Plainfield, New Hampshire, has been an extraordinary place since its beginnings. The serene river valley life offers nature's very best and has beckoned many artists and intellectuals, including Ethel Barrymore, J.D. Salinger, and President Woodrow Wilson. In her whimsical and touching Americana memoir, Viola Sawyer Lunderville reflects on her growing up years spent in the quaint New England town in the Connecticut River Valley where she explored, learned, and experienced a simple lifestyle full of freedom, memorable places, and special times. As she looks back on the years, Viola not only offers a unique look at Plainfield's history from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, but also shares a glimpse into all the reasons why the beautiful landscape beckoned many to settle on this picturesque land, including the famous and wealthy. Through detailed personal anecdotes, Viola brings to life historic places by sharing real-life experiences that detail adventurous days spent exploring local swimming holes, roaming the vast woodlands, licking sap from maple trees, and skiing on Whaleback Mountain. A Not-So-Small-Time Town takes a nostalgic, sentimental ride through a New England town filled with historical significance and many wonderful memories from a simpler time.

A small-town cop seeks vengeance on twelve escaped inmates in this novel of “jaw-dropping twists . . . crisp in execution and thrilling until the very end” (The Wall Street Journal). When twelve inmates pull off an audacious prison break, it liberates more than a thousand convicts into the nearby small town. The newly freed prisoners rape, murder, and destroy the quiet community—burning down homes and businesses. An immense search ensues, but the twelve who plotted it all get away. After two years, the local and federal police agencies have yet to find them. Then, the mayor calls in Leah Hawkins, a local cop who lost a loved one that terrible night. She’s placed on sabbatical to travel across the country learning advanced police procedures. But the sabbatical is merely a ruse. Her real job is to track down the infamous twelve—and kill them. Leah’s mission takes her from Florida to New York and from the beaches of California to an anti-government settlement deep in the Ozarks. But when the surviving fugitives realize what she’s up to, a race to kill or be killed ensues in this nonstop tale of vengeance from the Edgar Award–winning author of The Butcher’s Boy. “Leah proves to be both a brilliant detective and a cunning predator.” —Associated Press “Perry is an expert storyteller . . . A Small Town unfolds like a 1950s film noir.” —Wall Street Journal

"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of smiling village where the movies from his youth were set. Instead he drove through a series of horrific burgs, which he renamed Smellville, Fartville, Coleslaw, Coma, and Doldrum. At best his search led him to Anywhere, USA, a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by obese and slow-witted hicks with a partiality for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost: lost to itself because he found it blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a foreigner in his own country.

Fresh out of high school, Babe Vogel should be thrilled to have the whole summer at her fingertips. She loves living in her lighthouse home in the sleepy Maine beach town of Oar’s Rest and being a barista at the Busy Bean, but she’s totally freaking out about how her life will change when her two best friends go to college in the fall. And when a reckless kiss causes all three of them to break up, she may lose them a lot sooner. On top of that, her ex-girlfriend is back in town, bringing with her a slew of memories, both good and bad. And then there’s Levi Keller, the cute artist who’s spending all his free time at the coffee shop where she works. Levi’s from out of town, and even though Babe knows better than to fall for a tourist who will leave when summer ends, she can’t stop herself from wanting to know him. Can Babe keep her distance, or will she break the one rule she’s always had - to never fall for a summer boy?

The author of dozens of acclaimed novels including those in the Scudder and Keller series, Lawrence Block has long been recognized as one of the premier crime writers of our time. Now, the breathtaking skill, power, and versatility of this Grand Master are brilliantly displayed once again in a mesmerizing new thriller set on the streets of the city he knows and loves so well. That was the thing about New York -- if you loved it, if it worked for you, it ruined you for anyplace else in the world. In this dazzlingly constructed novel, Lawrence Block reveals the secret at the heart of the Big Apple. His glorious metropolis is really a small town, filled with men and women from all walks of life whose aspirations, fears, disappointments, and triumphs are interconnected by bonds as unbreakable as they are unseen. Pulsating with the lives of its denizens -- bartenders and hookers, power brokers and politicos, cops and secretaries, editors and dreamers -- the city inspires a passion that is universal yet unique in each of its eight million inhabitants, including: John Blair Creighton, a writer on the verge of a breakthrough; Francis Buckram, a charismatic ex–police commissioner -- and the inside choice for the next mayor -- on the verge of a breakdown; Susan Pomerance, a beautiful, sophisticated folk-art dealer plumbing the depths of her own fierce sexuality; Maury Winters, a defense attorney who prefers murder trials because there's one less witness; Jerry Pankow, an ex-addict who has turned being clean into a living, mopping up after New York's nightlife; And, in the shadows of a city reeling from tragedy, an unlikely killing machine who wages a one-man war against them all. Infused with the raw cadence, stark beauty, and relentless pace of New York City, Small Town is a tour de force Block fans old and new will celebrate.

