Tinker
Pittsburgh, 1794. The people of western Pennsylvania suffer under a hefty tax on whiskey. When the local militia takes up arms against the hated tax collector, his estranged daughter finds herself caught in the crossfire.
Her safety threatened and her name in tatters, Caroline Neville begs her father to present the farmers’ case to the President and ask for relief. When he refuses, Caroline adopts a nom de guerre, submitting articles to the Gazette under the pseudonym “Tom the Tinker.” She calls for a peaceful gathering to coordinate a plea for the tax’s repeal, hoping to turn the tide before her family’s lives are lost.
Then she meets Tench, the reporter who prints her demands. He’s part of the militia opposing the tax, and he has no idea she’s Tom the Tinker or a Neville. The deeper they fall in love, the harder it is to tell him the truth. Meanwhile, Caroline’s efforts for peace take a turn toward rebellion. As she faces losing her family, her home, and Tench, she must race to put it all right before she’s charged with treason.
TINKER is alternate historical fiction with a little romance, set during the Whiskey Rebellion.
Downriver
A sulfur sky poisoned her family and her heart. Now revenge tastes sweeter than justice.
It’s 1900. In a Pennsylvania coal town tainted by corruption and pollution, Charlotte’s world collapses when her parents meet a tragic end. Sent to a foster family in a Maryland fishing village, she’s fueled by grief and embarks on a relentless quest for justice against the ruthless coal boss, Nels Pritchard.
But Charlotte is no ordinary girl. She shares the fiery spirit of her father, whose powerful speeches inspired worker riots. With a burning desire for vengeance, she sets out to uncover the truth behind Pritchard’s crimes, unearthing a shocking connection between the town’s toxic air and the lifeless fish washing up on the shore of her Chesapeake Bay foster town.
To expose the truth, Charlotte builds a network of unexpected allies. There are gutsy suffragists, a literary society of teenage girls willing to print the truth… and Weylan. The captivating young man lost his own family to Pritchard’s poison. He offers support, but Charlotte questions his true motives when he lures her to break the law. Could she be falling into a dangerous trap, leading her to a fate worse than poison?
With her unwavering spirit and determination, Charlotte must forge alliances and navigate a web of treachery before Pritchard seeks his own ruthless revenge.
The newest book by award-winning author Jennifer M. Lane is perfect for fans of Jeannette Walls’ Hang the Moon and the fiery protagonist in The Hunger Games. Join Charlotte in this small town, coming-of-age dystopian historical saga as she finds resilience, courage, and triumph in her search for identity, independence, and her true home.
Upstream
The closer Charlotte gets to the killer and the cure, the more she forgets to live.
It’s 1901. It’s been a year since Charlotte arrived on the Chesapeake Bay and discovered the poison that killed her parents was in the water… and killing people downriver.
Together, Charlotte and Weylan use the power of his newspaper to launch an assault against Nels Pritchard and the coal town responsible, printing the truth behind the lies.
But they haven’t launched their relationship. When he asked her to marry him, she said “Yes, but not yet.” Her heart can’t settle until justice is won. And though poisoning the water isn’t illegal (yet), a lawyer is willing to help them, if they find proof of their claims.
Then they’re presented with an offer they can’t refuse: an attractive proposal to work undercover in Pritchard’s inner sanctum. There, they’ll have access to all the proof they can carry. But as they close in on evidence of Prichard’s schemes, an ally goes rogue and embroils Weylan in his plot.
Before the ash settles on his fiery plans, innocent people lose their lives, Charlotte loses the evidence she needs, and Weylan could lose himself. Picking up the pieces means choosing between the past she can’t leave behind and the future she may never grasp.
The newest book by award-winning author Jennifer M. Lane is perfect for fans of Jeannette Walls’ Hang the Moon and the fiery protagonist in The Hunger Games.
Of Metal and Earth
An Amazon Best Seller. Finalist in the 2018 IAN Book of the Year awards in the category of Literary / General fiction. Winner of the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the category of First Novel.
Of Metal and Earth follows seven owners of a little green Jeep as their lives entwine, connected by their failures, neglect, and restorations. Through their eyes, forty years of car ownership results in reconciliation through a story that’s easy to fall into and hard to let go of.
