In her moody debut, Alber skillfully uses many shades of gray to draw complex characters who discover how cruel love can be. --Kirkus Reviews Californian Merrit Chase doesn't know what she's in for when she travels to an Irish village famous for its matchmaking festival. She simply wants to meet her father, a celebrated matchmaker, in hopes that she can mend her troubled past. Instead, her arrival triggers a rising tide of violence, and Merrit finds herself both suspect and victim, accomplice and pawn, in a manipulative game that began thirty years previously. When she discovers that the matchmaker's treacherous past is at the heart of the chaos, she must decide how far she will go to save him from himself and to get what she wants, a family. Lisa Alber evokes a world in which ancient tradition collides with modern village life and ageless motivators such as greed and love still wield their power. Kilmoon captures the moodiness of the Irish landscape in a brooding mystery that explores family secrets, betrayal, vengeance, and murder.

Kilmoon: A County Clare Mystery

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Alber, Lisa

Mystery

Muskrat Press, LLC

What event could turn a quiet man from one who has always followed and gone along, to one who takes a stand against his community? In 1976, in a remote farming corner of Oregon, rebellious fifteen-year-old Patty vanishes. Blamed for awful trouble, the community, everyone but farmer Jack McIntyre and his daughter, bid her good riddance. Even Jack's wife dusts her hands of the girl. As wild as she turned, Patty had once been close to Jack's family and was his daughter's only friend. Jack cannot help but care what happened to her. His feelings for the girl force him to make the most difficult decision of his life: to find the courage to search for her. The journey he takes will change him, and everyone he loves, profoundly.

When Patty Went Away

Literature & Fiction

Burt, Ms Jeannie

Literary

In 1873, quiet Mary Harrington's husband, drunk and violent, leaves their remote Nebraska homestead. She and her five-year-old child wait for him to return. But three months later, he is still gone. By then they are starving. They have no choice but to ride out into the frigid Nebraska winter, searching for help. They stumble into a struggling community of a handful of people. Mary squats in an abandoned building and begs for work at the Emigrant rooming house. Weeks go by; they have no food but that which Mary can steal from slop buckets and the unguarded rooming house’s cellar. A cook's job comes available. Mary can do it, but the law won't allow her to be paid without her husband's approval. So, in exchange for Mary's labor, the rooming house proprietor offers two bowls of food a day.Barely surviving, Mary and her son continue to hope for her husband to return. Some time later, he passes through, now a drover of longhorns. He raises his whip at her, spits, and turns away. She realizes, then, she can rely on no one but herself. Alone, she must find a way to survive, and care for her child. But in a hostile time when women are denied any rights, how can she? With determination, wile and grit, Mary will find a way, and in the short time she has, prove herself an intrepid mother and a woman of courage. Written in the rich and elegant tone of Willa Cather, “The Seasons of Doubt” describes the hardscrabble life and courage of a prairie mother to survive and raise her child.

The Seasons of Doubt

Burt, Jeannie

Genre Fiction

Orphaned at fifteen in 1883, Ezekiel Harrington is forced from his home in remote Nebraska into the hands of strangers in Philadelphia. They steal what little he has and he flees their injustice. Only his drive and stubborn tenacity keep him from starving. Over time, ambition and a chance encounter with a childhood friend change the course of his life. The friend, Robert Henri, is now studying art at the academy. Henri introduces Ezekiel to his cadre of striving artists. Among them is a crude Bohemian woman of tremendous talent, a woman Ezekiel immediately despises. The connection with Henri leads Ezekiel on the outrageous and chancy path of becoming an art gallery owner. His business struggles until a request for portrait comes in from a member of Philadelphia's high society. The man insists the Bohemian woman artist will paint it and wants to use Ezekiel's gallery for the sittings. Ezekiel doesn't want her and her rough ways in his store until he hears the terms of the deal. It is on the shoulders of this unforgettable woman, that his fortunes begin to take a remarkable turn as he comes to see her and her talent as a way to solvency. But his feeling for her begins to fire him. He can't account the emotion that has come over him, emotions that thrust him on an intense and unexpected course until after a betrayal he realizes some ironic and existential truths.

Come the Morning

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Books by Muskrat Press, LLC

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Muskrat Press, LLC publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Kilmoon: A County Clare Mystery

When Patty Went Away

The Seasons of Doubt

Come the Morning