Wrong turn at the right timeFast–moving Texan Tyler Aldrich thought it a fate worse than death to be stuck in rural Eden, Oklahoma, overnight. Imagine the Dallas CEO settling in for homemade meat loaf at the Heavenly Arms Motel Yet something about quiet Charlotte Jefford made Tyler want to leave his worries behind for more than one evening. Was it their differences that drew Tyler in? The small–town girl was devoted to her family; he longed to escape his. Were they polar opposites thrown together by a wrong turn––or had God actually set them on the right path?

What is a sacred moment? Is it a big, sudden change in the direction of your life or your physical or mental state? Or is it a moment in which you understood your fears or made a choice to let something go? We may find our lives full of fear, hurt, or pain of loss, and even though these daily experiences have not caused major earthquakes or volcanic eruptions around the world, it is in these moments of our daily lives that we must look for our answers. In Small Steps, Huge Changes: The Extraordinary Moments of an Ordinary Life, writer Phyllis Reed shows us how it is possible to discover healing and joy by choosing to take just one small, courageous step. Through reflections, remembrances, poems, and vignettes, Reed tracks her own small steps through realms as varied as love, parenthood, loneliness, fear, and connecting to places, other people, and holy presence. Each true story, told in Reeds conversational, nurturing tone, is a tribute to those who have found ways to live happily and healthily after great difficultiesto see the extraordinary in their everyday experiences. Taken as a whole, these moments of rising and falling, of joy and defeat, become our sacred lives. Our sacred moments are our greatest gifts, and the choice is ours to step forward and accept and learn from them.

For Shame, Boone! For Shame, Iowa! The Disappearance of Norma Maynard By: Sidney S. Louis If you have a hidden, secret, wish to be Sherlock Holmes—and who doesn’t, really—the Norma Maynard story is for you. An innocent woman was murdered and made to vanish—as if she had never existed. City of Boone, county of Boone and Iowa state level law enforcement were unable to determine what happened. To this day, it is not known: · Exactly when the missing woman was murdered · Who committed the murder · How it was done · Why it was done · Where the missing woman’s remains are Join the author as he fights for twelve years to have his sister’s murder properly investigated, only to be met with a stone wall of resistance from Iowa officials at city, county and state level. The author provides readers with the ability to set up their own investigative files. He helps them devise a scale to measure the effectiveness of officials that are part of the story. The reader will be able to question, with some authority, why the Norma Maynard case has not been resolved. Was this a deliberate choice by Iowa law enforcement and legal and judicial officials? If you elect to sleuth along with the author, will you be the one to solve the almost forty year riddle of the disappearance of Norma Maynard?

A revealing examination of small-town life More than thirty million Americans live in small, out-of-the-way places. Many of them could have joined the vast majority of Americans who live in cities and suburbs. They could live closer to more lucrative careers and convenient shopping, a wider range of educational opportunities, and more robust health care. But they have opted to live differently. In Small-Town America, we meet factory workers, shop owners, retirees, teachers, clergy, and mayors—residents who show neighborliness in small ways, but who also worry about everything from school closings and their children's futures to the ups and downs of the local economy. Drawing on more than seven hundred in-depth interviews in hundreds of towns across America and three decades of census data, Robert Wuthnow shows the fragility of community in small towns. He covers a host of topics, including the symbols and rituals of small-town life, the roles of formal and informal leaders, the social role of religious congregations, the perception of moral and economic decline, and the myriad ways residents in small towns make sense of their own lives. Wuthnow also tackles difficult issues such as class and race, abortion, homosexuality, and substance abuse. Small-Town America paints a rich panorama of individuals who reside in small communities, finding that, for many people, living in a small town is an important part of self-identity.