This book is a collection of articles originally appearing in a variety of Vermont newspapers. Stephen Morris is an indefatigable chronicler of life in Beyonder, and this is his best work. His offerings on Mud Season and Vermont Holidays is particularly memorable.

Tales and More Tales of Beyonder is part three of "Stories and Tunes," Stephen Morris's "four-part" trilogy of life in the rural North.

The yellow school bus is as much a part of the rural landscape as the red barn or the hay silo. Sometimes we forget about the precious cargo.

I've never met Lamson. I don't even know his first name (or is "Lamson" his first name?), but for the past eight years I have entrusted him, twice a day, with the safety of my children. Lamson is the bus driver who has the route that extends to the far reaches of our hamlet. Although less than ten miles between here and the school, it is a forty-five minute bus route that takes place almost entirely on unpaved, hilly back roads. The route passes dairy farms, rushing brooks, sugar bushes—the best of Beyonder. But to experience it, one must brave the nether side of Vermont's scenic roads—mud, washboard, and ice.

Next up from The Public Press: the first three books, revised and improved, in Stephen Morris's Vermont epic, the four part trilogy.

Life has a way of interfering with art. Beyond Yonder, The King of Vermont, and Darwin and the Tunnel of Love were always intended by the author to be a single work, telling the epic story of the daily lives and times of the inhabitants of the tiny hamlet of Upper Granville, Vermont.

But life intervenes. It happens! Day jobs take priority. Parents grow old. Little publishers sell to big publishers. Editors move on to different jobs. Opportunities knock. Kids leave home. It happens! It happens! And it happens!

As a result, the epic novel came out in fits and spurts. First, Beyond Yonder. That's when the publisher got sold. Then, King of Vermont, that's when the editor quit. Meanwhile, a real life equivalent to Upper Granville began appearing on the pages of the Vermont Sunday Magazine. Now, the region had a name, Beyonder, to describe that part of Vermont that is next to nothing, but not far away from anywhere. Tales and More Tails is a collection of Beyonder's "Stories and Tunes."

The Public Press is pleased to present Beyonder in its original glory – ficticious and non-ficticious. This is the Director's cut, digitally remastered, and in full Dolby sound. This is Beyonder at the peak of foliage, at the depth of Mud Season despair, in the procreational frenzy of the vernal kaboom, and in the enveloping eternity of an August night watching the meteors shower in a part of the world where you can actually still see them.