was a believer. "Our creativity will blow that man from Montréal away."

"Let's hope so."

"Here's what's going on," Darlene counted off our participants on her glittering fingers. "Katie and Sarah are bringing their reversible tote bags. Husbands' turns to take care of the kids."

My newest students, Katie and Sarah, moved around town like a unit, on the lookout for escape hatch activities to break up the days spent with five small children between them. So far, they had tried yoga, hot and cold, the Walk the Weight Away club, and selling pyramid scheme jewellery. But they liked my classes best, and described themselves as sewists, which they said sounded more modern than sewers, which might be confused with plumbing.

Darlene continued her list. "Agnes is bringing her wine bottle bags and a casserole caddy made from pre-quilted cotton. They were a hit at the Seniors' Moments Potluck. She took orders." Agnes was a veteran of many craft fairs and would be my anchor woman today.

"What about Flora?" Flora taught family studies at the local high school, by the textbook, and had once referred to my own sewing classes as, "a little on the loosey-goosey side."

"Flora's bringing in some of those aprons she makes from men's shirts. She can talk for a long time about those. I'm sure she's got her instructions ready and stapled." There was a smile in Darlene's voice. "Then there's you and me, being cheap but calling it sustainable. Your recycled leather cosmetic bags and my felted wool mittens. We're all good."

"Okay, then." The road was clearer, and I loosened my grip on the steering wheel. "We should have a bit of a crowd. Us, the man from the sewing machine company, and whoever is in the store, I guess."

The general public was my real worry. The sign above the big front window of Rankin's General Store, "Feed, tools, housewares, and sundries." It didn't say sewing school headquarters. Instead, Rankin's sold whatever the locals might need and lots of things they didn't. This time of year, we carried bags of salt to put down on icy driveways and sand for roads. Rollie Rankin, my second cousin on my father's side, back to run the store, kept these seasonal items near the door. This cleared the path to the plumbing, hardware, and auto parts aisles that brought in most of the shoppers. For a bit of variety, Rollie had added a small display of as-seen-on-TV merchandise none of us ever saw on TV, an extensive selection of work socks, and, to support me, an embryonic sewing supplies section.

This time of year, the customers would be men in rubber boots, children lying on the wide boards of the old floors because they weren't waiting one minute longer, and women wondering if they didn't do everything themselves, if nothing would ever get done.

I wondered what the salesman from the metropolis would make of us. Would the store seem like a suitable home for discounted machines? The sales rep would have to make his own assessment. I would start by showing him where I taught.

I held my classes in a windowless, but big enough, room to the left of the front door. In my imagination, the classroom was an island of calm and good taste in the middle of the chaos that defined how our family had done business for generations. Sewing regulated me, and I hoped it would regulate the environment.

I was very proud of my teaching space. Duck Macdonald, our handyperson and, I suspected, an ongoing project from Rollie's past as a psychologist at Drummond Correctional, had refinished the wide wooden floors for me, repainted the elaborate scrolls and roses of the ancient, pressed metal ceiling, and helped me locate a beam to hang the water tank of my gravity-fed iron. Rollie and I had hauled up some long tables from the basement for cutting. Reverend Gail Best, from the church up the street, gave us some chairs. It would take time, but I hoped my sewing adventures might grow into something special. Perhaps that would start today.

We were almost there. This was my favourite part of coming into Gasper's Cove. Just as the road turned in and down towards the centre of town, there was a little hill. Whenever I passed over, it reminded me of when I pumped on a swing as a child, a sort of exhilarating lift in my stomach. I had that feeling now as we drove up and then down with the whole village laid out in front of us like a prize. There were tiny, colourful buildings snug around the small harbour, rocking fishing boats in from the sea lined up along the wharf, and a long, smooth boardwalk of Front Street. Gasper's Cove seemed to me to be perfectly composed. Everything was exactly where it should be, exactly where it always was. It was a home to hold in your heart when you left it, and a place to come back to.

Nothing could ever go wrong here, nothing at all.

Where to purchase link here.

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Article published in Threads magazine #233 : "Sew a Versatile Capsule Wardrobe for Travel."

Barbara Emodi — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two weeks, One carry-on. All handmade.

https://www.threadsmagazine.com/2026/01/02/sew-a-versatile-capsule-wardrobe-for-travel

Really enjoyed sewing for and writing this and good to be a contributor at Threads again. Simple patterns, new age fabrics and a sense of humor and adventure required!

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Barbara Reading the first chapters of the Gasper's Cove series

Barbara Emodi — Fri, 8 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My YouTube channel. Sewing how-tos and readings from my cozy mysteries.

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Pre-order alert! New Release

Barbara Emodi — Fri, 8 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

October 25 is a big day for me! The release of Crafting a Cold Case. Book 6 in the Gasper's Crafters Mysteries

The long, frigid winters of Nova Scotia are perfect for crafting—but when a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm cuts off Gasper’s Cove Island from the mainland, Valerie Rankin and her group of crafters settle in to weather the isolation with needles, fabric, yarn, and determination. As they stitch their way through the dark days, the storm unearths more than snowdrifts—long-buried secrets resurface, and an unsolved murder comes back to haunt the tiny community. With no one else to turn to, the crafters must unravel the threads of deception before the past traps them in its deadly grip.

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