Crispin Books: 18 books

Good fantasy literature is far more than a bunch of elves, dwarves, or other imaginary creatures running around fighting dragons, ogres, or orcs and having adventures. The Purpose of Fantasy looks at some of the core spiritual values of a dozen beloved fantasy books. With an introduction about fantasy...

“I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.” – Flannery O’Connor. Beginning writers often wonder what it takes to get published. The second edition of this practical book looks at what really makes fiction work: good storytelling! Oddly, storytelling...

“This essential guidebook gives writers the edge they need in today’s highly competitive market. If you’re serious about getting published, this is a must-read!” – Jeff Herman, author of Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents “Do read this book, which...

Death Books a Return is a mystery novel featuring Juanita Wills, intrepid (aka nosy) public librarian in the small town of Wyndham, Oklahoma. While researching local history, Juanita comes across the 1959 unsolved murder of a black teenager. But no one wants to dig up the past of buried secrets...

Cook the Books is a mystery novel featuring Juanita Wills, intrepid (aka nosy) public librarian in the small town of Wyndham, Oklahoma. The story takes Juanita into the world of adult literacy instruction, as she strives to prove the innocence of her student, Tracy Marie Riek, who is suspected of...

Mari's Hope delivers the dramatic conclusion to the middle-grade trilogy begun with Odin's Promise, awarded the 2014 Midwest Book Award for Children's Fiction, and Bjorn's Gift (released in 2016).  In Mari's Hope, set in a small village in occupied western Norway in the final years...

“An enchanting book full of forgotten history, the tension of friendship, a brave girl, and deeply overflowing with the love of wild nature.” – Polly Carlson-Voiles, author of Summer of the Wolves PHOEBE’S HERON, the story of 12-year-old Phoebe Greer, is set in Colorado in 1900. Her...

Rookie P.I. Sidra Smart thinks she knows where she’s headed. But when Sid’s second case requires that she clear the name of a dead man, she finds herself confounded by clues that lead no-where. She will have to face a baffling series of crimes, a burned-out office, the disappearance...

Winner of 2014 Midwest Book Award for Children's Fiction, Odin's Promise is a middle-grade historical novel, a story of the first year of German occupation of Norway as seen through the eyes of a young girl. Eleven-year-old Mari grew up tucked under the wings of her parents, grandma, and older...

Bjorn's Gift is a sequel to Odin's Promise, winner of the 2014 Midwest Book Award for Children's Fiction. Set in Norway during World War II, Bjorn's Gift continues the exciting adventures of Mari, the young Norwegian girl who faces growing hardships and dangers in her small village in a western fjord....

Bookmarked for Murder features Juanita Wills, intrepid (aka nosy) public librarian in the small town of Wyndham, Oklahoma. In this first book in the Scrappy Librarian series, Juanita takes on a dangerous mix of murder, local militias, and deep-seated racism, as she tries to get to the bottom of a...

Ever since Loreen Niewenhuis hiked the perimeter of Lake Michigan in 2009 (and wrote her popular 2011 book, A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach), people have asked about her favorite stretches of the Lake Michigan lakeshore – especially options to hike that are a bit shorter than 1,000 miles long! Now,...

Sidra Smart, fifty years old, is not your ordinary P.I. A recently divorced preacher’s wife, Sid knows next to nothing about running the private-detective business she’s inherited from her brother. But her first client bursts in with vague flashbacks of a grisly thirty-year-old murder. In...

Sidra Smart's search for an elusive pirate schooner stirs up a bayou bonanza of treasure hunters, smugglers, and the spirits of the infamous Jean Lafitte and his pirate queen, Mary Anne Radcliff. New P.I. Sid Smart, ex-preacher's wife, is back for another puzzling case, as she tackles the strange...