Books
experience Ellen’s world of color and storytelling
Mud Season
“This is a tale to which all the cliché words absolutely apply: hilarious, heartwarming, rollicking, and, most of all, rich in the real stuff of life.”
Julia Reed, author of But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!
In self-deprecating and hilarious fashion, Mud Season chronicles Stimson’s transition from city life to rickety Vermont farmhouse. When she decides she wants to own and operate the old-fashioned village store in idyllic Dorset, pop. 2,036, one of the oldest continually operating country stores in the country, she learns the hard way that “improvements” are not always welcomed warmly by folks who like things just fine the way they’d always been. She dreams of patrons streaming in for fresh-made sandwiches and an old-timey candy counter, but she learns they’re boycotting the store. Why? “The bread,” they tell her, “ you moved the bread from where it used to be.” Can the citified newcomer turn the tide of mistrust before she ruins the business altogether?
Good Grief!
One vacation changed everything… Now, having settled the family in Vermont’s rich muddy soil, they are faced with new challenges of raising kids in the paradise of this very small, very rural town. Good Grief tells the tales of the hopes and dreams of parents just trying to do their best—and not always succeeding. Good Grief is all about the inevitable moment right after somebody says, “What next?”
Ellen Stimson’s irrepressible optimism and good humor prevail as she, her two husbands, their three kids, and various much-loved pets face down real life, and even death and grieving, with good humor intact. This is life in a state where everyone knows everything, and everything is everybody’s else’s business
“Imagine Jerry Seinfeld and Annie Dillard on the dance floor, gliding gracefully from keenly observed humor to contemplative insight. As they glide by, you join them in a few pirouettes, and the challenges of your own life transform: you laugh at them; you understand them better. When the music ends, you feel grateful, lighter, and more compassionate. That dance is Ellen Stimson’s Good Grief—Good Grief taught me to laugh harder and love better—and to always, always choose compassion.”
BK Loren, author of Theft and Animal, Mineral, Radical
An Old Fashioned Christmas
With its trademark snow, piney forests, sleigh rides and woodsmoke curling out of village chimneys, New England was practically invented for the Christmas postcard. It’s got your Christmas goose and the maple syrup you are gonna use to glaze it. It is a whole bunch of the reason Ellen made Vermont her home. Here she shares recipes that have been in her family for generations, mixes up a cocktail or two, and invites readers to make their own traditions.
“I’ve been a little uneasy about Christmas for a long time and now I shall stop. ‘A festival of debauchery’. I like that idea. A big party. Cut out the stuff you don’t enjoy. And a whole raft of stimulating recipes and a good snowstorm.”
Garrison Keillor
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