Homemaker
Homemaker (Prairie Nightingale) by Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare
About Homemaker
Homemaker (Prairie Nightingale)
Mystery/Amateur Sleuth/Romantic Elements
1st in Series
Setting - Green Bay, Wisconsin
Publisher : Thomas & Mercer (June 1, 2025)
Paperback Print length : 300 pages
When a former friend and devoted mother vanishes, a confident homemaker turned amateur sleuth follows an unexpected trail of scandals and secrets to find her.
Prairie Nightingale is both the midlife mother of two teenage girls and a canny entrepreneur who has turned homemaking into a salaried profession. She’s also fascinated with the gritty details of other people’s lives. So when seemingly perfect Lisa Radcliffe, a member of her former mom-friends circle, suddenly disappears, it’s in Prairie’s nature to find out why.
Given her innate talent for vital pattern recognition, Prairie is out to catch a few clues by taking a long, hard look at everyone in Lisa’s life—and uncovering their secrets. Including Lisa’s. Prairie’s dogged curiosity is especially irritating to FBI agent Foster Rosemare, the first interesting man Prairie has met since her divorce. His square jaw and sharp suits don’t hurt.
But even as the investigation begins to wreak havoc on Prairie’s carefully tended homelife, she’s resolved to use her multivalent homemaking skills to solve the mystery of a missing mom—and along the way discover the thrill of her new sleuthing ambitions.
About Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare
Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare write critically acclaimed, bestselling mystery and romance, usually (but not always) together. They are the authors of the Prairie Nightingale mysteries and the TV Detectives mystery series. If you want more of their stories, check out their queer romances co-written as Mae Marvel, as well as solo work by Ruthie Knox (het romance), Annie Mare (grounded queer paranormal romance), and Robin York (Ruthie’s pen name for New Adult romance). Ruthie and Annie are married and live with two teenagers, two dogs, multiple fish, two glorious cats, four hermit crabs, and a bazillion plants in a very old house with a garden.
Author Links
Webpage: https://ruthieknoxandanniemare.com
Facebook:
http://facebook.com/ruthieknox
and
https://www.facebook.com/anniemareromanceauthor
Instagram: @ruthieknoxromance and @spinsterpress
Excerpt
Prairie Nightingale stood on her tiptoes, ignoring the
incessant buzz of her phone in the back pocket of her jeans and craning for a
better look at Amber Jenkins.
“What do you think of Mrs. Jenkins’s handbag?” she
asked her daughter Anabel.
Prairie and Anabel were part of a loose congregation of
parents and family members milling around on the paved playground of the K–8
gifted school, waiting for the final release bell. Prairie hated moments like
these, when there was a measurable stretch of time but nothing happening and no
way to get anything done. An article she’d once read called it “garbage time.”
When she was going through her divorce, she’d found a lot of articles like
that—about how women’s time was wasted and their labor undervalued—as she tried
to understand why the world believed she’d spent her seventeen years as a wife
and mother doing essentially nothing.
“I don’t think of Mrs. Jenkins’s handbag.” Anabel
looked away from her phone long enough to flick her eyes over to the purse in
question. “But if you’re asking me how much it cost, that’s a
seven-hundred-dollar bag. Nine, if it’s from this year.”
“Huh.” Prairie watched Amber, whose gaze was fixed in
the middle distance as she arranged her ripple of blond hair over one shoulder.
Bearing up under her own garbage time. Amber had two kids, like Prairie. She
was sharp and irreverent, with a slightly faded tattoo of koi circling a lotus
blossom on her shoulder. Once, she’d been Prairie’s favorite among a group of
women who went for coffee after school drop-off and got together to make swag
bags for the teachers. Prairie had always thought she and Amber had a genuine
connection as the two moms in the group without a prestigious education. Both
of them knew how to keep track of the drink orders from a ten top.
“Remember a couple of weeks ago when Mrs. Jenkins
backed into that Dodge Ram and smashed her taillight?” Prairie asked Anabel.
“No. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her
daughter’s dry tone failed to disguise a hint of interest. She was not immune
to what some called Prairie’s nosiness and what Prairie called her talent at
vital pattern recognition.
“Well, that happened. And look.” Prairie angled her
head at a dirty black Escalade illegally parked across from the school. “The
taillight is still busted.”
“So?”
“Who spends nine hundred dollars on a new handbag and doesn’t get their taillight fixed?”
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“I don’t know. Why would I know that?” Anabel squinted in Amber’s direction. “Didn’t she used to carry a Kitty Blue purse?”
“That’s right! The metallic blue crossbody bag with the
cat ears. And Kitty Blue is not high dollar.” Prairie had never bought anything
from the faddish direct-to-consumer brand, but she was familiar from seeing it
hyped on the social media channels of practically every woman she’d ever met.
“An upgrade like that begs a lot of questions.”
“Not really. Lots of things could explain it. Maybe
someone bought her this new purse because her Kitty Blue one started getting
ratty. Or the people who fix cars are too busy. Why do you even care?”
“It’s just something to keep me occupied while we wait
for your sister,” Prairie said. “I don’t really care.”
This was a lie. Prairie did care, in the way that you
couldn’t help caring about people you’d known for your children’s entire lives
who didn’t talk to you anymore and had blocked you from the group chat for
reasons you understood but didn’t agree with.
It wasn’t Prairie’s fault. At
least, she didn’t think so. She blamed Dr. Carmichael. Nathan
Carmichael had been a popular local ob-gyn until Prairie found out—via an
investigation that began when he failed to deliver an anticipated donation to the
PTO the year she was fundraising chair—that the doctor was serially abusing his
patients. She couldn’t let it go, and didn’t let it go, until there was nowhere
for Nathan Carmichael to go but prison.
It caused a scandal. Green Bay was not a big town, in
population or in generosity of spirit. The doctor’s wife, who had been part of
Prairie’s friend group, had to resign her seat as a state senator and move away
with her kids to weather the gossip. Prairie’s role in the unpleasantness did
not go unnoticed.
She was shunned. Cast out. Politely, Midwest-nice
ghosted.
Although, in truth, she had never been completely clear
on whether she lost almost all her friends because she was a dog with a bone
about Nathan Carmichael or because she’d pulled the trigger on her divorce.
Everyone liked Greg, her ex. In fact, Prairie liked Greg, her ex. He was, as
the women in her life had never failed to remind her, one of the good
ones.
But she could have approval, or she could live free and
do as she liked. When Prairie felt sad about the friends she’d lost getting to
the bottom of the mystery, she looked at the picture she’d saved on her phone
of Nathan Carmichael crying in a courtroom. When she felt sad about the friends
she’d lost because of her divorce, she let herself feel sad.
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