A riveting true account of gold rush fever in mid-nineteenth-century America, rich with the thrilling exploits of daring fortune seekers and dangerous outlaws America was never the same after January 24, 1848. It was on that day that a carpenter named James Marshall discovered a tiny nugget of gold while building a sawmill at Sutter's Fort, just east of Sacramento, California. Marshall's find ignited a fever the nation had never known before, drawing people from all over the country to the West Coast with high hopes of getting rich quick. Over the next six years, three hundred thousand prospectors raced to the California gold fields to make their fortunes, leaving their lands and families behind in order to chase a dream of easy wealth, but all too often encountering a reality of lawlessness, disease, cruelty, and death. A former columnist for the New York Times, author Fred Rosen takes readers back to the seminal moment when the American dream... Views: 13
From the Newbery Medal--winning author of Dead End in Norvelt, the uproarious final volume of Jack Henry storiesAccording to his new motto--A WRITER'S JOB IS TO TURN HIS WORST EXPERIENCES INTO MONEY--Jack Gantos's alter ego Jack Henry is going to be filty rich even before he gets out of junior high, for his life is filled with the worst experiences imaginable. For instance, in the course of the few months covered in this closing cycle of interlinked stories, Jack is humiliated by a gorgeous syncronized swimmer, gets a tattoo the size of an ant on his big toe, flubs an IQ test and nearly fails wood shop, and has to dig up his dead dog not once but twice. And that's not the half of it!At the close of this final book of semi-autobiographical stories, Jack may not end up rolling in dough, but he will prove once again "a survivor, an 'everyboy' whose world may be wacko but whose heart and spirit are eminently sane" (School Library... Views: 13
Lady Iris has just been matched with the most selfish and arrogant gentleman in all of London, and there’s nothing she can do to get out of the marriage. Views: 13
Born to race. Destined to fall.Ainsley "Ace" Vaughn is one of the best drivers in the world. She also happens to be female--and in the male-dominated world of racing, that means season after season on the bench of a cut-rate F3 team. That is, until she's recruited by the world's best F1 team to become their first female driver.And when smoking hot Enzo Lazio--the driver she's idolized since her hormones started working--is assigned as her mentor, Ainsley is convinced she's died and gone to heaven.For Enzo, the shock of having a female driver on the team is nothing compared to his stunned instant attraction to Ainsley--compounded when he finds out she really can drive. He might be racing's most notorious bad boy, but he can't resist a woman who can keep up with his horsepower on and off the track.Their explosive passion refuses to be contained, but a public affair could destroy both of their careers. Can they downshift before it's too late--or will they crash and burn in the name of love? Views: 13
Eleven-year-old Horace j. Edwards is an ordinary boy whose family has just moved to Niles, Michigan. But on the first day of sixth grade, mysterious things start to happen. His grandfather dies and Horace receives a strange gift—a stone scarab beetle. As he works to uncover the secrets surrounding his grandfather's death and the beetle, Horace is transported back in time to the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna. He meets the future pharaoh, young King Tut, and together the two boys become engaged in a fight to save the city from total destruction and Egypt itself from Tut's evil uncle Smenk. In the process, Horace discovers that he is the heir to an order of guardians, known as the Keepers of Time. The Secret of the Scarab Beetle is the first book in the middle-grade fantasy series Horace j. Edwards and the Time Keepers. Views: 13
Americans today have a love/hate relationship with France, but in How the French Saved America Tom Shachtman shows that without France, there might not be a United States of America.To the rebelling colonies, French assistance made the difference between looming defeat and eventual triumph. Even before the Declaration of Independence was issued, King Louis XVI and French foreign minister Vergennes were aiding the rebels. After the Declaration, that assistance broadened to include wages for our troops; guns, cannon, and ammunition; engineering expertise that enabled victories and prevented defeats; diplomatic recognition when no other country would give it; safe havens for privateers; battlefield leadership by veteran officers; and the army and fleet that made possible the Franco-American victory at Yorktown. Nearly ten percent of those who fought and died for the American cause were French. Those who fought and survived, in addition to... Views: 13
