Search results for ""North Star Press of Saint Cloud Inc""

It was by accident that Minneapolis radio personality Jack Kramp wrote his way into the life of Lisa Lisignoli, a book editor in New York. Struggling with the sudden loss of his wife and left to raise his three children, Jack is on the edge of depression while fighting early stages of alcoholism. His long nights of insomnia and drinking drive him to write a manuscript that is accepted by Lisa's publisher in New York. However, Lisa disdains the low level assignment of editing Jack's book and her problem is compounded by the fact she deeply dislikes Midwesterners. Summoned to New York for two weeks of editing, Jack quickly discovers he and Lisa have absolutely nothing in common and he quickly finds himself in an unfamiliar world of uncertainty and hidden dangers. While Lisa is haunted by an unsolved murder case, Jack inadvertently stumbles on a sinister kidnapping plot that places both of them in grave danger. With their diverse personalities, Lisa and Jack are forced to struggle independently to bring order, sensibility and resolution to their unpredictable relationship. Jack's easy-going charm, jaded wit and soft-spoken quips are in direct contrast to Lisa's hard-core personality, vehement determination and her unfulfilled dream. Together, they unravel the mysteries of their outside worlds, as well as those within themselves. Tender moments, startling humor, plus fast-paced action from a host of characters are delicately woven into an intriguing, passionate and unexpected adventure.

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Editor Jim Secord sent a letter out to over 160 of his friends and colleagues he has known in his eight decades of life, asking then to submit a small kernel of wisdom and knowledge that they have learned over the years. Some are short little quips, others more lengthy and involved, but all are authentically representative of the human experience and the pain and joys we collect on our journey through life.

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Marilee Anderson disappeared twenty-five years ago at the age of fifteen, but police are digging up the rose garden behind her parents' home in search of new evidence on a hot summer day in St. Paul. Marilee was last seen on a Sunday morning, when her father sent her off to a convenience store three blocks from home to buy a loaf of bread. Reporter Warren "Mitch" Mitchell and photographer Alan Jeffrey of the Daily Dispatch are the first newsmen on the scene at the Anderson home, but they learn almost nothing from closed-mouthed police until the diggers turn up a human skeleton. To everyone's amazement, the bones prove to be those of a young adult male. Police suspect that the mysterious remains are those of Jimmy Bjornquist, a teenager who worked at the convenience store and disappeared the same day as Marilee. But Jimmy turns up living on the West Coast, and he tells Mitch what happened at the store on the day Marilee vanished. Jimmy's story raises the possibility that Marilee is still alive somewhere. After a man who offers to give them some current information about Marilee turns up dead, Mitch and Al respond to an invitation from an anonymous phone caller and find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun.

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Wisconsin has over 200 lost, long ago, and nearly gone places. Why they began, why they faded or died encompasses many issues, many reasons. For Rhonda, her love of lost towns and long ago places began in northern Wisconsin, and in this book, she explores the stories and tales of Wisconsin's places of the past.

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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.

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This is the history both of Tuberculosis in Minnesota and of the Glen Lake Sanitorium, where, in the first half of the twentieth century, so many TB patients were housed as they fought their illness. Treatment methods changed over time, success with recovery varied, and Krugerud examines all of it, offering the often stark reality of this terrible disease, and the heart-warming stories of people suffering from it and those who sought to cure them.

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A summer boating excursion on Lake Pepin takes a nasty turn when the five members of the No Ordinary Women book club discover a body aboard the Wayward Wind. Louise and Robin begin to suspect murder, but only after unwittingly destroying evidence on the ill-fated sailboat. A local paranormal investigator gets caught up in the mystery as the amateur sleuths once more put themselves in danger in their rush to prevent other would-be victims from a watery death.

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Here is a fine companion for any paddler, wanderer, or dreamer with a love for the wild. What you have here is not one more how-to manual for paddlers. These pages comprise a why-do volume exploring the spiritual core of paddle trip experience. Tim McDonnell writes with clarity, spirit, and self-effacing good humor, taking you along on several amazing wilderness journeys. Here you will share explorations into the wild that are fueled by something far more substantial than mere adrenaline and far more significant than mere ego. Wonder, playfulness, gratitude, and introspection are the key ingredients of this well-crafted book. Each of his essays flares a bit and then lingers with you, just as you would expect from a good fire.

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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.

