This is Mark Twain's first novel about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, and it has become one of the world's best-loved books. It is a fond reminiscence of life in Hannibal, Missouri, an evocation of Mark Twain's own boyhood along the banks of the Mississippi during the 1840s. "Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred," he tells us. This is a book one never forgets: Tom whitewashing Aunt Polly's fence, Tom and Huck's dreadful oath, their...

Lucille Howard is getting on in years, but she stays busy. Thanks to the inspiration of her dearly departed friend Arthur Truluv, she has begun to teach baking classes, sharing the secrets to her delicious classic Southern yellow cake, the perfect pinwheel cookies, and other sweet essentials. Her classes have become so popular that she's hired Iris, a new resident of Mason, Missouri, as an assistant. Iris doesn't know how to bake but she needs to...

"The tranquil little town of Willow Ridge is facing a startling challenge. Wealthy Nora Glick Landwehr is determined to make it her home again--and put her past to rest. Cast out by her own family, Nora can't reconcile with Old Amish ways or her strict father. But she'll do anything to help her community embrace the future, and to make amends to the daughter she had to give up. So she certainly has no time for her reckless new neighbor Luke Hooley....

When Iris Winters and Maddy Harris are invited to the club, they find that it's just what each of them needs. Iris hasn't yet told anyone about the unlikely man who has captured her attention, and Maddy has come back home to escape a problem too big for her to confront.

"Recently widowed after twenty years of marriage, Frances Lehman is only just tasting the freedom and opportunity that her Promise Lodge friends enjoy. So she's not about to be pressured into marriage by her widowed brother-in-law, even if she and her daughter have no real means of support. Much more promising is her new friendship with Preacher Marlin Kurtz, though their respective families don't see their relationship as proper . . . When Frances...

"FBI Special Agent Lance McGregor, a former Delta Force operator, is assigned to the case when Christy Reed receives mail claiming her sister is still alive. She believed Ginny died in a house fire, so if she is still alive, who is the woman buried in her grave and is Christy a pawn or a target?"--

Can anything else go wrong? Marlene Queens goes home to Parness Springs, Missouri, to put her late Aunt Beth's house on the market and settle the estate. But once she's back home, Marlene suddenly finds herself in over her head. Her Aunt Ingrid grows more demanding by the day. Marlene discovers her childhood sweetheart is now the local vet and the town's acting mayor. And when a group of citizens want to put up a statue in memory of Marlene's father-the...

It is 1830, and the Berrybender family -- rich, aristocratic, English, and fiercely out of place -- is on its way up the Missouri River to see the American West as it begins to open up. Lord and Lady Berrybender have abandoned their palatial home in England to explore the frontier and to broaden the horizons of their children, who include Tasmin, a budding young woman of grit, beauty, and determination, her vivacious and difficult sister, and her...

Nativity, Missouri, is in trouble. When the small town is bypassed by the newly constructed highway, it loses its much-needed holiday traffic-threatening not only the town's financial survival, but its very heart and soul. Outside consultant Jake Brisco threatens everything the community loves about Christmas with his budget-slashing solutions. Nothing is sacred-not even the traditional town Christmas tree. Long-time resident Roni Elliot knows some...

"From Percival Everett-a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards-comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby...