Finest heroic poem in Old English celebrates the exploits of Beowulf, a young nobleman of southern Sweden. Combines myth, Christian and pagan elements, and history into a powerful narrative. Genealogies.
By day, a drab pole barn used as general store, post office and meeting place all-in-one by the people of Runde, Minnesota, a fishing village on the North Shore of Lake Superior. By night, a Viking-style long house filled with tales and singing, roasting meat and flowing beer, and of course mead. Ingrid Torfa can imagine no better place for a much-needed night of R&R. The mead hall run by her grandmother lies where modern small town life brushes up against the old world lifestyle of the people of Villmark, proud descendants of a lost tribe of Northmen. All of her friends mingle there from the server who works in the restaurant on the side of the highway to the guardians charged with protecting the sacred flame of their ancestors. The spells that her grandmother casts over her mead hall nightly keep everyone within safe and harmonious. Or so everyone always believed. But when a murder interrupts Ingrid's night off, she finds herself questioning everything. Because her chief suspect is her own grandmother. Corpse in the Mead Hall, Book 6 in the Viking Witch Mystery Series!
Ingrid Torfudottir lives in two worlds at once. The first, Runde, lies on the banks of Lake Superior, a town of northern Minnesotans who descend from Scandinavian immigrants, fishermen and farmers both. In that world she barely exists, just an unknown aspiring book illustrator who occasionally sells a little art at the local café.The other, Villmark, lies hidden from the rest of the world by ancient, strong magic. The people of the village descend from colonists who fled their homeland in Norway centuries before. In that world she bears great responsibilities. As a volva, a Viking witch, the protection of her people always comes first in her life.These two worlds overlap in just one place: her grandmother's mead hall. After sitting abandoned for months, Ingrid and her grandmother open it again to much celebration in both communities.But then everything goes wrong. The illusions and protections remain despite their efforts at the end of the night. And Ingrid can't get back to Villmark.Then someone dies, a murder. As if Ingrid didn't have enough on her plate.
Winter has come to the lost Norse village of Villmark, the wind and snow separating cozy house from cozy house like a knife breaks apart shortbread.And for the first time in her life, Ingrid Torfa lives alone. No mother, no grandmother, no roommate. Just a big, empty house and a cat who loves to disappear. Magical studies fill her every waking hour, and yet those hours stretch out in unbroken silence.Until a scream rents the night, drawing every neighbor out into the cold streets. A woman lies dead at the bottom of the well. It looks like an accident to the villagers, but to Ingrid it feels like a murder.Luckily, Ingrid knows just the friends to help her solve the mystery. Not even the bite of winter can stop them from uncovering the truth.
With Prohibition finally over, Anna Bergstrom finds herself in charge of the most precious element of her family’s Christmas: the Kentucky bourbon from her late grandmother’s home town. Without it, she and her cousins will never succeed at recreating her recipe before the details never written down are lost for good. But when the challenge of driving home on icy roads becomes a rescue of a stranded fellow motorist, Anna gets far more than she bargained for. The motorist in question may just be the handsomest man she’s ever set eyes on. But the trouble he brings with him threatens to overwhelm her. Luckily, she always has family to call on. “First the Fruitcake,” an historical, romantic story of kidnaping gone wrong and fruitcake made right.
Tabitha Greene grew up all alone, shuttled from magical academy to magical academy with no rhyme or reason. She never stayed in the same place for more than a matter of weeks. Ever. That all changed when she moved in with her uncles to help them run the Weal & Woe Bookshop in the Square, a hidden magical neighborhood in Minneapolis. Now her uncles make her breakfast to start every day, her neighbors greet her whenever she passes them, and she has friends who mean the world to her, and she to them. She even found a brother she never knew she had. All that, and a little dog too. What’s not to love about that life? But all of that is threatened when the father she’s never met moves into the Square and opens a business of his own. The Shop of Wonders, where the proprietor knows just what item every customer never knew they always needed. People flock to shop in his store. But when one customer turns up dead after leaving the store, Tabitha can’t help suspecting the last man to see her alive. Even if implicates her father. No, scratch that. Especially if it implicates her father.
Spring, the season of renewal, finally arrives on the North Shore of Lake Superior, and Ingrid Torfa finds herself in a strange new situation. On vacation. She and her grandmother spend their days resting and recuperating in an old cabin overlooking the shores of Lake Superior. She can see modern ships pass by along the shipping lanes on the horizon. But everything around her? Strictly from the Viking Age. Not even the lost Norse village of Villmark lies so far in the past as this lonely cabin. But her restful vacation comes to a sudden end when a stranger knocks on their door. His presence disrupts their quiet lakeside lives even before he turns up dead. Now Ingrid must figure out who wanted the strange old man dead. Because the next target just might be her.
Amanda Clarke knows she's a witch. She unleashed unstoppable magic to save her friends and catch a murderer. But she only did it the one time. And now? Back to powerlessness.Her friends insist that all she needs is proper training. Sophie wakes her before dawn for meditation and workouts designed to channel magic. Brianna buries her under books, so many books.Amanda longs for a distraction. But when the woman who lives next door to Miss Zenobia Weekes' Charm School for Exceptional Young Ladies turns up dead, and the murder weapon dates back to Prohibition, she gets more of a distraction than she bargained for.But who in 1927 would want her neighbor dead in 2018?
Every new year carries with it the tantalizing promise of better times to come. It brings the possibility of prosperity that the old year never delivered. It arrives with hope, if only for a moment. Dorothy Lundegaard hopes that 1938 will mean more success for her and her brother and their struggling Lundegaard Investigations. At least enough success to make her a full-fledged partner in the business. But their first job in the new year presents quite a conundrum. A case of theft that the police deem not a crime. An expensive new car, a Cadillac series 65 convertible, mysteriously vanishes, then reappears just where it belonged. Clean, full of gas, but with extra miles on the odometer. But who would steal such a valuable car then return it two days later? For that matter, who would choose the coldest January night with temperatures well below zero to steal a convertible? And what if the police are only half right? It might not be theft, but there just might have been a crime. One that only the Lundegaards working together can uncover. "The Vanishing Convertible," a short story in the continuing Dorothy Lundegaard Mysteries.