The book begins in 1964, when James survives the Vietnam War by hiding beneath a little green Jeep, watching his friends die on the battlefield. He returns home emotionally paralyzed with nothing to fight for and turns to the only salvation he knows, buying a little green Jeep of his own. When he gets a flat tire on the road out of town, he is forced to ask the elderly owner of a farm for help. There, he finds more than just the tools to fix his car. He finds a job and, among the rolling hills, he finds comforting isolation, contentment, and Claire. Getting to know her jeopardizes the seclusion he relies on, a risk that pays off when they start a family and James finds a part of himself that he thought he’d lost forever.
But soon, the life they built is threatened. James could lose Claire and everything he loves forever. He must seek salvation once more – in the form of his little green Jeep.
Over the next thirty years, the Jeep changes hands, passing between friends, family, strangers, and lovers. A single mother buys a car for her reckless son and destroys a friendship with a man who silently loved her for two decades. An insecure youth at the start of his career learns that the most important lessons are the ones you never set out to learn. A family torn apart by their differences finds that love can be the hardest road to take. And a city architect who must choose between the easy way out, abandoning his grandfather’s dying wish to save the car, or a difficult path to restoration that could save more than just a little green Jeep.
Stick Figures from Rockport
Tamsin Eliot isn’t half the painter her father was. She didn’t inherit his talent or his sense of adventure, preferring to stay close to home. But after the death of her mother, she does inherit his coat. And in its pocket, she finds a riddle – a crayon drawing of a lone stick figure, signed by a child named Ida and tucked in an envelope from Rockport.
In search of Ida she packs her bags and takes a reluctant trip to Rockport, the source of her happiest childhood memories and inspiration for her father’s most cherished art. But for all her doubts about straying far from home and finding Ida, she hasn’t calculated the cost. Will chasing after family secrets destroy her relationship with her only sister? Will shining light on old truths cast shadows on memories of her beloved father and obscure her view of the past?
STICK FIGURES FROM ROCKPORT is a story of loss and recovery, an ode to the family you come from, the family you choose, and the landscapes that shape who we are. Lane reminds us that we are forever tied to the places we come from. You can always go home again, but you may be different for the journey.
Blood and Sand
When her father goes to prison for crimes against the country, Logan Cole loses everything: her family, her fortune, her future, and her home.
Under a barrage of vicious online threats, she heads for the Canadian border, stopping in the smallest cozy town she can find. It’s the perfect place to be anonymous, but it’s not the high society she once knew.
The only job she can find is at the local bar, and she’s never worked a day in her life.
Logan makes a name for herself as a hard worker. She masters the world of cocktails and brings the town to a new way of drinking. When a tragic accident threatens the bar, Logan has to choose between revealing her true identity to save it or saying goodbye to the only thing she’s ever built on her own in order to save herself.
Penny’s Loft
Penny’s entire life has been a straight path to her one ambition of becoming a surgeon. Overwhelming and stressful, her residency is a rutted road of red tape and bureaucracy, but soon she’ll get to the rewarding part of healing the sick and injured. The last thing she needs is to lose focus, but her path comes to an abrupt halt when the grandmother she never knew dies and leaves her an antique store and a cat named Jake.
Eager to put the obstacle behind her, she rushes to the tiny town of Ramsbolt, Maine only to find she’s inherited more than tables and chairs and a cat. There’s a mountain of debt and a shop so full she can barely walk.
Penny has five days to sell everything, clear her grandmother’s debt, and find a home for Jake before it all crashes down around her. If she fails, she’ll miss a major deadline, her future will be put on hold, and her student loans will enter repayment, all before she finishes her education and starts her career. But Ramsbolt has no need for old furniture, and it has no need for outsiders. Especially the kind who don’t want to be there.
As she sifts through the contents of the antique store—through the mixed-up jumble of her family’s past and Ramsbolt’s—she must face old truths: There’s no such thing as a straight path, the road is paved with choices, and your destination isn’t one of them.
