Small Town America

Two true tales of small-town murders Unfriendly: How a social media feud led to a double homicide When the bodies of Bill Payne and Billie-Jean Hayworth were discovered in their Mountain City, Tennessee home on January 30 2012, investigators initially assumed it was a drug deal gone awry. However, soon their attention was drawn to a vicious online feud that had been simmering in full view of the entire town of Mountain City for over a year. What followed was an unbelievable case involving a CIA agent, a secret relationship, and an impressionable local man who had never had a girlfriend. At ...

The Great Covid Migration is upon us. As the Covid-19 pandemic upends the standards of life across America, are you ready to leave the stress, hassle and taxes of the big city for small town America? If you tired of paying high taxes, ridiculous parking fees, wanting more social distancing, having increased stress levels by living in the Big City? If so, this book is an absolute must… Within the next few minutes you'll find hidden gems of knowledge and wisdom that will change your life forever! But, before you go any further, ask yourself the following questions?- Is living in the big ...

Two Brits, George and Mark, set off from New York City to explore the back roads of America. In this calamity-ridden travel tale, George sets out in true clichéd fashion to discover the real America. Throw in plenty of run-ins with the police, rapidly dwindling finances, and Josephine - the worst car in the world - and you have all the ingredients for a classic American road trip. Will George and Mark make it all the way to California? And then there is Rachel, George's girlfriend, left back in England.

Gracie sees a chance of fitting in at her South Carolina private school, until a "white trash"-themed Halloween party has her steering clear of the rich kids. Samuel's Tejano family has both stood up to oppression and been a source of it, but now he's ready to own his true sexual identity. A Puerto Rican teen in Utah discovers that being a rodeo queen means embracing her heritage, not shedding it...

When musicians in the New York folk scene of the 1960s grew tired of city life, they decided to "get it together in the country". They headed for Woodstock - not to the site of the infamous music festival of 1969 but to the Catskills, to Bearsville, to Woodstock proper. Counterculture revolutionaries like Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, and Paul Butterfield got "back to the land", turning the once sleepy hollow into a funky Shangri-La.

Batavia, New York—between Rochester and Buffalo—hosted its first professional baseball game in 1897. Despite decades of deindustrialization and evaporating middle-class jobs, the Batavia Muckdogs endured. When Major League Baseball cravenly shut them down in 2020—along with forty-one other minor league teams—the town fought back, reviving the Muckdogs as a summer league team comprised of college players.

When the world crumbles, a broken man finds hope where he least expects it in the grit and quiet strength of a small Montana town. Cole Ramsey thought he’d left rural life behind for good. He poured his soul into big tech solutions for a cutting-edge smart city, only to be cast out as a scapegoat amidst corruption and scandal. He's blacklisted and adrift when a letter about his grandfather’s death pulls him back to the family ranch he had long abandoned. What he finds in Bridger’s Pass isn’t a simple homestead in disrepair. It’s a community clinging to old ways. Neighbors who ...

The long-awaited sequel to “Saving Stacy: The Untold Story of the Moody Massacre,” St. Clair’s new thriller is “Killing Dan Ott: Corruption and Murder in Small Town America.” It’s the tragic true-crime story of a case of mistaken identity that took detectives from Geauga County, Ohio, ten long years to solve. Why so long? Logan County corruption. Dan Ott was a 31-year-old pug grower, an expert at planting seedlings to grow into blooms. He didn’t know what caused him to wake up early that Friday morning, May 26, 2006. With the car fully loaded, Dan was anxious to move, ready to...

Discussion of the climate crisis has always suffered from a problem of abstraction. Data points and warnings of an overheated future struggle to break through the noise of everyday life. Deniers often portray climate solutions as inconvenient, expensive, and unnecessary. And many politicians, cloistered by status and focused always on their next election, do not yet see climate as a winning issue in the short run. But climate change is here whether we want to pay attention or not.

Hardly anyone ever leaves Des Moines, Iowa. But Bill Bryson did, and after 10 years in England he decided to go home, to a foreign country. In an ageing Chevrolet Chevette, he drove nearly 14,000 miles through 38 states to compile this hilarious and perceptive state-of-the-nation report on small-town America.

