A series by Nolan Maren
The Penrose Street Stories
Everybody in Aberly knows your business. Most of them are right about it.
The Penrose Street Stories follow the grown-ups of Aberly, Pennsylvania: people with jobs, mortgages, grown children and old habits, who find that some of the most important choices of their lives are still ahead of them.
The town
Welcome to Aberly
Aberly, Pennsylvania, is a slate town at the foot of Blue Mountain: steep streets of brick twins, a diner that opens at five, a Welsh chapel with a new roof, a bowling alley that has been open since 1961.
Each novel belongs to one person’s year and stands on its own. Read them in order and the town fills in around you: the bus contractor from Book One finds Book Two’s heroine a lawyer, the chapel organist turns up at everyone’s big moments, and nobody gets to keep a secret for long.
Warm, funny, honest novels about family, late love, money, loyalty, and the courage to begin again without pretending the past didn’t matter.
Reading order
The books, in order
Every book stands alone, and Books 1–3 overlap in time. The recommended order is publication order.
Book One
The Last Stop on Mill Row
A school-bus contractor finds her grandchildren on her own route sheet, and the man she can’t stand on the other side of a custody fight.
Maggie Lisowski and Leo Ferrante · August 2025 – August 2026
Book Two
The Year Rita Got Lucky
A night-shift clerk wins $3.2 million, and finds out who needs her, who loves her, and the difference.
Rita Szabo and Vince Pagano · November 2025 – September 2026
Book Three
Sing It Back to Me
The chapel organist is losing her hearing; the choir’s loudest bass can’t read a note.
Roz Bevan and Huw Jenkins · March – December 2026
Book Four
Before the Creek Rises
A new councilwoman holds the deciding vote, and she’s falling for the farmer selling the land.
Diane Oberholtzer and Wes Kemmerer · January – September 2027
More Penrose Street novels are on the way. Newsletter subscribers hear about them first.
The reading promise
Every Penrose Street novel gives you
- A grown-up heroine with a real job and a real family.
- A love story that arrives late and is worth the wait.
- A small town that feels lived in.
- Humor in the hard parts.
- An ending that’s earned, not handed out.
The newsletter
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