Paper Farms’ publishing debut features three novellas published under the Black Hills Press imprint. Defined as “a distinctive, mid-length fiction often overlooked as a literary genre,” the novellas have often fallen out of place, being too long to be a short story, and too short to be considered a full-blown novel.

After the excitement of the holidays comes always a letdown in spirits; and it seems that just about everyone could use a lift. Well, count on Nora Roberts to provide just that as going in, you know you’re in for a “happy-ever-after” treat.

At sixteen in rural England at the start of the 1960s, Laurel Nicolson hides in their tree house to avoid the family outing in celebration of her baby brother’s second birthday.  From there she witnesses a horrible act that involves her mother.  Innocently, she attests to the fact that her mother’s response was to protect her two-year-old child and herself. Years later in 2011, Laurel, an acclaimed actress now in her sixties, visits her ninety-year-old mother in the hospital in Suffolk, England, where Laurel and [...]

Five young men meet in college, become fast friends, and remain so long after graduation, having now become established in their careers. They make an annual trip to Las Vegas, and in this tenth year for the first time one of the friends is missing.

The Philosopher’s Kiss, a work of historical fiction by Peter Prange, was set in France in the 18th Century in Paris during the height of the Age of Enlightenment when all print was under the scrutiny and censorship of the Catholic Church. Denis Diderot, the title character, was a famous philosopher and writer whose idea it was to compile all knowledge under what became the Encyclopedia.

This is a coming-of-age story, told through the eyes of 13-year-old Hob (Robert), who by the end has matured into the young man Molly and her granddaughter knew he would become when on their travels eighteen months before they met him in the monastery where he, an orphan, had been raised and tutored by Father Athelstan.

Modelland Book CoverTookie De La Crème, AKA Forgetta-Girl, who aspires to become a Rememba-Girl, is the main character of Modelland, Tyra Banks’s first novel. It is set in the make-believe world of Modelland in Metopia. Tookie is a fifteen-year-old girl who longs to be noticed by anyone. One way she attempts to get attention is by lying down in the hallways of her school (B3), just hoping someone would step on her, proof she existed.

THE DISTANT HOURS by Kate Morton is historical fiction in true gothic style, replete with all of the elements of the genre: setting, plot, characters. The primary setting is Milderhurst Castle in Milderhurst Village, not far from London in England, between 1939 and 1992; a ruined castle complete with a moat that has been filled in, whispering walls, stormy nights; principal characters who are isolated from the rest of the outside world.

In Agenda’s November issue I briefly told you about Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, seven books published between 1991 and 2009, with the eighth and final in the series due out sometime in 2013. Since I started this series in September of last year, 2011, having been introduced to it when visiting my sister, I have not been able to put it down.

In 1945 after the end of WWII, Claire Beauchamp Randall, a nurse during the war, is reunited after six years with her husband, Frank Randall, who fought in the war, for a second honeymoon.