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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

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Minnesota baby-boomer Meggie Moore sets off on another housesitting adventure to a hobby farm in the country. But her dream job turns into a nightmare when she discovers the farm is haunted. Ghostly rumors surface soon after Meggie accepts the housesitting position but she refuses to be deterred. An unbeliever and not easily frightened, she ignores warnings from well-meaning friends and travels to the hobby farm to fulfill her obligation. Her reluctance to believe in the supernatural is tested when strange happenings occur shortly after arriving at the farm. As time goes on she finds herself being reeled into the spirit world unable to let go of a line that eventually connects her to murder.

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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-seven 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. Filled with tales and photos, the book is a fun and educational read for anyone who loves history or a good story.

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Untranslatable is a book-length collection of poems that all start from an untranslatable word—a word found in other languages that we do not have in English. The poems written from the words capture how this word is or can be lived, defined from a natural and imaginative world perspective. "Lovers of language take delight in those wonderful words which refuse to succumb to literal translation. Untranslatable captures the imaginative essence of these words and our underlying sense that, after all, nothing slips our understanding." –Marcia Peck, writer and cellist in the Minnesota Orchestra

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With his inimitable sense of humor and timing, astute awareness of irony, perfect understanding of permissible sentiment, and sheer joy taken in the well-captured image and pleasingly turned phrase, Larry Schug has given us a book of poems not just to enjoy but to remember for years to come." —Scott Owens, author of Eye of the Beholder "Through his poems Larry Schug opens his world to the reader's eyes and in his often terse, sharply honed language, he makes this distinctive place on the margins of a Minnesotan bog and tamarack forest a colorful, quite memorable one. Schug's poems casually invite the reader to stop in for a visit, to linger awhile. With each individual visit, the reader wants to return, again and again. "Mending Mittens" is just one poetic gem of this fine collection, the kind of poem that makes any other poet jealous." —Glen Sorestad, first Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan

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When an American Army unit arrived at the end of the war, some soldiers appropriated items in what appeared to be abandoned circumstances. A small painting by a mid-level Polish painter is used by an ex-GI to float a bank loan which results in the founding of a manufacturing firm in Minneapolis. Now the painting and the ledger become the center of murderous attempts by the descendants of the veteran to conceal the painting's journey. World-wide efforts at repatriation of stolen art from WWII is a major ongoing effort and the story links to that effort as international operatives descend on the Twin Cities. Enter private detective Sean Sean. He is a short but effective operative who, unlike many PIs of the modern era, doesn't sleep around, doesn't shoot people unnecessarily, and has many friends among various local law enforcement agencies

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When Minnesota baby-boomer Meggie Moore is given the opportunity to housesit for a friend in Key West, Florida, she jumps at the chance. Her husband, Walter, looking forward to completing the first item on his bucket list with a small game hunting trip to South Dakota, is unable to accompany her. Shirley, Meggie's faithful friend and sidekick, had vowed "never again" to become involved in Meggie's housesitting adventures, but when she discovers her husband plans to go hunting with Walter, she changes her mind and travels to Key West with Meggie. The working vacation takes a frightening turn when Meggie and Shirley find a body floating in the swimming pool where they are housesitting. Winging their way back to Minnesota, they believe they are leaving their troubles behind them and are not prepared for what awaits them back home.

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Cub reporter Emerald Malloy is assigned to gather "church food" recipes from the owner of Hot Dish Heaven, a café in a small town in the Red River Valley. Upon her arrival, she learns of a local, unsolved murder. Confident that solving the case will catapult her from newspaper "gopher" to investigative reporter, she questions the locals while attending a benefit dinner-dance at the VFW. By the end of the night, she's consumed lots of hotdish and bars while talking to everyone from the Irish, Catholic priest who lives among these Scandinavian, Lutheran farmers to the café owner's eccentric aunts. She's also met a hunky deputy sheriff and learned some tough lessons about herself. But the question remains, "Will she live long enough for any of it to matter?"

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Blooming Prairie is the fourth and final novel of the Abercrombie Trail series. Widow Serena Gustafson returns to Pomme de Terre where her husband was killed during the Sioux Uprising. Her dreams of financial independence dissolve when land values plummet after a scourge of Rocky Mountain locusts. Serena must release the past before she can embrace her future. Evan Jacobson, homesteading in nearby Otter Tail County, takes a job driving mules over the Wadsworth Trail. While Evan is on the road, newlyweds Anders and Ragna Vollen stay with Evan's family. Increasing Indian tensions in Dakota Territory threaten to spill over into Minnesota, renewing old fears and bitter memories from the1862 Uprising.

