Small States

This fifth volume includes the full texts of books 14 through 17 in the Chloe Boston Cozy Mystery Series: "The Sham", "Murder by the Book", "Cornucopia", and "Make Over".

Born in Brooklyn, Sammy Gregg is small in stature and naive to the ways of the world, yet headstrong and resolute to save enough money to marry Susie Mitchell. Gregg calculates that he needs $15‚000 and figures he can earn enough in six months out west. Although he is a small man who knows nothing of fighting‚ guns‚ or horses‚ he takes his $5‚000 in savings and heads west‚ arriving in Munson‚ a tough, lawless town.

As Jack Lee investigates a series of deadly cases, he encounters murderers, international criminals, and a robber. At the same time, his niece Jenn, an underwater archaeologist studying mermaids, arrives on the island, coinciding with a sudden crime wave. From bank robberies to vandalism to searching a lake with hidden secrets, Jack is determined to solve every case and protect the public. However, when tragedy hits the high school swim team, and someone close to Jack is kidnapped, Jack must find help to close the cases, including assistance from someone with fins, scales, and a long tail. ...

In March 1986, while living in Brooklyn, Chris Bohjalian and his wife were cab-napped on a Saturday night and taken on a forty-five-minute joy ride in which the driver ignored all traffic lights and stop signs. Around midnight he deposited the young couple on a near-deserted street, where police officers were about to storm a crack house. Bohjalian and his wife were told to hit the ground for their own protection. While lying on the pavement, Bohjalian's wife suggested that perhaps it was time to move to New England.

When Andrew Apperley visits his brother David in the East, he brings along an unexpected companion. Andrew's giant wolf dog, Comanche, is so wild that he has to be chained up for the safety of others. However, when the Apperley brothers come across a man drowning in the East River, Comanche breaks loose from his chains and swims to the man's rescue.

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.

An Iraq War veteran turned small-town homemaker, Colleen works hard to keep her deployment behind her - until pregnancy brings her buried trauma to the surface. She hides her mounting anxiety from her husband, Derby, who is in turn preoccupied with the retrial of his father, Hare Hobbs, for a decades-old civil rights-era murder. Colleen and Derby's community, including the descendants of the murder victim, still grapple with the fallout; Corrections Officer Doc and his wife, Jessica, have built their life in the shadow of this violent act.

Reniqua Allen tells the stories of Black millennials searching for a better future in spite of racist policies that have closed off traditional versions of success. Many watched their parents and grandparents play by the rules, only to sink deeper and deeper into debt. They witnessed their elders fight to escape cycles of oppression for more promising prospects, largely to no avail. Today, in this post-Obama era, they face a critical turning point. Interweaving her own experience, Allen shares surprising stories of hope and ingenuity.

The summer of 1966 burned hot across America but nowhere hotter than the cotton fields of Mississippi. Finding herself in a precarious position as a black woman living alone, Bernice accepts her brother Floyd’s invitation to join him as a servant for a white family, and she enters the web of hostility and deception that is the Kern plantation household.

Barney Dwyer is a gentle giant who has yet to find a place in the world. Capturing two notorious outlaws has made a hero of him, so much so that rancher Robert Parmelee offers him a job on his ranch to put a stop to persistent rustling. Taking the job promises an income sufficient for Barney to marry his sweetheart. But this promise for the future falls into jeopardy when the outlaws escape, determined to kill Barney.

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 ...

This collection takes us to a forgotten corner of the rural South, full of cemeteries, soybean fields, fishing holes, and Duck Thru gas stations. We meet a runaway teen, a mattress salesman, feral kittens, an elderly bachelorette wearing a horsehair locket, and a little girl named after Shania Twain. Here, time and memory circle above Phillips’ characters like vultures and angels, as they navigate the only landscape they’ve ever known. Corn reaches for rain, deer run blindly, and no matter how hungry or hurt, some forgotten hymn is always remembered.

Secretos, mentiras y actos terribles han estado rondando en Burdensville durante mucho tiempo. Durante un viaje por todo el país, el tren hace una escala en la pequeña ciudad de Burdensville, Scott decide visitar un pequeño café para almorzar. Pero termina visitándolo por más tiempo del que esperaba, Scott observa a un hombre borracho tratando de golpear a una camarera poco dispuesta en el restaurante. Él trata de intervenir y protegerla, pero el sheriff Darby termina enviándolo a la cárcel por su buena acción. Pronto, se vuelve evidente que la gente de Burdensville tiene serios ...

In this continuation of the Southern Roads series, Dr. Jay Cross is worried things are getting serious between Rachel Hutchins and Barry Devine, and decides if he's going to land the brainy beauty, he's going to have to up his game. So Jay approaches the three Armstrong brothers, all of them strapping ex-military men, and asks them to make him over from a small-framed British intellect into an alpha male Southern boy who will get Rachel's attention. The brothers agree and are determined to make a southern man out of him, but will all the sweat and humiliation be a waste of time?

From the author of the million-copy global best seller Lilac Girls, comes a captivating new historical novel, set during the American Civil War. It's a sweeping story of women caught in a country on the brink of collapse, in a society grappling with nationalism and unthinkable racial cruelty.

On the evening of the eighteenth of May, a young woman walks alone into the small village of Chimney Rock, North Carolina, with the intention of staying for exactly one year. As she sets about to find lodging and work, she quickly meets two precocious children, a caring and generous business owner, and the neighboring town's Chief of Police. Family and loss make up many of their stories, and while these people and others attempt to get to know and help the stranger, the history and troubled memories of what led her to this place begin to gradually unfold. As the date of her planned ...

Exploring the diverse landscape of American life, the stories in Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories capture the lives of people caught between circumstance and their own natures or on the run from fate. Tom Piazza’s debut short story collection, originally published in 1996, heralded the arrival of a startlingly original and vital presence in American fiction and letters. Set in Memphis, New Orleans, Florida, Texas, New York City, and elsewhere, the stories echo voices from Ernest Hemingway to Robert Johnson in their sharp eye for detail and their emotional impact.

Never ever date a client. That’s what I keep telling myself. Until Terence Daniels walks into my office. Biggest mistake of my life. Next thing I know, I’m fleeing Louisiana, hunkering down with my best friend in Dallas. Things just cannot get any worse. Until Kate’s car breaks down outside this bar that looks like their patrons kill women with sticks. We have no choice but to go inside. What I find in there is nothing that I would expect. What unfolds in the coming weeks are more mistakes. Better ones. And then one that I’ll forever call my favorite mistake.

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.