Frank Carlson Library

Firing up the Cookie Jar's ovens to attend a lengthy holiday checklist, Hannah Swensen helps loved ones manage seasonal doldrums before she is challenged to identify a skilled antique restorer found near death outside her bakery.

"Our nameless narrator stubbornly tries to keep her small brood of four chickens alive and safe over the course of one savage winter in Minnesota. Woefully unprepared for the task, she battles the relentless predators, severe weather and unforeseen bad luck--all the while grieving a recent miscarriage, and coming to terms with her infertility and the accompanying uncertainty that her future holds. Intimate and startlingly original, this slender novel...

Agent Tori Hunter takes in the body of the beautiful young woman curled up in the trunk of the car. Knowing what she will find, Tori gently lifts the bottom of the victim's blouse. Decorating her back are two small dots an inch apart. Just like the others. Guilt has kept FBI Agent Tori Hunter away from her home in Manchester Bay, Minnesota for twenty years, ever since her twin sister disappeared on the Fourth of July, when the girls should have been...

In the summer of 1984, 14-year-old Frankie Jubilee is sent to live with her estranged mother in the small Minnesota town of Litani. The locals whisper about "The Game," her mother warns her to stay out of the woods and away from adults, and Frankie begins to wonder if she living among monsters, even in the bright light of day.

After a devastating loss, Brynn Wilder escapes to Wharton, a tourist town on Lake Superior, to reset. Checking into a quaint boardinghouse for the summer, she hopes to put her life into perspective. In her fellow lodgers, she finds a friendly company of strangers. But in this inviting refuge, where a century of souls has passed, a mystery begins to swirl. Alice knows things about Brynn, about all of them, that she shouldn't. Bad dreams and night whispers...

It's the height of the Gilded Age, but Elena Bissette's family has lost most of its fortune. The Bissettes still own a home on fashionable Mackinac Island, and they spend summers there in hopes of introducing Elena to a wealthy suitor. Quickly tiring of the extravagant balls at the Grand Hotel, she spends her days walking along the island's rugged coastline. There she meets Chase, a young fisherman who invites her to watch the ships from an abandoned...

Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it's not all fun and games. Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can't forget. They've decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears--the second girl to vanish in...

"Twelve-year-old Maia's parents say she's lucky she noticed something as early as she did. Lucky to have smelled the smoke, lucky to have pulled her sister, Amelia, out of their burning house. But is it really "lucky" when Amelia's stuck in the hospital, covered in burns? And is it "lucky" when Maia knows it was her candle, left unattended, that started the fire in the first place?...As she begins to figure out how to face her guilt and paralyzing...

"When Agent Tori Hunter is urgently called to the murder scene of Dan and Heidi Newman, she finds their bodies tied up--and their seventeen-year-old daughter Cara missing. Tori's first thought is for this popular young girl. Will she be the next victim? A broken bracelet is the one clue found at the scene, but the team are running in circles until Tori finally tracks down Cara hiding in the woods. Sobbing, the devastated girl says all she remembers...

Fourteen-year-old Caleb Parker has not been having much fun playing baseball recently, but when his mother volunteers to host Ricky Alvarez, a nineteen-year-old Dominican player on a local independent team in their Minnesota town, he finds a friend and mentor whose own struggles serve as an inspiration to the young Caleb.