A broken ballerina. A forgotten melody. A thirty-year-old secret someone was willing to kill to protect.
Greer Tolliver can coax a song out of...
or
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J.J. Dakota
J.J. Dakota writes the Mended Marvels Mysteries, a cozy mystery series where forgotten objects, hidden histories, and small-town secrets have an inconvenient habit of becoming murder investigations.
Fascinated by antiques, curious inventions, and the stories old objects carry with them, Dakota's mysteries explore what can happen when something long forgotten suddenly has a story left to tell.
The series begins with The Unfinished Pirouette, in which antique restorer Greer Tolliver encounters a century-old mechanical ballerina that plays a melody it shouldn't—and discovers that some things from the past were forgotten for a reason.
When not plotting Greer's next mystery, J.J. can usually be found somewhere between an old book, an unusual object, and the question that starts every good mystery:
How did this get here?
J.J. Dakota writes the Mended Marvels Mysteries, a cozy mystery series where forgotten objects, hidden histories, and small-town secrets have an inconvenient habit of becoming murder investigations.
Fascinated by antiques, curious inventions, and the stories old objects carry with them, Dakota's mysteries explore what can happen when something long forgotten suddenly has a story left to tell.
The series begins with The Unfinished Pirouette, in...
Blog
Pins, gears, and a comb of steel teeth: the story of the music box, from a Geneva watchmaker's bench to a New Jersey factory floor.
By J.J. Dakota
Wind a music box, and before a single note sounds you can feel it: a small, tight resistance under your fingers as the spring takes up the tension. Then you let go, something inside begins to turn, and a tune comes out of a wooden box as if it had been waiting there all along.
Now that music lives in our pockets, it's easy to forget how strange that...
From J.J.'s Desk
Join me for curious objects, hidden histories, new mysteries, and occasional news from the Mended Marvels world.