Maple Grove Gazette - September 26, 2026

Maple Grove's Only Newspaper of Record—Vol. 1 No. 24—Edited by Mr. Ellison, Town Archivist & Historian

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

The rain stopped on Sunday. By Tuesday morning there was steam emanating from the just-parked cars along Main, and the town has spent the rest of the week telling itself that the cold is unseasonable. This editor has consulted the archive on that point and will report his findings in the proper section. For now he notes only that the days are bright, the nights are in the high forties, and every household in the village chose the same four days to seal the deck, cut back the borders, and haul the summer's inflatable toys into the garage, where they will stay until somebody needs the car.

Harvest has begun in earnest. The equipment goes out in the dark and comes back in the dark, and anyone driving County Road at half past five in the morning will meet a set of headlights higher and wider than a car's, moving at a speed that suits it and nobody else. Charlene told the ladies' church group on Sunday, without being asked, that she had put up fifty quarts of tomatoes in a single day. Fifty quarts is a good day's work for four women. This editor has no evidence that she had help. He has several reasons to suspect it. Chief among them: the garden from which the tomatoes were supposedly harvested was not large enough to produce ten quarts, let alone fifty.

Up at the college it is Homecoming Week, and that requires some history. A few years ago, pledges of several fraternities were found to have removed a number of objects from around the village during their initiation. The objects came back. So did the pledges, to perform community service in the same village. The college has since made its position unmistakable: no hazing, and no taking anything that belongs to anybody. The fraternities have complied in full. They have found that a young man who is forbidden to take anything can still take off most of his clothes, paint himself in the college colors, and run across the quad at dusk. This is happening on college property, outside village limits, and Chief Carter wanted it recorded that he is grateful for both facts.

The trouble is that it was seen, and that a number of the young men who saw it were in high school.

The Maple Grove High boys thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard of, and decided the high school deserved its own. At halftime of last Friday's home game, with the band in formation on the fifty, eight of them came out from behind the concession stand in their underwear and the school colors, each with one large painted letter across his chest, and ran the length of the track in front of the home bleachers. They had meant to spell BULLDOGS. The young man ‘wearing’ the S reconsidered at the last moment and stayed in the car. The bleachers read BULLDOG, which this editor must concede is accurate, since the school has exactly one. It was forty-nine degrees.

It should be said that the Bulldogs are a very good football team. They win their conference most years, and most years they are still playing when the state finals come around. The home bleachers on a Friday night are full of grandparents, and the grandparents did not come to see this. The boys regarded it as the finest thing they had ever done. Their parents took a different view.

This newspaper went to press last week without the item, as a courtesy to families who were still speaking to one another. They are now speaking to one another, and they have a great deal to say. The boys received in-school suspension from the high school. At home they received considerably worse, the details of which are private and have been described to this editor at length by nearly everyone. Then the parents did something this editor has not seen before. As a group, they went to Chief Carter and asked him to assign community service, to be served in the village, in daylight, where people could watch. The Chief said it was the first time in his career that parents had come to him to ask for a harsher sentence. He then said it was the second time this fall, and that he would prefer not to go into the first.

One of the eight was Caleb, the younger son of Wendell Fitch's daughter Mary. Readers may remember Mary's boys from the Fitch reunion in July and a pan of brownies this newspaper declined to describe then and declines to describe now. Mary has not been seen in the village since Friday night. Her groceries are being bought by her father. Every afternoon this week Wendell has walked the full length of every aisle at the market, pushing a cart at the pace of a man who would like it known that the Fitches are still here and have nothing to discuss. He has greeted everyone by name. Nobody has raised the subject with him. This editor thinks that is the correct decision and does not intend to test it.

📜 POLICE BLOTTER

MAPLE GROVE POLICE DEPARTMENT—INCIDENT REPORT
Reporting Officer: Officer Wilson Week of: September 19-25

Maple Grove High School Athletic Field—Disturbance at a Public Event. Reported by Officer Wilson. At approximately 8:10 p.m. Friday, during halftime of the home game, seven juvenile males entered the track from behind the concession stand in a state of partial dress and school-color paint, ran the length of the home bleachers, and left by the same route. Officer Wilson, who was working the game, located seven of the juveniles in the parking lot and the eighth in a vehicle, fully dressed, stating that he had "been against it from the start." Officer Markle, who was also working the game, recused himself on the grounds that one of the juveniles is his cousin, and spent the rest of the half at the concession stand. All eight were released to their parents, who were in the stands and who had, in several cases, already started toward the parking lot. Final Disposition: Referred to the school. Community service assigned at parental request.