Theo was kicked out of his home and fell in with a pimp. After escaping the pimp, he meets a group of rent boys and makes his own family. Views: 13
Amazon.com ReviewDid you ever wonder where all those mischievous vampires roaming the globe in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles came from? In this, the third book in the series, we find out. That raucous rock-star vampire Lestat interrupts the 6,000-year slumber of the mama of all bloodsuckers, Akasha, Queen of the Damned.Akasha was once the queen of the Nile (she has a bit in common with the Egyptian goddess Isis), and it's unwise to rile her now that she's had 60 centuries of practice being undead. She is so peeved about male violence that she might just have to kill most of them. And she has her eye on handsome Lestat with other ideas as well.If you felt that the previous books in the series weren't gory and erotic enough, this one should quench your thirst (though it may cause you to omit organ meats from your diet). It also boasts God's plenty of absorbing lore that enriches the tale that went before, including the back-story of the boy in Queen of the Damned is the ultimate multigenerational saga. --Tim AppeloFrom Publishers WeeklyThe cult audience for Rice's two previous vampire novels, Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat , will undoubtedly broaden with this third book, which features the same characters and a more complex plot. As before, Rice tells her story in fine melodramatic style, overwriting with zest and exuberance: the text pulses with menace, mystery and violence, and with sensuality verging on erotica. Here Lestat and all other vampires pay the price for his obsessive need for fame, his reckless honesty in describing the "blood drinkers" among us, and his frenzied rock concert in San Francisco. Lestat's kiss has awakened Queen Akasha from her 6000 year sleep. She immediately begins a wholesale slaughter of most of the world's vampires, sparing only a small remnant (including Lestat) who she expects will join her in a crazed crusade against male mortals. Meanwhile, vampires and psychic humans around the globe are having the same terrifying dream in which twin red-haired women weep over the body of another woman, whose eyes and brains are on a plate nearby. As Rice gradually reveals the significance of the dream, she also focuses on Jesse, who works for the Telamasca, a secret society that collects data on those with paranormal powers. Though she ingeniously pulls together the various plot strands, Rice then almost loses the reader in philosophic overkill. She regains her verve in the final chapter, however, promising yet another mesmerizing installment of the Vampire Chronicles. 150,000 first printing: Literary Guild main selection. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Views: 13
It's the '90s and Dot, Saul and Owen are living together on the fringes of the Hoxton art scene -- shoplifting, dole-scrounging, swapping drugs, clothes and beds. Fifteen years later they are drawn back into each other's lives but can they happily relive the past or will they rekindle the passions that nearly destroyed them? Views: 13
As with the first two novels of The Moosepath League, Van Reid again proves himself an incomparable storyteller with a spellbinding tale that is both lighthearted comedy and touching drama.Daniel Plainway opens during preparations for Christmas 1896 in snowy Maine. Holiday cheer eludes country lawyer Daniel Plainway as he contemplates the demise and disappearance of a neighboring family with whom he had shared countless happy times. Not a man to forget dear friends, when Plainway learns that a missing portrait of his friend's daughter has been recovered, he sets out on an odyssey that changes his life and the lives of an orphaned child, a large-hearted ballplayer, and an extraordinary woman he meets along the way.Soon Daniel crosses paths with the irrepressible Tobias Walton, his trusty companion Sundry Moss, and the distinguished members of the Moosepath League, a band of true originals who approach events earnestly enough but always seem to leave a good deal of... Views: 13
In this first book of "The Dragonheart Saga", the shocking assassination of newly-elected President Dunkelzahn shatters the dawn of a new era for the denizens of the "Shadowrun" universe. Now as shadowrunners, Secret Service Agents, and mega-corp execs scramble for the reins of power, only a miracle can save the world from total annihilation! Views: 13
