Erica R. Buteau is a New Hampshire author, historian, and independent publisher whose work is rooted in the people, landscapes, resilience, and complicated histories of northern New England. From her home in Milan, she writes atmospheric North Country fiction, accessible nonfiction, true crime history, memoir, and practical guides designed to help readers feel informed, understood, and less alone.Her fiction blends small-town secrets, crime, romance, family history, and a strong sense of place. She is the author of the Androscoggin After Dark series, a collection of dark romantic suspense stories set along the river towns and backroads of New Hampshire's North Country, as well as related novels and spinoffs that explore the people, mysteries, and buried histories of the region. Her nonfiction draws on research, lived experience, and a lifelong interest in the ways ordinary people survive extraordinary circumstances.Erica holds a master's degree in public history, a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, and an associate degree in liberal arts. She is also a New Hampshire Emergency Medical Responder, homesteader, researcher, data analyst, and the founder of Stearns Brook Press, an independent publishing imprint dedicated to compelling stories, useful books, and voices grounded in real places and real lives.She lives with her husband, Rick, at Legacy Acres at Stearns Brook Farm, where everyday life includes poultry, gardens, honey, a roadside farm stand, an ever-growing collection of projects, and the beautiful disorder of building something meaningful from the ground up. Her experiences in public history, emergency response, rural life, entrepreneurship, grief work, and community service shape both the questions she asks and the characters she creates.Across genres, her aim remains the same: to create books with heart, substance, atmosphere, and purpose.Whether she is writing about a river that keeps secrets, a historical crime nearly lost to time, or the practical realities of navigating a difficult season, Erica approaches every book with curiosity, compassion, honesty, and respect for the reader. Her work reflects a central belief: stories can entertain us, preserve what might otherwise disappear, and remind us that survival is rarely simple, but it is always worth examining.