I’m a contemporary mystery junkie. Realistic tales, set in the modern world always grab my attention. In a creative writing course in college, one professor suggested the old ‘write what you know’ approach. I don’t know everything, but I know what I like. Mysteries! I thrive on distinctive characters, those who are willing to put every effort into getting to the bottom of the situation. Sharp, tight dialogue and descriptions are essential. Give me that, and I’ll be back for more. This is my passion. Come along if you want a thrill and a surprise or two.
I’ve been a fan of Sandford’s detective Lucas Davenport for a long time. He’s wicked smart, with a dark side that loves to come out and play occasionally. The way he orchestrates his use of the news media, and the department is uncommon. But the bureaucratic nonsense is starting to wear thin. And it’s getting in the way of Davenport’s passion for catching killers. When a friend of his daughter runs into trouble, he reluctantly jumps into the case, even though it takes him out of Minnesota and into the wilderness of Wisconsin and Michigan.
Davenport is the ultimate badass. He does whatever it takes to bring a case to closure and for justice to be served.
A Lucas Davenport thriller by internationally bestselling novelist John Sandford
They call them Travelers. They move from city to city, panhandling, committing no crimes - they just like to stay on the move. And now somebody is killing them.
Lucas Davenport's adopted daughter, Letty, is home from college when she gets a phone call from a woman Traveler she'd befriended in San Francisco. The woman thinks somebody's killing her friends, she's afraid she knows who it is, and now her male companion has gone missing. She's hiding out in North Dakota, and she doesn't know what to do.
I’ve only ever lived in small Midwestern towns. I grew up there, raised my kids there, recovered from a divorce there, remarried there. I’ve had the same best friends for 40 years. I’ve paid and bartered for my classmates’ trade services. I’ve argued with them in churches and cafes, rooted for and against their kids at high school basketball and football games all over the state. We’ve celebrated and buried each other’s loved ones. I’ve run hundreds of miles of Wisconsin trail, soaked in her waters, marveled at her sunsets. It’s as home to me as my own body, and I’ll never tire of reading about it.
I’m a sucker for gorgeous prose, Wisconsin landscape as a character, strong female protagonists, small-town community dynamics, and the complexities of found family—Carol Dunbar’s debut novel checks all of these boxes and then some.
I got so excited when I read this book. The prose crackles. The sensory details are vivid. It’s a literary slow-burn with just enough sizzle to keep you turning pages, and I savored every word. What would you do if you were a young wife and mother living off-grid in Northwoods, Wisconsin, and your partner suddenly became incapacitated? Dunbar left me feeling like I now know.
He promised her he would never let go. She's willing to risk everything to hold on.
In the aftermath of her husband's logging accident, Elsa has more questions than answers about how to carry on while caring for their two small children in the unfinished house he was building for them in the woods of rural Wisconsin. To cope with the challenges of winter and the near-daily miscommunications from her in-laws, she forges her own relationship with the land, learning from and taking comfort in the trees her husband had so loved. If she wants to stay in their home,…
I’ve only ever lived in small Midwestern towns. I grew up there, raised my kids there, recovered from a divorce there, remarried there. I’ve had the same best friends for 40 years. I’ve paid and bartered for my classmates’ trade services. I’ve argued with them in churches and cafes, rooted for and against their kids at high school basketball and football games all over the state. We’ve celebrated and buried each other’s loved ones. I’ve run hundreds of miles of Wisconsin trail, soaked in her waters, marveled at her sunsets. It’s as home to me as my own body, and I’ll never tire of reading about it.
I’ve lived in Wisconsin since 1985, and somehow I had no idea there used to be a thriving Playboy resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
After the book came out I learned I even have a family member who worked security there—that’s how little people around here talk about this juicy history. Christina Clancy’s book is set in the 1980s in both Lake Geneva and the smaller community of East Troy, and she does an excellent job of balancing the celebrity and historical elements with the young Wisconsin women themselves and the complex relationship so many of them had with the seedy perception of Playboy. A lot of them were from farms and rural towns, and their families didn’t even know they worked there.
This particular Playboy resort was even known as a family-friendly destination. I loved learning about a world I had no idea existed, set against one I thought…
The small town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin is an unlikely location for a Playboy Resort, and nineteen-year old Sherri Taylor is an unlikely bunny. Growing up in neighbouring East Troy, Sherri plays the organ at the local church and has never felt comfortable in her own skin. But when her parents die in quick succession, she leaves the only home she's ever known for the chance to be part of a glamorous slice of history. In the winter of 1981, in a costume two sizes too small, her toes pinched by stilettos, Sherri joins the daughters of dairy farmers and…
I grew up reading mysteries and quickly realized that, for me, the best stories were those that peered into the very heart and soul of the protagonist. I also favored books with deep roots; I wanted the present-day crime to be linked to the past. Through work and personal experience, I also understood the heavy toll of loss and grief and found myself drawn to writing a mystery series that related both in a way that was honest and real. When readers tell me that my protagonist’s pain is their pain, that his story is their story, I am both humbled and honored.
