Cricket McRae Books In Order

Publication Order of Home Crafting Mystery Books

Cricket McRae is the real name of the author who also works under the psudonyms Baily Cates and Baily Cattrell.

she grew up in the West where she earned her degree in English and Philosophy from the Colorado State University. After completing her Bachelor’s degree, she moved to the Pacific West for almost 20 years. Before she became an author, McRae worked as an ad manager, book seller and a driver’s license examiner. While working for Microsoft as a localization program manager, she had the chance to travel throughout the world. Later on she moved back to Colorado, where she was able to write the Enchanted Garden Mysteries and the Magical Bakery series, as well as the Home Crafting Mysteries.

When she is not writing, McRae loves to cook, read, garden, market and manufacture. At one point in her life, she had begun a soap making company where she worked as the manager and product designer. She currently lives in Colorado with her husband and two felines.

The first novel in the Home Crafting Mysteries series of books is Lye In Wait, which was released in 2007. Sophie Mae is just a regular person – a widow who spends her time marketing beauty products and selling to her friends. However one day she discovers a dead body in her workroom, and it’s the local handyman.

The police investigate and decide that it was a suicide. However there are still some questions – the handyman is engaged to a wonderful woman, and is fairly well off thanks to some winnings in the lottery. Why exactly would he kill himself?

This is something that as it happened on Sophie Maes doorstep – she can’t just let go. She doesn’t agree with the police, and she decides it’s something she has to investigage for herself. People try to stop her, like her friend Meghan, as well as a Detective on the case. But Sophie Mae can’t stop – and it doesn’t matter who gets in the way. Sophie Mae is going to find out the story.

Lye In Wait was so popular that the next book came out less than a year later in the Home Crafting Mysteries series of novels featuring Sophie Mae again.

She’s earned quite the reputation around the town as a busybody – even moreso after she stuck her nose into the handyman death from the year prior. Sophie decides to take a step back and work on her crafting during the day, while working on a crisis center helpline at night. Nice and easy, and a good way to lay low, right?

Except for the very first evening on the crisis centre hotline when a man calls who says he is going to commit suicide, but then starts threatening Sophie Mae as well. The manager of the crisis centre, hearing the telephone calls, immediately cuts the irate caller off.

Unfortunately, that’s where the troubles begin, not end. Suddenly Sophie is getting calls repeatedly to her house in the same, threatening manner. And then her manager ends up dying as well. However not before he can utter the last words of his life to Sophie: “Threat. Meant it” in reference to the threatening telephone caller. Now Sophie Mae has to get on the case – knowing her very own life hangs in the balance. And as is typical in the Home Crafting Mysteries series of novels – nothing is what it seems!

Spoiler alert – but Sophie does not meet her death and she is back a year later in 2009, in Spin a Wicked Web featuring Sophie Mae again. The title of the book comes from the fact that Sophie has a brand new passion – spinning yarn. And that goes great…..for awhile.

But of course, nothing in Sophies life can remain as it is. She does the spinning with a group of people such as Ariel – and a skein of yarn of Sophies is found wrapped around Ariels neck, as she has beeen murdered. Ariel was someone who everyone knew – she oozed sexuality, was beautiful and would use her sexuality to her benefit. Usually when it came to getting married men to do what she wanted. However when they look into the life of Ariel – they find out she is more than just a gold digger. It’s someone who grew up having a tough life, and there may be more to her murder than a jilted lover or jealous wife.

Thankfully, Sophie Mae is on the case.