A missing charity fund. A planted hatbox. A flapper niece under suspicion.
Chicago, 1927. Evelyn Hart has two rules for running her millinery shop: always greet a customer by name, and never let gossip leave the counter. But when the parish’s Winter Fund for orphans vanishes overnight — and a Hart & Feather hatbox is found near the empty safe — gossip lands squarely on her niece, Lottie.
Determined to clear Lottie’s name before whispers ruin them both, Evie follows a trail of swapped tissue paper, mismatched timelines, and the telltale scent of bay rum cologne. Her search takes her from the cozy order of the parish hall to the smoky glamour of The Blue Canary club, where polite gangsters smile too easily and secrets trade hands like playing cards.
With the parish treasurer growing suspicious, a charming underworld figure offering “help,” and Officer Joe Morelli warning her to leave well enough alone, Evie must stitch together the truth before the Winter Fund — and her reputation — unravel completely.
A milliner’s hat can hide a multitude of secrets—especially in London, 1926.
When Vivienne Harrington agreed to design the Dauphine, she expected silk, feathers, and society gossip… not an oilskin packet sewn into its crown, nor a coded ledger that could topple half the city’s elite.
Now the shadowy Société de l’Oiseau Noir has surfaced, and they want their property back. Every whispered rendezvous, every glance across the auction floor, could be the moment an enemy strikes. With her friends drawn into a perilous game of misdirection, Vivienne must decide whether to hand the archive over, destroy it, or outwit those who would kill to possess it.
From the smoky corners of London speakeasies to the ivy-shaded west door of the Assembly Rooms, danger follows like a well-tailored shadow. In a world where a woman’s reputation can be ruined faster than a feather can wilt, Vivienne will need every ounce of charm, wit, and nerve to survive—because in this city, the most dangerous thing you can wear… is the truth.
Perfect for fans of Deanna Raybourn and Evie Dunmore, this second Roaring ’20s Millinery Mystery is a tale of glamour, deceit, and secrets stitched too deep to ever come undone.
The Row in October — Book 4
October on Millinery Row means heavier coats, closing windows, and the commission season in full stride. Evie Hart is content with a full ledger, a winter velvet cloche she’s been anticipating since September, and Tuesday and Thursday mornings that have taken on a pleasant regularity.
Then Rosa Russo comes to the shop with apple cake and a quiet concern: a neighbor’s building interest has vanished from the cooperative’s records. Signed away, the administrator says. All properly documented.
Evie knows what properly documented can hide.
What begins as a favor to Rosa becomes something larger: fourteen families, a pattern of forged seals, and a man who has spent years making himself the most unremarkable person in every room he enters. To find him, Evie will need to read not just the documents but the gaps between them — and understand what her late husband built, and what someone else learned to use.
A Millinery Row Mystery. Book Four.
The Paper Question — Book 5
April 1929, and Millinery Row is coming outside. The produce stand is back on the sidewalk, the tailor’s door is propped open for the first time since November, and Hart and Feather’s window has turned to spring. The only thing Evie Hart can’t account for is the tobacconist’s window — still papered, still shut, one more small sign that something in the neighborhood’s arithmetic is changing.
When Sister Agnes arrives with a brown card folder and fifteen minutes, the arithmetic becomes very specific: three families’ deposit books don’t match the cooperative’s reported figures. The discrepancy favors the cooperative’s operating fund. The interim administrator says the books are in some disorder following the previous administrator’s death.
Evie knows disorder. This is something else.
With five weeks until the member meeting and a locked office standing between her and the primary ledger, she’ll need a filing clerk with a thirty-year-old key, a cooperative administrator willing to help, and everything she’s learned about the patient, quiet work of following the paper.
A Millinery Row Mystery. Book Five. Large Print Edition