Fifteen-year-old Mary Lou Peters lives in the historic Southern Hotel in fictional Asheville, Maryland. Her life-long dream is to take over the hotel that her parents kept the same for so long. She discovers that she has an amazing gift that throughout these eight stories helps her solve previously unsolved mysteries, many having to do with the hotel’s eventful past. In the beginning, she has no friends besides friends of her parents. She meets all kinds of interesting people—her best friend Robby, energetic Julie, and even a few ghosts. Like everyone else, tragedies, celebrations, good and bad times are a part of Mary Lou’s life, and the hotel’s past. These stories take place in a hotel that is based on the real Southern Hotel in North Carolina. In July, 2005, I toured the hotel when it was for sale. The building and the history inspired this historical fiction collection about a mid-20th century family living in a prosperous small-town hotel.

Mary Lou and her family live in the Southern Hotel, a historic building her father has restored and operates. They live in the 1950s, in small town Maryland. Then Mary Lou discovers she has an unexpected gift. She has dreams and visions that transport her through time, mixing her up in mysteries, fires, and every sort of adventure, all in or around the Southern Hotel she has come to love.

Mary Lou and her family live in the Southern Hotel, a historic building her father has restored and operates. They live in the 1950s, in small town Maryland. Then Mary Lou discovers she has an unexpected gift. She has dreams and visions that transport her through time, mixing her up in mysteries, fires, and every sort of adventure, all in or around the Southern Hotel she has come to love.

Fifteen-year-old Mary Lou Peters lives in the historic Southern Hotel in fictional Asheville, Maryland. Her life-long dream is to take over the hotel that her parents kept the same for so long. She discovers that she has an amazing gift that throughout these eight stories helps her solve previously unsolved mysteries, many having to do with the hotel's eventful past. In the beginning, she has no friends besides friends of her parents. She meets all kinds of interesting people-her best friend Robby, energetic Julie, and even a few ghosts. Like everyone else, tragedies, celebrations, good and bad times are a part of Mary Lou's life, and the hotel's past. These stories take place in a hotel that is based on the real Southern Hotel in North Carolina. In July, 2005, I toured the hotel when it was for sale. The building and the history inspired this historical fiction collection about a mid-20th century family living in a prosperous small-town hotel.

In recent years, food writers and historians have begun to retell the story of southern food. Heirloom ingredients and traditional recipes have been rediscovered, the foundational role that African Americans played in the evolution of southern cuisine is coming to be recognized, and writers are finally clearing away the cobwebs of romantic myth that have long distorted the picture. The story of southern dining, however, remains incomplete. The Lost Southern Chefs begins to fill that niche by charting the evolution of commercial dining in the nineteenth-century South. Robert F. Moss punctures long-accepted notions that dining outside the home was universally poor, arguing that what we would today call “fine dining” flourished throughout the region as its towns and cities grew. Moss describes the economic forces and technological advances that revolutionized public dining, reshaped commercial pantries, and gave southerners who loved to eat a wealth of restaurants, hotel dining rooms, oyster houses, confectionery stores, and saloons. Most important, Moss tells the forgotten stories of the people who drove this culinary revolution. These men and women fully embodied the title “chef,” as they were the chiefs of their kitchens, directing large staffs, staging elaborate events for hundreds of guests, and establishing supply chains for the very best ingredients from across the expanding nation. Many were African Americans or recent immigrants from Europe, and they achieved culinary success despite great barriers and social challenges. These chefs and entrepreneurs became embroiled in the pitched political battles of Reconstruction and Jim Crow, and then their names were all but erased from history.

Unusual, interesting and little known stories of the state of Iowa. A Treasury of IowaTales is aimed at the target of familiarity-plus-novelty. These suspense-packed stories constitute "history for the ordinary person," and a few include really great traditions passed orally from generation to generation.

Our Southern Souls is a collection of 177 interviews of strangers that I approached on streets all across the southern United States. Each story feels like an honest conversation. Readers of Our Southern Souls have told me they've discovered a part of themselves in a story or found comfort and encouragement in reading about shared experiences or emotions. In the six years since starting this project, I have learned that the faces and places might change, but two things remain constant: everyone has a story to tell, and all of us need to know our life matters.