In early-nineteenth-century New England, folks considered a clean chin a sign of godliness. Born into this buttoned-up, strict society, Joseph Palmer stood out from childhood as someone who liked to do things his own way. A friend to Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Alcotts, Palmer lived by his own code and grew a belly-flowing beard that made his neighbors so crazy that they tried forcibly to shave him. He fought back and ended up in prison for a year. His cause became a local sensation, and a few short decades later a president of the United States—Abraham Lincoln—would wear a beard. Narrated with the charm of a tall tale, this true story celebrates the long American history of nonconformity and encourages children to question social rules they may take for granted. Praise for Quite Contrary Man “She [Hyatt] cleanly lays out a morality tale that could prompt a healthy civics lesson. Brown's arch illustrations, in watercolor with pen and ink, nicely capture 19th-century New England.” –Kirkus Reviews “Brown’s warmhued watercolors reiterate the folk yarn feel with rustic touches. A spirited introduction to an iconoclastic 19th-century activist.” –Publishers Weekly

The unusual thing about the collection Quite Contrary is the range of subgenre. Although these are all crime stories, each is vastly different in its approach to the crime. One story, A Step Above The Beasts, borders on horror, following the actions of a highly ethical murderer. Time, The Thief, which is set in a piazza in Italy, shows the power of imagination, and comes dangerously close to being a romance. In several of the stories, notably Five Points Of View, who the bad guy is may come as a surprise or even remain a mystery. There is humor here and even a bit of parody, as in Detour On Mean Street, the dilemma of a hard-boiled PI caught up in a cozy. These stories have appeared in seven different publications. Two of them (Quite Contrary and The Plot Thickens) won contests and one (Quite Contrary) has since appeared in a mystery anthology printed in Japan. Boson Books also offers the full length mysteries Our Fathers and Now Mourn the Space Cadet by John Chabot. For an author bio, photo and a sample read, visit www.bosonbooks.com

In a charming new cozy mystery series from USA Today bestselling author Amy Lillard, twenty-something advice columnist Sissy is ready for a fresh start in the small town of Yoder, Kansas – along with her loyal Yorkie, Duke. She’s planning to help out at her aunt’s Sunflower Café, but little does she know her new duties will soon include solving a murder! After Sissy’s rodeo cowboy boyfriend turns out to be more of a rodeo clown, she packs a bag; picks up her Yorkshire terrier Duke; and leaves Tulsa, Oklahoma, bound for her parents’ former hometown. There are still plenty of Yoders in Yoder, Kansas, including Sissy’s aunt Bethel, who owns the Sunflower Café but recently broke her leg. It’s a homecoming of sorts as Sissy arrives to help in the café and reunite with her pregnant cousin Lizzie. Plus she can continue to secretly write her newspaper advice column as seventy-year-old “Aunt Bess.” But it’s Sissy who could use some advice when she finds the milk deliveryman out behind the café with a knife in his back. As the sheriff’s prime suspect, it’s up to Sissy to catch the backstabber herself—before someone else gets creamed...

The celebrated author of The Group offers a “clever, witty, polished” portrait of the 1940s NYC literary bohemia she knew so well in this debut novel (The New York Times). Margaret Sargent is young and fearless, a deep thinker inspired by the bohemian energy that abounds in New York City in the years leading up to the Second World War. With careless abandon, she destroys her marriage and numerous love affairs as she moves through the social circles of artists and writers, playing at the fringes of political extremism. She is an enigma, often wanton and frivolous, but possessing intelligence and a razor-sharp wit, as well as a troubling core of inner darkness, self-doubt, and puzzling tendencies toward self-destruction. For Margaret, urban life in the 1930s is an ongoing adventure—ever-changing, always surprising, and deeply, profoundly unsatisfying. Mary McCarthy, author of the bestselling American classic The Group, burst boldly onto the literary scene with her provocative debut, The Company She Keeps. A brilliant, stylistically inventive novel, it offers a rich portrait of a truly fascinating protagonist in six revealing episodes. Love her, despise her, or fear for her, you will never forget Margaret Sargent. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary McCarthy including rare images from the author’s estate.

The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1877) is a collection of essays and letters by Michel de Montaigne. Originally published in French as Essais (1580), this edition was translated by English poet Charles Cotton in the late-17th century and republished by William Carew Hazlitt, the grandson of renowned English essayist and critic William Hazlitt. “No man living is more free from this passion [of sorrow] than I, who yet neither like it in myself nor admire it in others, and yet generally the world, as a settled thing, is pleased to grace it with a particular esteem, clothing therewith wisdom, virtue, and conscience. Foolish and sordid guise!” In his masterful essays, Michel de Montaigne eschews the typical distancing required of the authorial voice in order to investigate public matters through a personal lens. As the subject of his own musings, he provides both a stirring self-portrait and an invaluable new voice that will resonate throughout Western literature. Unlike the Enlightenment thinkers who would follow in his footsteps, Montaigne is skeptical of the possibility of human certainty and takes an ethical stand against the European colonial project in the Americas and elsewhere. At times serious, at others tongue-in-cheek, his wide-ranging topics include conscience, politics, sorrow, solitude, fear, friendship, war, and poetry. The Essays of Michel de Montaigne were written at a crossroads in human history—between Renaissance and Enlightenment, Catholicism and Protestantism, Montaigne argues that to look outward requires we first look within, and that the quest for happiness requires us to accept what we cannot know. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Essays of Michel de Montaigne is a classic of French philosophy reimagined for modern readers.

The author, a poet, recounts her difficult childhood growing up in a Texas oil town.