Welcome to my stop on the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour for The Secret in the Sampler: A Plain Truth Mystery by Abigail B. Hartwell. Stop by each blog on the tour for interviews, guest posts, spotlights, reviews and more!
The Secret in the Sampler: A Plain Truth Mystery by Abigail B. Hartwell
The Secret in the Sampler: A Plain Truth Mystery
Amish Adjacent Cozy Mystery with Slow-Burn Romance
1st in Series
Setting – Ohio
Publisher : Plain Truth Press
Publication date : May 31, 2026
Print length : 358 pages
What would you do if the family heirloom hidden in your aunt’s estate could expose a stolen inheritance—and make you the next person someone needs silenced?
Two years after losing her husband, Nora Bell returns to the quiet Ohio Amish-country town of Briar Creek to settle her late aunt’s estate. She expects dusty type drawers, unpaid bills, and enough sympathy casseroles to survive a minor siege. Reopening The Bell & Quill, Aunt Lenora’s old letterpress and stationery shop, is supposed to be a temporary project—not the beginning of an entirely new life.
Then Nora discovers an antique hand-stitched sampler concealed inside a cedar trunk.
Its mismatched initials, reversed border, and nearly invisible name suggest that the sampler is more than a family keepsake. It may be the only surviving record of a child erased from Briar Creek’s history—and an inheritance quietly stolen decades ago.
Before Nora can uncover what her aunt knew, a local estate appraiser is found dead. He had been asking questions about the sampler, searching for a missing auction ledger, and meeting privately with someone determined to keep an old land transfer from being examined too closely.
Now Nora is following a trail of altered records, old letters, disputed property, and carefully guarded family secrets. Her unexpected ally is Eli Yoder, a reserved Amish widower and auction clerk who knows Briar Creek’s family histories almost as well as he knows when people are refusing to tell the truth.
Eli’s dry humor and steady presence make him useful. The grief he recognizes in Nora makes him dangerous in an entirely different way.
As suspicion spreads through the Amish farms, antique shops, auction houses, and polished tourist businesses surrounding Briar Creek, Nora realizes the sampler does not simply reveal what happened in the past. It threatens someone’s money, reputation, and future.
And the person who killed to keep its secret hidden may already know Nora has begun to unravel the pattern.
Readers will discover:
- A clever, emotionally grounded amateur sleuth whose knowledge of printing, paper, handwriting, and design helps her notice what others overlook.
- An atmospheric Amish-country setting filled with rural roads, estate auctions, quilt work, family businesses, and small-town secrets.
- A layered, low-gore cozy mystery involving an antique sampler, a hidden heir, altered records, and a disputed inheritance.
- A clean, chaste slow-burn romance between two widowed people rebuilding their lives through trust rather than instant attraction.
- Warm community characters and lightly witty dialogue without turning the mystery into slapstick.
- A satisfying standalone investigation that opens the door to more secrets from The Bell & Quill.
The Secret in the Sampler is the first novel in The Plain Truth Mysteries, a gentle Amish-adjacent cozy mystery series about old objects, hidden histories, rural grudges, and the truths people leave behind on paper and cloth.
Perfect for fans of Amanda Flower’s Assaulted Caramel, Laura Bradford’s Hearse and Buggy, and Vannetta Chapman’s Falling to Pieces.
My Review
The Secret in the Sampler is an enjoyable Amish-adjacent cozy mystery with a unique theme. There are plenty of cooking, crafting, bookshop cozy mystery books, but I’ve never read one with a letterpress shop! I was intrigued by this and excited about the setting. I live near Amish country in this part of Ohio. Though the town is fictional (I believe!), there’s Walnut Creek, Sugarcreek, Berlin…all within an hour of me. I can imagine this town being similar to one of those. Lots of shops equaling lots of tourists. However, I certainly hope there’s not a murderer running loose! This book has some well-developed characters with my favorite being Maeve. The author uses lots of descriptive language making it easy to picture the town and its settings. Nora has a habit of personifying inanimate objects to make clever quips. Eli, with his quiet manner, has no trouble keeping up with her. The plot moves along slowly making this a more gentle cozy mystery with plenty of clues to keep you following along. It’s always fun trying to figure out whodunit along with the characters! Even though there’s a hint of romance, I’m not sure how it would work in this book series though I’m sure if it’s love, one character may either join or leave the Amish. We shall see! If you’re a fan of cozy mystery books set in small Amish towns with an atmospheric vibe, give The Secret in the Sampler a read!
I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All views expressed are only my honest opinion.
Character Post
The Difference Between a Letterpress and a Printing Press: From character Nora Bell
People often use letterpress and printing press as though the terms mean the same thing. They do not, although the confusion is understandable. A letterpress is a printing press, but a printing press is not necessarily a letterpress. That is the cleanest distinction, and perhaps the only clean thing one can say about printing once ink, oil, paper dust, and human beings become involved.
A printing press is the broad category. It is any machine designed to reproduce words or images by bringing an inked or prepared image surface into controlled contact with paper or another material. Across history, that category has included wooden screw presses, iron hand presses, platen presses, cylinder presses, lithographic presses, rotary machines, and offset presses.
A letterpress is one particular method within that larger family. It prints from a raised surface. Individual pieces of metal or wood type, an engraved block, or a modern relief plate carry the image above the surrounding surface. Ink touches those raised areas, and the press forces paper against them. The design transfers directly to the sheet.
