The Foursome

Christina Baker Kline

Mariner Books 

When Eng and Chang Bunker arrive in Wilkes County in 1839, they’re not just a curiosity—they’re a sensation. Everyone is eager to learn whether the salacious rumors about them are true. Within months, the twins have opened a general store, bought land, and begun building a plantation. Now, word has it, they’re looking for wives—and in a place that thrives on gossip and legacy, their ambitions set the community on edge. Sarah and Adelaide Yates, daughters of a once-prominent local family brought low by scandal, are drawn into their orbit. Bold, beautiful Adelaide sees in the twins’ fame a chance to reclaim her future. Sarah, quiet and observant, isn’t so sure. When the twins’ lives become entangled with theirs, they must navigate loyalty, longing, and identity in a world where everything—including race, class, and gender—is rigidly defined.

Twins 

Laura Krieger Emack

Prospect Press

She was eighteen, about to jump out of a birthday cake. He was sixty, the man she was supposed to impress. Neither expected what came next. When Katie Monahan, a big-dreaming high-school senior with no real friends and a dead grandmother she still talks to, agrees to a reckless scheme to earn two hundred dollars, she ends up naked and terrified. But the birthday boy, Ralph, surprises her. He is gruff, quietly grieving, and carrying a guilt of his own. The woman he should have loved. The life he should have lived. The hand he should have held. She was his great love's granddaughter. He was the grandfather Katie never had. Told across a single night in rural Maine, Twins is about the people who shape us after they are gone, the family we claim for ourselves, and the moment a stranger looks you in the eye and chooses you.

Tales of the Cemetery Trees II

John R. Cobb

Maine Authors Publishing 

From the author of the award-winning Tales of the Cemetery Trees, John R. Cobb presents another eclectic collection of short stories, including crime, drama, fantasy, horror, mystery, sci-fi, and supernatural. Brutally beaten by her abusive husband, Betty Bean calls upon the only man who can protect her. Assigned to explore a peculiar island along the Maine coast, a ranger encounters many mysteries. Two detectorists trek to an abandoned town with a fabled wishing well. Amid another global pandemic, a homeless man must survive in a cruel world. After the recent deaths of his beloved parents, a wounded World War I veteran returns home. A widow copes with unkind parishioners at her church. An intelligence agent searches for an enigmatic man, who may be from the future. And other tales… Fertile ground for the mysterious, the Maine wilderness holds many secrets.

Fifty-Seven: Cold War in the Stars and Sea 

Steven James Hantzis 

Alinet, LLC 

The U.S. is caught flat-footed when the Soviet Union launches Sputnik in October 1957. The U.S. missile program is years behind. The U.S., however, had launched the first atomic-powered submarine, the Nautilus (SSN-571), in 1956, and raced to have the capabilities to launch missiles submerged by 1960. The Nautilus, and Seawolf (SN-21), had the same limitations. Although they could prowl the oceans longer than conventional submarines, when they required maintenance, they had to return to Groton, Connecticut, an ocean away from their patrol area. Enter Stavros Niarchos. Stavros Niarchos, a golden Greek, a wealthy shipping magnate, is a friend of the Americans. Niarchos buys a rundown shipyard near the Port of Piraeus and undertakes modernization to support his commercial enterprise. The new yard will also provide NATO atomic submarines with a secret maintenance bay in the eastern Mediterranean on the doorstep of the Soviets’ Black Sea fleet. But the communists.

This is How We Speak

Rebecca Reynolds

Cornerstone Press

What do we owe one another? A woman running from the memory of her father's suicide seeks atonement through following her mentally ill boyfriend into the cornfields of Nebraska; a father cannot face his daughter after failing to save her from being shot and permanently disabled; an aunt raises her abandoned nephew; a woman must decide if she is willing to stand by her lifelong best friend. Rebecca Reynolds tells stories within stories of parents, children, turmoil, and forgiveness. Devastating and redeeming, this collection of stories heralds the debut of a stunning new voice.

Down from Cascom Mountain

Ann Joslin Williams 

Islandport Press 

A haunting debut novel about loss, healing, and the power of place to both wound and restore us. Mary Walker returns to the New Hampshire mountains of her childhood with her new husband, ready to rebuild her family's house on Cascom Mountain and start their life together. But in a single, devastating moment during a routine hike, she watches helplessly as her husband falls to his death, leaving her utterly alone in the wilderness that once felt like home. Struggling with sudden widowhood in the isolated mountain community, Mary finds unexpected solace among the seasonal crew that maintains the trails and lodge—young people who gather each night to share ghost stories and songs. As the small community rallies around her, Mary discovers that healing comes not from escaping the past but from embracing the rugged beauty and harsh realities of the place that shaped her. Now in Paperback.

