Genre Literature

Eight-year-old Benjamin Franklin “B .F.” Windes decides to abandon home and trail his father’s path. Thus begins a trip of constant struggle with disease, severe weather, hardship, Indian attack, and death on his lone journey across much of what is now the United States. B. F. spends the next 11 years in gold rush towns in California - first as a barber, then as a physician’s assistant - before departing for the Caribbean at age 19, where he becomes a blockade runner during the American Civil War.

Andi Callahan prefers the quiet company of the dead. As a morgue tech in a sleepy coastal town outside Boston, she lives for silence, predictability, and zero small talk. Living people? Too loud. Too messy. Too nosy. The dead don’t interrupt her, meddle in her life, or flirt with her. Cole Hartley does.

When a catastrophic mistake leaves his wife, Clara, in a coma, Dr. Elliott Harrison is consumed by guilt – and determined to find the truth. His investigation leads him to a remote Scottish island, where Clara had been consulting for an exclusive biotech clinic.

Michigan's Upper Peninsula is blessed with a treasure trove of storytellers, poets, and historians, all seeking to capture a sense of Yooper Life from settler's days to the far-flung future. Now U.P. Reader offers a rich collection of their voices that embraces the UP's natural beauty and way of life, along with a few surprises. The 36 works in this second annual volume take readers on UP road and boat trips from the Keweenaw to the Straits of Mackinac.

1789: The magnificent city of Paris sees the dawn of the French Revolution. The cobblestone streets run red with blood as the people rise against the oppressive aristocracy. But revolutionary justice comes at a high price. At a time when the divide between the rich and the poor is at its most extreme, and a nation is tearing itself apart, a young man and woman fight to avenge all they have lost.

Open the door for her. Lend her your coat in the cold. And flowers. Always flowers. It was the reason he started MaineStems, his flower delivery service—to help more men be gentlemen. And one of those men is his best friend on his wedding day—even if the bride is the woman of Max’s dreams.

Published in Harper's Magazine in 1946, "Beware of the Dog," by Roald Dahl, is a short story that recounts the experiences of Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pilot Peter Williamson after he is shot down during a World War II bombing mission.

Love is in the air in the little village of Barton-in-the-Dale. Anyone can see that Ashley Underwood and Emmet O'Malley are made for each other. They've just got to admit it to themselves. But as the saying goes, the course of true love never did run smooth. While romance blossoms on one side of the village, an angry young boy struggles to believe in love. But when tragedy strikes, he learns that comfort and care can come from the most unexpected of places.

George Eliot's first full-length novel is the moving, realistic portrait of three people troubled by unwise love. Adam Bede is a hardy young carpenter who cares for his aging mother. His one weakness is the woman he loves blindly: the trifling town beauty, Hetty Sorrel, who delights only in her baubles - and the delusion that the careless Captain Donnithorne may ask for her hand.

As worlds collide and memories linger, one migrant’s journey reveals the universal longing for home and the courage it takes to seek a new beginning. The Migrant is an odyssey across borders and into the heart of what it means to belong.

Stories and animals have long travelled the same routes. Through our heritage of charming, quirky and profound tales, you will find yourself re-acquainted with Britain's wondrous fauna. Find out how hedgehog ended up with spines and what makes him scuttle so fast, discover how pigs saved a prince from leprosy and why the wealthy lord was so intent on capturing the black fox. Sharon Jacksties' wonderful book combines traditional stories, little-known zoological facts and true anecdotes to create a treasure trove of stories for animal lovers of every kind.

Emily was only five years old when she was sent away from her ma and pa and her brother, Joe, to go and live with old Granny Edwards. A loving and hardworking child, she goes into service when she is 12 at the house of Roger Francis, whose connections with Emily's own family prove to be closer than she could ever have guessed. Roger's daughter, Deborah, takes a great fancy to Emily, and when Emily has moved to another household in Hull she finds that her new employer's son, Hugo, is to marry Deborah.

First published in March 1722, 57 years after the event that struck more than 100,000 people, Journal of the Plague Year is a compelling portrait of life during London's horrific bubonic plague. Through the eyes of H.F. (speculated to be Defoe's uncle, Henry Foe, from whose journals the book was supposedly adapted) we witness great grief, depravity and despair: crazed sufferers roam the streets, unearthly screams resound across the city, death carts dump their grisly loads into mass graves, and quackery and skulduggery feed on fear. But there is kindness and courage too, as mutual support and caring are upheld through the worst of days.

Published in 1888, The Legacy of Cain is the last of Wilkie Collins’s completed novels. Two sisters, Helen and Eunice, are brought up by their father, Reverend Gracedieu. He has deliberately kept the girls in ignorance of their true ages, to disguise the fact that one of them was adopted after her birth mother was executed for the brutal murder of her husband. In time, both girls fall for the same man, Philip Dunboyne, but when he eventually chooses one of the sisters, events take a sinister turn.

Cassie Linden worries about every word she can’t remember, terrified of the early-onset Alzheimer’s that stole her mother. Now, recently divorced, she’s back home to care for her aging father, who can no longer manage his beloved bees. To pay for her dad’s care, she puts her misgivings aside and convinces him to sell to a developer who’s putting up a luxury project next door. She also enlists the help of beekeeper Glenn Marsden, who fiercely opposes development of this last open space in town.

Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude", an imaginary crime that defies definition.

A tale of betrayal, revenge, loyalty, and redemption, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a true classic. Hester Prynne settles in a little town in Puritan-era Massachusetts while awaiting her husband’s arrival from England. Hester becomes pregnant, exposing her sin in the eyes of the townsfolk. Her penalty: wearing an embroidered A on her bosom for the remainder of her life. When Hester’s husband arrives in the town anticipating a joyous reunion with his young wife, he instead begins a cankering quest to uncover the father of Hester’s child.

An enchanting and nostalgic tale of Ireland in the 1950s by Ireland’s favourite writer, Alice Taylor. The Phelans have owned Mossgrove for generations. The small, rural Irish farm has been the pride of them all until Ned's wife, Martha, arrives and begins to undermine generations of hard work and happiness. She resents the deep history of the place and sets about making it her own, shutting out what is left of Ned's family. She is particularly jealous of Ned's sister, Kate, a local nurse and doting aunt to Martha's children.

Jane Austen's first major novel, a parody of the popular literature of the time, is an ironic tale of the romantic folly of men and women in pursuit of love, marriage, and money. The humorous adventures of young Catherine as she encounters "the difficulties and dangers of a six weeks' residence in Bath" lead to some of Austen's most brilliant social satire.

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (commonly known as The Pickwick Papers) is the first novel by Charles Dickens. The book became the first real publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books and other merchandise.