Imagine raising six spirited kids on a grass farm—today. Newspaper columnist Dorcas Smucker and her brood live out their days in full view in this collection of musings—picking blueberries while watching for bears, hoping for angels while driving off the freeway, moving into the “thousand-story house,” and enduring lectures from teenage children about the virtue of respect. Three books in one, this collection includes Smucker’s Ordinary Days: Family Life in a Farmhouse, Upstairs the Peasants are Revolting: More Family Life in a Farmhouse, and Downstairs the Queen Is Knitting. Often slightly off-stride and with disarming humility, Dorcas finds endless materials for stories and life lessons in everyday happenings. As she says, “I, like my mother, feed my children mashed potatoes and stories. I repeat the ones I heard from Mom and turn our family escapades into tales to be repeated while washing dishes or snapping buckets of green beans on the front porch. A story is much more than just a story, of course. It is entertainment, identity, interpretation, and lessons. This is who we are, this is why we do what we do, this is important, that is not, and don’t ever whack your brother’s finger with a hatchet like your dad did to Uncle Philip.” This delightful trilogy includes some of Smucker’s best writing. She covers topics and dilemmas everyone can relate to while also inviting readers to explore her Mennonite family’s more personal experiences. Her voice is humorous, encouraging, and at times, doubting, but she never takes herself too seriously. As you read, her stories will entertain you and ultimately soothe your soul.

New Moon: A Coming-of-Age Tale traces the author's path through grade school at P. S. 6, "group" in Central Park, high school at Horace Mann, and college at Amherst, while recalling Freudian psychoanalysis, Grossinger's Hotel in the Catskills, Color War at Camp Chipinaw, '50s rock 'n' roll, teen romance, the mysterious world of tarot cards, discovery of Carl Jung, and spiritual and political initiation. This is not the paperback of the 1996 hardcover but its metamorphosis and realization.

Have you ever desired to escape and live simply? Have you ever fantasized about moving to a small town? Having spent half of my forty-three year career as a high school principal and volunteer pastor in small towns and counties with less than five thousand people, I learned that bliss was superficial. No matter how positive, people resisted change, especially with a newcomer serving as the agent of change. Kinfolk mattered more than issues. To survive, newcomers walked a fine line and had to learn who controlled and who was related to whom. Relationships mattered more than issues. Good versus evil became obvious. In Freedom's Tree, Rock Creek Valley resembled Canaanite cities with heavily fortified bulwarks. Interstate highway construction had decimated the economy and school reorganization altered valley culture. Perceived as invaders, newcomers arrived in Rock Creek at God's direction, while a murderer escaped detection and residents presumed another's guilt.

More than a year after Cannon Whyte fell from the cathedral gallery, unease still casts a shadow over peaceful living in the Close. In a separate incident, head verger Appledown is being persecuted, before being found dead. Inspector Hazlerigg is called in. Investigations suggest someone connected to the cathedral is responsible.

The author takes the reader through a theoretical world where as the times change, the cyclical events remain the same. The people of Folium are besieged by a curse from which they must be rescued before it is too late. Throughout the years, several attempts are made to free them with each generation, but are met with opposition. It is now up to decedents of the lost tribes to free them before Folium’s final harvest. Explore this world through the eyes of Folium, the proverbial wondering bee who climbs out from her hive, circles around and then declares there is no God. Trapped by the wrinkles of times, the truth remains hidden to her until she decides to become free. It is now up to two young men, Raymond and Dan to show her the way to freedom.