"A group of dedicated families leaves Bliss Creek to establish a new community in Missouri. Among them is Bethel Graber, a beautiful young woman with a passion for teaching. But after being disabled in a terrible accident, overseeing a classroom is out of the question...and romance seems a long-lost dream."--

In 1856, having traveled with his young sister from New York toa foster home on a farm in Missouri, ten-year-old Danny plots toget his foster father to send for and marry his mother.

As the owner of Brown's Botanical Flower Shop, Anne encounters a serious challenge in her life while also seeing a big dream fulfilled on the Dickson properties. Grandmother Davis's trademark lilies show up in a patterned wholecloth quilt. This quilt gives much comfort to Anne until she is forced to give it up to its intended owner. --

"Dev's five-and-dime may be doing well, but her love life is in turmoil. She's torn between Deputy U.S. Marshal Jake Del Vecchio, who is on an undercover assignment, and her ex-beau Noah Underwood, the local doctor from a high-society family. So she welcomes the distraction when Elise Whitmore offers her a great deal on antique chocolate molds that would be perfect for her Easter gift baskets. But do the molds actually belong to Elise's soon-to-be...

Roxana, a light-skinned slave nurse on a large Southern plantation, is desperate to give her son a better chance at life than she had ever enjoyed, and so she switches him with the master's son. Years later, when Roxana's real son has turned to gambling, murder, and theft, it is the country lawyer, Pudd'nhead Wilson, who unmasks the true identity of the two. Considered Twain's most courageous work, this short novel is one of the most sensitive treatments...

"After one of her patients is murdered, Dr. Megan Bradley has to get away. Away from the crime she saw but couldn't prevent, and away from missionary Gerard Vance, who almost made her trust in love again. Shaken and scared, Megan flees to the one place she can heal--her small Missouri hometown. She never expected Gerard to follow her ... or for danger to find her again. When they discover a murderer lurks in town, Megan will need strength from Gerard--and...

The novel exposes the hypocrisy of small-town life in the midwest, addressing many social taboos. Research suggested that Bellamann was working off resentment of his upbringing in Fulton, Missouri, where he had been ostracised for his German extraction and rumoured illegitimacy.

"Betsy Huckabee has big-city dreams, but nobody outside of tiny Pine Gap, Missouri, seems interested in the articles she writes for her uncle's newspaper. Her hopes for independence may be crushed, until the best idea she's ever had comes riding into town. Deputy Joel Puckett didn't want to leave Texas, but unfair circumstances have made moving to Pine Gap his only shot at keeping a badge. Worse, this small town has big problems, and masked marauders...