That raised surface is the heart of letterpress printing. If I lock movable type into a form, ink it, and press cotton paper against it on the Chandler & Price machine at The Bell & Quill, I am using a letterpress. The pressure may leave a slight impression in the paper. Modern customers tend to admire that impression. Earlier commercial printers usually sought a clean image without driving the type deeply into the sheet, because type was expensive and crushing it for decorative enthusiasm was not considered good workmanship.
The history of the printing press is broader than the history of letterpress, although the two begin closely entwined in Europe. Printing from carved woodblocks had existed in East Asia for centuries. In fifteenth-century Europe, Johannes Gutenberg brought together movable metal type, suitable ink, type casting, and a press mechanism into a practical system for producing books. The exact design of his machine is unknown, but historians believe it was probably a wooden screw press operated by a lever. The screw-and-platen arrangement remained fundamental to type-printing presses for centuries.
Those early machines were letterpresses because they pressed paper against raised, inked type. Over time, printing presses became stronger and faster. Wooden frames gave way to iron. Lever mechanisms improved pressure. Cylinder presses carried sheets over flat forms of type, and rotary presses eventually printed from curved plates at speeds an old hand printer might have regarded as both miraculous and morally suspicious.
By the nineteenth century, small platen job presses became common in American printing offices. They were designed for short commercial work such as tickets, handbills, letterheads, notices, cards, and labels. Chandler & Price, founded in Cleveland in 1881, became one of the best-known American manufacturers of these machines. The press at The Bell & Quill belongs to that tradition. It is a compact job press designed to bring an inked form and a flat platen together repeatedly and efficiently.
Meanwhile, the larger category of printing presses kept expanding. Lithographic presses print from a flat surface rather than raised type. Offset presses transfer an image from a plate to a rubber blanket and then to paper. Rotary newspaper presses use cylinders and rolls of paper for enormous production runs. These are printing presses, but they are not letterpresses.
That distinction matters when considering an Amish community.
The sentimental explanation would be that letterpress is appropriate because the Amish reject modern machinery and prefer everything old. It is also wrong. Amish communities do not all follow identical rules, and they do not reject technology simply because it is new. They assess tools according to local church standards and the likely effect on family, humility, independence, and community life. Many Old Order groups reject electricity from public utility lines while permitting selected technologies powered by batteries, generators, compressed air, or other locally controlled sources.
A treadle-powered or mechanically adapted letterpress can fit that approach. It can operate without connection to the electrical grid. It is durable, understandable, repairable, and suited to modest local production. It does not require a computer network, online ordering, or dependence on a distant commercial printer. None of those things is automatically forbidden, but they can shift control away from the community.
Letterpress is also well matched to the printed needs of a rural Amish district: auction bills, school-benefit notices, business cards, jar labels, seed packets, memorial cards, wedding invitations, and simple stationery. Platen job presses were created precisely for neighborhood printers producing short-run local work.
At The Bell & Quill, that scale matters. Aunt Lenora served both the Englisch town and nearby Amish families by printing auction flyers, recipe cards, memorial programs, church bulletins, wedding invitations, and private stationery. The shop’s Chandler & Price press and drawers of movable type make the business local, deliberate, and personal. A customer can stand at the counter, settle the wording, choose the paper, and know who will handle the names and dates.
Letterpress is therefore not appropriate because Amish people belong to the past. They do not. It is appropriate because the machine can support local control, limited scale, practical independence, repair rather than replacement, and careful work performed by someone accountable to the customer.
A printing press is the larger invention: any of many machines developed to reproduce text and images. A letterpress is one branch of that invention, defined by raised, inked forms pressed against a surface.
The difference is technical, but it is also philosophical. A high-speed press is built to make many copies quickly and consistently. A letterpress asks the operator to remain close to every part of the work: the type, the ink, the pressure, the paper, and the person whose name is being printed.
In Briar Creek, names have consequences. I prefer to keep my hands near the machinery.
About Abigail B. Hartwell
Abigail B. Hartwell writes gentle Amish-adjacent cozy mysteries rooted in the small towns and wooded backroads of east-central Ohio. Though she is not Amish, she lives near Amish communities and draws inspiration from the region’s quiet rhythms, close-knit families, old stories, and rural traditions. She shares a modest home on five wooded acres with her long-haul truck driver husband. They have two grown daughters and three grandchildren. When she is not writing, Abigail enjoys church activities, family time, and the peaceful beauty of the Ohio countryside.
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Amazon https://www.amazon.com/stores/Abigail-B.-Hartwell/author/B0H71WD53Y
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The Secret in the Sampler TOUR PARTICIPANTS
August 18 – Books, Ramblings, and Tea – SPOTLIGHT
August 18 – The Avid Reader – REVIEW
August 19 – Jody’s Bookish Haven – SPOTLIGHT
August 19 – Reading, Writing & Stitch-Metic – AUTHOR GUEST POST
August 20 – Boy’s Mom Reads! – SPOTLIGHT
August 20 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
August 21 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – REVIEW, CHARACTER GUEST POST
August 21 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – SPOTLIGHT
August 22 – Ruff Drafts – SPOTLIGHT
August 22 – Sarah Can’t Stop Reading Books – REVIEW
August 23 – Sarcastically Yours, Jen – SPOTLIGHT
August 23 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
August 24 – StoreyBook Reviews – CHARACTER GUEST POST
August 25 – Cozy Up With Kathy – REVIEW, AUTHOR INTERVIEW
August 26 – Ascroft, eh? – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
August 27 – Salty Inspirations – AUTHOR GUEST POST
August 28 – Sarandipity’s – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
August 28 – Book HookUp – REVIEW
August 29 – Romance Novel Giveaways – SPOTLIGHT
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