Eighth grader, Amanda Craftton bent to peer pressure. She slipped away from school at lunch time with her friends. They went to the mall to get tattoos. Afterward, one of the friends invites the girls to go home with her to sample a beer. The time got away from them, making them late for math class. The teacher sent them to the principal's office for a tardy slip. The principal smelled beer on the girls' breath and suspended the girls from school for the last six weeks of the term. Amanda's parents don't seem to be able to make Amanda understand what she did was wrong. Her mother, Iris,...

Gracie Evans is going back to her Three Oaks farm again to farm sit for a month. After the problems she had the last time she farm sit, the Moser Mansion family is worried about her staying in the country alone. So this time she offers to take the Lang's daughter, Shana, with her. The girl needs to work off some excess energy now that school is out, and this will give Molly and Orie Lang a break from worrying about Shana wondering around town by herself. The last straw to their consenting to Shana's stay with Gracie was when Shana invited a hobo to Sunday dinner. Her parents fear Shana is...

Miranda Tollifson had an easy life after she married Minnesota farmer, Anselm Tollifson. Her husband put up with her imaginary ailments and even brought in a woman to do the housework for her. Her life was so good that other farmers' wives in the area were jealous. They wouldn't associate with Miranda unless it was unavoidable. Miranda didn't care what they thought of her as long as her husband, Anselm, pampered her. All that changed. Right after the Civil War, Oregon land opened up for homesteading. There was a rush to go west and claim the free land before it was all gone. Anselm wanted to...

Author Karen Warwick was satisfied her move to the country was a good one when her parents decided to sell the century old Crane family farm house. She has more peace and quiet in the country than she'd realized was possible. That all changes when her scientist friend, Amy Brown, asks Karen to try out a robot maid as a favor to her to see if the robot was working well enough to sell on the market. Karen has regrets from the get go after she says yes. She takes home a young woman robot, named Henie, that acts like a teenager, and the next morning finds a senior citizen robot in her kitchen...

Wedgewood, Minnesota Police Detective Renee Brown has a murder case to solve with the help of rookie police officer Jeff Briceson. When Alice Hutson dies in her country home, Renee and Briceson take over the investigation to help the county sheriff department. At first glance since Alice Hutson is in bed with her pistol in her hand, an educated guess by Briceson was suicide. Alice's son, Bill Hutson, is adamant that his mother would never kill herself. Mabel Baxter, a neighbor across the road from the Hutson farm, tells Renee about several cars with unknown drivers that came and went the...

Join Wedgewood, Minnesota's Police Detective Renee Brown in book two of her series as she moves in with her sister, Diane, for what will become the longest two weeks of her life. Not one of them could imagined, what was wrong in Diane and Paul Logan's house when they heard strange noises in the attic that kept waking them up in the night. It was just plain weird when food and orange juice disappeared. Several suggestions were made. One neighbor said it was the ghost of the grumpy old man who committed suicide in the house. He was still haunting the place. Paul thought annoying bats that lived...

Bag lady Cowboy Girl Annie knew life to be tough. She had adjusted to all her bad breaks years ago, because she always figured life was similar to a game of poker. She called what happened to her the luck of the draw and endured whatever bad luck came her way. It could be something as simple as the squeaky wheel on her shopping cart locking up before she'd made her rounds of the dumpsters. On the other hand, it might be something as deadly as getting the town's meanest gangster, Big Ed, mad enough at her to kill her. When she found out there was a bounty on her head, Cowboy Girl Annie tried...

"Life ain't fair. You have to be stronger than it is to take what you can get." That was just one of the life lessons Lizzy Cobb was fond of repeating to her ten children when life wasn't going to suit her. She had many more sayings, but to her children, when they became adults, their mother's remembered sayings sounded more like Lizzy's excuses to do whatever she wanted. The family made a sudden move to Iowa to keep Lizzy Cobb's husband, Logan, from being arrested by the law in Virginia. A few years later, the family moved again to hide in the Missouri Ozarks. This time it was to protect...

1895 was the year life as a grownup began for Lilly Baker Elliot when she took notice of Tom Elliot, a handsome bachelor farmer. He began to spend time in her parents general store, not knowing what he wanted to buy. It became very clear to Lilly that he just wanted to spend time with her. Lilly was a bright fifteen year old, and Tom was twenty three. For Lilly's mother, Bernice, this was a match she had been working toward for years by showering Lilly with fashionable clothes to catch the eye of all the Ford Crossing, Iowa's single men. Tom Elliot was not just single, he owned a farm and a...

Home Health Nurse Hal Lindstrom is assigned Amish widower John Lapp. She offers to stay with his children while he is in the hospital. Fifteen year old Emma takes care of the household. Her two younger brothers are handling the dairy operation. Hal soon realizes that Emma suffers from depression. Noah is withdrawn, and Daniel is so troubled he sleepwalks outside, looking for his dead mother. Drawn to this needy family, Hal discovers they have a family secret swept under their proverbial Amish rag rug. The more she tries to help them the deeper she is sucked into the family's problem. Finally,...