Boughs of Folly
(2025)(The sixth book in the Holiday Hounds Mystery series)
A novel by Hailey Hartley
When Christmas shop owner Noelle Sterling discovers a cache of vintage decorations in her attic, she expects to find charming antiques for Sterling's Christmas Corner. What she doesn't expect is for her Welsh Corgi Ginger to unearth a wooden box containing decades-old newspaper clippings about a bitter rivalry between two Christmas shop families—including shocking details about a fire that destroyed the Whitmore Christmas Emporium thirty years ago. Before Noelle can make sense of her grandfather's hidden secrets, prominent town historian Victoria Aldridge is found dead in Noelle's shop, crushed beneath a fallen shelving unit. With the police treating it as a tragic accident and Ginger alerting to clues everyone else has missed, Noelle can't shake the feeling that Victoria's death is connected to the fire her grandfather was once accused of starting.
As Noelle digs deeper into Snowfall Springs' buried past, she discovers that Victoria had been investigating the same Christmas shop rivalry—and had recently confronted several people about explosive evidence she'd uncovered. The decades-old feud between the Sterling and Whitmore families comes roaring back to life when Noelle realizes someone is willing to kill to keep the truth buried. With her best friend Lena providing support and Ginger's nose leading her to more hidden evidence tucked away in forgotten corners, Noelle races to uncover what really happened thirty years ago. But in a town where everyone remembers the rivalry differently and no one wants to admit what they knew, separating truth from lies proves more dangerous than she ever imagined.
From falsified reports to devastating betrayals, Noelle must untangle a mystery that's been wrapped in secrets for three decades. Can she and Ginger expose the truth before the killer decides the nosy shop owner has learned too much? Or will this investigation prove that some people will do anything—even murder—to protect the sins of the past? In a race against time, Noelle discovers that the most dangerous gift isn't always the one under the tree, but the one that should have stayed buried in the ashes.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
As Noelle digs deeper into Snowfall Springs' buried past, she discovers that Victoria had been investigating the same Christmas shop rivalry—and had recently confronted several people about explosive evidence she'd uncovered. The decades-old feud between the Sterling and Whitmore families comes roaring back to life when Noelle realizes someone is willing to kill to keep the truth buried. With her best friend Lena providing support and Ginger's nose leading her to more hidden evidence tucked away in forgotten corners, Noelle races to uncover what really happened thirty years ago. But in a town where everyone remembers the rivalry differently and no one wants to admit what they knew, separating truth from lies proves more dangerous than she ever imagined.
From falsified reports to devastating betrayals, Noelle must untangle a mystery that's been wrapped in secrets for three decades. Can she and Ginger expose the truth before the killer decides the nosy shop owner has learned too much? Or will this investigation prove that some people will do anything—even murder—to protect the sins of the past? In a race against time, Noelle discovers that the most dangerous gift isn't always the one under the tree, but the one that should have stayed buried in the ashes.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Used availability for Hailey Hartley's Boughs of Folly