This time out, smalltown caterer and minister's wife Faith Fairchild's neighbor, Pix Miller, takes center stage, heading off to Norway to investigate the sudden disappearance of a family friend. Determined to discover the truth, Pix is drawn into a suspenseful world of intrigue, stolen antiques, secret histories, and deadly echoes from Norway's past and the Nazi occupation. Surrounded by the country's breathtaking beauty, the ever-resourceful New Englander perseveres -- until at last she finds herself face-to-face with a remorseless killer...with no way out.

The inimitable Faith Fairchild returns in a chilling New England whodunit, inspired by the best Agatha Christie mysteries and with hints of the timeless board game Clue. For most of her adult life, resourceful caterer Faith Fairchild has called the sleepy Massachusetts village of Aleford home. While the native New Yorker has come to know the region well, she isn’t familiar with Havencrest, a privileged enclave, until the owner of Rowan House, a secluded sprawling Arts and Crafts mansion, calls her about catering a weekend house party. Producer/director of a string of hit musicals, Max Dane—a Broadway legend—is throwing a lavish party to celebrate his seventieth birthday. At the house as they discuss the event, Faith’s client makes a startling confession. "I didn’t hire you for your cooking skills, fine as they may be, but for your sleuthing ability. You see, one of the guests wants to kill me." Faith’s only clue is an ominous birthday gift the man received the week before—an empty casket sent anonymously containing a twenty-year-old Playbill from Max’s last, and only failed, production—Heaven or Hell. Consequently, Max has drawn his guest list for the party from the cast and crew. As the guests begin to arrive one by one, and an ice storm brews overhead, Faith must keep one eye on the menu and the other on her host to prevent his birthday bash from becoming his final curtain call. Full of delectable recipes, brooding atmosphere, and Faith’s signature biting wit, The Body in the Casket is a delightful thriller that echoes the beloved mysteries of Agatha Christie and classic films such as Murder by Death and Deathtrap.

New District Sheriff Tristan Haraldsen uncovers a series of dark secrets when he investigates the disappearance of two boys in the remote Faroe Islands. Newly-appointed District Sheriff Tristan Haraldsen and his wife Elsebeth are looking forward to a peaceful semi-retirement in the remote fishing village of Djevulsfjord on the stunningly beautiful island of Vagar. But when two boys go missing during the first whale hunt of the season, the repercussions strike at the heart of the isolated coastal community. As he pursues his investigations, Tristan discovers that the Mikkelsen brothers aren’t the first young men to have vanished on Vagar. Determined to solve the mystery of Djevulsfjord, yet encountering suspicion wherever he turns, Haraldsen comes to realize he and his wife are not living in the rural paradise they had imagined, and that the wild beauty of the region hides a far darker reality.

A versatile missive written from the intersections of gender, disability, trauma, and survival. “Some girls are not made,” torrin a. greathouse writes, “but spring from the dirt.” Guided by a devastatingly precise hand, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound—selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry—challenges a canon that decides what shades of beauty deserve to live in a poem. greathouse celebrates “buckteeth & ulcer.” She odes the pulp of a bedsore. She argues that the vestigial is not devoid of meaning, and in kinetic and vigorous language, she honors bodies the world too often wants dead. These poems ache, but they do not surrender. They bleed, but they spit the blood in our eyes. Their imagery pulses on the page, fractal and fluid, blooming in a medley of forms: broken essays, haibun born of erasure, a sonnet meant to be read in the mirror. greathouse’s poetry demands more of language and those who wield it. “I’m still learning not to let a stranger speak / me into a funeral.” Concrete and evocative, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound is a testament to persistence, even when the body is not allowed to thrive. greathouse—elegant, vicious, “a one-girl armageddon” draped in crushed velvet—teaches us that fragility is not synonymous with flaw.

Finalist, the Arts Club of Washington Marfield Prize A look inside a dancer’s world Inspiring, revealing, and deeply relatable, Being a Ballerina is a firsthand look at the realities of life as a professional ballet dancer. Through episodes from her own career, Gavin Larsen describes the forces that drive a person to study dance; the daily balance that dancers navigate between hardship and joy; and the dancer’s continual quest to discover who they are as a person and as an artist. Starting with her arrival as a young beginner at a class too advanced for her, Larsen tells how the embarrassing mistake ended up helping her learn quickly and advance rapidly. In other stories of her early teachers, training, and auditions, she explains how she gradually came to understand and achieve what she and her body were capable of. Larsen then re-creates scenes from her experiences in dance companies, from unglamorous roles to exhilarating performances. Working as a ballerina was shocking and scary at first, she says, recalling unexpected injuries, leaps of faith, and her constant struggle to operate at the level she wanted—but full of enormously rewarding moments. Larsen also reflects candidly on her difficult decision to retire at age 35. An ideal read for aspiring dancers, Larsen’s memoir will also delight experienced dance professionals and fascinate anyone who wonders what it takes to live a life dedicated to the perfection of the art form.

An insightful and humorous account of the author's first year in Norway as a foreigner. From Easter to summer holidays and Christmas, it dives deeply into Norwegian culture, language and people.

“Enticing recipes at the back of the book and cooking tips sprinkled throughout…The crime is solved satisfactorily…[but] let’s be honest: most of us came for the food.” — New York Times Book Review Attorney Sophie Maxwell has come to Savannah to be with her new husband, Will. But nothing throws cold water on a hot relationship faster than a dead body. Worse for Sophie, no one believes the body she knows she saw is real. Will is spending an awful lot of time in Atlanta on a case he claims is urgent, and she’s been tasked with house hunting for them with his former sweetheart, who Sophie can’t help but suspect wishes Sophie would return to her Yankee roots! Fortunately, Sophie has a good friend in Faith Fairchild. With teenage Amy being bullied by mean girls and husband Tom contemplating a major life change that will affect all the Fairchilds, Faith is eager for distraction in the form of some sleuthing. In between discussions of newlywed agita, surprising Savannah customs and, of course, fabulous low country food, Faith and Sophie will pair up to unmask a killer. “Readers will enjoy this entry in which danger—and clues turn up in unexpected places.” —Publishers Weekly

Fjords are both an interface and a buffer between glaciated continents and the oceans. They exhibit a very wide range in environmental conditions, both in dynamics and geography. Some are truly wonders of the world with their dizzying mountain slopes rising sharply from the ocean edge. Others represent some of the harshest conditions on earth, with hurricane winds, extremes in temperature, and catastrophic earth and ice movements. Fjords are unique estuaries and represent a large portion of the earth's coastal zone. Yet they are not very well known, given the increasing population and food pressures, and their present industrial and strategic importance. Temperate zone estuaries have had many more years of intense study, with multiyear data available. Most fjords have not been impacted by man but, if history repeats itself, that condition will not last long. Fjords present some unique environmental problems, such as their usually slow flushing time, a feature common to many silled environments. Thus there is presently a need for management guidelines, which can only be based on a thorough knowledge of the way fjords work. Fjords are, in many respects, perfect natural oceanographic and geologic lab oratories. Source inputs are easily identified and their resulting gradients are well developed. Throughout this book, we emphasize the potential of modeling pro cesses in fjords, with comparisons to other estuary, lake, shelf and slope, and open ocean environments.