Sylvia Fulton is a ten-years-old girl from Boston who stayed in Charleston, South Carolina, before the opening of the civil war. She loves her new home, and her dear friends. However, political tensions are rising, and things start to change. Through these changes, Silvia gets to know the world better: from Estrella, her maid, she starts to understand what it is to be a slave, from her unjust teacher she learns that not all beautiful people are perfect, and from the messages she carries to Fort Sumter she learns what is the meaning of danger. However, this is a lovely book, written mostly for children.

Plucky eight year old Anne Nelson, living in Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod, is determined to bring the Revolutionary War to an end so that she can be reunited with her soldier father. Will she succeed in carrying an important message from Boston to Newburyport, warning the American troops to be prepared, or will she be caught by the English ships patrolling the harbor?

These stories detail the lives of soldiers and civilians during the American Civil War. This is the 1909 edition. The 1909 edition omits six stories from the original 1891 edition; these six stories are added to this recording (from an undated English edition). The 1891 edition is entitled In The Midst Of Life; Tales Of Soldiers And Civilians. The Wikipedia entry for the book uses the title Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – after December 26, 1913) was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

The Maid of Maiden lane is a wonderful love story in which Mrs. Barr intertwines the hot political and social issues that were occurring in America during the last decade of the 18th century with an excellent love story plot. Some of those issues include: the moral dilemma and debate over the French Revolution, and how that event touched the lives of the immigrants in America; the prejudices between the immigrants from England, and those from France or Holland, and how those animosities affected the ordinary lives of the people; and the political debate over titles, foreign policy, and such things(for example)as where the capital of the nation was to reside, New York or Philadelphia...

Edward the Confessor is very weak and will die soon. But with no son to succeed him, who will gain the throne? The common folk and loyal Saxon barons in England want Harold, while the Norman barons and the people in Normandy, France want Duke William. They claim Edward gave William the throne. Who is right? Will Britain be Normanized? - Summary by Esther ben Simonides Cast List King Edward the Confessor: Beth ThomasHarold, Earl of Wessex: Adele de PignerollesGyrth, brother to Harold; Cecilia, daughter...

The Gods Are Athirst (French: Les dieux ont soif, also translated as The Gods Are Thirsty or The Gods Will Have Blood) is a 1912 novel by Anatole France. The story follows the young Parisian painter Évariste Gamelin, who rises speedily from his humble beginnings to a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal in the second and third year of the French Revolution. In brilliant prose, Anatole France describes how Évariste's idealism turns into fanaticism, and he allows more and more heads to roll and blood to flow, placing himself and those he loves into ever greater danger.

In 1866, only men uprooted by war had reason to ride into Tubacca, Arizona, a nondescript town as shattered and anonymous as the veterans drifting through it. So when Drew Rennie, newly discharged from Forrest’s Confederate scouts, arrived leading everything he owned behind him—his thoroughbred stud Shiloh, a mare about to foal, and a mule—he knew his business would not be questioned. To anyone in Tubacca there could be only one extraordinary thing about Drew, and that he could not reveal: his name, Rennie...

Drew Rennie, served as a cavalry scout in Confederate general John Hunt Morgan's command. He had left home in 1862 after a final break with his harsh grandfather, who despised him since his birth because of his mother's runaway marriage to a Texan. During the final year of conflict Drew has the additional responsibility of looking out for his headstrong fifteen-year-old cousin Boyd, who has run away from home to join Morgan's command and has a lot to learn in the school of hard knocks the army provides. The story follows the two of them and a new friend, Anson Kirby, through campaigns in Kentucky, Tennessee and later on deeper into the South, first with Morgan and later under Forrest.

The Log of a Cowboy is an account of a five-month drive of 3,000 cattle from Brownsville, Texas, to Montana in 1882 along the Great Western Cattle Trail. Although the book is fiction, it is firmly based on Adams's own experiences on the trail, and it is considered by many to be the best account of cowboy life in literature. Adams was disgusted by the unrealistic cowboy fiction being published in his day; The Log of a Cowboy was his response. It is still in print, and even modern reviewers consider it a compelling classic...

Romantic history of the fictional Don Sebastian, which was suggested to the author by a plaque commemorating a mysterious "Portuguese stranger". There is a historical backdrop, but the story itself and the characters are figments of her imagination. - Summary by Lynne T

A Tale of the Great Plague. 1666 was a difficult year in London. With its sordid materialism and its coarse handling of things most sacred, not merely does Manning see, as an Englishwoman, the grandeur of its struggles, but she sees its best embodiment in the tragedy of an almost perfect life. In her description of the plague , followed by The Great Fire, Manning is taken out of her comfort zone to the sordid realities. Her answer is to take Mistress Cherry to a country house in Berkshire, where peace and tranquility are to be found. - Summary by Lynne Thompson

The scene of this story is laid in Kentucky. Its heroine is a small girl, who is known as the Little Colonel, on account of her fancied resemblance to an old-school Southern gentleman, whose fine estate and old family are famous in the region. (Introduction taken from original book.)

