Lea Wait crafts compelling mysteries set against the evocative backdrop of Maine, drawing readers into intricate plots with a keen eye for detail and suspense. Her historical novels for younger audiences transport readers to 19th-century Maine, vividly reconstructing the past with authentic settings and engaging narratives. Wait's prose is rich and immersive, offering a distinctive blend of suspense and historical fidelity. She excels at creating resonant characters and atmospheric settings that linger with the reader long after the final page.
Angie and Sarah investigate after a troubled teenage boy is accused of stabbing Ike Hamilton, who appeared to be simple-minded, but apparently knew secrets that may have led to his murder. Angie sets out to trace Ike's bottle-collecting route to find out what he witnessed. Original.
When her long-lost half-brother, Ted Lawrence, a wealthy old artist and gallery owner in town, is poisoned to death after he announces plans to leave her his museum-worthy heirloom paintings, antique dealer Sarah Byrne is accused of the crime and must unravel the clues to find the real killer.
It's hard to imagine anything bad ever happening in picturesque Haven Harbor, Maine--until a famous face rolls into town and unthreads some very dark secrets. . . Angie Curtis and the Mainely Needlepointers are all too familiar with the Gardener estate. The crumbling Victorian mansion, known as "Aurora," has been sitting vacant for nearly twenty-five years--and some say it's haunted by the ghost of Jasmine Gardener, the teenage girl who died there in 1970 under mysterious circumstances... Harbor Haven is abuzz with excitement when Hollywood actress Skye West decides to buy Aurora and sell off its furnishings. And Angie is intrigued when Skye asks her to appraise the estate's sizable collection of needlepoint pictures. But the more she examines the pieces, the more they seem to point toward Jasmine's murder--and the murderer--and it's up to her to stitch the clues together. . .
Returning to the quaint coastal town of Harbor Haven, Maine--a place she once called home--Angie Curtis finds her memories aren't all quite pleasant ones. . . After leaving a decade ago, Angie has been called back to Harbor Haven by her grandmother, Charlotte, who raised her following her mother's disappearance when she was a child. Her mother has been found, and now the question of her whereabouts has sadly become the mystery of her murder. The bright spot in Angie's homecoming is reuniting with Charlotte, who has started her own needlepointing business with a group called Mainely Needlepointers. But when a shady business associate of the stitchers dies suddenly under suspicious circumstances, Charlotte and Angie become suspects. As Angie starts to weave together clues, she discovers that this new murder may have ties to her own mother's cold case. . .