Town Histories

Will a little meddling from Granny Mae and a touch of mistletoe magic be enough to turn enemies into lovers in time for a merry Christmas? Meredith: Returning to Kings Valley was supposed to be simple: revive my family’s beloved café and keep our town’s traditions alive. I never imagined my biggest challenge would be Kris Knight, the smooth-talking developer with grand plans to modernize our historic inn. From the moment we met we were at odds—our visions for the future couldn’t be more different. But a surprise kiss under the mistletoe has turned everything upside-down. Suddenly, ...

From city streets to City Hall and to Midtown corporate offices, Saving Stuyvesant Town is the incredible true story of how one middle-class community defeated the largest residential real estate deal in American history.

The Secret History of Twin Peaks enlarges the world of the original series, placing the unexplained phenomena that unfolded there into a vastly layered, wide-ranging history, beginning with the journals of Lewis and Clark and ending with the shocking events that closed the finale. The perfect way to get in the mood for the upcoming Showtime series.

When a centuries-old windmill in Seabreeze is set for restoration, a shocking discovery inside its walls uncovers hidden chambers, coded journals, and a Revolutionary War-era secret. Charlotte Greenfield and Luke Harrison race to unravel the truth behind a forgotten network of spies, but someone is determined to keep the past buried forever. With history whispering its secrets and danger closing in, Charlotte must solve the mystery—before the winds of the past turn deadly.

While out checking their lobster traps, two Landry cousins and skipper Dwayne Samson saw Boudreau in his boat, the Midnight Slider, about to vandalize their lobster traps. Like so many times before, the small-time criminal was about to cost them thousands of dollars out of their seasonal livelihood. Boudreau seemed invincible, a miscreant who would plague the village forever. Meanwhile, the police and local officials were frustrated, cowed, and hobbled by shrinking budgets. One of the men took out a rifle and fired four shots at Boudreau and his boat.

One of the bestselling novelists of the American West brings us a gripping tale of gold, greed, and vengeance.

Rebecca McClung, who sat in her house watching everyone in town go by, was once a beauty. But the scene that greeted the coroner early one spring morning in 1901 was far from beautiful. She lay across her bed, blood dripping to the floor, her head bashed in with a wooden club. Her husband, a wealthy old miser, stood dazed nearby, his coat stained with blood. Residents in the small Ohio town said he kept all his money in a barrel in their house and made his wife sit on it whenever he went out. They were a peculiar couple. But was he a murderer? Isabel Miller, the undertaker’s daughter, ...

In The Other Side of the River, his eagerly awaited new book, Kotlowitz takes us to southern Michigan. Here, separated by the St. Joseph River, are two towns, St. Joseph and Benton Harbor. Geographically close, they are worlds apart, a living metaphor for America's racial divisions: St. Joseph is a prosperous lakeshore community and 95 percent white, while Benton Harbor is impoverished and 92 percent black. When the body of a black teenaged boy from Benton Harbor is found in the river, unhealed wounds and suspicions between the two towns' populations surface as well.

The micro-nation Christiania has been threatened from without by the Danish government for decades. Nowadays, it is equally menaced by schisms from within.

Mattie Reynolds made a promise to a dying Meg Boldrin to fulfill her last wishes, to mend the strained relationship with her son from beyond the grave. She would make the journey of her life by stagecoach over seven hundred miles to the small East Texas town of Chivalry, receiving a cavalier welcome. Her quick, persistent determination fouls her pure intentions to do right by a grieving son. Chess Boldrin, Chivalry’s most eligible bachelor is situated comfortably with everything he needs. When Chess and Mattie meet, the temperatures run high and short. Chess avoids her attempts to gain ...

John Henry Cole is an operative of Ike Kelly's Detective Agency, based out of Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. Returning to Cheyenne from what had been a deadly assignment in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, Cole has decided that he has no alternative but to resign from the agency and pursue a different line of work. However, in Cheyenne, Cole learns that Ike Kelly has been murdered and his body burned in a fire that destroyed both the agency office and the shop next door.