County Road, East of the McGregor Farm—Suspicious Lights. Reported by Officer Markle. A motorist reported a large vehicle with multiple bright lights moving slowly on County Road at 5:40 a.m. Tuesday, "too wide to be a truck and too slow to be anything." Officer Markle responded and identified it as a combine. The motorist, reached by telephone, said she had lived in the township four months. Final Disposition: Harvest.

📋 COMMUNITY NOTICES

Harvest Equipment on the Roads—before dawn and after dark, through October. Motorists are reminded that the headlights coming toward them on County Road may belong to something wider than they are. Slow down, keep right, and let the operator wave you around when it is safe. Chief Carter asks this editor to add that a motorist who will not pass also blocks everyone behind him, and that the Chief has been that man and does not recommend it.

Community Service Crew—Saturdays, 8:00 a.m., Main Street. Eight young men will spend the next several Saturdays sweeping the curbs, gathering trash, and clearing storm grates along Main, under the supervision of Officer Sanchez. Officer Sanchez finished supervising this editor's great-nephews on the 19th. He was reassigned on the 21st. Residents may observe. Chief Carter asks that they not take photographs, on the grounds that the parents have already taken plenty.

Homecoming at the College—Saturday, on campus. The college's Homecoming parade and game take place on campus off the state road, not in the village. Residents headed out that way are asked to allow extra time at the entrance. The village has no role in the event and has been told so.

Fall Farmers Market—Saturdays through October, 9:00 a.m. to noon, the square. Apples, squash, the last of the tomatoes, and one grower's pumpkin, which is still being discussed only in the future tense. The weigh-in remains scheduled for October. Canning jars are reported to be in short supply township-wide, and this editor is told nobody wishes to name the cause.

School Photographs—Retakes Wednesday, October 7. Envelopes are due back at the office before the retake date, not on it.

🏛️ HISTORICAL NOTE

The town has called this week's weather unseasonable. This editor went to the bound volumes to see how unseasonable.

This newspaper has printed a weather item every week since 1911. In those volumes, the first cold week of autumn falls in the second half of September a little more than nine years in ten. In ninety-four of those years, the Gazette described it as unseasonable. The first was in 1913. The most recent, before this week, was last year. In 1947 the paper called a cold week in the third week of September "entirely unseasonable." The following September, in the same week, it called the weather "unseasonable again."

Weather that has arrived in the same week for a hundred and fifteen years is, by every definition this editor can find, the season. He does not expect this to change anyone's mind. His purpose is to note that the town has been surprised by the same chilly nights ninety-four times, each time in writing, and each time with the same conviction. Whatever else the record shows, it shows a town that has never once taken September for granted. This editor offers the figures and nothing further.

🔍 Fellow Sleuths Worth Following

No new Fellow Sleuths this week. If you haven’t already read any of the books I’ve featured from L.B. Dayton and Bessie Barr, they are worth checking out. I’ve met both authors and not only are they great writers, but they are also wonderful humans.

Read the full Spotlight →

FREE READS—SEPTEMBER TITLES

This is the last weekend for September's free shelf. After that it's October, which means the good blankets and the longer books.

Browse September’s Free Books →‍

🍽️ THE MAIN COURSE

Every fall the college kids come back and something in Maple Grove goes missing. Or everybody in town is sure it did.

That's where Scones, Secrets & Sabotage starts. The festival is coming, things are disappearing all over town, and the fraternity pledges are running a scavenger hunt that makes them the obvious suspects. Maple Grove would love for it to be the pledges. It's tidy. It's college boys. Everyone already knows how that story ends.

Jenna isn't so sure. Because while the whole town is counting missing things, somebody is using the confusion to do something much worse, and they're counting on nobody looking past the kids with the scavenger list.

