{ "item_title" : "Sawdust & Secrets", "item_author" : [" Jace Fox "], "item_description" : "Late summer in Bracken Bay brings the Northwest Woodcraft Invitational to Market Hall, filling the waterfront with hand-built furniture, restoration demonstrations, architectural salvage, and makers who can read a piece of wood the way other people read a confession.For Graham Rook, the event should be a homecoming to the craft world he understands best. Instead, legendary furniture maker Silas North arrives without warning.Silas was once Graham's mentor, the man who taught him precision, patience, and the importance of truth in materials. He was also at the center of the professional failure Graham has carried for twenty-five years. Their reunion erupts into a public argument, and Silas announces that his keynote, Hand, Machine, and Truth, will expose something the furniture world has been pretending not to see.Hours later, Mara Vale and Graham enter his waterfront workshop and find Silas dead beside the main bench.Everything points toward Graham.The murder took place in his locked workshop. Silas's last message demanded a private meeting with him. Their argument had witnesses. Graham's heavy joiner's mallet is missing. And the old authentication scandal that ended his apprenticeship has suddenly become relevant again.For the first time, Mara's greatest challenge is not simply identifying a killer. It is investigating honestly when the person she cares about most is the most reasonable suspect.Then a broken walnut drawer corner found beside Silas begins telling a different story. Its dovetails appear hand-cut, yet the rounded internal corners and unnaturally repeated geometry suggest machine routing. Auction photographs reveal the same pattern across supposedly unique Silas North pieces. A maker's mark looks too precise. Provenance documents lead through shell consignors. A missing portfolio of photographs may have contained the evidence Silas intended to reveal.Someone has been manufacturing more than furniture. Someone has been manufacturing history.As Mara follows maker marks, freight records, restoration notes, access logs, antique dealers, salvage operators, and decades-old workshop secrets, the case reaches back to the same scandal Graham thought he had left behind. Evidence disappears. A woodworking display is sabotaged. False certificates appear where they can hurt Graham most. And a convincing suspect emerges who has committed real fraud, but may not be guilty of murder.The investigation also transforms Mara and Graham's relationship. For six books, Graham has learned how Mara wants to be supported. Now Mara must learn the same lesson in reverse. Graham does not want blind reassurance or someone managing his emotions. He wants facts, room to be angry, and Mara beside him without pretending love is evidence. What they learn about each other under pressure finally forces them to decide whether they are merely drifting closer or deliberately choosing a life together.And inside a restored cedar document chest, another piece of Bracken Bay's oldest mystery emerges: a surviving survey copy once passed to the Women's Guild for a 1938 heritage quilt, pointing Mara toward the next hidden chapter in Market Hall's past.Atmospheric, intelligent, and rich with fair-play clues, Pacific Northwest craftsmanship, small-town secrets, humor, and mature slow-burn romance, Sawdust & Secrets asks one irresistible question: If a maker's mark can be forged, how do you recognize the truth underneath?", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/79/817/173/9798171738686_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "23.99", "online_price" : "23.99", "our_price" : "23.99", "club_price" : "23.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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