A magical bedtime story, honored as a Caldecott Honor Book.

In sincere and imaginative dialogue between a child and her kind and understanding parents, the little girl decides in a cocoon of sheets, a nest of blankets, she is ready to sleep, warm and strong, just like a tiger.

The lyrical narrative echoes a Runaway Bunny-like cadence: Does everything in the world go to sleep? the little girl asks.

Artist Pamela Zagarenski's rich, luminous mixed-media paintings effervesce with charming details that non-yet-sleepy children can examine for hours. A rare gem.

Women Writing the West WILLA Award Finalist

From the reigning royalty of Minnesota murder mysteries (The Rake) comes a striking new heroine: a young Irish immigrant caught up in a deadly plot in nineteenth-century Deadwood

When I was fifteen and my brother Seamus sixteen, we attended our own wake. Our family was in mourning, forced to send us off to America.

The year is 1880, and of all the places Brigid Reardon and her brother might have dreamed of when escaping Ireland's potato famine by moving to America, Deadwood, South Dakota, was not one of them. But Deadwood, in the grip of gold fever, is where Seamus lands and where Brigid joins him after eluding the unwanted attentions of the son of her rich employer in St. Paul--or so she hopes. But the morning after her arrival, a grisly tragedy occurs; Seamus, suspected of the crime, flees, and Brigid is left to clear his name and to manage his mining claim, which suddenly looks more valuable and complicated than he and his partners supposed.

Mary Logue, author of the popular Claire Watkins mysteries, brings her signature brio and nerve to this story of a young Irish woman turned reluctant sleuth as she tries to make her way in a strange and often dangerous new world. From the famine-stricken city of Galway to the bustling New York harbor, to the mansions of Summit Avenue in St. Paul, and finally to the raucous hustle of boomtown Deadwood, Logue's new thriller conjures the romance and the perils, and the tricky everyday realities, of a young immigrant surviving by her wits and grace in nineteenth-century America.

A grisly death near her new homestead draws Brigid Reardon into a complicated mystery soon after her arrival in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1881

After the harrowing events that entangled her in Deadwood, Brigid Reardon just wants to move west and get on with her new life in America. But shortly after traveling to Cheyenne to join her brother Seamus, she finds herself caught up in another deadly mystery--beginning with her discovery of a neighbor's body on the plains near their homes. Was Ella murdered? Are either of the two men in Ella's life responsible? With Seamus away on a cattle drive, her friend Padraic possibly succumbing to a local's charms, and the sheriff seemingly satisfied with Ella's fate, it falls to Brigid to investigate what really happened, which puts her in the crosshairs of one of Cheyenne's cattle barons, called big sugars in these parts. All she really wants is something better than a crumbling, soddy homestead on the desolate plains of Wyoming--and maybe, just maybe, she wants Padraic--but life, it seems, has other plans: this young immigrant from Ireland is going to be a detective on the western frontier of 1880s America, even if it kills her.

Loosely based on the true story of Ellen Watson in Cheyenne in 1889, The Big Sugar continues the adventure begun in Mary Logue's celebrated mystery The Streel, which introduced a gritty, charming, clever protagonist (Kirkus Reviews). With a faultless sense of history, a keen eye for suspense, and a poet's way with prose, Mary Logue all but guarantees that readers, like Brigid, will find the mystery at the heart of The Big Sugar downright irresistible.

Claire Watkins, deputy sheriff of Pepin County, Wis., makes a strong second showing that ought to gain her new fans. In spite of recurrent panic attacks associated with the death of her husband, Claire is starting to find the peace and security she's been seeking for herself and her 10-year-old daughter, Meg, since leaving her promising career with the St. Paul-Minneapolis police department for the small bluff town of St. Antoine.

One summer evening, while her sister Bridget takes care of Meg, Claire and Rich Haggard, a local pheasant farmer she's been dating for three months, attend a street dance in nearby Little Rock. Just as the fun gets under way, screams for help stop the music and put romance on hold. Someone has stabbed well-liked farmer Jed Spitzler in the chest. Members of the close-knit St. Antoine community join Jed's children in searching for Jed's killer.

Long-hidden town secrets are revealed as Claire seeks the truth and continues to struggle with her own demons.

This first in a series launch introduces Claire Watkins, a deputy sheriff for the Pepin County Police Department. Claire, a former Minneapolis police detective, and her 10-year-old daughter Meg fled the Twin Cities after her husband, Steve, also a cop, was killed.

When Landers Anderson--an elderly neighbor who befriended Claire and Meg--dies of a heart attack after being sideswiped with a shovel, Claire determines to find the culprit. This involves delving into Landers's family history and investigating the machinations of a right-wing group, Homeowners of America, that is buying up property to build an environmentally unsound development.

At the same time, Meg fearfully admits to Claire that she saw the man who killed Steve. Claire contacts her former partner, Det. Bruce Jacobs, and prods him into accelerating the investigation into Steve's death.

