Other books that might interest you

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  The Almanack

  Martine Bailey

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  The philosophy of time, destiny and the stars pervade this intricate historical mystery in which a young woman determines to avenge her mother’s death. 1752, Midsummer. Following a desperate summons from her mother, Tabitha Hart departs London for her home village of Netherlea – only to discover that her mother has drowned. Determined to discover the truth about the Widow Hart’s death, Tabitha consults her almanack and uncovers a series of cryptic notes describing her mother’s terror of someone she names only as ‘D’. Teaming up with young writer Nat Starling, Tabitha begins a race against time to unmask ‘D’ before more deaths follow. But as the summer draws to a close and the snow sets in, cutting off Netherlea from the outside world, Tabitha and Nat are forced to face the darkest hours of their lives.

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  Legend of the Lost Ass

  Karen Winters Schwartz

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  I think we should take it through Guatemala. A random text from a stranger inspires agoraphobic Colin to leave New York. His first stop is Brownsville, Texas, where he meets the sender, half-Mayan Luci Bolon, her ancient but feisty great-uncle Ernesto, and Miss Mango, a bright-orange Kubota tractor. Ernesto’s dream is that Miss Mango be driven to Belize and given to the family he left behind nearly seventy years ago. Colin agrees to join Luci on the long journey through Central America. In 1949, seventeen-year-old Belizean Ernesto falls painfully in love with Michaela, an American redhead nearly twice his age. Their brief but intense affair changes everything Ernesto has ever known. When she leaves, Ernesto is devastated. Determined to find her, he “borrows” a donkey from his uncle and starts off for Texas. He meets a flamboyant fellow traveler, and the three of them—two young men and the donkey they name Bee—make their way to America. The past and present unfold through two journeys that traverse beautiful landscapes. Painful histories are soothed by new friendships and payments of old debts.

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  Hood: The Scribe of Sherwood

  Iain Meadows

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  England 1201 in the reign of King John and someone is looking for the truth about Robin Hood…Scribe Alan-a-Dale ventures into Sherwood Forest. As a storyteller he knows one man’s laments are another’s inspiration. Caught in a storm he finds Little John and Will Scarlet in their shelter. Seeking refuge he joins them and finds that John is eager to tell a tale, just not the one that Alan was bargaining for…Entertaining in the Great Hall of Nottingham castle, Alan-a-Dale and his songs and stories bring warmth to a cold castle night. Stories of passion and adventure that give the Lord High Sheriff, Phillip De Nicholay, cause to reflect… And share a secret with Alan…

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  Riverboat

  Douglas Hirt

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  During the golden age of Mississippi, people from all walks of life climbed aboard the riverboats to help forge a nation. The stories of a gambler, a landowner, chambermaid, and runaway slave are told.

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  Barren Island

  Carol Zoref

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  How does one remember a world that literally no longer exists? How do the moral imperatives to do so correspond to the personal needs that make it possible? Told from the point-of-view of Marta Eisenstein Lane on the occasion of her eightieth birthday, Barren Island is the story of a factory island in New York's Jamaica Bay, where the city's dead horses and other large animals were rendered into glue and fertilizer from the mid-nineteenth century until the 1930s. The island itself is as central to the story as the members of the Jewish, Greek, Italian, Irish, and African-American factory families that inhabit it, including those who live their entire lives steeped in the smell of burning animal flesh. 
  The story begins with the arrival of the Eisenstein family, immigrants from Eastern Europe, and explores how the political and social upheavals of the 1930s affect them and their neighbors in the years between the stock market crash of October 1929 and the start of World War II ten years later. Labor strife, union riots, the New Deal, the World's Fair, and the struggle to save European Jews from the growing threat of Nazi terror inform this novel as much as the explosion of civil and social liberties between the two World Wars.

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  The Cricket on the Hearth

  Charles Dickens

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  John Peerybingle, a carrier, lives with his wife Dot (who is much younger than he), their baby, their nanny Tilly Slowboy, and a mysterious lodger. A cricket constantly chirps on the hearth and acts as a guardian angel to the family, at one point assuming a human voice to warn John that his suspicions that Dot is having an affair with the lodger are wrong.The life of the Peerybingles frequently intersects with that of Caleb Plummer, a poor toymaker employed by the miser Mr. Tackleton. Caleb has a blind daughter Bertha and a son Edward, who travelled to South America and seemingly never returned. Tackleton is now on the eve of marrying Edward's sweetheart, May.In the end, the lodger is revealed to be none other than Edward. Tackleton's heart is melted by the Christmas season, like Ebeneezer Scrooge, and surrenders May to marry her true love. It is suggested ambiguously that Bertha regains her sight at the end. (Wikipedia)

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