Maple Grove Gazette - July 11, 2026

Maple Grove's Only Newspaper of Record—Vol. 1 No. 13—Edited by Mr. Ellison, Town Archivist & Historian

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

Last week this editor reported that the heat had driven Maple Grove indoors and expressed some doubt as to when the town might be let out again. The weather, as if stung by the coverage, resolved the matter Saturday afternoon with a thunderstorm that broke the heat, emptied the square, relocated a measurable percentage of the town's lawn furniture, and interrupted the nation's two hundred and fiftieth birthday at very nearly the exact moment Maple Grove had chosen to observe it.

The particulars require some background. Wendell Fitch of the Men's Club, who has delivered the Fourth of July reading from the courthouse steps since 1987, had let it be known that this year—the year being what it was—he intended to read the Declaration entire: every grievance against King George III, in their original number and full particulars. Readers who consulted last Saturday's Historical Note will understand that this had been attempted once before, in the summer of 1911, and how that ended. Whether Mr. Fitch consulted it, this editor cannot say. He began at two o'clock beneath a sky the color of dishwater, which those assembled—seated in the folding chairs the Men's Club had advised them to bring—elected to interpret optimistically.

The storm arrived somewhere in the middle grievances, with what witnesses describe as considerable editorial force. The crowd withdrew in good order into the businesses along the square—into Brewed Awakenings, where the crew reports pouring coffee at a pace not previously believed possible; into Ben Franklin's; and into Gordon's, where the fan display, having spent June selling out as a cooling device, spent Saturday afternoon employed as a drying one, and where Gordon observes it has now seen more activity in a single summer than any display in the store's history. The Tobias party-rental crew, citing lightning and the manufacturer's warranty, struck the microphone, the amplifiers, and both speakers in under four minutes—a teardown this editor is told may constitute a company record. Mr. Fitch, observing that the Continental Congress had not adjourned for weather, raised his voice and carried on.

What the town witnessed next, it witnessed in silence, the rain and wind having claimed every syllable. Through the streaming front windows of three establishments, Maple Grove watched Mr. Fitch prosecute the King of England in full oratorical gesture and total inaudibility—arm raised, finger leveled, document pinned to the lectern against the wind—for the better part of forty minutes, before a square containing, at its lowest attendance, no one. He finished the entire document, every grievance and the closing pledge of lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, and the debate at the Diner has continued all week over whether the man ought to have his head examined or his name on a plaque, with the largest faction holding out firmly for both. The sky, perhaps mindful of the pledge, cleared by eight o'clock, and the fireworks proceeded as promised—the Men's Club having already held that there is no temperature, and it now develops no weather, at which a town may be asked to give up its fireworks—before the largest crowd in recent memory, a good many of whom stopped at Mr. Fitch's lawn chair to shake his hand first. He accepted their congratulations graciously, and at a volume the entire square could appreciate, his voice being, by every account, the only part of him the storm never touched.

📜 POLICE BLOTTER

MAPLE GROVE POLICE DEPARTMENT—INCIDENT REPORT

Reporting Officer: Officer Markle Week of: July 4–10

Saturday, 2:47 p.m., Elm Street. Charlene reported her patio umbrella airborne, last observed clearing the Hendersons' hedge on a southeasterly heading. Two folding chairs were recovered Sunday from a maple on Orchard Lane; a third remains at large. Final Disposition: Wind, officially.

Saturday, 4:05 p.m., Birch Street. A children's wading pool was located three doors down from its residence of record, upright and fuller than when it left. Its plastic duck occupants were unharmed. Final Disposition: Returned. The ducks were not questioned.

Overnight Wednesday, County Road. Residents along the north stretch of County Road woke Thursday to find five mailboxes struck from their posts by what the responding officer describes as "a blunt object traveling at window height," which in this county has meant, since time immemorial, a baseball bat and somebody's father's sedan. Chief Carter attributes the damage to high schoolers, on the grounds that it is July, that school is out, and that the work shows "enthusiasm but no craft." Among the casualties was the mailbox at the McGregor farm. Mr. McGregor, a veteran, received the news with a stillness the responding officer found more concerning than shouting would have been, and is said to have taken measurements before the officer was out of the driveway. Final Disposition: Open. Chief Carter asks the parents of any young man who came home Wednesday night with a bat but no glove to draw their own conclusions, and to share them with the department.

📋 COMMUNITY NOTICES

Storm Lost & Found—Village Hall, weekdays 9–4. Recovered to date: four lawn chairs, one trampoline (partial), one wind sock (ironically), and a quantity of pool noodles nobody has claimed. Residents are asked to collect their property in an orderly fashion. The Men's Club, whose advisory concerning unattended chairs appeared in this space only last Saturday, declines to say it told the town so, and has asked the Gazette to say it for them.

From the Postmaster. Residents replacing mailboxes damaged in Saturday's storm, or by other means, are reminded that regulation height is forty-one to forty-five inches from the road surface, and that the box must be approachable by a carrier who does not leave the vehicle. The Postmaster notes that no federal regulation governs what a mailbox may be built of, a point one County Road resident has already asked him to confirm in writing.

