Small Town America

It's the 1790s, and the circus has arrived in Durham, Maine. Before weaver Will Rees is able to take in its spectacle, he spots Magistrate Hanson - the man he blames for his family's having to flee Dugard two years earlier. On his journey home he encounters Shaker brothers searching for a girl from their Zion community. Despite women not being allowed inside the circus, Leah had snuck out to visit it. They quickly come across her lifeless body beaten and thrown into a farmer's field on the road leading to the circus.

Summer, 1851. Racial tensions in America were higher than ever. The year before, President Millard Fillmore had passed the Fugitive Slave Act to return runaway slaves to the South. In February, Congress had established the reservation system, forcing Native Americans to leave their homelands. White Americans were strengthening dominance over people of color across the continent. In Oregon City, one biracial man named Jacob Vanderpool found himself in the crosshairs of this racist discrimination.

In Summer over Autumn, Howard Mansfield sifts through the commonplace and the forgotten to discover stories that tell us about ourselves and our place in the world - in this case, Hancock, New Hampshire.

Eat Like a Local: Illinois by author Elaine Joy Nicholson Small offers the inside scoop on food in Illinois, USA.

A dying man, Hank Peyton, tells his son Jerry Peyton that, after a lifetime of evil deeds, his only gift to his son will be his extremely valuable gun called The Voice of La Paloma. When Jerry is wrongfully accused of horse thievery, a cunning sheriff blackmails Jerry into stealing the gun from his father in exchange for a clean slate, even though the sheriff has already found the real horse thief.

On December 6, 1941, the rural township of Cussler was making final preparations for the town’s Christmas gala held every year. Nobody in the township, or the entire country, could predict that Sunday, December 7, 1941, would end far differently than anyone would ever imagine. The following morning during the gala, news broke of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The mood turned from celebratory to solemn in a matter of minutes as the reports of the attack on the Pacific Fleet came in. After the attack, the nation became galvanized, and over the coming weeks and months, the ...

What is it like growing up in a small town in Kansas where 15 boys have been best friends since childhood? A town so small that the same Doctor delivered 12 out of the 15 boys. Their lives are intertwined like spaghetti and have been for over sixty-two years. Today, they text regularly for birthdays and sporting events. They each know stories about the others our parents would not even know. Many feel lucky to have one or two friends they have known since childhood. Imagine what it is like to have 15 friends that know everything about you and your entire life. These are the stories of how ...

1973 Lubbock, Texas is the setting for this tale of mystery and the hidden lives of children as told by an eight year old girl. Her “vivid imagination resulting in hyperbole” sheds light on a local woman’s suicide, as well as providing a rare insight into the secret lives of her and her sisters. Holidays and school events create the timeline, as that is how children tell time, and retell some humorous vignettes regarding family, friendship, and budding love. She has the support of the many adults in her life, yet they are often seen in opposition to her imagination.

Fans of the New York Times bestselling Addison Holmes Mystery Series will love the final installment of The Scarlet Chronicles, featuring Scarlet Holmes and her days as a spy during World War II. Scarlet Holmes and the love of her life are secretly married at the height of the war. But wedded bliss is short-lived when her husband is captured as a French spy and imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen. It's up to Scarlet and an unlikely group of war heroes—women—who devise a plan to liberate the camp and save hundreds of lives.

It's 1951, and Miranda's mother has just married into one of the wealthiest families on Winthrop Island, a glamorous haven set off the New England coast. But beneath the surface, the island is a delicate balance of tension between the wealthy summer families who holiday there and the Portuguese fishermen and domestic workers who keep the island going. As Miranda begins to fall for Joseph, the lighthouse keeper's handsome son, the tension rises inexorably to the surface, and an explosive end to the summer will change everyone forever....

In "Master and Man," Bobbie is a black man who can outride, outfight, and outshoot any white man in the mountain desert. His unwavering moral code serves as a model for his often cruel and dissolute white master.

Cops in the Wilderness How the COVID-19 Pandemic Impacted Rural Policing As cities emptied, the countryside changed—forever. When the COVID-19 pandemic sent shockwaves through urban life, millions fled crowded cities for the open spaces of rural America. But what happened when the stressors of big-city living followed them into small-town communities? Cops in the Wilderness explores how the pandemic didn't just change public health—it transformed the very landscape of rural law enforcement. Through sharp analysis and on-the-ground perspective, this book uncovers the hidden challenges ...

Will Macey's chance at summer romance go up in smoke? Small town florist Macey Edwards is focused on running her small business. Independence Day is an opportunity to take a day off and spend it with friends, but she's definitely not looking for love. When her next door neighbor opens a fireworks stand, Macey is annoyed and swears she'll get it closed down. But, there's something about Sam's crooked smile that lights her heart on fire. Sam comes to quaint Charles Town, West Virginia, to help his aunt and uncle after an injury leaves their new fireworks stand floundering. When he meets Macey...

The Fireweed Moon is part of a trilogy, but each part is a standalone novel that can be read in any order. Forty-four-year-old Willow Trudeau has lost her mojo, her career as an artist in New York City is floundering, and she decides to pick up and move to the small town of Weeping Willow, Ohio (for which she is named) where her father, Leon Ziemny, still lives. When she arrives, she’s surprised to find that he has a houseguest, a stranger from her late grandmother’s past, who’s on a mission to find his murdered pastor brother’s long-missing Bible, a treasured family heirloom passed...