The Yarn Woman

She lives above an Art Deco theater in San Francisco’s Sunset district with an old long-haired cat, a harpsichord and more yarn than a loading dock. The FBI and city police call her the Yarn Woman. She’s their textile forensics expert.In her first recorded case, ‘Ghosts of the Albert Townsend,’ Ruth has only a blood-soaked nineteenth century shawl to unravel the link between the resurfacing of a ghostly schooner just offshore and the severe wounds on young Hauper Brown’s body. A nearby fatal animal mauling only adds to her worry. In her second case in this first Yarn Woman mysteries book, ‘The Fisherman’s Wife,’ Ruth must decipher the meaning behind a dead man’s hand-knit sweater while racing against time to save his otherworldly widow. Finally, Ruth helps identify the body of a playwright by the handwork in his shirt, and finds not only a young friend in Gabriel, a curly-haired boy with unusual abilities, she unearths a network of beggar-masters and their slaves deep in San Francisco’s seamy underside.This first book, a trilogy of dramatic novellas, introduces a cast of characters who will recur as the Yarn Woman mystery series continues in ‘Wailing Wood’ and ‘The Rusalka Wheel,’ with more cases on the horizon.

Brooks Mencher is a second-generation newspaper writer and editor, and author of the Yarn Woman mystery novels. He published his first mystery collection, "The Yarn Woman," in 2014, and the novel, "Wailing Wood," in 2015. He is currently working on the third book of the Yarn Woman mystery series, which chronicles the cases of the eccentric Ruth M, a textile forensics consultant.