Men's Club—Commendation pending. The Men's Club will honor Wendell Fitch at Thursday's meeting. Debate continues over the plaque's wording; "Perseverance Under Fire" leads narrowly over "Poor Judgment, Nobly Executed."

Village Council—With thanks. The Council thanks the fire department for standing by, the Tobias crew for a teardown described as "frankly athletic," and all residents who returned property to its correct yard, whether or not it was theirs to begin with.

🏛️ HISTORICAL NOTE

Readers will recall that these very pages, only last Saturday, preserved the account of the summer of 1911—the last occasion on which a citizen of Maple Grove undertook to read the Declaration of Independence entire, and the reason the town has read the abridged version since. The archive is now obliged to open a second file. The gentleman of 1911 finished his reading before an audience of one loyal dog and the widow Pruitt; Mr. Fitch finished his before no one at all, the dogs of Maple Grove having displayed, on Saturday, the good sense they are seldom given credit for. Whether last week's account reached Mr. Fitch as a caution or as a blueprint, this editor is not prepared to say. The record will note only that the full reading has now been completed twice in the town's history—once nearly defeated by heat, and once, after a fashion, victorious over water—and that both readers were heard, in the end, chiefly by the weather. This editor offers the historical record without further comment.

🔍 Fellow Sleuths Worth Following

Fellow sleuths, if you like your mysteries with a café at the center and a dog who's smarter than half the suspects—and I suspect you do—this week's pick is for you.

Murder at Lighthouse Point by Nora Brinkley. Lighthouse History Weekend is supposed to bring Greystone Harbor tourists and packed tables at the Blue Lantern Café. Instead, it brings a historian dead in the lantern room and a clue hiding in plain sight—one that only Bailey, café owner Sloane Harper's sharp-eyed labradoodle, bothers to notice. The deeper Sloane digs, the clearer it becomes that someone in the harbor is protecting a decades-old secret, and they'd like it to stay buried. Café owner, loyal dog, small town full of secrets—Sloane and Jenna would get along just fine, and I have questions about what Bailey and Biscuit would get up to. Grab it here →

Read the full Spotlight

FREE READS—JULY TITLES

Willow's July Free Books are live on the website—a fresh batch of free cozy mysteries, perfect for restocking the e-reader now that the fans at Gordon's are getting a rest..

Help yourself: Browse July's Free Books →‍ ‍

🍽️ THE MAIN COURSE

Yes, fellow sleuths, I pointed you at Harvest of Shadows and Dark Brews last week too. I'm doing it again, and here's my defense: last week it was the gardens. This week the first fields around Maple Grove are actually coming in—sweet corn at the farm stand, combines out before the calendar strictly allows—and Book 3 is the one that belongs to this exact stretch of summer, when everything is growing and some of it shouldn't be.

I still won't tell you what Lisa stumbles into, because watching it unspool is the entire pleasure. I'll only add this to last week's pitch: it's the book where the prettiest, most ordinary-looking things in town—a good harvest, a friendly face, a group of people who only want to help—are exactly the ones worth looking at twice, and where Joe remains unconvinced right up until the moment he very much isn't.

If Saturday's storm knocked your reading stack over, consider this your sign to restack it with Book 3 on top. It's in Kindle Unlimited →

New to Maple Grove? Start at the beginning—Book 1, Scones, Secrets & Sabotage, is free →

✍️ Behind the Scenes

The same storm that emptied Wendell's audience found us at a party—and a good one, the kind you get when your daughter and the son of your longtime friends announce they're getting married and both families need an excuse to feed each other. The food had just come off the grill and everyone had just settled in under the canopies when the sky quit pretending. What followed was the fastest coordinated effort I have ever witnessed from people holding their dinner on plates: a full rescue operation for the food, the canopies, and the cooks—in roughly that order of urgency, and the cooks have been informed of their ranking. We finished dinner shoulder to shoulder indoors, the sky cleared in time for fireworks, and I can report that rain does absolutely nothing to dampen news that good. Next week I'll have news from the writing desk—something with snow in it, which in July feels like its own small act of defiance.

That's the Gazette for this week, fellow sleuths—the square is dry, the fans at Gordon's have earned a vacation, and somewhere on County Road a veteran is taking measurements. I'll see you back here next Saturday—same town, new trouble.

— Willow 🌿

Meet Willow

Author, School Board member, and gluten-free baker. I write the Jenna McGregor mysteries from my home in Michigan, fueled by coffee and Peloton PRs.

Want to stay in the know? Get the Weekly Gazette

Maple Grove Gazette - July 4, 2026

Maple Grove's Only Newspaper of Record—Vol. 1 No. 12—Edited by Mr. Ellison, Town Archivist & Historian

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

It has been the considered opinion of this editor, across a great many summers, that Maple Grove is a town best appreciated out of doors. This editor wishes to formally suspend that opinion until further notice. The heat that settled over us this week arrived without warning and without mercy, driving the thermometer to figures the Gazette is reluctant to print for fear of appearing to exaggerate, and driving the citizens of Maple Grove indoors with a unanimity rarely seen outside of an election. By Tuesday the streets were as quiet as a Sunday. By Wednesday the shade under the courthouse elms was being rationed like a public utility.