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Perched above Spirit Falls in the lush Wisconsin woodland, Robin Bentley's cabin is remote enough for her and her book club friends to shed the restraints of city living, hike in the woods, take moonlight walks and go skinny dipping under the waterfall. But when a body washes up below the falls, the No Ordinary Women find themselves up to their bifocals in a real mystery. And one of them could be the next victim.

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Bob White is hoping to post a state record by sighting an elusive Gyrfalcon in Minnesota's Cottonwood County, but instead, finds himself flying to Flagstaff, Arizona, to help his sister track down her missing husband (aka Bob's best friend, Alan Thunderhawk). As soon as he lands in the high mountain country, though, Bob finds more than he bargained for, including a twenty-year-old unsolved murder and a boy who claims to be Alan's son. Sifting his way through deception, land disputes, family secrets, and even an earthquake, Bob must strike a balance between suspicion and trust while he negotiates the tricky landscape of unearthing buried truths. Along the way, his birding expertise affords him close encounters with Arizona birds and possible murderers, but in order to solve the mystery and bring everyone home to Minnesota, Bob must first do something he's never done before - not just find a killer, but figure out where the body is, too!

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"Harris's Arkis an excellently written and frightening tale of what happens within a small community when the larger community fails. Harrowing and hopeful at the same time. A book for the survivalist in all of us." - Steve Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of The Weatherman, The Wheat Field, and Silent Snow

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Birders always hope for a rarity when they go on a Birding Weekend, but when Bob White finds the weekend leader sporting bullet holes in his chest, he realizes that more than an unusual bird is at stake. To make matters worse, Bob must contend with a lost love, big cats, ATV enthusiasts, and small-town intrigue as he sets out to find a killer, along with an elusive Northern Bobwhite, in Minnesota's Fillmore County. In this third Birder Murder mystery, Bob discovers that the past and present can collide in surprising ways to shape the future... assuming he'll survive the weekend and still be around to see it.

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In The Mare and the Mouse, the first book in the Stories of My Horses trilogy, Martín Prechtel sets loose his mystical memoir of a few mixed-breed horses who transform into allies of mythic proportions by his one-of-a-kind style of maneuvering through the rugged beauty of New Mexico. Together, they out-canter disillusionment and bitter despair, coursing into a dawn of beauty and humor. This second book, The Wild Rose, continues the saga of re-finding the horses of Prechtel's reservation-youth, which were assumed extinct, along with all the wild vicissitudes, truly magical happenings, and unique pre-cowboy Southwestern horse knowledge. This is the account of his struggle to gather a herd of these old-time Barb horses, who in the process become counselors and co-conspirators in the cause. The Wild Rose chronicles what it takes for Indigenous beauty and wild vitality to live, disappear, reappear, revive, and thrive in the modernity's unsympathetic clatter, and seems to hint the self-spinning condition of today's mindset is a spiritual illness that can cease being the relentless oppressor of Nature, open land, and Naturalness in People, and re-find its own health and nobility of soul

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In keeping with his previous book, Vintage Wisdom, editor Jim Secord sent letters out to over 200 friends and family members, ranging in ages from 9-90, asking them to write down what they had learned and experienced during the pandemic lockdowns, uncertainties, and fears of 2020. The responses he received were as diverse as the people asked to respond, and taken together represent a small slice of the lives of everyday folks during a year that will not soon be forgotten.

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What do you do when you are a teacher/writer and you lose your classroom because your world is locked down? Following the order to stay home because of the exploding Coronavirus contagion, Stan Kusunoki's response was to keep a journal in poetry form. From the grim early days of late March 2020 until Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz, allowed a limited opening on May 18, Kusunoki recorded daily life: the joys and frustrations of teaching online, and the ordinary activities of living under the "Shelter in Place" order. When things began to open up, Kusunoki realized he had a day-to-day history of this time, and enough poems for a new manuscript. The result is this book. He invites you to join him as he takes on the challenges of teaching online, discovers the meditative calm of walking the labyrinth at Como Park, observes back-yard critters living their normal lives, and performs sidewalk concerts for the neighbors. Here are the ups and downs, fears, and celebrations of one poet's experience with COVID-19.

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Terry has written that her works often focus on a Phoenix of hope rising from tragedy. They churn the blood of our past into an informed metaphor, which transcends a temporal definition. Her images urge on the symbolic. Their figures and potent calls, shrieking and whimpering, assert echoes of ancestry that resound in the chambers of today. Through a curious eye they utter, whisper, and choke us with tentative movements that blend reality, history, dreams, sand, water, wine, and blood to intimate an unforeseen direction comprising a part of humankind's silhouette. Our eyes water from the sophisticated plan which, in essence, remains hidden from sight.