Lark Chadwick is my kind of protagonist – gutsy, smart, and burdened with a past that won’t let go.
When the aunt who raised her dies, Chadwick refuses to believe that suicide was the cause. Digging into the circumstances surrounding one death she discovers the truth about the deaths of her parents who were killed in an accident that only she survived.
A fledgling journalist, Chadwick talks herself into a job with the local paper, a first step in the many adventures that follow her in an exciting series that takes her all the way to the White House. Author John DeDakis, a former veteran CNN journalist, infuses the award-winning series with real-life drama and authenticity.
Orphaned as an infant, sexually assaulted as a naïve college student, strong-willed, impulsive Lark Chadwick is vexed and trying to figure out what to do with her mixed-up life. When she discovers the body of the aunt who raised her, Lark goes on a search for answers.
She is stunned to learn from a 25-year-old newspaper clipping that she’s the “miracle baby” who survived a suspicious car accident that killed her parents at a rural railroad crossing in southern Wisconsin. Lark convinces Lionel Stone, the crusty Pulitzer-Prize winning editor, to let her do a follow-up investigation of the crash. Two…
I love America. I was born here, I live here, and I will die here. Like Walt Whitman, I am mad for this place, and I treasure the soil beneath my feet, the water I drink, and the air I breathe. Unfortunately, the soil I love so much has been marinated in the blood of previous generations, the water I drink is filled with the filthy effluent of a greedy, industry-centered culture, and the air I breathe is bitter, choking me with cancer-causing toxins. Why do I care so much about books that describe the destruction of the North American continent? Because the destruction has not stopped!!!!!!!!
I first fell madly in love with the writing of Allan Eckert when I read The Crossbreed. I’m a cat person, so I was, of course, a sucker for a story about a wild kitten who was a cross between a housecat and a bobcat. Eckert’s descriptive writing enabled me to see North America through the cat’s eyes, and I still cry like a baby every time I think about the poignant ending—not because the story was so sad, but because it was so beautiful. If you have ever wondered what we lost in the destruction of the North American wilderness, just read The Crossbreed.
His mother was a housecat gone wild-a huge, tiger-striped cat who survived almost certain death at the hands of a man intent upon destroying her and her family.
His father was a bobcat-a proud, cunning creature of the Wisconsin countryside, whose tumultuous courtship with her resulted ultimately in his own violent death.
The Crossbreed himself was their largest offspring-the only one that strange litter the feral housecat bore to resemble his sire, even though his markings were those of his mother. His intelligence and ability and the combination of the better attributes of both breeds enabled him to survive in…
I’ve only ever lived in small Midwestern towns. I grew up there, raised my kids there, recovered from a divorce there, remarried there. I’ve had the same best friends for 40 years. I’ve paid and bartered for my classmates’ trade services. I’ve argued with them in churches and cafes, rooted for and against their kids at high school basketball and football games all over the state. We’ve celebrated and buried each other’s loved ones. I’ve run hundreds of miles of Wisconsin trail, soaked in her waters, marveled at her sunsets. It’s as home to me as my own body, and I’ll never tire of reading about it.
I was working part-time at an independent bookshop in 2008 when this book arrived in the latest shipment. In addition to the title—named for Driftless Region near where I grew up—the author’s personal comeback story was a novel in itself: Iowa Writers Workshop graduate Rhodes published three books in quick succession in the 1970s, then promptly fell off the face of the earth until, decades later, fledgling Milkweed Editions tracked him down and learned he’d been paralyzed in a motorcycle accident but was still very much alive (and writing) in a small farmhouse in rural Wisconsin. Hooked, I read the book—and was moved to my core.
Nobody captures the particular quirkiness, heart and faith of the people that make up tiny Wisconsin communities better than Rhodes.
“A fast-moving story about small town life with characters that seem to have walked off the pages of Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology.”—The Wall Street Journal
The few hundred souls who inhabit Words, Wisconsin, are an extraordinary cast of characters. The middle-aged couple who zealously guards their farm from a scheming milk cooperative. The lifelong invalid, crippled by conflicting emotions about her sister. A cantankerous retiree, haunted by childhood memories after discovering a cougar in his haymow. The former drifter who forever alters the ties that bind a community. In his first novel in 30 years, David Rhodes offers…
As a food scientist, I’ve always been interested in the processing of food and developing new recipes. Foodie fiction can take us into that process, showing us the behind-the-scenes of what it takes to run a foodie business and how to create dishes that people will love, even if you can only taste them through your imagination. And food and books just go together! Or am I the only one reading while eating?
This is a cute story about finding your path and being true to yourself. I love coconut cake, so the cover really grabbed me (and the author includes a recipe in the book!).