The gardens, this editor notes, did not get the message. What the heat has done to the townspeople it has done in precisely the opposite direction to the vegetables, which have responded to the punishment by producing at a rate bordering on the alarming. Beans hang in curtains. The zucchini has achieved sizes that will be addressed at length in the Notices, where the afflicted may seek relief. This editor will observe only that a town cannot at once hide from the sun and keep pace with what the sun is growing, and that Maple Grove is presently losing on both counts.

It fell to Brewed Awakenings, as it so often does, to supply the remedy. Lisa, having persuaded Jenna McGregor that the café's survival through a heat wave depended upon a menu of cold summer offerings—Jenna having agreed with the wariness of a woman who has learned that Lisa's ideas arrive whether one agrees to them or not—has this week rolled out what the chalkboard styles the Cosmic Summer Menu, a line of smoothies whose names this editor is obliged to reproduce as written. There is The Mercury Retrograde, a sensible affair of banana and honey undone by what the ingredient card describes, without apology, as "a generous measure of fresh dill." There is The Lunar Tide, blueberries and yogurt, each berry—Lisa assures the doubtful—blessed personally beneath last month's full moon. And there is The Solar Flare, a violent green union of kale, apple, cucumber, and jalapeño that the café now serves with a napkin and a cautionary word. Mildred, who submitted to a taste of the last of these at her usual table, offered a verdict that three readers have requested for print. The Gazette has, as is its custom, preserved it in the archives, and will report only that she has recovered, and that she does not intend to repeat the experience.

And all of this, the reader will note, in the same week the nation marks its two hundred and fiftieth year—a milestone the town had intended to meet with some ceremony, and now intends, more realistically, to meet from the shade. The particulars belong to the Notices. This editor will say here only that Maple Grove has weathered a great many Fourths, in heat and otherwise, and that the archive, consulted on the point, is reassuring on the matter of the town's endurance and rather less so on the matter of its dignity.

📜 POLICE BLOTTER

Chief Carter reports no arrests, one very long conversation, and an incident he characterizes as "a misunderstanding that any reasonable person could have avoided by staying home and going to bed."

The matter began, as a surprising number of matters in this town now do, with a resident whose devotion to her neighbors' affairs has long outpaced her attention to her own. Readers of this column will recall this resident as a frequent informant—the party who has, in recent months, reported to these pages a golden retriever operating farm machinery and sundry other outrages, and who is known to the town rather less for her observations than for the dresses in which she delivers them. The Gazette reports, not without a certain quiet satisfaction, that this week this resident furnished the column not with its complaint but with its subject. Shortly before eleven o'clock on Tuesday evening, a resident of the west end of Main Street telephoned the department to report a figure moving through the neighboring gardens by flashlight, crouching at intervals among the bean rows and, the caller alleged, appearing to measure things. Officer Wilson was dispatched. The figure, when located behind the Petersons' tomato cages, proved to be a —in a dress the department's report describes, with unusual care, as "difficult to overlook, even by flashlight," which this editor suspects did little to further the evening's stated purpose of concealment.

The trespasser explained herself at length. She had not, she wished it understood, been examining anyone's produce with a view to the county fair, an event in which she holds no particular interest and to which she certainly intends to enter nothing. She had been conducting, rather, a survey of the after-dark wildlife—raccoons, she specified, and the occasional emboldened deer—which pose, as any gardener knows, a grave threat to a tender crop, and which she had happened to pursue, in the discharge of this civic duty, across two fences and into the Petersons' tomatoes, where the flashlight had merely assisted her in confirming that the animals had fled. Officer Wilson recorded the account without comment. Chief Carter, reviewing it the following morning, observed that the department was unaware of any raccoon in the town's history that had required a tape measure to apprehend, and considered the matter closed.

No charges have been filed. The Petersons decline to press the point, allowing only that their tomatoes are, for the record, coming along nicely, and that they trust the trespasser found the wildlife satisfactory. The implicated’s own garden, the Gazette is given to understand, is not this year among the town's more distinguished, a circumstance this editor mentions solely because it appears, on the available evidence, to be the whole of the trouble.

📋 COMMUNITY NOTICES

FOURTH OF JULY — REVISED PLAN The Men's Club wishes the town to know that this Saturday's observance of the nation's two hundred and fiftieth will proceed, though in a form the heat has obliged them to revise. The morning parade has been shortened to a length one organizer describes as "honest," the reviewing stand relocated to the shade of the Legion hall, and the fireworks retained in full, the committee being of the firm view that there is no temperature at which a town may be asked to give up its fireworks. Residents are urged to bring water, bring hats, and bring, if the spirit moves them, a folding chair—the Gazette having been asked to specify that chairs left unattended remain, as ever, the responsibility of their owners.

