That Turned Ugly Fast

Embracing the Sign

This memoir braids together stories about ordinary people who had extraordinary experiences following the death of a loved one. Each recounts a confluence of events or series of coincidences that seemed to come from “out of the blue.” What makes these stories important is the profound effect of each experience...

The Indwelling of Dissonance

The Indwelling of Dissonance is a large volume of resonant, lyrical poems bridging cultures and singing life’s contradictions and challenges with a pulse on the sacred.Terry Hauptman’s braid of images create storytelling song , entering the absurd through the divine...

Items in the News

Items in the News is a collection of topical poems laid out like a newspaper, with sections for national, international, local, and miscellaneous subjects. From the Japanese -American internment camps during World War II to a Syrian refugee and the deaths of Prince and David Bowie, the book captures the baby boomers' zeitgeist.

The Medicine of Place

In TheMedicine of Place, the reserved, spartan poetry of J. Vincent Hanson mixes seamlessly with the deep-hued photographs of everyday objects by Chuck Norwood.  The result is an earthy and sweat-scented homage to old-fashioned hard work and the beauty to be found in the minutia of a life well-lived and a place well-loved.

A Blanket of Raven Feathers

Larry Schug's poetry is conversational. He likes the reader to picture themselves sitting across the kitchen table, talking over a cup of tea or coffee. Poetry is an art form, like all others, which is essentially communication between one human being and another. Larry's poetry is an art, which he hopes inspires or causes readers to perhaps think in new ways or feel some sort of emotion.

Incense Drifting to the Horizon

In Incense Drifting to the Horizon, a collection of new poems, Minnesota writer Kathryn Oakley holds up a perceptive, vivid, and sometimes humorous mirror to the joys and sorrows, beauty and awkwardness of our humanity. The poems are divided among themes of daily living, reflections on stories from the larger world, mixed experiences of love, and a new life centered “up north.”

Going Coastal

Lake Superior—its people and places—feature in this anthology of short stories by nine writers from Minnesota and Wisconsin.The power of stories lures an aging man on a road trip back home, north on Highway 61. Through her painting of a river, an Ojibway woman teaches a historian about himself and her culture’s connections to the land and water...

Farewell, My Sweet

Michael Connelly, an attorney living in the lakeside city of Excelsior, Minnesota, has few wants beyond his small law practice, his lakeshore town home, his boat, and his vintage Mustang. Life for him runs smoothly and on a routine.It's with women that Mike seems to get himself into trouble...

The Legend of the Golden Monkey

The Crypto-Capers are off on another adventure, but this time it is because of their adversary, the Panther. Max, Mia, Granny and Morris, must rise to his challenge. If they don't, the infamous Panther will surely win. The Legend of the Golden Monkey leads the Crypto-Capers to the ancient ruins of Chichen Itza, a once flourishing Mayan city where secrets abound...

Firstborn

Firstborn is a book of poems and anecdotes which starts where Tracks on Damp Sand leaves off. Here we find that the firstborn eaglet to that pair of bald eagles we met in Tracksis a female who leaves the nest reluctantly. We see her struggle and learn to survive in her world as the humans in her immediate surroundings learn to survive in theirs...

High on Table Mountain

As the phases of moon describe a lunar cycle, so High on Table Mountain spans the arc of a life and includes themes of family, loss, joy, humor, and immigration to the USA.

H Is for Harry

H Is for Harry, the third book of poetry from Susan Sink, is a tightly woven collection of poems on a variety of subjects, including divorce and remarriage, the role of language and literature in life, and the ways in which language contributes to identity...

The New Folklore

The New Folklore: Lyrical Tales for Dreamers & Thinkers is a collection of seven stories written by musician Teague Alexy and beautifully illustrated by artists from across the country: "The Wisdom of King Joe Colli," "Old Lady Truth," "The New Tune of Elijah Swoon," "Three Little Fish," "How Lefty Stepanovich Turned Water Into Wine," "Teufelo's Tongue" and "Old Rickety Bridge...

Without Dividend in Mind

Small enough to fit in a pocket, J. Vincent Hansen’s second collection of poems touches the soul with its simplicity, honesty, and conviction. Hansen packs a punch with his epigrams and easy essays, accompanied by wood engravings by the gifted artist Claire Leighton. Without Dividend in Mind is sure to stay in the mind of the reader for a long while.

Northern Lights, Southern Nights

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood . . . back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame . . . back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time—back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” -Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

Shelterbelts

Tia Fiskum, the old maid of Tolga Township, yearns to retain her hold on the family farm after her shell-shocked brother returns from World War II. The neighbor she hopes to marry chooses a town girl for his new wife.The Potato King listens to the radio preacher and prays for a miracle. Eddy Root fears a return to the asylum...