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Maverick Radar Airman chronicles author J.B. Randers' journey through the tumultuous 1960's, a decade which certainly lived up its theme song, "The Times They Are A-Changing." Wars and asssassinations were happening everywhere, but so were movements promoting civil rights, women's rights, voting rights and equal pay. J.B. reflected the diversity of those fascinating days by being both a serious thinker and a bit of a "wild child," a respecter of tradition and an enthusiast for what's new, a pacifist and an activist. While much of the historical events of the 60s happened in the southern and western United States, where Jim was stationed, he was also up on the frozentundra of Alaska serving his country in its Air Force. However, cold temperatures don't freeze history. This book follows Jim's progress through that very eventful time. Enjoy as he shares his military odyssey!

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Hundred Miles to Nowhere: An Unlikely Love Story explores what happens when a singer-songwriter moves from New York City to rural Minnesota for love, and finds there's more to life than music. When Elisa Korenne took a month's break from New York City to be the resident singer-songwriter in middle-of-nowhere Minnesota, she didn't intend to stay. Then she fell in love with the local outdoorsman/insurance guy. One cross-country romance later, Elisa gave up subways, theater, City Bakery cookies, and her Brooklyn apartment to become the 1,153rd resident of New York Mills, a rural town ninety miles from the nearest metropolitan area, Fargo. She had to resort to moonshine to stay sane.The barista knew her weekend plans before she did. The postmaster set up gigs for her behind her back. Chris expected her to eat roadkill for dinner. And you wouldn't believe the uproar when the Finnish Lutherans in town learned she was Jewish. Despite a gun-toting Millenialist neighbor and the furnace dying at twenty-six below, Elisa moved to Minnesota and married Chris anyway. Then a tornado threatens to destroy the home she had finally made for herself.Hundred Miles to Nowhere is A Year in Provence for the Prairie Home Companion crowd, or Coop for fans of indie music.

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Mysterious lights are appearing on Rainy Lake. When Henry, Dylan, Arla, and Rika hear that ghosts are visiting the lake, they laugh it off. But as they kayak back over the route where Arla's parents disappeared ten years before, they find themselves stranded on an island, haunted by a real ghost, who doesn't want them to leave . . . ever.

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Quarry Quest is a remarkably thorough history of Stearns County's Quarry Park and Nature Preserve. The book not only highlights the granite heritage of Central Minnesota and the many features of the park, but captures the natural beauty and serenity of this magnificent plance in the many exquisite color photos that fill its pages.

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1873 Minnesota. Evan and Inga Jacobson struggle to raise their family in the midst of bank failures, grasshoppers and lingering effects of the 1862 Uprising. Harsh economic realities force them to relocate to Otter Tail County where they must begin again in a hostile environment. Ragna Larson, their foster daughter, grows up haunted by her missing sister, Birdie. Though both girls were kidnapped by the Sioux during the Uprising, only one returned. Ragna must make peace with the past before she can move forward with her life. Evan and Inga must do the same.

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Sherry Reiter, PhD, director of The Creative Righting Center, is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), a registered poetry therapist (PTR-M/S), and registered drama therapist (RDT-BCT). Dr. Reiter entwines talk therapy with writing therapy; poetry, story, and the reclaiming of voice are dynamic healing components in her work. Sherry divides her time between writing, teaching at Touro College and Hofstra University, and private practice. At The Creative Righting Center, she mentors helping professionals who want to incorporate creative techniques into their work. Sherry is the coordinator of Poets-Behind-Bars, an innovative long-distance training program, in which poetry therapy trainees mentor inmates of the Indiana State Maximum Security Prison. Dr. Reiter served as president of the National Association for Poetry Therapy (1993-1995), and was president of the National Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy (1995-2005). She is the recipient of the Art Lerner Pioneer Award (2005), and the Morris Morrison Education Award (2007) for excellence in teaching and bringing poetry to marginalized populations. Sherry aspires to the beautiful words of poet Dawna Markova: to live so that which comes to us as seed / goes to the next as blossom / and that which comes to us as blossom / goes on as fruit.