LADIES' AUXILIARY The Auxiliary's annual Independence Day lemonade and pie table will operate this Saturday from the Legion porch, relocated indoors should the heat require it. The ladies note that the pies will keep better than the lemonade and advise the town to plan its afternoon accordingly.

GORDON'S HARDWARE Gordon reports that he is sold out of box fans, window units, and all but three of the oscillating variety, and that he does not expect resupply before the weekend. He reminds the town that a wet cloth and a bowl of ice set before a running fan will cool a room "near enough for the money," and that he is holding the last three units behind the counter for the elderly and the genuinely desperate, in that order. He asks that residents not attempt to determine into which category they fall by argument.

A SURPLUS OF ZUCCHINI The Gazette has been asked by no fewer than six households to advise the town that they have zucchini to give away, that the giving is sincere, and that no reasonable quantity will be refused. Residents are cautioned that the customary courtesy—a squash left quietly on a neighbor's porch—has this year escalated to a volume the recipients no longer regard as neighborly. This editor takes no side. This editor notes only that his own porch received two on Thursday and asks that it be spared a third.

HEAT ADVISORY The town's physician reminds residents to drink water, seek shade, and look in on the old and the alone, and observes that a great deal of trouble can be avoided by the simple expedient of doing less. The Gazette endorses the sentiment without reservation and intends to practice it directly.

🏛️ HISTORICAL NOTE

The town's habit of marking the Fourth with a public reading of the Declaration of Independence from the courthouse steps is, the archive assures us, nearly as old as the courthouse—and has been, for most of that time, mercifully brief. The exception the files preserve belongs to the summer of 1911, a Fourth remembered in these pages less for its heat, though the heat was considerable, than for the ambitions of the man who undertook the reading. The archive declines to name him, recording only that he was a gentleman of some local standing and a great deal of local voice, and that he had resolved, that year, to read the document entire—not the stirring opening the town had grown fond of, but the whole of it, every last grievance lodged against King George III, in their original number and full particulars.

He began to a full square. He did not end to one. The heat being what it was, the citizens of Maple Grove withdrew grievance by grievance—first the children, then the mothers after the children, then the men who had stayed only to appear dutiful—until, the files record, the reader arrived at the final signature before an audience of one loyal dog and the widow Pruitt, who had a lemonade stand to mind and nowhere better to be. The town has read an abridged version ever since, in the interest, as the governing resolution put it, of both liberty and attendance.

This editor sets the account down this Saturday, as the nation keeps its two hundred and fiftieth, with more fellow-feeling than instruction. There is a kind of patriotism in the long reading and a kinder one in the short, and Maple Grove, in its heat and its wisdom, has long known the difference. A town need not sit through every grievance to love the country that was won for it. It need only remember the parts that mattered—and see to the lemonade.

🔍 Fellow Sleuths Worth Following

Fellow sleuths, I have to tell you what's happening in my garden, because I suspect a few of you are living it right alongside me. It got hot here this week—the kind of hot that makes you reconsider every life choice that led to owning a stove—and while the rest of us went indoors and stayed there, the garden apparently decided this was its moment. The beans came in like they had somewhere to be. The peppers are showing off. And the zucchini… well. If you have ever wondered how a person ends up leaving vegetables on a stranger's porch under cover of darkness, I am now in a position to explain it to you personally. I have made zucchini bread (gluten-free, and genuinely good, which after years of practice I've earned the right to say). I have made zucchini "noodles," which fooled no one. I have begun, I confess, to eye my neighbors' porches with the same look Charlene got herself a police visit over. There is only so much one household can do, fellow sleuths, and I have done it.

And speaking of things worth digging into—this week's Guest Sleuth takes us clear out of Maple Grove and back to New Year's Day, 1900. Tanked by Bessie Barr opens the twentieth century with a dead man floating face-down in the McKinney, Texas, courthouse-square water tank—and with Minnie Mae Harper, a sixty-year-old farmwife armed with a basket of eggs and too many years of reading people, who simply cannot let the town's tidy, obvious answer stand. She isn't working alone, either: there's a knitting circle—a boarding-house owner, a milliner, a mercantile wife, a doctor's daughter, and her own sister-in-law—who gather with their needles out and their ears open, and who have something better than badges, which is a town that underestimates them completely. It's the first of the OWL Ladies mysteries, warm and witty and full of turn-of-the-century Texas charm, and you can read it as a standalone.

Read the full spotlight →

FREE READS—JULY TITLES

Willow's July Free Books are live on the website—a fresh batch of free cozy mysteries, perfect for loading up the e-reader before the heat sends you indoors with the fan going and the shades drawn. Help yourself:

Browse July's Free Books →‍ ‍

🍽️ THE MAIN COURSE

Everybody's got gardens on the brain this week—mine included, though "brain" is generous for a woman currently at war with a zucchini—so it feels like the right moment to point you at Harvest of Shadows and Dark Brews, Book 3, the one where Maple Grove's sunniest season quietly grows a shadow.