Who Done Houdini?

Detroit Free Press reporter Timothy Wiggins learns of Harry Houdini’s death on Halloween 1926 with more than casual interest. He had been at the great magician’s final performance the night before. Wiggins had grown up as a sort of magician himself on the streets of London, stealing to survive. But then he met the real-life Sherlock Holmes, who made him his chief Bay Street Irregular...

Autumn of Elves

Panic fills Aly and her grandmother when Aly's ten-year-old sister, Emily, sees a troll. The shock of Emily also having magical powers gives way as the sisters begin to share a world of intrigue. Aly becomes Emily's instructor and protector while they interact with many new creatures—some of which are fascinating and some terrifying...

Fishing for a Killer

The sun isn’t even over the horizon at Madrigal’s Lodge on Gull Lake, and an empty motorboat is slowly circling the bay. The Governor’s Fishing Opener just got a lot more exciting. Luckily, St. Paul Daily Dispatch reporter Warren “Mitch” Mitchell and photographer Alan Jeffrey are on the scene...

Visibility: Ten Miles

Visibility: Ten Miles is a collaboration of poetry and photography between Sharon Chmielarz, poet, and Ken Smith, photographer. Both are well acquainted with the prairie; hence these photos and poems include not only grasslands but also the unusual only insiders have seen. These images come from two angles, what the eye sees and what the heart responds to...

A Habit of Mind

Looks, charm, stylish job shooting TV news . . . Doug Pepper’s only goal is his next conquest at the local pick-up bar. It takes tragedy and a cross-country odyssey for Doug to break through a habit of mind—classic self-absorption—and learn to love. The lady in Doug’s life also learns life’s hard lessons in a shared moment of truth that binds the pair together forever.

The Murder of Emily Magillicutty

What's Behind the Mighty Fitz?

When Lucas Sanchez fails to catch a Frisbee and it crashes into an oil painting of the Edmund Fitzgerald, he is stunned as part of a green eye stares back...

That Word

“Jamie Parsley’s new poems tread the path of grief within the liturgical map of holy days, feasts, and spiritual acts. These poems offer a voice ‘forever altered’ by loss, a keening we sense in each moment depicted until we understand ‘We are what we hold / and let go...

Rooted in Iron and Ice

Author Gary W. Barfknecht jokes that his baby-boom boyhood home in Virginia, Minnesota, wasn’t exactly at the end of the world. But he could see it from there. With energetic style and sly wit, this son and grandson of miners paints a vivid, fascinating portrait of his daily life in the harsh, frigid, isolated strip of mineral wealth known as the Mesabi Iron Range...

Fishing for a Killer

The sun isn’t even over the horizon at Madrigal’s Lodge on Gull Lake, and an empty motorboat is slowly circling the bay. The Governor’s Fishing Opener just got a lot more exciting. Luckily, St. Paul Daily Dispatch reporter Warren “Mitch” Mitchell and photographer Alan Jeffrey are on the scene...

Minnesota's Lost Towns Northern Edition

The long-awaited second book in the Minnesota’s Lost Towns series is now available. Travel along as we visit and learn about more than 125 central Minnesota locations. The book covers twenty-six of Minnesota’s central corridor counties, from east to west. Read how the towns were created, how they developed and lived, and why they died. Discover the people and places of Minnesota’s past...

A Killing Fair

The Minnesota State Fair is famous for its endless variety of foods on a stick, so reporter Warren “Mitch” Mitchell and his photographer buddy Alan Jeffrey are surprised when they’re sent to the fairgrounds to cover the introduction of still another stick-bound treat. The new novelty, called Square Meal on a Stick, is introduced by its celebrity inventor, Vinnie Luciano, owner of one of St...

Desert Crosses

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Chasing the Moon

Nadia Alvarez, a fifteen-year-old Mexican immigrant, travels from a remote and poverty-stricken village in southern Mexico with her family to the United States. They sneak illegally into the country through a drain pipe that connects Sonora, Mexico, to Arizona. As the family enters the country, the Border Patrol is waiting for them...

Growing Up on the Mississippi

“Kent Stever takes you by the hand for a stroll back in time to a simpler place, one sprinkled with nostalgia and fond remembrance. His writing conjures up images so exact you’ll swear you’re sitting at a soda fountain sipping on a cherry Coke while he tells his tales.” —Mike Nistler, Publisher, Minnesota Moments Magazine