The Body in the Web: A Faith in Fairchild Mystery

Katherine Hall Page

William Morrow

This novel begins on a sunny winter afternoon in 2021, with our heroine, Faith, reflecting on life since March, 2020. As the story unfolds, Aleford is caught up in a Zoom-bombing incident, which turns deadly. The target is a teacher and a dear friend, and Faith finds herself attempting to solve the murder hampered by Covid protocols. Grateful for her friends, neighbors, and resilient family—including her son, Ben, home from college, and her high school senior, Amy— Faith forges on. This is a story of enduring hope in a time of loss and fear. "The 26th Faith Fairchild mystery (after The Body in the Wake) is fresh and remarkable in its ability to bring back memories of the day-to-day aspects of living through COVID. The reader and the victim are both trapped in a web in this skillful combination of mystery and pandemic story" — Library Journal (starred review).

Hidden Beneath

Barbara Ross

Kensington Publishing

In this eleventh novel of Barbara Ross’ award-winning Maine Clambake Mystery Series, featuring sleuth Julia Snowden, Julia and her mother, Jacqueline, have come to the exclusive summer colony of Chipmunk Island to attend a memorial service for Jacqueline’s old friend Ginny. Ginny has been officially declared dead half a decade after she went out for her daily swim in the harbor and was never seen again. But something seems fishy at the service—especially with the ladies of the Wednesday Club. As Julia and Jacqueline begin looking into Ginny’s cold case, a present-day murder stirs the pot, and mother and daughter must dive into the deep end to get to the bottom of both mysteries . . .

Wit and Wisdom: The Forgotten Literary Life of New England Villages

Joan Newlon Radner

Bright Leaf

Wit and Wisdom begins with the story of an odd discovery in a Maine attic which led to a long-lost nineteenth-century tradition of joyful wintertime gatherings. Rural villagers saw winter as a “season of improvement,” a time for mental exercise in good company. Neighbors bent on self-improvement created local “lyceums” featuring formal debates on current topics and performance of handwritten “papers.” Ordinary people – men and women of all ages, farmers and mechanics, and the few village intelligentsia – wrote poetry, serious essays, witty parodies, and sundry pieces teasing one another. Radner has found dozens of these ephemeral lyceum papers, which provide new access to the voices, talents, and concerns of rural New Englanders: their lifelong devotion to mutual “improvement” through face-to-face exchange of ideas, their broad national awareness combined with resistance to modernization, their passionate belief in their own model of democratic community, and their abundant, playful humor.

Studying the Princess Carolina: Anatomy of the Ship that Held Up Wall Street

Warren C. Riess

Texas A&M University Press

In this second volume about the ship he excavated in Manhattan, the follow-up to his 2014 publication, The Ship That Held Up Wall Street, Riess presents an in-depth technical analysis of the vessel in question. He believes it to be PRINCESS CAROLINA, a merchant ship constructed in 1717 by shipwright Benjamin Austin in Charleston, South Carolina. In doing so, he fills significant gaps in contemporary knowledge of eighteenth-century shipbuilding techniques. Though meticulous in scientific detail, Riess’s style is eminently readable for interested general readers.

The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry

Gretchen Cherington

She Writes Press

Three powerful men converge on the banks of the Cedar River in the early 1900s in southern Minnesota—George Albert Hormel, founder of the multi-billion dollar food conglomerate Hormel Foods; Alpha LaRue Eberhart, the author’s grandfather and Hormel’s Executive Vice President; and Ransome Josiah Thomson, Hormel’s comptroller. Over ten years, Thomson will embezzle $1.2 million from the company’s coffers, nearly bringing it to its knees. Opening in 1922 as George Hormel calls Eberhart into his office and demands his resignation, Cherington deftly weaves the histories of Hormel, Eberhart, and Thomson within the sweeping landscape of our country’s early industries, along with keen observations about business leaders from her thirty-five-year career advising top executives. The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy is a multilayered exploration of the ways we all must contend with the mythology of powerful men, our reverence for heroes, and the legacy of a complicated past.

Heart's Core

Joann Gardner

Finishing Line Press

In Heart's Core, the poet journeys through places, memories and ancestral musings on a quest for significance and self. Sometimes, she becomes a librarian tracing obscure references, sometimes a naturalist hunting specimens in bodies of water and stretches of forest, sometimes a person on a spiritual scavenger hunt. These are poems of loss and retrieval, of finding your way.

The Original Douglas Rabbit Story

Terry Perkins Mitman

(as told by Donald Walker Perkins)

Walk With Me 

Author's Note: When I was a child, I loved it when my father told me "Douglas the Rabbit" stories at bedtime. It is probably no coincidence that I married a Douglas of my own. When our kids were little, I tucked them into bed at night with Douglas the Rabbit stories too. There was always natural beauty, curiosity, risk, connection with others, and returning home, at the end of another adventure, safe and sound. The first in a series of four, The Original Douglas the Rabbit Story takes place in the summer and introduces readers to Douglas and his adventurous spirit. It stays true to the anticipation and humor my dad’s story-telling stirred in me way back when and concludes with fun facts to answer questions that may arise. Here’s to all of you who find time to tell your kids stories, too, even when—especially when—your days are full of adventures of your own.

From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast

Edited by Samaa Abdurraqib

Nature Culture

From Root to Seed lifts up the poetic voices of Black, Brown, and Indigenous writers who have deep historical and current connections to the land, places, and natural world of the Northeast region of the United States. The 25 contemporary writers featured in this collection share poetry which engages with nature and land from a wide variety of vantage points, from the grand scale–imagining Sarah Baartman dreaming of boats and oceans–to the minute scale–an instruction on how to live like a snail. With its mix of emerging and well-established writers, From Root to Seed inserts critical voices into the stream of nature poetry coming out of the Northeast. This brief, but poignant collection serves as reminder that Black, Brown, and Indigenous people have deep roots in this region and continue to thrive here.