It's Book 1. It's where Jenna, Lisa, and Mildred first get into trouble together, and where Joe first starts to regret knowing them.

Book 1, Scones, Secrets & Sabotage, is free →

✍️ Behind the Scenes

The rain finally quit, and this week I found out that a dry, sunny, fifty-five-degree afternoon is the most dangerous kind of weather there is. You look outside and think, I could get a few things done.

I sealed the deck. I cut back the borders. I packed the summer toys into the garage, and yes, something inflatable fought back. By Wednesday I had accomplished more than I have since June and I could not lift a coffee cup above shoulder height.

I regret nothing. The deck looks wonderful. I'll be admiring it from inside.

See you next Saturday, fellow sleuths—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 - September 19, 2026

Maple Grove's Only Newspaper of Record—Vol. 1 No. 23—Edited by Mr. Ellison, Town Archivist & Historian

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

It has rained for ten days. This editor states that plainly and at the top because it is the only fact anyone in Maple Grove has been willing to discuss since the previous Saturday, and because there is no arrangement of words that will make it more interesting than it is. It rained. It is still raining. The forecast, which this newspaper prints as a courtesy and not as a promise, suggests it will stop.

The water comes down the state road, as water in this town has always come down the state road, and arrives at the corner where the state road becomes Main with nowhere particular to go. The grates take what they can. What they cannot take runs along the curb in a steady brown ribbon the width of a dinner plate, and turns at the corner, and goes on down Main past the hardware store and the florist and the shoe repair in a manner that several residents have described to this editor as a river. It is not a river. It is runoff, and it is four inches across at its most ambitious. This editor raises the point only because the description has begun to travel.

The fields, for the record, are untouched and were going to be untouched this week regardless. There is nothing out there to bring in yet. The farmers have spent ten days doing what farmers do in the middle of September when it rains, which is to spend the day at the diner drinking coffee and regaling each other with memories from their youth. They also have opinions about October that this newspaper will print when October arrives and not before.

It is the college that has made the week a story. The ditch that runs along the state road out by the campus entrance—which is a proper ditch, cut deep, and which has been running full and fast since Sunday—was discovered by students on Monday afternoon and has not been left alone since. They ride it in inner tubes. On Wednesday there was a kayak. The stretch that works is perhaps sixty yards between the entrance and the culvert, and a rider who does not sit up in time goes into the culvert, and this editor is given to understand that this has happened twice and is considered part of it. They have named it the Maple Grove River. Signs were made. This editor is obliged to record, for the archive and for whoever is reading this in fifty years wondering where the river went, that it is a ditch, and that no one has cared about this correction at any point during the week in which it was issued.

Chief Carter was asked what the department intended to do about it and said there was no ordinance against a ditch, that he had looked, and that he was not going to write one in a week when nobody had been hurt and everyone was going to be back in class by Monday anyway. Asked a second time, on Friday, after the signs went up, he said his answer had not changed and that he would like that printed.

The high school, not to be outdone by an institution it has never acknowledged as competition, found a slope. The particulars belong to the Blotter. This editor will say only that the tarp was returned.

Brewed Awakenings has taken the brunt of it, and is the one business in town for which this week has been an unqualified success and an unqualified ordeal, in that order, every day, for ten days. The shop has not been dry since Monday. The only place on campus for Maple Grove College students to hang out is the library or their dorm room, which means that a young person who does not want to sit in a wet residence hall sits at Brewed Awakenings instead, for a considerable while, over a cup they bought at eleven and were still holding at three.

On Tuesday Lisa set out four bowls of rock salt on the windowsills to draw the damp out of the room. The bowls are still there. The room is, by general agreement, better than it was, and the salt has received the credit for this in every conversation this editor has overheard on the subject. This editor is obliged to record what he observed, which is that the four window tables were the coldest and wettest seats in the building, that a bowl of salt now occupies each of them, that nobody has sat at any of the four since Tuesday, and that the line consequently no longer backs up into the doorway where the door was being held open by it. Whether this is what Lisa intended, this editor cannot say and did not ask. Belle allowed on Thursday that the room did seem drier. Mildred observed that it was fifty-one degrees, raining, and full of wet coats. Belle said she had not said dry, she had said drier. Mildred let it go, which Belle noted aloud was the first time.