A genteel Border South town not far from the nation’s capital is shaken by a series of vicious slayings at historic sites. These include a Civil War cemetery for escaped slaves; a burial mound of Confederate soldiers; a church associated with George Washington; and a museum on the Antebellum Era. At the same time, violent break-ins take place at venerable banks and townhomes connected with the lives of Washington, Robert E. Lee, and civil rights figures.

Based on the personalities who created America’s Early Colonial Period, Footprints in History, combines imagination and historic events to tell of the author’s sixth great-grandfather, blacksmith and indentured servant, James Fitchett. James and his neighbors toil in the new land for the twenty-four Scottish investors, known as proprietors. These men control East New Jersey hoping to amass fortunes from the sweat and tears of their tenants, indentured servants, and slaves. Not all settlers share the same hopes and beliefs. Footprints in History reveals the winners and the losers

Inspired by a true story. In 1825, in a remote Irish valley lying between the mountains and Flesk River of Killarney, three women are brought together by strange and troubling events. Nora Leahy, a widow, has lost her daughter and her husband in the same year and is now burdened with the care of her grandson, Michael. The boy cannot walk or speak, and Nora has kept him hidden from neighbours, who might see in his deformity evidence of supernatural interference.

CAPE TOWN’S POPULAR high-end night spots attract an array of clientele, from young partygoers to politicians, models to moguls. In parallel with this is a sleazy underworld where control of the lucrative nightclub-security scene is the ultimate prize, for which some are prepared to pay using extortion and murder as the main currencies. South Africa’s private-security sector is massive, an informal police force increasingly relied on as confidence in traditional policing wanes. But it’s an industry tainted by ties to underworld figures and events.

Kukum recounts the story of Almanda Siméon, an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle, who falls in love with a young Innu man despite their cultural differences and goes on to share her life with the Pekuakami Innu community. They accept her as one of their own: Almanda learns their language, how to live a nomadic existence, and begins to break down the barriers imposed on Indigenous women. Unfolding over the course of a century, the novel details the end of traditional ways of life for the Innu.

Nuclear power once promised to be the solution to the world's energy crisis, but that all changed in the late twentieth century after multiple high-profile accidents and meltdowns. Power plant workers, finding themselves the subject of public opposition, became leery of reporters. But one plant in Zion, Illinois, allowed unrestricted access to one journalist: the Chicago Tribune's Casey Bukro. Bukro spent two years inside the Zion nuclear plant, interviewing employees, witnessing high-risk maintenance procedures, and watching the radiation exposure counter on his own dosimeter tick up and up.

A historical fiction novel set in the Five Towns of England during the late 19th century, Three Penny Sunday offers an engaging journey into the life of an intriguing character, Edward Henry Walker, born in 1867. Tracing his trajectory from a modest upbringing in Bursley to prominence, the novel weaves a rich tableau of the era's local pottery industry often referred to as "potbanks", and the tight-knit, gossip-ridden community that shapes the town's social and political landscape. Henry's Course Initially an ordinary boy, Henry secures a surprise scholarship at twelve, albeit through ...

When Juniper returns home for Christmas, will the magic of the season turn what starts as a fling into something more? Coming home for Christmas wasn’t part of my plan, especially not after my ex, Troy, dumped me like a hot potato for another woman. But my mom’s guilt trips are as relentless as ever, and with no flights available, I find myself on a twelve-hour drive back to the small town I left behind. Just as I’m about to reach town, my car gives up the ghost, leaving me stranded with a snowstorm approaching and no cell service. That’s when he shows up. Mason Knight. The high ...

In April 1938, Swift River Valley residents held a farewell ball to mark the demise of the quintessential New England town of Enfield and its three smaller neighbors, Greenwich, Dana, and Prescott. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts sacrificed these three towns to build the Quabbin, a massive reservoir of drinking water for residents of Boston. Three prominent residents attended the somber occasion.