Hope for Us Yet
In the small town of Ramsbolt, Adelle is fighting a crumbling economy to live a quiet, drama-free life dedicated to her flower shop. But the town is decaying, stores sit empty, and there isn’t enough money to solve the town’s problems. If something isn’t done, Adelle will lose her home, her shop, and the quiet life she loves.
Conditions worsen when the town manager quits, and Ramsbolt is left without leadership. As rumors spread that the town could be sold, merged with another, and charged a high tax no one can afford, all eyes turn to Adelle. After all, her father ran the town for decades. But he suffered for the cause. He wanted to make the town the best it could be and please everyone, but residents wanted someone to solve their petty squabbles rather than address their real problems. Adelle has no interest in living in the public eye.
Then suddenly, the forces that drove her father to his lowest point rise up again. While she resists running for office, her father’s old political opponent starts a ruthless smear campaign against her, urging town residents to support annexation and sell Ramsbolt to another town.
Running for office would mean facing old grudges and confronting the man who slandered her father. But if she doesn’t stand up to him, if she doesn’t stand up for Ramsbolt, no one else will. And she could lose the only home she’s ever known.
A Good Day for Pie
Having grown up poor and hungry on the outskirts of town, Kyle swore he’d never move back to Ramsbolt, Maine. He turned his job as a chef into a business degree, then into a career in finance, and he never needed to look back. But when his father falls ill, Kyle heads home, swearing it won’t be forever.
As he cares for his aging father, his savings account drains. Time creeps on, and his part-time job at a local farm becomes permanent, where his dream of teaching cooking classes in his own chain of kitchenware stores fades into cornfields and dusty barns. He’s abandoned his dream, deserted his career, and doesn’t fit in his own hometown.
When Ramsbolt’s new town manager devises a plan to breathe life into empty storefronts, Kyle sees a chance to chase his dream. But pursuing happiness will take every penny he has, and Kyle has no safety net. Plus, Ramsbolt isn’t wild about outsiders and without the support of the town, he’ll sink.
He’s willing to risk it all to open the store he always dreamed of, but will his trendy shop be welcome in a town set in its ways, or will a crumbling building and financial setbacks force him to fail? Unless he can prove that he really belongs and the store takes off, he’ll be more than bankrupt. He’ll be right back where he started – poor and hungry on the outskirts of town.
The Worsted House
Logan Cole is restless. Yes, she loves her friends, her husband Grey, and the life she’s made for herself in the tiny, cozy town of Ramsbolt, Maine. She’s comfortable in a house he thinks is too small. And she enjoys her bartending job, though it barely pays her bills. But something’s missing.
She needs a hobby, a passion all her own, and when a chance comes along to open a store in a new flea market on the edge of town, all the pieces seem to fall into place.
But the sketchy lease and its landlord make her nervous. And when Grey goes behind her back to buy a gorgeous, old house they can’t afford, her trust is broken. The property comes with an angry neighbor intent on making their lives impossible. And he’ll go to any lengths to see them lose their home, including reporting them for mortgage fraud.
Logan’s sense of security in the town she loves is shattered.
The more questions she asks, the more connections she uncovers—and the angrier Grey gets. She promises to stop her paranoid investigation, but with their home on the line, risking her marriage may be the only way to save it.
The Warmth of Fires
The son of a famous author, Stuart is a creative writing teacher and an expert in lifelong writer’s block. While trying to write a book that could save his career and finally earn his father’s respect, he finds himself seeking a breakthrough in a cottage nestled in a Maine graveyard. The village is great for inspiration, but the more he writes about zombies in the tavern basement and serial killers who make cinnamon buns, the further he gets from his truth.
His heart isn’t in those stories. And the thing that keeps him from getting it right is the same reason his relationships are failing, he can’t connect with his father, and doesn’t feel at home in his own city. While trying to craft a life that will please everyone else, he’s put himself last.
Just when he’s at the brink, his mother exposes a family secret that changes his definition of family and forces him to ask if he really wants the approval he’s been seeking all along.
With the clock ticking on his sabbatical, he discovers that family isn’t always what it seems, the pressures we create for ourselves can be our own undoing, and home is often where we least expect to find it.
The Warmth of Fires is the sixth book in The Collected Stories of Ramsbolt.