Goldy Bear, recently divorced, has made a home for herself and her young son in scenic Aspen Valley, Colorado. There, calls for Goldilock's Catering have been steady enough to pay the bills. But when a mourner is felled by rat poison during a funeral buffet Goldy is serving, the police quickly close her business. Now it's up to Goldy to find the rat who has tainted her food and her reputation.

The protagonist, Mary Emma Moody, widowed mother of six, has taken her family east in 1912 to begin a new life. Her son, Ralph, then thirteen, recalls how the Moodys survive that first bleak winter in a Massachusetts town. Money and prospects are lacking, but not so faith and resourcefulness. "Mother" in Little Britches and Man of the Family, Mary Emma emerges fully as a character in this book, and Ralph, no longer called "Little Britches," comes...

The lush banks of Beaver Creek, in Eastern Fremont County, were a welcome sight to twenty-two pioneer families from Appanoose County, Iowa. They settled there in the early 1860s, where they farmed, ranched, and raised their families. Other families also put down roots and small settlements grew up and down the sparkling creek. At the turn of the century, Spencer Penrose, businessman and investor from Colorado Springs, bought water rights on the creek....