📜 POLICE BLOTTER

MAPLE GROVE POLICE DEPARTMENT—INCIDENT REPORT
Reporting Officer: Officer Markle Week of: September 12-18

State Road at the College Entrance—Persons in the Roadway Ditch. Reported by Officer Wilson. A motorist reported between six and nine persons in the drainage ditch along the eastbound shoulder, some in inflatable tubes and one in a kayak. Officer Wilson responded and confirmed the report, with the correction that the kayak had by then been carried back up to the entrance for a second attempt. All parties were out of the roadway and none were in the traffic lane at any time. The department notes that no ordinance prohibits the use of a drainage ditch and that the Chief has declined to seek one. Parties were advised that the culvert is a culvert. Final Disposition: Advised. No further action.

High School Practice Field—Report of Damage to School Property. Reported by Officer Sanchez. A complaint was received Thursday evening regarding a number of students on the slope behind the practice field, a quantity of mud, and a tarpaulin belonging to the feed store. Officer Sanchez responded, located eleven students, and confirmed the tarpaulin's ownership and its subsequent return in the same condition it left in, which the feed store describes as poor. The district groundskeeper, asked to assess the damage, viewed the slope and declined to call it damage, stating that nothing has ever grown there and that nothing ever will. Final Disposition: Unfounded.

📋 COMMUNITY NOTICES

Standing Water—the four principal streets and the state road approach, through the weekend. Motorists are asked to slow at the corner, where the water stands deepest and where a vehicle taken through it at speed will put the whole of it onto the sidewalk and, on one occasion Tuesday, into the doorway of the florist. Mrs. Wilson has asked this editor to note that she saw who it was.

Storm Grates—a request from the Village Council. Residents are asked to clear the grate in front of their own property of leaves and whatever else has come down. The Council notes that this is the entire extent of what the Council can do about the situation, and that it is doing it.

Fall Farmers Market—Saturdays through October, 9:00 a.m. to noon, the green. Four vendors set up last Saturday in the rain and sold, between them, most of what they brought. The apples are in. The pumpkin weigh-in remains scheduled for October and remains, per the same grower as last week, "not a joke."

School Photographs—Retakes Wednesday, October 7. Envelopes are still due back at the office before the retake date rather than on it.

Sump Pumps. Gordon reports that he sold out Tuesday morning, that the truck comes Thursday, and that he has been telling people the truck comes Thursday since Monday. He asks this editor to note that he is aware of how that sounds.

🏛️ HISTORICAL NOTE

A reader has asked this editor, reasonably, what the archive says about a rain like this one, and this editor is obliged to answer that the archive says less than it should, and to explain why.

In September of 1955 the building that then housed this newspaper took eleven inches of water in the basement over a night and part of a morning. The bound volumes were kept on the high shelf, as they had been kept on the high shelf since the paper began, and they survived, which is why this newspaper can tell you what was printed in Maple Grove in any week of any year since 1911 and can show you a school photograph from every one of them. What sat on the floor was the correspondence—the letters, the notes, the files the paper kept but never printed—and a man named Alvin Pease, who did not work here and was not asked, went down the stairs in the dark and carried out what he could reach.

What he could reach was the advertising ledgers.

This editor has therefore inherited a complete and unbroken record of what every business in this village charged for everything it sold between 1911 and 1955, and almost nothing of what anyone in it wrote to anyone else. When this newspaper cannot tell you why a thing was done, which happens more often than this editor would like, the answer is generally that the reason was on the floor.

This editor has considered, over a number of years, whether to record Mr. Pease's choice as an error, and has declined to, on the grounds that a man standing in cold water in the dark grabs what is nearest and heaviest, and that the question of what a historian would have preferred did not come up and could not have.

🔍 Fellow Sleuths Worth Following

February 1900. The square is strung with paper hearts for a three-night Valentine's square-dance-a-thon, and before sunrise on the second morning the caller is dead behind the Magnolia House—a man who collected other people's secrets and was tolerated rather than liked.

