"Candy Wilson has forgotten to buy the paprika. Turner Davis needs to get his zinnias in. Della Dorner told her mother she was going to the Galaxy Swirl, but that's not where she's really headed on her new Schwinn five-speed. Float Up, Sing Down is the story of a single day. But in that day, how much teeming life! The residents of this rural Indiana town have their routines, their preferences, their joys, grudges, and regrets. Gossip is paramount....

"As a girl, Zorrie Underwood's modest and hardscrabble home county was the only constant in her young life. After losing both her parents, Zorrie moved in with her aunt, whose own death orphaned Zorrie all over again, casting her off into the perilous realities and sublime landscapes of rural, Depression-era Indiana. Drifting west, Zorrie survived on odd jobs, sleeping in barns and under the stars, before finding a position at a radium processing...

After her boyfriend is killed in a van in which she was also a passenger, Amish girl Katie Yoder finds herself suffering from depression and anxiety attacks. What -- or who -- can deliver Katie from the bondage of her fears; Freeman Bontrager has been attracted to Katie for years and will make any excuse to be near her. Now that she is finally home, his fervent hope is that he will be able to break through her emotional scars long enough to reach...

A man at one with nature finds himself enchanted by a vision in this classic Midwestern romance from the naturalist and author of The Keeper of the Bees. David Langston, the Harvester, allows his dog to decide his fate every year-to join the money-making scramble in the noise and grime of the city, or continue harvesting the goldenseal, mullein, and ginseng in the woods around their country home. Every year, his dog Bel chooses correctly-for...

A wounded veteran discovers the healing power of nature in this classic American novel by the author of A Girl of the Limberlost. Wounded in World War I, Jamie McFarlane is looking for a peaceful place to spend his final days. After escaping the grim confines of a California military hospital, he finds himself at the seaside home of the Bee Master. There, with the help of an impish eleven-year-old called Little Scout, Jamie tends to the hives and...

A debut collection set in southern Indiana features protagonists who test the boundaries of their sanity and survival skills, from a man who violently snaps and flees when his wife falls terminally ill to a former hunting dog breeder who clashes with a Salvadoran drug smuggler.

"Living alone for the first time in her life is lonely for Elma Hochstetler, whose twin sister Thelma recently married. Though they share the running of a general store, more and more of Thelma's time is taken up by her growing family. Elma has dated some, but she wonders if she is just too picky to find love. Through a mishap at the farmers' market, Elma meets Ben Wagler and instantly likes him. But there is a problem. He lives in Grabill--50 miles...

A great, hilarious new voice in fiction: the poignant, all-too-human recollections of an affable bird researcher in the Indiana backwater as he goes through a disastrous yet heartening love affair with the place and its people.
 
Nathan Lochmueller studies birds, earning just enough money to live on. He drives a glitter-festooned truck, the Gypsy Moth, and he is in love with Lola, a woman so free-spirited and mysterious she can

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Wrong-side-of-the-tracks Roxann and her silver-spoon cousin Angora have never had anything in common--until now. Now adults and estranged for years, both women are on the run, one a reluctant witness to a crime, one just jilted at the altar. With each harboring her own secrets, the cousins decide to hit the road to tackle items on the Life Lists they created in college. Along the way, they let their hair down and are forced to face their pasts, unleashing...

It’s Christmastime in Skary, Indiana, but the holiday season has been hijacked by maverick director Lois Stepaphanopolis as she attempts to bring her horror-ific vision of A Christmas Carol to life. But the holly-decked path from page to stage is a thorny one, as Lois attempts to rally her skeptical cast, including new father Wolfe Boone, and then she learns that her reluctant marketing director, Alfred Tennison, is truly a Christmas...