Logue writes beautifully about rural Minnesota life while telling a good mystery. For fans of J.A. Jance and Margaret Maron. --Library Journal

Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins has had an easy summer in Fort St. Antoine, Wisconsin; the only problem is that her daughter Meg is leaving for college soon. When Claire walks down to the park to watch the Burning Boat--a large replica of a Norwegian longboat set on the shores of Lake Pepin, burned at the autumnal equinox--she has no idea that more than just a wooden structure is going up in flames.

The next day, the bones of a young woman are found in the ashes. When Claire learns that the new deputy she has hired, a vet returning from Afghanistan, was the young woman's former boyfriend, and that he is now dating her daughter Meg, she is desperate to find out who is responsible for the death.

In order to get to the heart of this mystery, Claire must understand what happened in an attack in the mountains of Afghanistan, which left one man wounded, one man killed, and one man disturbed. Could one of those two remaining men be the killer?

My grandmother, Mae Kirwin, scared me. With that disturbing, distant memory, mystery novelist Mary Logue begins her exploration of the life of her mother's mother, who died more than thirty years ago.

Mae McNally Kirwin was born in 1894 in Chokio, a small prairie community in western Minnesota. In 1926, the sudden death of her husband left Mae to support herself and her five children. These facts were well known, but for Logue, they were not enough. Determined to get to know her grandmother better, Logue sets out to assemble the bits and pieces of her grandmother's life. Along the way, Logue takes the reader--and herself--on a journey of discovery. Digging through forgotten bank records, old newspapers, handwritten census forms, family documents, and faded recipes, she pieces together the past. In the process, she tells a much larger story--that of a community, a way of life, a family, and a single woman's struggle to survive in a world that is both harsh and richly rewarding.

Wisconsin winter weather plays as important a role as any individual in this nicely paced tale of domestic abuse and murder. Claire Watkins is still adjusting to life in little Fort St. Antoine when she notices the bruises and stiff gait of a local woman named Stephanie Klaus. Small town or big city, Claire knows the signs of abuse when she sees them.

Stephanie, however, won't talk, even when her new boyfriend, Buck, is tied into his car, driven out on the treacherous ice of Lake Pepin and left there to sink and drown.

When Stephanie, accompanied by Buck's delightful dog, Snooper, tries to leave town, she is once again beaten; this time, she barely survives . . .

A grisly death near her new homestead draws Brigid Reardon into a complicated mystery soon after her arrival in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1881

After the harrowing events that entangled her in Deadwood, Brigid Reardon just wants to move west and get on with her new life in America. But shortly after traveling to Cheyenne to join her brother Seamus, she finds herself caught up in another deadly mystery--beginning with her discovery of a neighbor's body on the plains near their homes. Was Ella murdered? Are either of the two men in Ella's life responsible? With Seamus away on a cattle drive, her friend Padraic possibly succumbing to a local's charms, and the sheriff seemingly satisfied with Ella's fate, it falls to Brigid to investigate what really happened, which puts her in the crosshairs of one of Cheyenne's cattle barons, called big sugars in these parts. All she really wants is something better than a crumbling, soddy homestead on the desolate plains of Wyoming--and maybe, just maybe, she wants Padraic--but life, it seems, has other plans: this young immigrant from Ireland is going to be a detective on the western frontier of 1880s America, even if it kills her.

Loosely based on the true story of Ellen Watson in Cheyenne in 1889, The Big Sugar continues the adventure begun in Mary Logue's celebrated mystery The Streel, which introduced a gritty, charming, clever protagonist (Kirkus Reviews). With a faultless sense of history, a keen eye for suspense, and a poet's way with prose, Mary Logue all but guarantees that readers, like Brigid, will find the mystery at the heart of The Big Sugar downright irresistible.

A boy, his grandfather, and a baby dragon set off on an international adventure that takes them from the Midwest to Iceland in this children's fantasy novel perfect for fans of When You Trap a Tiger and How to Train Your Dragon.

Johan is off to visit his Grandpa Siggy--a charismatic, impetuous Icelander with a big secret: He took a dragon egg with him when he immigrated to America. As fate would have it, Dreki hatched just a few hours after Johan was born, magically linking the two. But Dreki was kept hidden.

Now, many years later, the time has come for Dreki to journey home and for Johan to discover his ancestry through a life-changing trip to Iceland. But the clock is ticking, as both Siggy's and Dreki's health are in jeopardy. This cross-cultural coming-of-age story explores aspects of Icelandic folklore while dealing sensitively with the themes of aging, generational memory, and returning home.

The sailboat flew out of the marina like a stone from a giant's slingshot, crashing through big waves in a blue-green sea. So begins this rollicking murder mystery set in the lush environs of the Virgin Islands. A book heavy on sailing and intrigue, we follow Elsie Hennessee and her husband Max as their vacation turns into a struggle to unravel the reasons behind a brutal murder. Sailing from island to island, outrunning shadowy figures and the police, they join forces with a local islander to uncover a conspiracy that threatens to end their lives and overthrow the peaceful rhythms of the islands.

This lively and varied collection is not limited by a unanimity of form or style. A family of work is gathered in this book where, as the editors note, quality prevails, highlighted by intensity of voice and subtlety of tone. The drawings by Lynn Weaver provide strikingly visual segues from piece to piece.