Kirjahaku

A Civil War odyssey in the tradition of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and Robert Olmstead's Coal Black Horse, Mosher's latest, about a Vermont teenager's harrowing journey south to find his missing-in-action brother, is old-fashioned in the best sense of the word....The story of Morgan's rite-of-passage through an American arcadia despoiled by war and slavery is an engrossing tale with mass appeal. -Publisher's Weekly Morgan Kinneson is both hunter and hunted. The sharp-shooting 17-year-old from Kingdom County, Vermont, is determined to track down his brother Pilgrim, a doctor who has gone missing from the Union Army. But first Morgan must elude a group of murderous escaped convicts in pursuit of a mysterious stone that has fallen into his possession. It's 1864, and the country is in the grip of the bloodiest war in American history. Meanwhile, the Kinneson family has been quietly conducting passengers on the Underground Railroad from Vermont to the Canadian border. One snowy afternoon Morgan leaves an elderly fugitive named Jesse Moses in a mountainside cabin for a few hours so that he can track a moose to feed his family. In his absence, Jesse is murdered, and thus begins Morgan's unforgettable trek south through an apocalyptic landscape of war and mayhem. Along the way, Morgan encounters a fantastical array of characters, including a weeping elephant, a pacifist gunsmith, a woman who lives in a tree, a blind cobbler, and a beautiful and intriguing slave girl named Slidell who is the key to unlocking the mystery of the secret stone. At the same time, he wrestles with the choices that will ultimately define him - how to reconcile the laws of nature with religious faith, how to temper justice with mercy. Magical and wonderfully strange, Walking to Gatlinburg is both a thriller of the highest order and a heartbreaking odyssey into the heart of American darkness.

A writer journeys coast to coast along the Canadian-American border, sharing his impressions of the people who live there

Set in northern Vermont in 1930, On Kingdom Mountain is the story of Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson. She is a renowned local bookwoman, eccentric bird carver, and the last remaining resident of a wild mountain on the U.S.-Canadian border, now threatened by a proposed new highway. Miss Jane encounters a mysterious stunt pilot and weathermaker when his biplane crashes on a nearby frozen lake. He brings with him a riddle containing clues to the whereabouts of stolen Civil War gold that may have been hidden on Miss Jane's property. As she and the footloose aviator search for the treasure, Miss Jane is confronted by the most important decisions of her life. Featuring daring action scenes and outrageous comedy, along with a passionate, surprising love affair, On Kingdom Mountain is traditional storytelling at its best, rooted in Howard Mosher's own family history and in a way of life on the brink of extinction.

"The rugged and mysterious mountains of Kingdom County are the setting for Howard Frank Mosher's new autobiographical novel, The Fall of the Year. This novel celebrates the fiercely independent people of Kingdom County, including such memorable new characters as Foster Boy Dufresne, the local bottle picker and metaphysical savant; the incomparably strange clairvoyant and matchmaker, Louvia the Fortuneteller; Dr. Sam E. Rong, a wayfaring Chinese herbalist and connoisseur of human nature; the itinerant vaudevillian mind reader, Mr. Moriarity Mentality, who uses his unusual powers to teach the town fathers a lesson they will never forget; and the daredevil tomboy, Molly Murphy, who risks her life twice in a single day to fulfill her dream of running away with the Last Railway Extravaganza and Greatest Little Show on Earth. At the heart of The Fall of the Year are Kingdom County's baseball-playing, trout-fishing "unorthodox priest," Father George Lecoeur, his adopted son and protege, Frank Bennett, and two interlocking love stories unlike any others in contemporary fiction.

The Wall Street Journal called Howard Frank Mosher "a writer of power and originality"; the Boston Herald called his writings "lovingly forged, understated, and laden with images that surprise and haunt." In Northern Borders, the author of A Stranger in the Kingdom and Where the Rivers Flow North returns with a novel full of the warmth, wisdom, and wry humor that have won him a devoted following among readers, writers, and critics alike. In the summer of 1948, six-year-old Austen Kittredge is sent by his widowed father to spend the summer with his grandparents on their farm in Lost Nation Hollow, near Vermont's Canadian border, with the hope that he will remain and attend school there. Northern Borders is the story of life in Lost Nation over the next twelve years. The past and present lives of the Kittredge family, their friends, and their neighbors unfurl like an heirloom quilt: county fairs, game hunting, dam building, one-room schools, family secrets, family conflicts, family tragedies, and family reunions. At the center of the story are Austen's grandparents, whose stalwart pride, fierce Puritan diligence, and sheer cussedness (their marriage is known as the Forty Years' War) embody the spirit of the Lost Nation community. In Northern Borders, Howard Frank Mosher has given us a masterfully crafted story that finds grace, humor, and love in the quiet beauty and sometimes awesome harshness of rural life itself.

Howard Frank Mosher introduces Private True Teague Kinneson, who sets out with his nephew, Ticonderoga, on an epic race to reach the Pacific before Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Along the way True and Ti encounter Daniel Boone and his six-foot-two spinster daughter, Flame Danielle; fight and trick a renegade army out to stop Lewis's expedition; invent baseball with the Nez Perce; hold a high-stakes rodeo with Sacagawea's Shoshone relatives; and outwit True's lifelong adversary, the Gentleman from Vermont, a.k.a. the devil himself.

In "one of the funniest and most heartfelt baseball stories in recent memory" (Publishers Weekly), Howard Frank Mosher returns to Kingdom Common, Vermont, to spin a touching coming-of-age tale in an America that has almost disappeared. From this remote village, noted for its fervent devotion to the Red Sox, comes Ethan "E.A." Allen, a young man with a chance to change baseball history. Homeschooled, fatherless, and living on the wrong side of the tracks, E.A. is haunted by a dark mystery in his family's past until a drifter named Teddy arrives in his life, determined to teach E.A. everything he knows about baseball. Filled with an engaging array of rambunctious, memorable characters and brimming with faith, Waiting for Teddy Williams is an irresistible read that reminds us that dreams--no matter how far-fetched--sometimes do come true.

Needing money to buy feed for his cows through the winter of 1932-33, Quebec Bill Bonhomme, last of his clan of hardy Vermonters, returns to whiskey smuggling and introduces his fourteen-year-old son to the traditional family trade. Reprint. (A new film, written & directed by Jay Craven, releasing Winter 2006, starring Kris Kirstofferson, Charlie McDermott, and others) (General Fiction)