Stomped by Bessie Barr puts Minnie Mae Harper back on a case she has learned the hard way not to rush: everybody on that dance floor had a reason, everybody else is pointing, and the person it keeps pointing at is the one Minnie Mae most needs it not to be. Six church ladies, quilting needles, strong opinions, and a whole Texas county's worth of people who all know each other too well to be objective about any of it. If you'd like your turn-of-the-century cozy with six women in it who do not intend to be managed, that's this book.

Read the full Spotlight →

FREE READS—SEPTEMBER TITLES

Ten days of rain is the best reading weather there is and I will not be taking questions. September's free shelf is still stocked. Browse September's Free Books.

Browse September’s Free Books →‍

🍽️ THE MAIN COURSE

There are college kids all over this issue. They floated a ditch, they named it, they made signs, and the worst that happened to any of them was a wet shoe.

In Harvest of Shadows and Dark Brews, a college kid drinks something somebody was handing out, and it goes the other way.

That's Book 3. It's the harvest one. By the time anybody in Maple Grove understands what was in that cup, Lisa is already further inside it than she should be, and the thing that makes the book work is that nobody involved is menacing. They're pleasant. They're helpful. They're so glad you came. Joe spends most of it unconvinced, right up until he very much isn't.

I wanted to write the book where the frightening thing is a group of people who only want to help you.

And if you jumped from Book 2 straight to Book 4—I know some of you did—this is the one you skipped.

It's in Kindle Unlimited →

New to Maple Grove? Start at the beginning—

Book 1, Scones, Secrets & Sabotage, is free →

✍️ Behind the Scenes

Ten days of rain and I got a cat out of it.

She turned up in the trees west of the house—tiny, soaked, and apparently done negotiating. Her name is Peanut. Charlie is tolerating her, which from Charlie is a standing ovation. She has spent the week pouncing on things that are not there and falling asleep mid-pounce, and I'm convinced she believes a roof and a full bowl are the greatest luck that has ever befallen an animal.

The granddaughters have had a harder week. The novelty of school wore off somewhere around Labor Day, and the tablets have started traveling to school in backpacks, which is how I know they are not supposed to be traveling anywhere. I've been confiscating them. The first afternoon, they asked me what they were supposed to do until their mom got home. I told them that when I was a kid we went outside and played until somebody called us in for dinner or it got dark, and that cartoons were on Saturday morning and that was the whole allotment. HayHay looked at me and said, "well, that's stupid."

She had a point. It has rained for ten days.

The next afternoon I found the two of them on the couch after snack, reading.

I did not say one word about it. I'm not a fool.

See you next Saturday, fellow sleuths—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 - September 12, 2026

Maple Grove's Only Newspaper of Record—Vol. 1 No. 22—Edited by Mr. Ellison, Town Archivist & Historian

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

This editor wrote in August that a four-way stop is not a piece of equipment but an agreement. This editor has spent the past week watching that agreement tested by a machine thirty feet long that has never read it.

The straw that has sat stacked at the field edges since wheat came off in July began moving this week, the farms having taken the view they take every year, which is that straw under a roof in September is worth twice what straw under a tarp is worth in October. So while one half of Maple Grove stood in back yards over grills on Monday, the other half was hauling, and the road between them carried tractors and loaded wagons from first light until well after supper. This is not a complaint and is not printed as one. It is simply the fact of the second week of September, and it has been the fact of the second week of September for as long as this newspaper has been keeping track.

The difficulty, such as it is, occurs at the corner. A car arriving at a four-way stop can stop and start again without consequence. A tractor pulling a straw wagon can do neither easily, is stacked to a height the driver cannot see around, and requires the whole of the intersection to make the turn onto Main—which is to say it requires everyone already sitting at that corner to understand something that has never been posted, published, or agreed to in any recorded form. This editor watched Monday's first attempt with some concern. There was a horn. There was a driver who plainly believed his turn had been taken from him, and who was not entirely wrong.

By Wednesday there was a procedure. This editor is unable to describe it, and reports that failure honestly, having tried. Four men at the diner explained it to this editor across the same morning, and the four explanations agreed on nothing except the outcome: cars hold longer than the rule requires, somebody waves, everybody goes, and the corner has not backed up once since Tuesday. One man insisted the whole thing depends on the third car in line. Another said it has nothing to do with the third car and never has. This editor observed the corner for the better part of an hour Thursday afternoon and can confirm only that it works, that nobody speaks, and that no one out there appears to be doing anything they would describe as unusual.

