Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

The world of Olive Kitteridge, a retired school teacher in a small coastal town in Maine, is revealed in stories that explore her diverse roles in many lives, including a lounge singer haunted by a past love, her stoic husband, and her own resentful son.

"Olive Kitteridge has returned, as indomitable as ever ... this time as a person getting older, navigating her next decade as she comes to terms with the changes--sometimes welcome, sometimes not--in her own life. Here is Olive, strangely content in her second marriage, still in an evolving relationship with her son and his family, encountering a cast of memorable characters in the seaside town of Crosby, Maine. Whether it's a young girl coming to...

In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount,...

Ah, it's an academic conference, with all the egos, the scandals, the terrifyingly petty squabbles on display. Well….perhaps not so petty. Professor Andrew Basnett has returned to his old university for a meeting of the Botanical Association, an event that should be entirely benign, except that he can't help being just a little curious about Carl Judd, an artist who was murdered here just two years ago. And, of course, about Stephen Sharland, who's...

Plans for peaceful seaside holidays rarely work out well in the world of classic British mysteries. Retired professor Andrew Basnett, for example, envisioning sandcastles and the blessings of a pale English sun on his pale English skin, is startled to meet his nephew, Peter, on the beach. He's more startled (and not entirely thrilled) when Peter gets him invited to dinner with a celebrity novelist. And he's extremely startled when the novelist's sister-in-law...

Retired teacher Mary Alice Roth, while working her way back to a comfortable friendship with her neighbor, finds the careful shell she’s built around her life threatened by her sister who delivers a staggering piece of news that could send shockwaves through her small Texas town.

When an old colleague complains of disappearing neighbors, a retired professor of botany starts digging for clues in this delightful cozy mystery. Andrew Basnett may be retired from academia, but that doesn't seem to have stopped his former colleagues from dumping problems in his lap. This time around it's peppery Constance Camm, whose neighbors keep disappearing. Miss Camm and her sister, Mollie, would probably shrug it off if not for a frightening...

When her friend Georgia Hallerbee asks Phyllis to have her house featured in the annual Christmas Jingle Bell Tour of Homes, Phyllis is equally flattered and flustered. She already has a bridal shower on Christmas Eve and a wedding on New Year's Eve to prepare for, and she's been baking gingerbread cookies as if they're going out of style. But like her tasty treats, she rises to the occasion. Before the tour can even get under way, Phyllis hears a...

Widow and retired special education teacher Daisy Arthur takes up romance writing with a quirky group of aspiring authors. She finds herself tangled in merry mayhem that suddenly turns quite deadly. Enter Gabe Caerphilly father of one of her old students and a single police lieutenant with Littleton, Colorado's finest. Daisy sees Gabe as having definite Mr. Right potential. Unfortunately Gabe sees her as a prime murder suspect. What s a woman to do?...