Fragile Designs

When Carly Tucker’s husband, a police officer, is killed during a home break-in, she knows that her side hustle finding antiques at flea markets isn’t enough to support her and their infant son, Noah. Her grandmother’s proposal that she and her two sisters restore the family’s waterfront Beaufort home into a bed-and-breakfast for Carly to run is immediately intriguing, but it’s equally daunting given the animosity between the sisters.

As Carly begins sorting the attic, she finds a letter in a trunk in her husband’s handwriting dated two days before his death. Eric had discovered that Carly’s grandmother was adopted — a fact Carly is certain Gram does not know — and had already begun trying to track down her birth family. Is it possible that Eric’s death wasn’t random? With few options, Carly reaches out to Gram’s neighbor, Simon — the older brother of her high school sweetheart — who is a local homicide detective. One of the items in the trunk is an enameled egg: if it truly is a Fabergé egg, its value could set Carly up for life and would certainly be worth killing for. The journey to find the truth and protect her family will have Carly delving deep into the lost treasures of Eastern Europe — if she and Simon can survive that long.

Family secrets can be the most dangerous of all.