During Prohibition, while Al Capone was rising to worldwide prominence as Public Enemy Number One, the townspeople of rural Templeton, Iowa - population just 418 - were busy with a bootlegging empire of their own. Led by Joe Irlbeck, the whip-smart and gregarious son of a Bavarian immigrant, the outfit of farmers, small merchants, and even the church Monsignor worked together to create a whiskey so excellent, it was ordered by name: Templeton Rye.

In the fall of 1973, the Greek oil shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, husband of President John F. Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and arguably the richest man in the world, proposed to build an oil refinery on the New Hampshire coast, in the town of Durham. But three women vehemently opposed the project. Small Town, Big Oil is the story of how the residents of Durham, led by three women, out-organized, out-witted, and out-maneuvered the governor, media, and Onassis cartel to hand the powerful Greek billionaire the most humiliating defeat of his business career.

Suddenly widowed with no means of support, Evelyn Peerbaugh hangs a “for rent” sign in front of her large Victorian home and her life changes in ways she never dreamed of. In a matter of days she becomes the owner of a busy boardinghouse and must now cope with the lives and emotions of the most incompatible group of women ever gathered under one roof. How will Evelyn manage? What will her future be like now? “The Sister Circle,” Book One of this charming contemporary series, introduces Peerbaugh Place, the quaint Victorian house that becomes a refuge to seven women of vastly ...

EVELYN’S NEWEST BOARDERS ARE PENNILESS … BUT GOD IS WATCHING OVER THE SISTER CIRCLE Evelyn Peerbaugh is worried. Once again she has taken in new boarders, but this time she’s opened the doors of Peerbaugh Place to women who can’t pay a cent for her services. But the bonds of sisterhood are as strong as ever. As Evelyn reaches out to these sisters in need, she discovers that God has a whole new plan for the Sister Circle — and for her. Evelyn could not have predicted the shock in store for her and Piper. “A Place to Belong,” Book Four of this charming contemporary series, ...

Evelyn is not so sure she likes the new dynamics of Peerbaugh Place, her impromptu boarding house. Even though it had been hard adapting to strangers living in her home, she and the other women (from The Sister Circle) had found a calm cove of sisterhood. Now Evelyn is forced to start over with a new set of boarders — with more challenging personalities and problems. Evelyn fears that the bonds of sisterhood may not come as easily this time. ’Round the Corner, Book Two of this charming contemporary series, continues the timeless, heartwarming story of Peerbaugh Place, the quaint ...

In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen emerged from a field of 370 teams to become the smallest school in Illinois history to make the state final, a distinction that still stands. There, sporting long hair, and warming up to "Jesus Christ Superstar", the Ironmen would play a dramatic game that would change their lives forever.

Sarina loves her mother.They have gone beyond the awkward teen angst to become friends. They're even starting to share clothes. She has a little brother, but he hardly bothers her. Then her world spins out of control. Mom and little brother are killed in an automobile accident. While she is reeling from the news, her father (you know, the guy who goes to work and comes home) comes up to her and tells her it wasn’t an accident. It was murder. Then he tells her the agents are here to take them away to a new home and a new life. Sarina is in emotional overload. She learns it was her ...

"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.

THE WOMEN OF PEERBAUGH PLACE ARE ABOUT TO ENTER A SEASON OF THE HEART. Things are ever changing at Peerbaugh Place, and once again Evelyn Peerbaugh opens her home to new boarders. This time she gets more than she bargains for. With one new tenant whose vanity exceeds all bounds, and another who is a doormat to her dominating fiancé, it seems these women will never find common ground, even as they struggle to share one house. But loyal members of the Sister Circle — Mae, Piper, Audra, and Tessa — are all close by to keep love and faith growing amidst the heartaches and joys. Evelyn even...

On January 7, 1994, residents of the Berkshire Hills woke up to a typical snowy winter day in the majestic woods of Western Massachusetts. The quaint New England towns, the idyllic scenery and the people who lived there could have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting.