Small States

Welcome to Hope Falls where there’s love in the air… "Melanie Jackson is a talent to watch." —WritersWrite.com It's Chloe's first Valentine's Day with Alex and someone is out to sabotage the Sweethearts Ball. Her romance may also become a casualty when Alex's parents and their cats come to town for a visit. They are not pleased with their son's engagement. Now, their simple wedding plans have gone awry. "I was delighted to find Chloe Boston and all of Melanie Jackson's series." —Connie Shelton, author of the Charlie Parker and Samantha Sweet Mystery Series The path of true love ...

The State of Jones is a true story about the South during the Civil War: the real South. Not the South that has been mythologized in novels and movies, but an authentic, hardscrabble place where poor men were forced to fight a rich man's war for slavery and cotton. In Jones County, Mississippi, a farmer named Newton Knight led his neighbors, white and black alike, in an insurrection against the Confederacy at the height of the Civil War.

It has been twenty years since Philip McBride's body was found along the riverbank in the dark woods known as Happy Hollow. His death was ruled a suicide. But three people have carried the truth ever since—Philip didn't kill himself that day. He was murdered. Each of the three have wilted in the shadow of their sins. Yet what cannot be laid to rest is bound to rise again, and these three will be drawn together for a final confrontation between life and death . . . between truth and lies.

In a dry Kansas riverbed, a troop of young girls finds a human hand. This discovery leads Billy Spire, the tough and broken sheriff of Ewing County, to investigate and confront the depths of his community and of himself: the racism, the dying economy, the lies and truths of friendship, grievances of the past and present, and even his own injured marriage. To flyover folks, Ewing County appears nothing more than a handful of empty streets amid crop circles and the meandering, depleted Arkansas River. The truth of this place—the interwoven lives and stories—is anything but simple.

A thirty-something single woman, the untried colt she inherits, a horse-crazy little girl, and their band of misfits and has-beens stick it to the establishment in the cutthroat world of horse racing.

"Viva Lost Vegas" is the sixth book in the Chloe Boston Cozy Mystery Series. The path of true love is often rocky, but Chloe and Alex are trying to smooth the way by eloping to Las Vegas. On the way, they take a detour through a ghost town and find a body in a pink Cadillac. Someone is killing Elvis impersonators. Will they be hearing funeral bells or chapel bells on their wedding day?

Dark, profane, and hilarious, yet ultimately humane, these ten stories are the latest and best of Robin McLean’s reports from the eternal battlefront that is the United States. Ranging across the continent, from Alaska to Missouri, from the flatlands to the mountains, each tale is a snapshot of the political, racial, and sexual undercurrents roiling contemporary life, and each finds a way into the nerves and blood that pulse beneath the question of how to live a decent life.

How far would you go to protect a loved one? Would you tamper with evidence? Commit arson? Allow a prime suspect to remain at large? Pegasus Quincy and her former partner, Shepherd Malone, have some difficult choices ahead when Shep’s daughter is caught with a murder weapon in her hand. It doesn’t help when the detective on the case has problems of his own. When he applies to the sheriff’s department, he conveniently forgets to mention that he was terminated from his previous position under a cloud of fraud.

What readers are saying... "An excellent story - one showing exactly what God can do, if we only listen and get out of our own way. I absolutely loved this book. Thank you for making me laugh and cry, for helping me see things from a different perspectives and showing Gods amazing grace so clearly!" Amazon reviewer Sage Hoffman wants what her sister has. A normal life. A husband. The works. But moving on from the trauma she survived during her late teens proves more than she can bear—especially when she’s haunted by the sound of a tiny heartbeat she never knew existed. Because of the ...

It is a busy weekend in the town of Perfect, WA. A fan convention is being held. A serial killing is uncovered. Then a second distinctly different set of killings. And a third. Police Officer Brad Graham, along with FBI Special Agent Kyle Smart, tries to figure out why three different serial killers have descended on the small Pacific Northwest town. Welcome to Perfect, WA.

