Borden Chantry never wanted to be a marshal. His plan was to wear the badge until he could raise enough money to buy cattle. But he was good at his job of riding herd on horse thieves, drifters, and drunken cowpokes. Now, a well-dressed stranger lay dead in the street, seemingly the victim of a cold-blooded murderer. With few clues to go on, Chantry knows only one thing for sure: the killer lives in this town. But who can it be? The ruthless saloon...

A mysterious minister who never removes the black veil shrouding his face, an eccentric scientist who experiments with the fate of his friends, a cheerful tombstone carver who speaks the wisdom of the graveyard, these are but a few of the unusual New Englanders you'll meet in Twice-Told Tales

Luther and Nora Krank decide to avoid the chaos and frenzy of Christmas by taking a Caribbean cruise during the holidays, but their plans have unexpected consequences.

"It is 1880 and Gracy Brookens is the only midwife in a small Colorado mining town where she has delivered hundreds, maybe thousands, of babies in her lifetime. She is a gifted and important resource for the women of her hardscrabble community, a position earned through wisdom and trust. Most women in Swandyke couldn't even imagine getting through their pregancy and labor without Gracy by their sides. But everything changes when a baby is found dead...and...

"Based on [the author]s own experiences as a young man, the books two novellas and short story are set in the small towns and mountains of western Montana. It is a world populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, but also one rich in the pleasures of fly-fishing, logging, cribbage, and family. By turns raunchy and elegiac, these superb tales express, in [the author]s own words, 'a little of the love I have for the earth as it goes by.'y--...

A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. In the story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sun-drenched...

Explores the five distinct regions of Colorado separated by geography, culture, history and economy: Southern Colorado (including the San Luis Valley and the plains south of the Arkansas River), Western Colorado, eastern plains (north of the Arkansas River), Front Range, and Denver metropolitan region.

George Eliot takes the well-worn tale of a lovely dairy-maid seduced by a careless squire and out if it creates a portrait of the lives of ordinary Midlands working people their labors and loves, their beliefs, their speech.

As daughter of the richest, most important man in the small provincial village of Highbury, Emma Woodhouse is firmly convinced that it is her right--perhaps even her "duty"--To arrange the lives of others. Considered by most critics to be Austen's most technically brilliant achievement, "Emma" sparkles with ironic insights into self-deception, self-discovery, and the interplay of love and power.

Set in the Parisian underworld and plotted like a detective story, Les Miserables follows Jean Valjean, originally an honest peasant, who has been imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family. A hardened criminal upon his release, he eventually reforms, becoming a successful industrialist and town mayor. Despite this, he is haunted by an impulsive former crime and is pursued relentlessly by the police inspector...