Here's all I'll tell you: Lisa stumbles into the closest thing our tidy little town has ever had to a cult, and watching it unspool is the entire pleasure, so I won't say another word about it. What I will say is that the coffee is strong, the Jeep earns its keep, Mildred falls back on the training from her mysterious past, and Jenna's "Biscuits!" budget does not survive the final chapters. It's a book about how the prettiest, most ordinary-looking things—a good harvest, a friendly face, a town that runs like clockwork—are exactly the ones worth looking at twice.

If you're hiding from the heat this weekend with the shades drawn and the fan going, this is the one I'd hand you.

It's in Kindle Unlimited →

New to Maple Grove? Start at the beginning—Book 1, Scones, Secrets & Sabotage, is free → https://BookHip.com/NPNHTDA

✍️ Behind the Scenes

We've been shut up indoors since Monday, when the heat rolled in and made it clear it had no plans to leave, and I can report that our household is now running almost entirely on popsicles. The grandkids are with me, and "cool" and "occupied" have been my two great projects of the week—cool I can manage; occupied is another matter entirely, since the one thing the two of them refuse to do is want the same thing at the same time. In a fit of either bravery or heat-addled optimism, I took them both to see the new Toy Story, on the theory that a dark, air-conditioned theater solves most of life's problems. It was, in fact, air-conditioned. My sanity and my wallet did not make it out intact—but the popcorn was cold and nobody cried in the parking lot, so I'm filing it under victory. We've got a weekend of get-togethers ahead that I'd trade in a heartbeat for a quiet room and a fan if the thermometer stays where it is; there's something about 110 in the shade that makes even the people you love start to sound optional. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, Joe and I quietly marked 38 years this week—which either earns us a medal or simply proves we've finally learned to share the good fan.

That's the Gazette for this week, fellow sleuths—the fans are running, the fireworks are still on, and somewhere in town a stack of zucchini is looking for a home. Stay cool, stay in the shade, and I'll see you back here next Saturday—same town, new trouble.

— Willow 🌿

Meet Willow

Author, School Board member, and gluten-free baker. I write the Jenna McGregor mysteries from my home in Michigan, fueled by coffee and Peloton PRs.

Want to stay in the know? Get the Weekly Gazette

Maple Grove Gazette - June 27, 2026

Maple Grove's Only Newspaper of Record—Vol. 1 No. 11—Edited by Mr. Ellison, Town Archivist & Historian

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

Father's Day arrived last Sunday under a sky so agreeable it seemed almost to be showing off, and Maple Grove observed the occasion in the manner it has perfected over the decades: barbecues lit in nearly every backyard, the air thick with the smell of charcoal and good intentions, and the fathers of the town arrayed in fresh regalia announcing their rank. This editor counted, in the course of a single morning's walk, four mugs, two ball caps, and one t-shirt, each declaring its wearer the holder of the title #1 Dad—a distinction the Gazette is pleased to report was claimed without contest, there being, by long custom, no second place.

It was, for the better part of the day, a portrait of peace. This editor would like it entered into the record that the peace held until roughly half past three in the afternoon, at which hour it left Elm Street at considerable speed and did not return.

The particulars belong to the Blotter, where they have been set down with the gravity they have earned. This editor will confine himself here to the matter of the footage. It is the modern misfortune of any public spectacle that it is now recorded, and the recording of last Sunday's events was uploaded to the internet, by parties unknown, before the dust had so much as settled on Elm Street. By Monday it had been viewed a number of times this editor declines to print, on the grounds that he does not entirely believe it. It was at Brewed Awakenings that the footage achieved its fullest reception, Lisa having produced it on her telephone for the benefit of Mildred and Gordon, who watched it through twice and then, this editor is told, a third time at Mildred's insistence. Mildred's appraisal of the proceedings has been requested for print by no fewer than four readers. The Gazette has elected to preserve the sharpest of it in the archives, where her finest observations are kept safe from litigation and the easily scandalized, and will report only that she predicted half the town would require therapy, and that she did not appear, herself, to be among them.

📜 POLICE BLOTTER

Chief Carter reports no arrests, no citations, and one incident he describes as "the most ground covered, by the most parties, over the smallest object, in the history of this department."

The matter began as a gift. Dan Harper—local husband, father of three, and the man who has, over the years, quietly insured a good portion of this town—received on Father's Day a remote-piloted aircraft of the recreational sort, a thing he is reported to have wanted for several years and was, by every account, delighted to finally hold. He took his children into the backyard for its maiden voyage. The aircraft achieved flight. It cleared the trees. For a period the Gazette estimates at four minutes, the venture was an unqualified success, and Mr. Harper had every reason to believe he had mastered the device.

He had not reckoned on the wind. A gust—rogue, sudden, and uncommonly strong for the afternoon—took the aircraft over the fence and out of his control entirely, at which point Mr. Harper did what any devoted father would do, which was to give chase on foot down Elm Street, controller held aloft, eyes fixed on the sky. He was not, for long, alone. Fire Chief Jim Kelly's Belgian Malinois, Xena, observing a grown man running and a small object fleeing, arrived at the only conclusion available to a dog of her temperament: that a game of the highest order was underway and that she had been, somehow, left out of it. She passed Mr. Harper within the first block. She gained on the aircraft over the second.