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Move over Stephanie Plum, Betty Crocker, and the residents of Lake Wobegon. Retired farmer Doris Day Anderson Connor and her quirky friends and relatives are solving crime in the Scandinavian-Lutheran farming community of Hallock, in the northwest corner of Minnesota. This book, the second installment in the It's Murder series, has Doris and her sister, Grace Kelly Anderson, the owner of the local café, taking ninety-year-old Rose O'Brien ice fishing. The day ends, however, with nothing to show for their efforts except a dead body. With Rose distressed over the crime, Doris feels compelled to make inquiries in an effort to move the murder investigation along, much to the chagrin of the sheriff, an old boyfriend and a current puzzle. While in the café, at a funeral, and during a gender-reveal-party blizzard, she uncovers answers, but she also learns secrets and lies that lead her to wonder if she truly knows the residents of her hometown. After all, at least one of them is a killer.

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Minnesota has more youth, high school, college and pro hockey players than anywhere in the United States. For all that pedigree, and despite fifty years in the NHL, it still waits for a Stanley Cup championship team. This is the improbable tale of when the self-professed State of Hockey came closest to that title with the Minnesota North Stars. Through most of the 1990-91 schedule, the team was among the worst in the NHL on the ice, and dead last at the turnstiles. But in February and March, the North Stars began to win a little more. Future Hall of Famer, Mike Modano, and a cast of characters ranging from better-than-average to journeymen played some of the best hockey of their lives behind a homegrown goalie who made everyone believe in fairy tales, for a while. This is the story of the team with the worst regular-season record in any of the major North American sports leagues to play for a championship. The second half of Mirage of Destiny relates the exhilaration, heartbreak, and t

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While it is difficult for adults to understand the extent of changes in the world brought about by the 2020 pandemic, it must be so much more confusing to children. Waiting and spending time indoors while a favorite park is closed or school is shut down has been a constant companion for children in 2020. While I Wait shows children waiting for bits of life to re-open and return to normal, while at the same time having fun and using their creativity indoors. With each page featuring a different style of artwork from a unique artist, While I Wait displays lessons in patience, creative thinking, and hope that children will carry into 2021 and for the rest of their lives.

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50 years after the war Hansen continues to mine his time in Vietnam as an 18-year-old machine gunner with the 101st Airborne Division. These poems inform us that no soldier ever grows so old as to see a war's final ripple.

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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. Drawing on her Jewish background and connecting to world song, her musical rhythms invite us into a passionate sensuous chorus of becoming.Recommended to all who love poetry and work towards unity,igniting a flame of love.

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When Detective Cal Sheehan learns no one's heard from his childhood friend Mike "Hawk" Hawkinson in days, he begins an unofficial investigation. Cal follows a lead from Minnesota to Las Vegas, and back again. When Hawk's car is later found abandoned north of Prairie Falls, Birch County officially opens a missing person's case, which allows Cal to hunt for his buddy and investigate the strange circumstances surrounding his disappearance. But Cal doesn't know whether he's conducting a search and rescue or a kidnapping and murder investigation—all as he's dealing with the blowback from a family tragedy.

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A fresh and compelling voice in regional fiction, Marlais Brand's new collection, The Hungry Coast, takes the reader for a hair-raising ride along a rocky stretch of the historic and fabled North Shore.

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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. Now, years later, Holmes notifies Wiggins he is in the U.S. at the request of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is being investigated as a possible murder suspect in Houdini's death. What follows is a mad dash to New York and Boston with a deranged Spiritualist medium on the tail of Holmes and his team of investigators: Wiggins, his feminist wife, and Rose Mackenburg, Houdini's top investigator into phony Spiritualism, which was rampant at the time. In Boston, Sir Arthur introduces the team to Margie, the most highly regarded Spiritualist of the day. Her séance and the bizarre form of treasure hunt that follows leads to a stunning climax that will change everyone's perception of Holmes's character.

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Three Paths to Glory is the story of three regiments in the American Civil War: the 2nd and 5th Minnesota and the 1st Tennessee. It follows each of the regiments through the war through the eyes of men serving in them. Clinton Cilley, of the 2nd Minnesota will be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, Jimmy Dunn of the 5th fights bravely in the Indian wars and at the Battle of Nashville. Sam Davis of the 1st Tennessee is remembered as the "Boy Hero of the Confederacy" for his gallant and noble deeds. We follow their exploits through their respective regiments. While historical fiction, this book is extensively researched and the events and people are accurately portrayed. The grime, grit and valor of service in his deciding point of American history is part of the story.

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This is a book of adventure and travel. It is also a memoir, reflecting the author's love for the people and the land, but do not expect a sentimental reflection of years gone by. These stories connect us all as human beings.Blcoh expresses his deep wonder as a child, frustration with his studies at the seminary, and his deep longing for freedom. Freedom he receives during his rollicking free life as a hobo, and he flies through graphic descriptions of piloting jet airplanes. Finally Blcoh reaches an honest insight into what it's like to be a special agent/pilot for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Here is the first part of his story.

