fiction

Eleven-year-old John Hale has already survived one brutal Dakota winter, and now he's about to experience one of the deadliest blizzards in American history. The storm of 1888 was a monster, a frozen hurricane that slammed into America's midwest without warning. Within hours, America's prairie would be buried under ten feet of snow. Hundreds would be dead, thousands terrified and lost and freezing. John never wanted to move to the wide-open prairie. He's a city kid, not a tough pioneer! And his inner strength is seriously tested when he finds himself trapped in the blinding snow, the wind like a giant crushing hammer, pounding him over and over again. Will John ever find his way home?.

When thirteen-year-old Samantha returns home to her family's cattle ranch in Nevada, she's nervous. She moved away two years ago to recover from a bad fall off her beloved mustang, Blackie, and she's still not sure she can get back in the saddle. She's having trouble bonding with her new horse, Ace, the other ranchers treat her like the boss's spoiled daughter, and Blackie has been missing since the day of Sam's fateful accident.

"Robbed on the train platform as soon as he arrives in the city, eleven-year-old Oscar Starling soon finds himself in the middle of the Great Chicago Fire when he chases after his thief, who is herself in need of rescue." --.

"Razi, a local fisherboy, is watching turtle eggs hatch when he sees a boat bobbing into view. With a chill, he notices a small, still hand hanging over the side. Inside is Zheng, who's escaped a shipwreck and is full of tales of sea monsters and missing treasure. But the villains who are after Zheng are soon after Razi and his sister, Shifa, too! And so begins an exhilarating escapade in the shadow of the biggest sea monster of them all"--.

After smallpox takes their parents, seventeen-year-old Camille supports herself and her sister by magically transforming herself into a baroness in the court at Versailles, then faces difficult choices as the French Revolution looms.

In 1776, fifteen-year-old Francisca escapes a dangerous life in the Bahamas by posing as a wealthy shipwreck victim, and soon finds herself a spy for George Washington in New York.

Alice Whittier, a crusading young journalist in 1931, leaves New York and travels to Scottsboro, Alabama, to cover the trial of nine African-American boys who have been accused of raping two white prostitutes who happened to be riding on the same freight train as the boys.

Follows the final days of Mordechai Anielewicz, leader of the Jewish Fighting Organization that led the insurrection against Nazi control in Poland during the Holocaust.

A Chinese boy, orphaned by cholera and raised in Britain, is trained to work at Oxford's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation, the world's center for translation and magic through silver-working, where he must choose between competing loyalties.

"Taken hostage by a failed bank robber while attending an open house, eight anxiety-prone strangers--including a redemption-seeking bank director, two couples who would fix their marriage, and a plucky octogenarian--discover their unexpected common traits"--OCLC.