What followed has been described by witnesses in terms the Gazette finds difficult to improve upon. As the aircraft dipped low over the property of the Trembley family, Xena ascended the hood of their newly purchased pickup truck and launched herself over the fence beyond it, clearing both in a single motion several witnesses have called "the finest thing they have ever seen a dog do." The aircraft, descending, came to rest in a quantity of laundry hung out to dry. Xena seized the aircraft in her teeth without breaking stride—and departed the scene, this editor must report, with a floral dress and certain articles of a more personal nature trailing behind her like the tail of a kite.

The owner of the laundry gave chase, voicing both her objections and her intention to pursue the matter through every channel available to her. Chief Kelly, summoned by the commotion and calling for his dog, was spared what this editor understands would have been a lengthy conversation by the timely arrival of an unrelated emergency: a porch fire, two streets over, traced to a new grill positioned with more enthusiasm than wisdom against the side of a house. Chief Kelly and Xena departed for it at once, the latter still in possession of the aircraft.

No charges have been filed. The aircraft, this editor is told, survived. The dress remains a matter of some sensitivity, and the Gazette—mindful that the complainant's wardrobe has occupied this column before—will note only that it has been recovered, and leave the rest to the discretion of those involved.

📋 COMMUNITY NOTICES

SPECIAL TOWN COUNCIL MEETING A special meeting of the Village Council has been called for this coming Wednesday evening, the agenda consisting chiefly of three proposed ordinances, each of which this editor notes has arrived suspiciously soon after last Sunday. The first would establish a designated "drone zone" at Centennial Park, where operators of recreational aircraft may fly to their hearts' content and, the Council hopes, well clear of the town's laundry. The second would require all outdoor grills to be kept no fewer than ten feet from any structure—a standard Gordon reports he has, in effect, been enforcing at his own register since Sunday. The third would prohibit the hanging of undergarments out of doors. All three are expected to pass. One resident, overheard on the subject of the third, allowed that any ordinance sparing the public the trauma of a certain homeowner's "circus tent drawers" had his wholehearted support; the Gazette records the sentiment and declines, as ever, to name the source.

HARPER INSURANCE Dan Harper wishes the town to know that he is sincerely and personally sorry to everyone affected by the events of Sunday afternoon, and that any resident who suffered property damage in the course of them should file a claim without hesitation, as he intends to see each one processed promptly and without fuss. He thanks Maple Grove for its patience and, this editor notes, its restraint.

GORDON'S HARDWARE Gordon reports that he carries touch-up paint matched to most makes and models of motor vehicle, and has set aside a tube for the Trembley family at no charge, "on account of the circumstances." He reminds the gentlemen who received new grills on Sunday that a grill belongs a good arm's length from the house, the porch, and anything else a man would be sorry to lose, and that he stocks fire extinguishers by the register for those who learned this lesson the more memorable way.

MAPLE GROVE FIRE DEPARTMENT Chief Kelly extends his thanks to the town for its understanding regarding Sunday's events, and reports that Xena is "in good spirits and off active duty pending a refresher on the difference between work and recreation." He adds that the Department would be glad to spend the remainder of the summer at the firehouse, and trusts Wednesday's grill ordinance will help it do so.

FOUND One recreational aircraft, recovered and returned to its owner. Other items recovered Sunday have been restored to their rightful parties, who have asked that the matter be considered closed. The Gazette is pleased to oblige.

🏛️ HISTORICAL NOTE

The chasing of objects through the streets of Maple Grove by its more enthusiastic dogs is, the archive reminds us, a tradition of some standing. The Gazette's predecessor records that in the summer of 1949, a model glider flown at the village green by a boy named Harlan Pruitt was carried off by a farm dog belonging to the Voss family, who returned it three days later, undamaged, having apparently grown attached to it. The boy and the dog were thereafter inseparable, and Harlan went on, the files note, to keep the town's first proper kennel. This editor offers the precedent for whatever comfort it may lend the parties of last Sunday, and observes that Maple Grove has always been a town where a chase, given enough time, tends to end in friendship. He withholds judgment on whether three days will be required in the present case.

🔍 Fellow Sleuths Worth Following

Fellow sleuths, this week we're slipping off the usual map and into a town where the magic is real and quietly coming undone: Feathers of Fading Magic by Tessa Silver, a Quillhaven Cozy Mystery. In the New England town of Quillhaven the animals have gone still, the forest is holding its breath, and the Boundary that's protected the place for generations is unraveling thread by thread. When a wildlife ranger turns up at the Kindred Creatures Refuge with an owl whose feathers have gone ashen—and a runaway girl stumbles out of the woods cradling a fading mother Phoenix and her fledglings—the town's carefully tended magic stops being a private matter and becomes everyone's problem. It's soft, playful enchantment wrapped around a real mystery, and underneath it all a story about belonging, legacy, and the courage it takes to believe the impossible. The series can be read in any order, so this is as good a doorway into Quillhaven as any.

