The Teacake Gazette

Madame Sue Soderburg stopped, her face drawn, a cigarette burning in between her fingers despite the early hour. “They’re framing me for Roberta’s murder.”

On the mantle, a photograph in a tarnished frame showed a stern man, two children, and a woman with a hauntingly blank stare.

The little girl giggled and patted Needle’s trunk. “I think the tree heard me.”

Up and up and up the butterfly went, until it reached the very tippy tops of the trees.

The canyon stretched before them under a half-moon. Cattle shuffled along the dusty trail below. Someone was stealing her livestock again.

“I thought I belonged up here,” she whispered. “But now I see I belong in the in-between.

It is with reverence and a hush of winter stillness that I present to you this series of letters from Mrs. Marian Tate—a young widow dwelling alone in the Kansas Territory during that first long, uncertain season of 1855.

They welcomed me kindly—Mr. James Calloway with his firm handshake and steady eyes, and Miss Sarah Whitmore (soon to be Mrs. Calloway) with a smile warm enough to outshine the fading sun. We spoke in their modest sitting room where a kettle simmered and the shadows grew long across the floorboards.

A Field Note from Miss Sybil Whitlow, Spring 1858 Edition Dearest Friends— It is no small thing to begin again. And yet, here we...

Though you hold this missive (or perhaps scroll it) in modern hands, I invite you to imagine, if only for a moment, that you are seated beside a low fire in a dim drawing room. A pot of tea steams on the sideboard. The scent of pressed violets lingers on the air. Outside, the wind murmurs something forgotten.

Sagebrush Ridge Territory of Kansas September to April 1855   The wind whispered secrets through the tallgrass of the Kansas prairie,...

“You are a listener too, child. The tree chose you for that.”   Elspeth blinked. “Chose me?”   “You hear what others forget. You believe in what breathes beneath the bark and behind the veil.”

An audible gasp escaped several nearby matrons. Juliet accepted the bouquet with trembling hands, conscious of the sudden silence that fell around her. Yellow roses—the flower of betrayal and broken promises. To receive such a gift at a public gathering was tantamount to social ruin.

Lord Nigel Ashcombe, Duke of Wexley, and Miss Mary Smith shared with me the details of their upcoming nuptials...I offer their words below, as they shared them with me—modest, tender, and utterly sincere.

The moment her fingers met his, the rooftop fell away in a swirl of stars and wind. Her shawl fluttered like wings, and her skirts rippled,.

Her badge caught the sun just as a rider thundered down Main Street, raising a cloud of red clay behind him. Mercy recognized the horse before the man: the gray Appaloosa with a split ear. Wild Rye, Everett Tate's mare.

"Foxes don't talk," she said automatically,...The fox's whiskers twitched in what might have been amusement. "And humans don't lose their shadows—unless the fair folk steal them."

Margaret Abernathy found the journal six months after Robert died....Then a name appeared that she’d never heard before.

Charles was a master of his craft, known far and wide for his lush rose bushes and sprawling ivy. But there was one flower that had always eluded him—the delicate and elusive lady slipper orchid.

Millicent sighed. At sixty-two, she had weathered enough society storms to know that scandal was as inevitable in their circles as rain in an English spring. “And you’re certain it was him? The fog has been terribly thick these past evenings.”