Mr. Fitch came out Tuesday morning in his vest. He stood at the edge of the lot by the feed store, watched the corner for ten or twelve minutes, and went home. Asked about it, he told this editor he wasn't needed. This editor, who has now spent some years observing how people behave near that intersection, regards that as the harder of the two things to do. Chief Carter, asked whether the department intended to post an officer there while the hauling lasted, said no, and then said it was working, and then—after a pause this editor has elected to print—said that if he put a man out there it would stop working, and that he would rather not find out whether he was right.

This editor is obliged to record one loss. A bale came off a load at the corner sometime Tuesday morning, which nobody saw happen, including the man whose load it came off. It was reported to the department at nine. It was not there at twenty past. This editor has made no inquiries and intends to make none, but notes for the record that the porches of Maple Grove have acquired a quantity of decorative straw this week, and that at least one garden on the east side is better mulched than it was on Monday. Three farms were hauling that road Tuesday. Nobody has reported a bale missing, and this editor does not expect that anybody will.

Elsewhere, and more quietly: school photographs were taken Wednesday.

📜 POLICE BLOTTER

MAPLE GROVE POLICE DEPARTMENT—INCIDENT REPORT
Reporting Officer: Officer Markle Week of: September 5 - 11

State Road at Main—Property in the Roadway. Reported by Officer Markle. A motorist reported a straw bale lying in the eastbound lane at the corner, believed shed by a load turning off County Road. Officer Markle responded within twenty minutes and found the roadway clear. No bale was recovered and no owner has come forward. This department notes that three separate farms were hauling that road that morning. Final Disposition: Unable to locate. No further action.

Main Street—Noise Complaint. Reported by Officer Markle. A complaint was received regarding a horn sounded at length at the four-way stop Monday morning. Neither vehicle was identified, and the department notes that no one on that corner has admitted to hearing it. Final Disposition: Unfounded.

📋 COMMUNITY NOTICES

Straw Hauling—County Road and the four principal streets, through month's end. Motorists are reminded that farm equipment is entitled to the roadway, that the shoulder is a courtesy and not an obligation, and that a wagon which appears to be stopping is frequently doing something else. Allow the extra minute. It is one minute.

School Photographs—Retakes Wednesday, October 7. Envelopes went home Wednesday. The office asks that they be returned before the retake date rather than on it.

Fall Farmers Market—Saturdays through October, 9:00 a.m. to noon, the village square. The first apples are in. Vendors report the pumpkin weigh-in remains scheduled for October and remains, in the words of one grower, "not a joke."

Load Securement. Gordon reports he sold out of ratchet straps by Wednesday and has more coming, and asks this editor to note that every man who bought one bought it the day after he needed it.

🏛️ HISTORICAL NOTE

The Gazette's archive holds a school photograph from every year since 1911, which makes this editor the only person in Maple Grove obliged to look at all of them. In the course of filing Wednesday's proofs, this editor consulted the run and reports the following. In 1979, the backdrop selected by the photographer and the shirt selected for the school's fall spirit day were, by every indication available in the surviving prints, the same shade of blue. The archive holds no record of who chose either, no correspondence between the school and the photographer on the subject, and no evidence that anyone noticed until the photographs came back. Forty-one children appear in that year's run to be floating without visible support. This editor notes only that the school kept them, ordered no retakes, and hung the composite in the hallway, where it remained for a number of years. Whatever else may be said about the town in 1979, it was not a town that wasted a photograph.

🔍 Fellow Sleuths Worth Following

This week I'm handing you a Halloween gala, a Food Network camera crew, and a body on the dance floor before dessert.

Camera, Confections and a Corpse by L.B. Dayton puts head chef Kat Calloway in the middle of a co-catered gala that goes very wrong—the arrogant host drops dead mid-boogie, a masked man dressed exactly like the pastry chef she's been trying not to stare at vanishes into the crowd, and Bash ends the night in handcuffs. Her best friend is acting strange. Her tuxedo cat has picked this of all nights to disappear. And there are recipes at the end, which is the kind of thing I take personally.

