Set in the 1980s, the Jennifer Pierce mystery series features a prototypical small town in Maine going through the transition from a self-reliant semi-rural mill town to distant suburb of the information age. In Barnburner, secretary turned reporter Jennifer Pierce finds the incendiary mix of a fundamentalist preacher and an unabashedly pagan back-to-the-earth couple could be worth a story-and someone's life. When a new computer BBS pops up in town around the same time, there are complications that reach far beyond Maine, and as close as her own front door.