Lou owns a French restaurant because she thought it would help her establish herself and get a steady clientele when, in reality, she would’ve preferred a more intimate restaurant featuring the comfort food she learned to cook from her grandmother. When a food critic gives her a scathing review, and she’s forced to close the restaurant, she hones in on what she actually wants and connects to her authentic self.
The book also explores the foodie scene in Wisconsin, which was a great addition and really makes you want to visit and taste the food.
I moved around non-stop as a kid, attending a dozen schools by age
eleven. As a result, once I stayed put long enough to make real
friends, I stuck to them like glitter glue. As a reader and writer, I
can’t get enough stories about female friendships, whether rock-solid or
fraying. My latest novel involves
childhood friends whose loyalty is stretched like a pair of latex gloves
yanked off at a crime scene. The book grew out of a meme I saw on
Facebook, captioned: “Real friends help you hide the bodies”. My first
thought was: who would I help? Straight off, I thought of my oldest
friends.
I adore unreliable narrators—and here we have two, a pair of best friends on a dream backpacking vacation. Something terrible happens on their travels. Even worse, tragedy struck the last time they backpacked together. Worst luck ever? Or something more sinister?
I love the dynamics between this book’s flawed besties and the growing uncertainty about who can be trusted. This is one twisty read that’s deliciously creepy. It left me feeling lucky to have good friends in real life.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “This book is every suspense lover’s dream and it kept me up way too late turning pages. . . . A novel with crazy twists and turns that will have you ditching your Friday night plans for more chapters.”—Reese Witherspoon
A backpacking trip has deadly consequences in this “eerie psychological thriller . . . with alluring locales, Hitchcockian tension, and possibly the best pair of female leads since Thelma and Louise” (BookPage), from the bestselling author of The Lost Night and The Herd.
My favorite books as a child were the ones where kids went off on wild, impossible adventures alone, figuring things out, learning important lessons, and finding they were more capable than they thought. Wisdom, truth, insight, inspiration… those are the treasures found in these fantastical places. I’ve written (and told) stories all my life, but it wasn’t until I was in my fifties that my goal of publishing a book was realized. And now I have four more coming out (Lord willing!) within the next year and a half. It’s never too late. Unless you’re dead, then you blew it. So don’t stop trying, whatever your goals are.
While again, it’s not a magical world, it might as well have been. I was transported and transfixed to a different time and place. I could smell the linen baking dry in the sun as it hung in the open air and open fires that crackled and sparked as bacon sizzled on a cast iron pan. I shivered as they woke up one morning covered in a blanket of snow. I tasted the Christmas orange that was received with such joyful excitement. It made me want to like fruit–which, sadly, didn’t stick.
More importantly, it made me recognize the beauty of being grateful for things I took for granted. The mark of a good story is if you want to read it again as an adult, and I’ve read and reread this series more than once.
Classic tales by Laura Ingalls Wilder about life on the frontier and America's best-loved pioneer family.
Inside the little house in the Big Woods live the Ingalls family: Ma, Pa, Mary, Laura and baby Carrie. Outside the little house are the wild animals: the bears and the bees, the deer and the wolves. This is the classic tale of how they live together, in harmony mostly, but sometimes in fear ...
The timeless stories that inspired a TV series can now be read by a new generation of children. Readers who loved Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, and Heidi…
In the ‘60s, everyone was reading—or claiming to have read—Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I faked reading it, to appear cool. The idea of a road trip, though—characters running away, running toward, or often both—and the self-discovery that ensues—was so intriguing, I made it the heart of the novel I first drafted decades ago. I wrote about a middle-aged woman who flees her life to find a lost love and her lost youth, then put the manuscript away. For 30 years. When I retired from my social work career, I pulled it from the closet, revised it, and became an author at 74.
When this astonishing debut novel about a complicated mother-daughter relationship came out, I wondered if the author had met my mother. Because Adele August believes there’s nothing for her in her small Wisconsin town, she sets off for Los Angeles with her twelve-year-old daughter and a dream—Ann will be a child star; Adele will make a wealthy marriage; they’ll live the lives they were meant to. Simpson’s writing is gorgeous: “My mother and I should have both been girls who stayed out on the porch a little longer than the rest… who strained to hear the long-distance trucks on the highway... girls who looked at the sky and wanted to go away… but who finally sighed, and calling the dog with a mixture of reluctance and relief, shut the door and went home.” Reality can’t live up to Adele’s delusions; mother-child roles are often reversed; but love underlies this tangled…
A national bestseller—adapted into a movie starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon—Anywhere But Here is the heart-rending tale of a mother and daughter. A moving, often comic portrait of wise child Ann August and her mother, Adele, a larger-than-life American dreamer, the novel follows the two women as they travel through the landscape of their often conflicting ambitions. A brilliant exploration of the perennial urge to keep moving, even at the risk of profound disorientation, Anywhere But Here is a story about the things we do for love, and a powerful study of familial bonds.