Read the full spotlight →

FREE READS—JUNE TITLES

Willow's June Free Books are live on the website—a fresh batch of free cozy mysteries, perfect for loading up the e-reader before the heat sends you indoors with the fan going and the shades drawn. Help yourself:

Browse June's Free Books →‍ ‍

🍽️ THE MAIN COURSE

It's festival season—the stretch of summer where every small town worth its salt throws something involving a banner, a folding table, and at least one event nobody fully thought through. Which makes this the perfect week to point you at Parade of Peril, Book 4, the one where Maple Grove runs a festival and a fishing tournament in the same breath and—because this is Maple Grove—turns up a body in the middle of both.

This is the book where Jenna's dad comes back to town, Lisa arrives at the fishing tournament in an outfit that has no business within a hundred yards of a fishing tournament, and Mildred quietly proves, one more time, that she is the most competent person in any room she walks into. I won't tell you who did it. I'll only say the festival makes everything worse before it makes it better, and that the back of the book hides Omar's Gluten-Free Mega Bars recipe, which I can personally vouch for.

If you've been waiting on a Maple Grove book to load up before a long weekend, this is the one I'd hand you first.

It's in Kindle Unlimited →

New to Maple Grove? Start at the beginning—Book 1, Scones, Secrets & Sabotage, is free → https://BookHip.com/NPNHTDA

✍️ Behind the Scenes

It rained here most of the week, which meant the house quietly reclassified itself as Gigi's Crafting Center and never looked back. The girls painted rocks to tuck into the fairy gardens out in the yard, built pinecone bird feeders and kept a very official tally of every bird that came to investigate, and we spent one whole afternoon growing crystals and pretending we fully understood how. After that it was hours at the craft table—paper, pipe cleaners, stickers, ribbon, and enough tape to supply a small post office—turning out more creations than my refrigerator has room for. All that rain did wonders for the garden, too, so between projects I've been out weeding and fussing over the fruits and vegetables that are going to feed us the rest of the summer. A good week, all told—even if I keep finding marker caps in unlikely places.

That's the Gazette for this week, fellow sleuths—the grills are at a respectful distance, the laundry is back where it belongs, and somewhere in town a Belgian Malinois is reflecting on her choices. I'll see you back here next Saturday—same town, new trouble.

— Willow 🌿

Meet Willow

Author, School Board member, and gluten-free baker. I write the Jenna McGregor mysteries from my home in Michigan, fueled by coffee and Peloton PRs.

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Maple Grove Gazette - June 20, 2026

Maple Grove's Only Newspaper of Record—Vol. 1 No. 10—Edited by Mr. Ellison, Town Archivist & Historian

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

Father's Day arrives this Sunday, and Maple Grove has entered its annual season of strategic misunderstanding, in which every father in town announces he wants nothing and every family proceeds, wisely, as though he had said the opposite. This editor has watched the ritual play out for more years than he intends to confess in print, and remains quietly moved by it: the fathers do not mean it, the families know they do not mean it, and a great show is made of everyone being surprised on Sunday morning all the same. It is one of the finer customs we keep, and the Gazette would not change a thing about it.

The week's principal event, however, was not a father at all. It was glitter.

On Wednesday, in a spirit of seasonal generosity, Lisa hosted a Father's Day craft workshop at Brewed Awakenings, open to every child in town and whichever parent could be talked into coming along. The project—selected by Lisa over the audible reservations of nearly everyone present—involved glitter, in a quantity this newspaper is not equipped to measure and the café, as it developed, was not equipped to contain. Witnesses report full airborne distribution within four minutes. It is now in the cracks between the floor boards and is clinging to the interior historical brick wall. It was, by one sworn account, in the beard of a man three tables away who took no part in the workshop and had come in only for coffee. Café manager Megan, displaying the decisiveness this paper has long admired in her, confiscated the remaining supply mid-session and placed it under lock and key, where it stays. Lisa maintains the project was "spiritually cleansing." Megan maintains custody.

Mildred observed the whole campaign from her usual table, supplying a running commentary with Belle and Gordon that witnesses describe as drier than the scones and roughly twice as sharp. Her closing remark—delivered as a four-year-old departed wearing considerably more glitter than was glued to the construction paper—has been formally requested for print by three separate readers. The Gazette has elected to preserve it in the archives instead, where the best of Mildred's observations are kept, safe from litigation and the children.

📜 POLICE BLOTTER

Chief Carter reports one citation, no arrests, and a single complaint he describes as "the most time I have ever spent on a matter I cannot do one thing about."

The complaint arrived Thursday from a concerned citizen the Gazette will decline to name, though readers may note her dress was, as ever, memorable. She reported observing—from her vehicle, on the county road—a tractor proceeding through the McGregor fields apparently under the operation of a golden retriever in a ball cap. She wished to know whether this was legal. She wished, further, to know whether the animal was licensed, insured, and aware of the rules of the road.

