Rebecca Burns

"The night before Esther's ship was due to dock, her sister dreamed of her." Auckland at the turn of the century. A city on the cusp of change. Isobel, a settler of ten years, waits for her sister to cross the ocean to join her. Separated by distance, disappointments and secrets, the women reunite in a land where the rules of home do not apply. Women push for the vote and the land offers opportunity and a future for those brave enough to take it....

"Letters of a Woman Homesteader" is the fascinating true tale of life on the American frontier by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. First published in 1914, Stewart's work is a collection of 26 letters written by Stewart from 1909 to 1914 which follow her adventures in Wyoming. Born Elinore Pruitt in 1876 in Chickasaw Nation territory in modern day Oklahoma, her birth father died when she was very young and her mother and step-father both died when Stewart...

"Summary: Sara Crewe, a pupil at Miss Minchin's London school is left in poverty when her father dies, but is later rescued by a mysterious benefactor."--Following title page

"When a tornado hits Dorothy's home in the Kansas prairies, she and her dog, Toto, are whisked away to the magical Land of Oz. To return home, Dorothy must follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and seek help from the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. So, accompanied by the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, Dorothy sets out on a wild and magical adventure. This classic children's novel has been described as the first American...

Charles Perrault's classic and timeless "Cinderella" holds a special place in all children's hearts. Sweet, beautiful Cinderella is cruelly mistreated by her evil stepmother and stepsisters until her magical fairy godmother appears, turns Cinderella's rags into a sumptuous ball gown, and sends her off to win the heart of the handsome prince. Also included in this book are the classic tales "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," "Little Red Riding Hood,"...

For generations, children around the world have come of age with Louisa May Alcott's March girls: hardworking eldest sister Meg, headstrong, impulsive Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. With their father away at war, and their loving mother Marmee working to support the family, the four sisters have to rely on one another for support as they endure the hardships of wartime and poverty. We witness the sisters growing up and figuring out what role...

Washington, D.C.-based attorney Lawrence Blakely has been asked by his partner to deliver some important documents to a client in Pittsburgh. In the course of his return trip, the occupant of the train berth opposite his - the lower ten, which Blakely was supposed to have taken - is savagely murdered. Was Blakely the intended victim, and did the crime have something to do with his briefcase full of vital evidence? When the murder weapon turns up underneath...

When someone shoots Horatio Leavenworth, a wealthy retired merchant, through the head in his library late one night, the evidence at the inquest indicates that no one could have left the victim's locked Manhattan mansion before the discovery of the body the next morning. Suspicion thus falls on members of the household, specifically the dead man's nieces, Mary and Eleanore, only one of whom stands to benefit from their uncle's death. Everett Raymond,...

The first novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart, America's queen of crime This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous. So says Rachel Innes, the spinster in question and one of the most remarkable heroines in American...

"The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories" is a classic collection of some of the most loved short stories of Rudyard Kipling, one of the most important and accomplished English authors of the twentieth century. The youngest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature at age 42 in 1907, Kipling, who was born in India in 1865, captured in his writing the British Empire in all of its glory and contradiction in unparalleled detail and nuance. Contained...