Joel, a crippled boy, cannot play with the children and has nothing to care about. Rabbi Phineas helps him to find something he can do and tells him the reason that he is so kind is because of a boy from his hometown of Nazareth. Soon stories are going about everywhere of miracles, and some people think that the Messiah has come. Then someone tells Joel he should ask for his back to be healed. Will Joel be able to find the miracle worker?

Sir Thomas More is a collaborative Elizabethan play by Anthony Munday and others depicting the life and death of Thomas More. It survives only in a single manuscript, now owned by the British Library. The manuscript is notable because three pages of it are considered to be in the hand of William Shakespeare and for the light it sheds on the collaborative nature of Elizabethan drama and the theatrical censorship of the era. The play dramatizes events in More's life, both real and legendary, in an episodic manner in 17 scenes, unified only by the rise and fall of More's fortunes.

The first book in the political Palliser series, the novel deals with parliamentary politics, while concurrently devoting its pages to much more intricate issues. Presenting three parallel stories, the parliamentary novel draws its attention to three contrasting young women, who are beset with arduous decisions concerning courtship and marriage. Additionally, the novel covers topics including women in conventional society and their discernment, while illustrating the tentative stages of marriage with all the attributes of sacrifice, compromise and temptation...

Phineas Redux is the fourth in Trollope’s series of six Palliser novels. At the end of Phineas Finn, the second novel in the series, Phineas had to return to Ireland to marry his childhood sweetheart, who was expecting their child. As Phineas Redux opens, Phineas is working as a Poorhouse Inspector in Ireland. His wife having died in childbirth, he finds his existence dull and unsatisfying. Phineas’ returns to England; his career advances and his romantic adventures continue, while we encounter many familiar characters including Glencora and Plantagenet Palliser, Madame Goesler, and Lizzie Eustace and her husband the Reverand Mr. Aemelius.

Framley Parsonage is the fourth novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire", first published in serial form in the Cornhill Magazine in 1860. "Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic." — W. H. Auden

The thirty-five year-old (hence utterly over-the-hill) Miss Margaret Mackenzie, having devoted her life to others, suddenly finds herself with no one to care for, and in possession of a moderate fortune. Having money, she is now much sought-after and no longer universally deemed too old to marry. Partly because she has spent her life taking care of the brother whose money she has now inherited, she has no experience of wealth or popularity. Miss Mackenzie is the definition of “other-oriented. (Indeed, Trollope originally considered naming the novel, and his heroine, “Griselda”, presumably to invoke the folkloric character’s qualities of stolid obedience and endless patience...

Time to do a short Continental trip with Trollope and see if we agree with Walpole. "...not only Trollope's very best shorter book, but one of the most charming idylls in English literature. - . . It has all the colour and richness and cohesion of something done irresistibly." -Walpole . The storyline is simple - boy meets girl - parents object - trials and tribulations follow - and then the story reaches it's conclusion - but you will need to find what that is for yourself !

"A Mid-Victorian Christmas Tale"; tells of a night time encounter between relatives who had never before met, resulting in minor injuries, embarassment, and Trollope's usual 'nice' social interactions.

The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on directing the play as a tragedy. Since this initial production, directors have had to contend with the dual nature of this play. The play concerns an aristocratic Russian woman and her family as they return to the family's estate (which includes a large and well-known cherry orchard) just before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage...

This is a fictionalized biography of the wife of the reformer Dr. Martin Luther. In the author's words, he hopes that "people may learn to know the wife of its greatest man,—not by name only, but as her husband's 'helpmeet,' in the truest sense of the word, as a pattern of domestic virtue, and as a pearl among women." - Summary by Dory Smith

The novel opens with Carl Foster, a recently qualified doctor, coming to London to try and make his fortune. He meets a famous tenor, Signor Alresca, who suffers a dreadful injury backstage and Foster tends to him. He thus meets the lead soprano, Rosetta Rosa, and falls hopelessly in love with her.Alresca takes Foster under his wing and they travel to Alresca's home in Bruges. It is clear to Foster that Alresca has some strange obsession. Foster also notices a stranger who seems to be dogging his footsteps.Things take an even more sinister turn when Alresca inexplicably dies. . .

Young Adult historical fiction of a young man joining the Union Army and taking part in the Great Locomotive Chase.