Category Archives: Women’s Fiction

Hot Stuff

by CJ Fosdick

HotHot Stuff takes on double meaning when klutzy Kate is faced with rookie cop Dallas looking for a stolen lawn statue. In her quiet, crime-free Wisconsin village, Kate has her hands full writing slogans for candy hearts and keeping her kleptomaniac brother with Asperger’s Syndrome inside the law. Even her grandmother’s famous snickerdoodle cookies can’t ameliorate the crime when a stolen lawn statue turns out to be a drug dispenser. Will Kate rise above her concern of what Dallas’s uniform represents and admit the charming Texas rookie is the man of her dreams?

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About the Author

CJ was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wis. but has lived longer in Rochester, MN where her writing career escalated from locally- and nationally-published award-winning stories, articles, and anthologies to her first novel--The Accidental Wife. Though she has lived on a woodsy 12-acre hilltop deer haven for decades, she has ventured down on rare occasions to climb a waterfall in Jamaica, float in the Dead Sea, kiss the Blarney Stone, and train wild mustangs, several dogs, cats, children and one patient husband.

The Accidental Series #3: The Accidental Heiress

The Accidental Series #3

by CJ Fosdick

TheA plane crash in the Shannon River spins Jessica’s Irish honeymoon into a wilderness of unexpected emotions. For Robbie, the heroic Irish time-traveler she met and married in Wyoming, it becomes more than a reunion to the homeland he left…in the nineteenth century.

Things have changed since then. The old manor house of his youth has become the honeymooners B & B, run by descendants of his wild boyhood friend and the willful heiress of the estate. Dual era love stories, a hidden diary and the 104-year-old family healer reveal scandalous secrets and consequences that began with Robbie and trickled down through generations. Can he reset history and restore honor without losing Jessica, the soulmate he vowed to love “forever and a day?”

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About the Author

CJ was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wis. but has lived longer in Rochester, MN where her writing career escalated from locally- and nationally-published award-winning stories, articles, and anthologies to her first novel--The Accidental Wife. Though she has lived on a woodsy 12-acre hilltop deer haven for decades, she has ventured down on rare occasions to climb a waterfall in Jamaica, float in the Dead Sea, kiss the Blarney Stone, and train wild mustangs, several dogs, cats, children and one patient husband.

Girl Unreserved

by Tashia Hart

GirlGirl Unreserved is a very intimate coming-of-age narrative told from the perspective of a "mixed-blood" girl from a Chippewa Indian reservation in Northern Minnesota.

The story addresses how the concepts of identity, gender, and sexuality are shaped by both our cultural environments as well as the intrinsic, spiritual landscape we grow and carry inside of ourselves throughout our lives.

Other themes this book addresses are: the prevalence of sexual assault in Indian Country; poverty and malnutrition and their effects on the mental states of children; alcoholism; and one of the worst coping mechanisms for suffering, the "I Don't Care" mentality that allows subscribers the belief that they are in control of their own suffering--leading to cycles that recreate the suffering over and over again.

This mentality is currently devastating Native communities, with particularly harmful repercussions for the youth of these communities.

Girl Unreserved is based on the author's own coming-of-age story and has woven into it elements of fiction and a touch of magical realism.

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About the Author

Tashia Hart is from the Red Lake Reservation of Chippewa Indians in Northern Minnesota, where her father and other enrolled family members reside.

Like many women, her recovery from traumas like the ones portrayed in Girl Unreserved is a life-long, on-going process.

She is currently finding ways to bring healthy feminine and masculine energy into her life.

The Callie Lindstrom series #2: A Stone for Amer

The Callie Lindstrom series #2

by Connie Claire Szarke

AWill Lindstrom was only sixteen when he and his father left the predictable routine of their family farm in southwestern Minnesota and were launched, via the Transcontinental Railway, into the wilds of eastern Montana to find Uncle Amer. The year was 1919. Decades later, after he and daughter Callie arrive at the Scandinavian Cemetery in Rockford, Illinois, in search of Amer's tombstone, an elderly Will recounts that difficult journey west, pays homage to the life that was, and reveals controversial truths about his beloved uncle and the prejudice that killed him. This novel, A Stone for Amer, is part of the Callie Lindstrom trilogy, which includes Delicate Armor and Lady in the Moon, A Novel in Stories.

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About the Author

Midwest author, Connie Claire Szarke, grew up in “The Land of 10,000 Lakes.” A writer of fiction and poetry, she also taught high school French for many years. She enjoys playing classical piano, painting, alpine skiing, and kayaking with her Shetland sheepdogs near her home west of the Twin Cities. Much of her work has been published in literary journals and magazines, including The Talking Stick, Dust & Fire, Stories Teachers Tell, Lake Country Journal Magazine, and Community Connections: The Minnesota Project.

The Callie Lindstrom series #1: Delicate Armor

The Callie Lindstrom series #1

by Connie Claire Szarke

DelicateSet in the Upper Midwest, 1950s-1990, Delicate Armor is the coming-of-age story of Callie Lindstrom, a cheeky girl who shares a special bond with her father. After the loss of his baby boy, Will Lindstrom places his energy in young Callie, teaching her his love for the outdoors. Accepted into the world of men within her family and privy to their dreams and struggles, she learns to navigate waves of conflict and loss while realizing her own place in the world. This book is about lost time, the tenacity of the human spirit, and our narrator’s emerging consciousness as she passes from young girl to self-possessed woman. Delicate Armor is Callie’s tribute to the land and to her microcosm of men.