Chief Carter drove out to the McGregor farm. He reported that the farm is operating "within the law and within reason," declines to characterize the precise division of labor between John McGregor and his livestock, and observes only that the party in question "has a better seat than most licensed drivers in this town and has never once been cited." The Gazette, consulting its archives, can confirm that no Maple Grove ordinance expressly forbids a dog from riding in a tractor cab, wearing a hat, or—should the rows run east and the afternoon light cooperate—appearing, to a nervous motorist, to be steering. We leave the matter there. We leave it there on purpose.

📋 COMMUNITY NOTICES

FATHER'S DAY SERVICE The Methodist church welcomes all for Sunday's Father's Day service. The Men's quartet will provide special music, having rehearsed with an enthusiasm the season did not strictly require. Attendance is encouraged; requests are not being taken.

BREWED AWAKENINGS An old-fashioned sour cream coffee cake with a whiskey-infused glaze will be available for Father’s Day this Sunday; Jenna McGregor advises ordering ahead, as the Maple Grove dads seem to be particularly fond of this treat—”especially when all of the family is present for an entire afternoon.” Patrons are further advised they may encounter glitter on the premises indefinitely. The supply has been secured. The glitter already at large has not.

GORDON'S HARDWARE Grills, tackle, and "the last grill brush a man will ever need" now stocked at the front. Gordon reminds the gentlemen receiving power tools on Sunday that ear protection is available by the register, where he has learned to keep it.

FOUND Several items at Brewed Awakenings are now permanently decorative. They may be claimed, though the Gazette cannot promise they can be restored.

🏛️ HISTORICAL NOTE

Several readers have asked when Father's Day first became a fixture of the town calendar. The Gazette's archives are characteristically vague, recording only that the earliest observance involved a fish fry on the riverbank sometime in the early 1950s, attended by most of the town's fathers and one exceptionally stubborn perch. The perch, by the account in our files, won. The fish fry itself faded over the decades, but its essential spirit—fathers gathered near an open flame, accomplishing very little and entirely content—survives in every backyard in Maple Grove to this day.

🔍 Fellow Sleuths Worth Following

Fellow sleuths, this week's Guest Sleuth Spotlight comes with a passport and a dessert cart: Murder by Meringue by Greta Sinclair. Newlywed food critic Darcy Finnegan wants exactly one murder-free honeymoon in Sydney—harbor lights, winter romance, pavlova under the glow of the Vivid festival. Then a celebrity dessert judge drops dead mid-event, her best friend Lizzie is framed for it, and the only witness keeping his cool is Mozart, a Schnoodle who steals every scene and occasionally cracks the case. Stolen recipes, dockside sugar fraud, and a bonus recipe you can actually make at home.

It's a $0.99 pre-order landing June 26—lock it in now and let it turn up like a present:

Read the full spotlight →

FREE READS—JUNE TITLES NOW LIVE

Willow's June Free Books are live on the website—a fresh batch of free cozy mysteries, perfect for loading up the e-reader before the heat sends you indoors with the fan going and the shades drawn. Help yourself:

Browse June's Free Books →‍ ‍

🍽️ THE MAIN COURSE

It's officially kiddie-pool season, which in my house means one book within arm's reach and a second one hidden where nobody can borrow it. My pick for your towel bag this summer is Harvest of Shadows and Dark Brews—the one where Maple Grove's sunshine picks up a shadow.

This is the book where Lisa stumbles into the closest thing our tidy little town has ever had to a cult, and I won't tell you one inch more than that, because watching it unspool is the whole pleasure. What I will tell you: the coffee is strong, the Jeep earns its keep, Mildred falls back on the training from her mysterious past—and recruits John McGregor for reconnaisance and extraction, and Jenna's "Biscuits!" budget is badly overdrawn by the final chapters.

Same town square you'd recognize from this very newspaper—just with something humming underneath it.

It's in Kindle Unlimited →

New to Maple Grove? Start at the beginning—Book 1, Scones, Secrets & Sabotage, is free →https://BookHip.com/NPNHTDA

✍️ Behind the Scenes

That's the Gazette for this week, fellow sleuths—the glitter is contained (mostly), the brisket is resting, and Mr. Ellison has retreated to the archives to keep an eye on a perch.

Closer to home, it's a big day at our house: my granddaughter HayHay turns seven today, a number I'm choosing not to examine too closely or I'll need a minute. She's with me all summer and has Big Plans—she's decided we're making videos together, a whole series she's already titled Fun with Gigi and HayHay. I've been informed I'm the co-star, not the director, and honestly that feels exactly right. And because the calendar has a sense of humor, her birthday landed square on Father's Day weekend, so Papa Joe is pulling double duty and loving every second of it.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads keeping their families in good trouble. I'll see you back here next Saturday—same town, new trouble.

— Willow 🌿

Meet Willow

Author, School Board member, and gluten-free baker. I write the Jenna McGregor mysteries from my home in Michigan, fueled by coffee and Peloton PRs.

Want to stay in the know? Get the Weekly Notebook