Read the full Spotlight →

FREE READS—SEPTEMBER TITLES

The evenings are getting shorter, which is the only excuse anybody needs. This month's free shelf is stocked. Browse September's Free Books.

Browse September’s Free Books →‍

🍽️ THE MAIN COURSE

There is a moment in Parade of Peril where Jenna walks out the back of her own café and finds a parade float parked where the delivery van goes, and a body on it, arranged. Not dumped. Arranged—the way you'd stage something you wanted looked at.

That's the book. It's Halloween week in Maple Grove, the town is doing what it does every year, and this year the week does something back. It opens with a man Jenna went to school with posed in a field like a scarecrow, and it keeps going from there, and the thing that makes it the October book isn't the costumes or the weather. It's that every single person Jenna grew up with turns out to have a version of what happened here twenty years ago, and none of the versions match, and she cannot stop collecting them. Joe would very much like her to stop collecting them.

If you've been waiting for the one where the town stops being charming for a couple hundred pages, this is it. It's still Maple Grove. It's just Maple Grove at the end of October, when the light goes early and a scarecrow standing in a field is exactly the kind of thing nobody looks at twice.

It's in Kindle Unlimited →

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

✍️ Behind the Scenes

I have lived in small farming towns my whole life, and I can tell you that around here nobody calls September and October fall. They're harvest. It's the stretch when you hear tractors in the fields before sunrise and still hear them long after dark, and when a trip to town has to be planned around the possibility of a tractor parade.

A tractor parade is what happens when cars stack up behind equipment moving between fields. People who grew up here know the cues—a farmer will tell you when it's safe to go around, and you learn to read it without anybody ever sitting you down and teaching it. The trouble starts when somebody who doesn't know the signals ends up first in line. They won't pass, because nobody told them they could, and now nobody behind them can pass either. So everybody waits. Thus: parade.

See you next Saturday, fellow sleuths—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 - September 5, 2026

Maple Grove's Only Newspaper of Record—Vol. 1 No. 21—Edited by Mr. Ellison, Town Archivist & Historian

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

After a week that began with a school bulldog loose on the football field and ended with an actual criminal pursuit conducted by a private citizen in a personal pickup truck, this editor finds himself once again noting that Maple Grove's capacity for incident does not appear to be diminishing with the season. Readers who have followed the County Road mailbox matter since July will be glad to hear—this editor is glad himself, and admits it plainly—that this week's report contains an ending.

The particulars, as this editor has been given them: geese. Mr. McGregor spent a recent afternoon in the barn drafting what he calls "a permanent solution" to a goose problem that has plagued the farm's east pasture since spring, a project made more urgent by an incident earlier that same day in which their daughter Jenna’s dog, Biscuit, required rescue from a goose he had badly underestimated. It was after dark when Mr. McGregor walked back from the barn and heard voices at the end of his driveway, and beneath them, a sound this editor is told is best described as thwacking.

What followed, this editor reports without embellishment, because none is required. Mr. McGregor did not call out. He returned to his truck, and by the time the car at the end of his drive had pulled away, he was behind it—headlights off, the moon judged sufficient, the taillights ahead judged sufficient. He held back through a mile or two of County Road, through a crossroads, and onto a driveway of a fellow farmer. He did not go in blind. He waited until the car's occupants were out and standing in the open before switching his headlights on.

This editor is told the resulting scene involved three young men, ages seventeen, fifteen, and thirteen, several urgent requests that Mr. McGregor lower his voice on account of their sleeping parents, and a flat refusal. The parents were roused; the mother, by all accounts, was appalled. The father required no assistance from Mr. McGregor in expressing his own views, which this editor understands were extensive, and which Mr. McGregor allowed to run their full course without interruption. Mrs. McGregor, informed over coffee the next morning, said only that she wasn't surprised, and asked whether he'd remembered to feed Biscuit. By eight o'clock the following morning, three boys were on the McGregor porch with a new mailbox and the tools to install it. Per their father's instruction, they will be reporting to the McGregor farm every afternoon and weekend through the end of harvest. chief Carter has been informed of the situation and is in full agreement regarding atonement.

