Left to right, back row: Andrea Mayfield, Valerie Mayfield, Chuck Meier, Ken McCaffrey, John Rodgers, Mary Petrich, Ruth Hale, Maureen Johnson, Veronica Schell, Barbara Crotts. Left to right - Front row Mary Ann Fear, Dreama Powell, Shirley Securro, Floriana Hall, Sparrow Kelley, Linda Grazulis POEMS OF BEAUTIFUL OHIO - Then and Now is a compilation of poetry by twenty members of THE POET'S NOOK. It was written to be a source of inspiration and information for people who live in Ohio, to attract people who are thinking of moving to Ohio, and to encourage visitors to Ohio. Ohio is a state of great beauty and one of the safest states to live in the United States. Ohio is one of only several states which can boast of the four seasons....

Newly updated look at Ohio , past and present with photos, maps and graphs.

“Extraordinary...beautifully precise...[an] earnestly ambitious debut.” —The New York Times Book Review “A wild, angry, and devastating masterpiece of a book.” —NPR “[A] descendent of the Dickensian ‘social novel’ by way of Jonathan Franzen: epic fiction that lays bare contemporary culture clashes, showing us who we are and how we got here.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “A book that has stayed with me ever since I put it down.” —Seth Meyers, host of Late Night with Seth Meyers One sweltering night in 2013, four former high school classmates converge on their hometown in northeastern Ohio. There’s Bill Ashcraft, a passionate, drug-abusing young activist whose flailing ambitions have taken him from Cambodia to Zuccotti Park to post-BP New Orleans, and now back home with a mysterious package strapped to the undercarriage of his truck; Stacey Moore, a doctoral candidate reluctantly confronting her family and the mother of her best friend and first love, whose disappearance spurs the mystery at the heart of the novel; Dan Eaton, a shy veteran of three tours in Iraq, home for a dinner date with the high school sweetheart he’s tried desperately to forget; and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose rendezvous with the washed-up captain of the football team triggers the novel’s shocking climax. Set over the course of a single evening, Ohio toggles between the perspectives of these unforgettable characters as they unearth dark secrets, revisit old regrets and uncover—and compound—bitter betrayals. Before the evening is through, these narratives converge masterfully to reveal a mystery so dark and shocking it will take your breath away.