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by Diane Duane

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In a new short novel by Diane Duane, three suburban Dublin teens are lured into mystery in the mists of Ireland...Uchenna O'Connor lives a life like that of any other Dublin schoolgirl... until the horses arrive.
The unexplained appearance of a little herd of "tinker ponies" that no one will claim causes no particular stir among adults in the purpose-built suburb of Adamstown... but there are others who notice. Uchenna starts feeling responsible for the ponies that have suddenly turned up on just the other side of the wall separating her suburban home from the fields around Adamstown.
Her growing concern for the hungry and seemingly abandoned horses leads Uchenna into hatching a benevolent plot to secretly take care of them, while she tries to discover who's brought them to her doorstep and why. But Uchenna little realizes the complications that will ensue when she draws two others into her plans: her best friend Emer -- an American transplant with a taste for rocking the boat -- and young Jimmy Garrity, a Traveler boy with a yen for higher math and a stubborn streak that drives him to try to beat the odds against his acceptance by "settled" people.
Together the three of them find themselves enmeshed in trouble in the neighborhood, at school, and even with the police, before the strange unseasonable autumn mist lifts enough for them to have a chance of discovering the truth behind the puzzle. But will the fragile new friendship that's growing in the mist survive the pressures and demands of the adults trying to pull them apart?...

For anyone who's ever picked an apple fresh from the tree or enjoyed a glass of cider, writer and orchardist Diane Flynt offers a new history of the apple and how it changed the South and the nation. Showing how southerners cultivated over 2,000 apple varieties from Virginia to Mississippi, Flynt shares surprising stories of a fruit that was central to the region for over 200 years. Colorful characters abound in this history, including aristocratic Belgian immigrants, South Carolina plantation owners, and multiple presidents, each group changing the course of southern orchards. She shows how southern apples, ranging from northern varieties that found fame on southern soil to hyper-local apples grown by a single family, have a history beyond the region, from Queen Victoria's court to the Oregon Trail. Flynt also tells us the darker side of the story, detailing how apples were entwined with slavery and the theft of Indigenous land. She relates the ways southerners lost their rich apple culture in less than the lifetime of a tree and offers a tentatively hopeful future.

Alongside unexpected apple history, Flynt traces the arc of her own journey as a pioneering farmer in the southern Appalachians who planted cider apples never grown in the region and founded the first modern cidery in the South. Flynt threads her own story with archival research and interviews with orchardists, farmers, cidermakers, and more. The result is not only the definitive story of apples in the South but also a new way to challenge our notions of history.