Mimi Thebo, The Corner Booth Chronicles

In Eudora, Kansas local author Margaret Lupin's newest novel The Vortex is published. The townsfolk are stunned with the storyline as everyone tries to figure out whom Margaret was referring to. As "over the hedge" gossip widens, relationships explode. Engaged couple, Janey Lane and Mark Ramirez, end their engagement due to his apparent romancing. Kylie Requena. The parents of three rambunctious boys, pregnant Pattie and Phil Walker are struggling with their marriage that seems on the brink of imploding. Meanwhile the town as a whole struggles with recently arisen racism thought dead by most residents and the new sexual preference prejudices. Finally, like many small communities Eudora feels the impact of the long running Iraq and Afghanistan Wars with families coping poorly with multiple deployments and deaths. None of that touches on a strange new cash crop growing on one farm.

Mindful of the Georgia cozy Mossy Creek saga and Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove Washington State series, THE CORNER BOOTH CHRONICLES is a fine Jayhawker farming community cozy. Using vignettes, Mimi Thebo introduces readers to the troubled players of Eudora who struggle with everyday living in a world changing all the time that they each fears is leaving them behind.

Harriet Klausner