Skyland

Ann Joslin Williams 

Islandport Press 

When Celia is murdered by a troubled young man from across the street, her family is left to navigate the unthinkable in their small town of Kittery, Maine. Desperate to help his daughters heal, widowed Henry sends young Nora and Lucy to Skyland Farm, a remote artists' retreat in the New Hampshire mountains run by his beloved cousin Franny. The girls, overwhelmed by grief, struggle to find their footing among the resident artists. Nora grapples with her complicated feelings about her mother’s murderer and former love interest, Blake, while forming a new bond with a young sculptor. Lucy, the sole witness to the crime, retreats into silence and the mysterious world of a painting above her bed. Back in Maine, Henry battles his own past when he becomes entangled with Blake's alcoholic mother, threatening his twelve years of sobriety. Set in coastal Maine and the mountains of New Hampshire.

Quagmire

Charles J. Thayer

Chartwell Publishing 

Harrison encounters a mystery when he joins Jennifer for Piper’s graduation in Switzerland. Why does Piper’s sailing teammate abandon her phone when she disappears the day before graduation? Her teammates are worried—Madison hasn’t reached out to anyone. Harrison’s plans to sail the coast of Maine are interrupted when he asks Noah to help locate Madison. Step by step, they’re dragged deeper into the quagmire of her disappearance.

Well Heeled

Marjorie Arnett 

Artistwalk Press 

Marjorie Arnett’s drawings and captions in WELL HEELED form whimsical characters in this delightful book about Stanley and his dog Boots. Stanley is a well heeled, loves-to-wear stilettos man, comfortable and supported in his life choices. Boots, his dog is his constant companion. Stanley and his friends support the LGBTQIA+ community and are advocates for equal rights for all.

A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 6

Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

Baen Books

The sixth Constellation collects eleven stories set in Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s vast, versatile, and beloved Liaden Universe®. Themes range from military to western to found family, and include discovery stories and novel outtakes. All showcase Lee and Miller’s deft touch with characterization and their acclaimed world-building skill. Also included in this volume is the text of Sharon Lee’s speech accepting the Robert A. Heinlein Award for outstanding published works in science fiction literature, which was presented at the 59th Baltimore Science Fiction Convention. Stories included are: “Standing Orders,” “Gadreel’s Folly,” “The Last Train to Clarkesville,” “Wise Child,” “Songs of the Fathers,” “From Every Storm a Rainbow,” “Our Lady of Benevolence,” “Chimera,” “Neutral Ground,” “Mother’s Love,” and “Core Values,” plus a foreword from the author, original to this volume.

Art From The Garden: Create 25 Beautiful Botanical Projects 

Kerry Michaels 

Timber Press 

Art From the Garden is a celebration of making art from what grows around us—leaves, flowers, stems, and branches—transformed into beautiful, accessible projects. Through clear instruction and lush photography, the book invites readers to slow down, look closely, and work with materials at hand, whether gathered from a backyard garden, a city walk, or even bought from a store. At its heart, Art From the Garden is grounded in the joy of creativity, curiosity, and a deep respect for the natural world. It emphasizes process over perfection, offering each project as a roadmap rather than a rigid blueprint, and empowering readers to create pieces that are both beautiful and uniquely their own.

An Old Man's Darling

Deborah K. Shepherd

Heliotrope Books

In her captivating memoir, Deborah K. Shepherd examines her first great love, with a man thirty-four years her senior. In 1968, at age 21, Shepherd ditched college in Tucson for hippie life in New York. When that soured, she found a low-level corporate job, where she met an unhappily married 55-year old senior executive. That they had a fling is unsurprising for the time. What is surprising is that they stayed together ; for twenty years and two children, despite their age gap, differing religions, and society's expectations. With today's perspective, and the benefits of both age and hindsight, Shepherd revisits her past, scouring old love letters and asking tough questions, of herself, and about romantic love, religious roots, judgement from others, and feminism. But she offers no easy answers in what becomes a powerful, engrossing, and unforgettable read about an unlikely love.

Thresholds 

Beth Kanell

Kelsay Books 

Thresholds involve an exploration of transitions. Set deeply in northern New England, the poems in this collection probe love, loss, fear, and re-connection, and fellow poet Judith Chalmer says the images here "grow lush in that environment, insisting ... on 'breath, blood, life itself.'" This is the first widely available book of Kanell's poetry, although she is already an award-winning novelist and journalist who lives close enough to Maine to revisit, with tenderness, the rocks, rivers, and blueberry patches there, where she found awe and delight as a child.