Showing titles in History & Culture

Ned Kelly was a thief, a bank robber and a murderer. Yet, when Ned was sentenced to death, thousands of people rallied to save his life. He stood up to the authorities and fought for what he believed in. He defended the rights of people who had no power.

Despite my best intentions, I was beginning to understand how my dad saw the world. The shadows haunting every living thing. The secrets inside the lies wrapped in bullshit. Even Gracie’s box of pills was beginning to make sense. For the past five years, Hayley Kincain and her father, Andy, have been on the road, trying to outrun the memories that haunt them both. They moved back to Andy’s hometown to try a “normal” life, but the horrors he saw in the war threaten to destroy their lives.

Chronicling the story of the last Africans brought illegally to America in 1860, African Town is a powerful and stunning novel-in-verse. In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and...

This young adult adaptation brings to light the shocking truth about how not every voter is treated equally. After the election of Barack Obama, a rollback of voting rights occurred, punctuated by a 2013 Supreme Court decision that undid the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Here are the real events that inspired Gary Paulsen to write Brian Robeson’s story in Hatchet, The River, Brian’s Winter, Brian’s Return, and Brian's Hunt: a stint as a volunteer emergency worker; the death that became the pilot’s death in Hatchet; plane crashes he’s seen; and his own near misses. He takes listeners on his first hunting trips, showing the wonder and solace of nature along with his hilarious mishaps and mistakes. He shares special memories, such as the night he attracted every mosquito in the county, and how he met the moose who made it personal.

En Lugares asombrosos. Travesías insólitas y otras maneras extrañas de conocer el mundo podrás viajar -con Luisito como compañero y guía- a los lugares más recónditos de uno, dos y más continentes: a sitios abandonados que conservan la huella de un hecho inexplicable; espacios delineados por trazos y personajes místicos; habitáculos hechizados por almas que vagan entre dimensiones desconocidas; zonas marcadas por los errores de la historia y sus fantasmas, y pintorescas comisuras del orbe con el sello de una costumbre o un suceso perturbador.

"This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the...

For fans of Fever 1793 comes the story of a young woman paving her own path and falling in love during the Great Plague of 1348, from the award-winning creator of What the Night Sings. Edyth grew up in a quiet village with a loving family, before losing everything she holds dear in the blink of...

In this striking new novel by the critically acclaimed author of Allegedly and Monday’s Not Coming, Tiffany D. Jackson tells the story of three Brooklyn teens who plot to turn their murdered friend into a major rap star by pretending he's still alive. Brooklyn, 1998. Biggie Smalls was right...

After unwittingly helping her mother poison King Louis XIV, 17-year-old alchemist Mirabelle Monvoisin is forced to see her mother's Shadow Society in a horrifying new light: They're not heroes of the people, as they've always claimed to be, but murderers. She herself included. Mira tries to ease her guilt by brewing helpful curatives, but her hunger tonics and headache remedies cannot right past wrongs or save the dissenters whom her mother vows to purge.

In Pork Belly Tacos with a Side of Anxiety, Yvonne Castañeda shares vibrant stories of her childhood growing up in Miami as the daughter of humble immigrants from Mexico and Cuba … and how she came to develop an unhealthy relationship with food. To help ease her mami’s nervios, Yvonne becomes a perfectionist from a young age, achieving high grades at school and mastering the piano. But as her Cuban family members openly make comments about her puberty, Yvonne enters a new phase of self-consciousness that begins her obsession with weight.

“Endearing, exciting, and very clever, Danielle Rollins' Stolen Time is the kind of time-travel story I'm always on the lookout for. I know I can't really speak for him, but I feel like Doc Brown would be onboard with this one.”—Kendare Blake, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the...

This is the memoir written by Bella Kuligowska Zucker, the only person in her family to survive the Holocaust. In September 1939, Bella was a carefree teenager living in Poland when the German army struck. She was rounded up with her friends and family and sent to a series of grim Jewish ghettos. After loved ones were separated and lost through the war years, Bella survived by changing her identity. After finding the birth certificate of a Catholic girl five years her senior, she became Sabina Mazurek. Then she went into the eye of the storm, Germany.

From the critically acclaimed author of The Borden Murders comes the thrilling story of Mary Surratt, the first woman to be executed by the US government, for her alleged involvement in the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. A dubious distinction belongs to Mary Surratt: on July 7, 1865, she...

There is a saying: knowledge is power. The secret is this. Knowledge, applied at the right time and place, is more than power. It’s magic. That’s what the Black Panther Party did. They called up this magic and launched a revolution. In the beginning, it was a story like any other. It could have been yours and it could have been mine. But once it got going, it became more than any one person could have imagined.

During World War II, a group of American fighter pilots roamed the skies over China and Burma, menacing the Japanese war effort without letup. Flamboyant, daring, and courageous, they were called the Flying Tigers. The Tigers - who had been recruited from the Army, Navy, and Marines - first saw action as a volunteer group fighting on the side of the Chiang Kai-shek's China against Japan. Trained in the unconventional air-combat tactics of their maverick leader Claire Lee Chennault, they racked up some of the most impressive air victory records of World War II.

In this riveting, beyond-belief true story from the author of The Borden Murders, meet the five children who captivated the entire world. When the Dionne Quintuplets were born on May 28, 1934, weighing a grand total of just over 13 pounds, no one expected them to live so much as an hour...

One evening, against the wishes of his frightened wife, young Puritan Goodman Brown embarks on a mysterious errand that leads him through the skeletal woods to a Black Mass being held by his fellow townsmen. His life forever changed by contact with the evil congregation. And his horror is amplified by the attendance of one participant in whom he had placed his greatest trust.

These essays recount his adventures alone and with friends, taking listeners through the seasons. In Paulsen’s north country, every expedition is a major one, and often hilarious. Once again Gary Paulsen demonstrates why he is one of America’s most beloved writers, for he shows us fishing and hunting as pleasure, as art, as companionship, and as source of life’s deepest lessons.

Some true crimes reveal themselves in bits and pieces over time. One such case is the Florida School for Boys, a.k.a. the Dozier School, a place where - rather than reforming the children in their care - school officials tortured, raped, and killed them. Opened in 1900, the school closed in 2011 after a Department of Justice investigation substantiated allegations of routine beatings and killings made by about 100 survivors. Thus far, forensic anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle and her team from the University of South Florida have uncovered 55 sets of human remains.