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About the Author

Midwest author, Connie Claire Szarke, grew up in “The Land of 10,000 Lakes.” A writer of fiction and poetry, she also taught high school French for many years. She enjoys playing classical piano, painting, alpine skiing, and kayaking with her Shetland sheepdogs near her home west of the Twin Cities. Much of her work has been published in literary journals and magazines, including The Talking Stick, Dust & Fire, Stories Teachers Tell, Lake Country Journal Magazine, and Community Connections: The Minnesota Project.

The Callie Lindstrom series #3: Lady in the Moon

The Callie Lindstrom series #3

by Connie Claire Szarke

LadyOh, those formation years--coming of age never ends until it's time to leave this earth for good. Callandra Mae Lindstrom, a once feisty girl grown into a promising young woman, approaches her middle years altered by an abusive marriage.

During the road trip back home from Illinois, where she and her father Will traveled in search of Uncle Amer's gravesite, Callie spends time behind the wheel coming to terms with her personal struggles. In doing so, she reflects on the lives of others, including former residents of Masterton, her captivating hometown. The ways in which these people survived or succumbed to their own painful experiences serve as critical lessons, helping Callie to get on in the world as she alternately stumbles and dances through this part of her life.

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About the Author

Midwest author, Connie Claire Szarke, grew up in “The Land of 10,000 Lakes.” A writer of fiction and poetry, she also taught high school French for many years. She enjoys playing classical piano, painting, alpine skiing, and kayaking with her Shetland sheepdogs near her home west of the Twin Cities. Much of her work has been published in literary journals and magazines, including The Talking Stick, Dust & Fire, Stories Teachers Tell, Lake Country Journal Magazine, and Community Connections: The Minnesota Project.

Nobody’s Angel

by Melissa McNallan

Nobody'sIt's hard to be a Munson in Harmony, Montana. Even harder, being an Indy in Ma Sue's house where margaritas, cigarettes, and microwave meals reign. Independence Angel Munson lucks her way out of both Harmony and her grandma, Ma Sue's house when her dad brings his girlfriend Lydia home for a visit.

After her mom passed on, her dad left town for the open road. On occasion, he'd stop on home with stories of his adventures. Indy couldn't wait to get out into the world and live some stories of her own. Indy's dad and Lydia invite her to join them on the road, she jumps at the chance. Her days become filled with pool hustling, magazine and romance novel reading, and boy meeting.

Out on the road, Indy learns that some stories cost more than others. In order to get by and make a life, there are some things she'll have to abandon.

"I'm ready to leave his too long glances and the broken tiles of Hotel Bradenton behind."

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About the Author

Melissa McNallan is a columnist for the Post Bulletin and a journalist for several publications. Her short stories and poems have appeared in The Green Blade and The YellowJacket Review. In 2010, she earned a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant in Prose for an early draft of Nobody's Angel (then titled I.A.M.). She was a finalist in the 2015-2016 Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose.

The Edge of Nowhere

by C H Armstrong

TheThe year is 1992 and Victoria Hastings Harrison Greene—reviled matriarch of a sprawling family—is dying.

After surviving the Oklahoma Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, Victoria refuses to leave this earth before revealing the secrets she’s carried for decades.

Once the child of a loving family during peaceful times, a shocking death shattered her life. Victoria came face to face with the harshness of the world. As the warm days of childhood receded to distant memory, Victoria learns to survive.

No matter what it takes.

To keep her family alive in an Oklahoma blighted by dust storms and poverty, Victoria makes choices—harsh ones, desperate ones. Ones that eventually made her into the woman her grandchildren fear and whisper about. Ones that kept them all alive. Hers is a tale of tragedy, love, murder, and above all, the conviction to never stop fighting.

Publisher

Published by: Penner Publishing

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About the Author

C.H. Armstrong is an Oklahoma native transplanted in Minnesota. A 1992 graduate of the University of Oklahoma, “Cathie”is a life-long lover of books, and staunchly outspoken on subject of banned and challenged books. The Edge of Nowhere is her first novel and was inspired by her own family’s experiences during the 1930s Oklahoma Dust Bowl and The Great Depression.

Eve: A Novel

by Elissa Elliott

Eve:In this mesmerizing debut novel, Elissa Elliott blends biblical tradition with recorded history to put a powerful new twist on the story of creation’s first family. Here is Eve brought to life in a way religion and myth have never allowed–as a wife, a mother, and a woman. With stunning intimacy, Elliott boldly reimagines Eve’s journey before and after the banishment from Eden, her complex marriage to Adam, her troubled relationship with her daughters, and the tragedy that would overcome her sons, Cain and Abel. From a woman’s first awakening to a mother’s innermost hopes and fears, from moments of exquisite tenderness to a climax of shocking violence, Eve explores the very essence of love, womanhood, faith, and humanity.

Publisher

Published by: Delacorte Press

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About the Author

Elissa Elliott is a former high school teacher and has optioned her first screenplay. She and her husband, Daniel Elliott, live in Minnesota. Eve is her first novel.