By Tuesday, the story had reached the diner, which this editor understands is the only venue in town where a true account improves with retelling rather than the reverse. Mr. McGregor's truck, in the earliest versions, followed the car a mile or two down County Road; by Wednesday the distance had grown to "the better part of ten miles"; by Friday, at least one telling had him making the entire run without headlights, moon or no moon, and pulling in behind them one-handed. This editor spoke to Mr. McGregor directly and can report the true distance was closer to two miles, the headlights came on well before the confrontation, and both of his hands, throughout, remained where the manufacturer intended. Mr. McGregor declined to correct the diner's version. This editor suspects he has earned the right.

📜 POLICE BLOTTER

MAPLE GROVE POLICE DEPARTMENT—INCIDENT REPORT
Reporting Officer: Officer Wilson Week of: August 29 -September 4

County Road—Property Damage, Case Closed. This department's open file on the County Road mailbox incidents, opened in July, is closed as of this week—not, Chief Carter wished it noted, through any action of this department. "We weren't consulted," the Chief said, "and having reviewed how it came out, we don't have a complaint." No charges were filed; restitution was arranged privately between the families involved. Final Disposition: Closed. File transferred to archive.

📋 COMMUNITY NOTICES

Loose Geese—County Road, East Pasture. Motorists and walkers are advised the geese remain at large pending completion of Mr. McGregor's pen, expected "any week now." Cyclists in particular are encouraged to give the shoulder a wide berth.

Farm Help Wanted—Filled. The McGregor farm's need for weekend and afternoon labor through November has been resolved via private arrangement. No further applicants necessary.

Fall Farmers Market—Saturdays through October, 9:00 a.m. to noon, the green. Vendors report a strong tomato year and an unusually competitive pumpkin bracket already forming ahead of the October weigh-in.

🏛️ HISTORICAL NOTE

This editor, in the course of closing the McGregor file, took the opportunity to review the mailbox folder in full rather than merely its recent contents, and reports the result with some surprise. The folder's oldest clipping is dated 1958: a Gazette item reporting that three county boys had been apprehended for what the article calls "the wanton and repeated destruction of United States mail receptacles by means of a Louisville Slugger," at what this editor gathers was roughly the moment newly licensed teenage drivers and newly standardized rural mailboxes first arrived at the same conclusion about each other, nationally, at once. The practice, in other words, is not new. This editor offers the historical record without further comment, except to note that the Gazette of 1958 used a great many more words to say a great deal less than this editor has managed above.

🔍 Fellow Sleuths Worth Following

This week I'm sending you down to Tansy Ridge, where the lake is calm and absolutely nothing else is. Fellow sleuths, meet Daphne Cole.

Murder Makes Ripples by Cora Finch drops a true-crime podcaster into the middle of Lake Days week, has him dead within a day, and points every piece of evidence at the town sheriff. Daphne—bookstore café owner, one very large Old English Sheepdog named Mooney at her side—isn't buying it. Neither will you.

Read the full Spotlight →

FREE READS—SEPTEMBER TITLES

Back-to-school chaos calls for something you can pick up and put down without losing the thread. This month's free shelf has you covered.

Browse September’s Free Books →‍

🍽️ THE MAIN COURSE

Every September I get the same question: where do I start? Right here. Scones, Secrets, and Sabotage is Book 1, it's free, and it's the reason Jenna McGregor ever got tangled up with murder in the first place—a spilled bag of flour, a body in the pantry, and a golden retriever who is somehow already a suspect. If your afternoons have gone the way mine have this month—snack, backpack, one more load of laundry, repeat—this is the book that fits in the cracks. Start reading free →

✍️ Behind the Scenes

My granddaughters are still adjusting to the school-year schedule. All summer they stayed up too late, and now that the bus comes before 6 a.m., they arrive at my house every afternoon half-asleep, and I've spent the week feeding them a snack while they blink their way back to consciousness. No homework yet, so we've got a little runway before the real test hits. Also: the dishwasher died this week. We're replacing it this weekend. That's the whole report.

See you next Saturday, fellow sleuths—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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