This Time Might Be Different by award-winning writer Elaine Ford is a collection of stories in which deftly drawn characters contemplate difficult choices: a young girl might have coffee with a stranger; a guy might decide to rob the local laundromat; or a widow might get in the car and just keep driving.

Underneath the commonplace--running into an old lover, a longstanding feud, an unspoken divorce--readers will find a trace of dark humor, a sinister underpinning, or a profound irony.

Of Ford's rural-Maine-set novel Monkey Bay, The New York Times said: "In its unsparing but sympathetic treatment of its characters and locale, Elaine Ford's book is reminiscent of Andrew Wyeth's stark paintings, which use the terrain of northern New England to explore a much larger emotional landscape."