"Snowbirds will turn your image of the Amish upside down. Lucy will grab your heart and run away with it." —Robin MacCready, winner of the Edgar award for Buried Every year, Lucy waits eagerly for the arrival of the "snowbirds," the Old Order Amish who come trundling into Florida on buses from the north, bringing Lucy's best friend Alice, with whom she's spent every winter she can remember. This winter is different. At sixteen, Alice is in the middle of "Rumspringa," a season in which Amish teens try out forbidden temptations, in order to get them out of their system. Lucy is part of a different sect, in which teens aren't allowed such bold experimentation, and she's fighting to keep up as Alice races from one wild party to the next. Then, one night after just such a party, Alice vanishes. Wracked by guilt, Lucy knows that she should have been watching out for Alice, but instead, she was kissing Faron, an Older Order boy shunned by his society.... Views: 5
The launch of an exciting, hilarious new series narrated by an underdog every Minecrafter can relate to.Gerald Creeper Jr. is a self-proclaimed pacifist (which, by the way, has nothing to do with a pacifier), but he finds himself in the war zone when he starts his first year at Mob Middle School. At his new school, every monster in the Overworld is jockeying for power, and the skeletons seem to have it out for him.Armed with a 30-day plan (he can thank his mom's self-help obsession for that), Gerald makes it his mission to use his brains—instead of his blasts—to survive the school year. It all starts with:Day 1: Come up with a nickname. (Gerald is not gonna cut it.)Day 2: Keep a low profile. (Not easy when your new best friend is a super bouncy slime!)Day 3: Avoid being target practice for skeletons, and somehow get in with super-popular Eddy Enderman. (Easier said than done.)The first book in this laugh-out-loud... Views: 5
Emma Bontrager is spending her first Christmas alone after her husband of 45 years, Henry, passed away in July. Although the Amish don't normally allow animals in their homes, a big, fat, orange barn cat keeps coming into Emma's house. She shoos the cat away, but it continues to appear in her house, settling on Henry's favorite wingchair. But the cat isn't the only Christmas visitor: a group of young people help bring the Christmas spirit to Emma, reminding her that love and hope abide. Views: 5
The story of the world's largest, longest, and best financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Until now recorded only in academic works, this 10-year venture, led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering and including scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and led to fame, shipwreck, and "one of the most tragic and ghastly trials of suffering in the annals of maritime and arctic history." Views: 5