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History and Hauntings of the Halloween Capital takes a look into why the small village of Anoka, MN, has been declared (by Congress and everything!) to be The Halloween Capital of the World. This fun look at the elements that make up this unique town, from the rivers along its borders and limestone underfoot to the historical locations and rich characters that helped put Anoka on the world map—to those characters who have seemed to stick around long after their time—History and Hauntings of the Halloween Capital mixes together the popular ghost stories of Anoka as well as answers to the question inhabitants are so frequently asked: ''Why is Anoka the Halloween Capital?''

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Soft, Sherrie Fernandez-William's first book, is a relentlessly textured memoir exposing the author's life as she goes back and forth in time, examining who she is today, and why. Soft is a story for those who understand moving from one geographical, spiritual, or identity-oriented place to another, hoping to escape, only to discover there are always other places that need escaping. It is a story for those searching their own lives to understand the capacity we may have to move forward, even as we may be forced to move back, with strength, and dignity and compassion, and despite our fears.

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While visiting vintage and classic boat shows around the country, what sometimes seems so evident, beyond just the spectacular restorations, is where did all this come from? I mean, sure, it was in the boathouse just last week, but really, what is the story behind this boat. Why did it survive while thousands of others didn't? What kind of provenance stands behind it, and who were the caretakers before that ensured it would be here, right in front of you, today? Who built it, and where is their place in history? Can we place it in the timeline of our families, before we were born? If you are lucky, the owner of each boat will be there, waiting to tell the story of their boat. Perhaps they know the history, back to the builder, previous owners, why its condition is just the way it is. Maybe the known history is more short-term, based on where the current owner found it and lovingly breathed new life and spirit back into a weathered hulk, found behind an old building, left for dead. Or it could be that it is all original, needing only a thorough cleaning to make it serviceable once again. Still showing its scars of usage, these proud survivors are out on the water serving their intended purpose: pleasure boating.Long, short, it makes no difference, each boat has a history, a heritage of how it has come to this place. While the artifact is indeed amazing, the journey to bring it back to life is even more so. Bob Matson's book, What's in Your Boat House? Amazing Stories of Nautical Archeology, brings these journeys to light in this intriguing collection! —Lee Wangstad - Boat Historian

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Akhenaten to the Founding Fathers: The Mysteries of the Hooked X is the third book in a series that investigates the origin and meaning of a mysterious symbol originally found on the five fiercely debated medieval North American rune stones. That research led forensic geologist Scott Wolter on a world-wide search that resulted in several explosive discoveries, including the stunning realization that the Hooked X symbolizes an ideological thread that weaves through at least 3,800 years of human history. This amazing story involves some of the most important figures in world history, including the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, the biblical Jesus, the medieval Cistercians and Knights Templar, numerous Native American tribes, Freemasonry, and the founding fathers of the United States, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. This book introduces several new mysterious artifacts and sites in North America along with exciting new scientific geological research using the latest technology, which allowed Wolter to reach definitive conclusions about the authenticity of these and many other controversial artifacts. Some of these artifacts provide conclusive evidence that changes not only North American history in a profound way, but demands a thorough rewrite of world history.Wolter brings the reader along on his investigations and presents his case using his proven and enjoyable narrative style along with over 280 black-and-white images, and 40 color photographs to introduce these artifacts and sites and illustrate his points. After the fun, Wolter distills the evidence down to his findings of fact, his interpretations of the facts, and finally presents his conclusions in a convincing scientific way that is irrefutable.

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Baby-boomer Meggie Moore finds life in the small town of Pine Lake, Minnesota, a little too mundane even with her part-time job at a local gift shop. Always up for an adventure, Meggie accepts a housesitting position on Spirit Lake knowing full well there has been a rash of burglaries in that area. Shirley, Meggie's outspoken friend and side-kick, labels Meggie as a nut who has lost touch with reality and vehemently argues that the housesitting position would be extremely dangerous under the circumstances. The adventure at the lake takes a sinister turn when Meggie, along with Shirley, stumble on the body of a lake neighbor. They become suspects in the murder, do some investigating in order to clear their names, and risk their own lives in the process.

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Phenology is the study happenings in the natural world: when birds migrate, when flowers bloom, the weather conditions. Larry Weber makes an intimate study of the natural world from his home in Barnum, Minnesota.

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