Trouble hasn’t left the quiet town of Revival Cove, and the Mayer family faces their greatest challenges yet as life, loss, and love collide in unexpected ways. Huck Mayer is battling more than his past—he’s fighting for his future. Haunted by regrets and still wrestling with his dependence on alcohol, Huck dreams of rebuilding his life, seeing his daughter more, and maybe even finding love again. However, embracing a new path could drive a wedge between him and his father, further straining the already-tenuous family ties. Johnny Mayer has found purpose as a preacher in the ...

Janie Treeborne lives on an orchard at the edge of Elberta, Alabama, and in time she has become its keeper. A place where conquistadors once walked and where the peaches they left behind now grow. Elberta has seen fierce battles, violent storms, and frantic change - and when the town is once again threatened from without, Janie realizes it won’t withstand much more.

Addie James's attempts to help out in Aunt Kate's tea shop are about to backfire bigtime, and Addie's new magic won’t be enough to get her out of a murder charge. Somewhat settled in the idyllic mountain town of Stargaze, former scientist Addie James still isn’t sure what she’s going to do with her life—or her newly discovered magical talent for reading tea leaves. In the meantime, she’s helping out at her Aunt Kate’s shop, Wild Rose Teas and Apothecary. But after buying an herbal remedy Addie made, the mayor's wife turns up dead. Addie is the prime suspect! Now she must beat ...

Neal Burgess, a semi-retired, middle-aged computer analyst from California, had just cashed in from a start-up company he helped bring to life. He bought the sailboat of his dreams and was enjoying his new liveaboard lifestyle in a small marina in southern Alabama, intending to just kick back, relax, do some writing, and focus on his zen practice. Life there was idyllic and blissfully uneventful until the day he met Cap'n Billy, a prototypical, down-home good ol' boy who operated a small shrimping trawler along the inland waterways that lined the Gulf.

Addie’s first Apple Festival is about to turn deadly... The Apple Festival kicks off the fall festival season in Stargaze, and that means colorful trees, cozy coats, apple cider, and fun! It also means an influx of tourists, including a stranger from Betty's past. It turns out the palm reader has a secret past, and it's coming back to haunt her. When a body turns up in Betty’s fortuneteller tent at the Apple Festival, she becomes the prime suspect in the killing. She claims she’s innocent, but her connection to the deceased only makes her appear more guilty. Addie is determined to ...

Tonasket: Anchored in the Okanogan is a sweeping historical fiction novel that spans a century of change, challenge, and quiet triumph in Washington State’s rugged Okanogan River Valley. Told through interwoven vignettes of pioneers, Native peoples, missionaries, and townsfolk, this heartfelt narrative brings to life the trials and transformation of a land once wild and untamed. From the early 1800s when fur trappers and tribal leaders cautiously exchanged words and wares, to the early 1900s when steam trains, apple orchards, and Baptist churches became fixtures of the valley, Tonasket ...

From Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain, comes her masterpiece, 10 years in the writing - an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about taming the wilderness and destroying the forest, set over three centuries. In the late 17th century, two illiterate woodsmen, Rene Sel and Charles Duquet, make their way from Northern France to New France to seek a living.

Rachel Ruskin never intended to return to her family’s tobacco farm in Shiloh, North Carolina. But when her academic career studying Southern folklore in New York City flames out, she has no choice. Back in her hometown in the wake of family loss, she is alone, haunted by memories, by ghosts, and by Shiloh’s buried history of racism and violence. When another child is accidentally shot and killed, however, Rachel can no longer avoid confronting her own past wrongs; nor can she continue to hold herself apart from her community.

După ce a petrecut zece ani în Anglia, Bill Bryson vrea să-şi rememoreze copilăria, aşa că pleacă din locul în care s-a născut, Des Moines, Iowa, într-o călătorie prin 38 dintre statele americane, pe care o documentează cu mult umor. Autorul speră să se reîntîlnească cu peisajele idilice ale copilăriei sale, însă găseşte lanuri nesfîrşite de porumb, benzinării, moteluri şi localuri care arată peste tot aproape la fel şi sunt populate de oameni care seamănă uimitor de mult unul cu altul.

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.