Akron Public Library

When Duncan McKaskel decided to move his family west, he knew he would face dangers, and he was prepared for them. He knew about the exhausting terrain, and he was expecting the punishing elements. What he worried about was having to use violence against other men--men who would follow him and try to steal the riches that he didn't even possess. Yet bandits were only part of McKaskel's worries. For a mysterious stranger, Con Vallian, had appeared...

"He blew into town like a tornado--a mysterious stranger with money to burn and a sadistic streak as wide as the Rio Grande. He says his name is Benson and he's come to invest in the town's future. First, he showers the banks and local businesses with cash. Then, he hires a pair of drunks to fight and get arrested so he can check out the local lawmen. After that, he warms up to a lady of the evening--with deadly results. That's just the beginning....

Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon. The motives: the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itself.

Pa's homestead thrives, Laura gets her first job in town, blackbirds eat the corn and oats crops, Mary goes to college, and Laura gets into trouble at school, but becomes a certified school teacher.

Remembering her mother's words, an eight-year-old girl finds courage to go alone with her father to build a new home in the Connecticut wilderness and to stay with the Indians when her father goes back to bring the rest of the family.

"Eleven-year-old John Hale has already survived one brutal Dakota winter, and now he's about to experience one of the deadliest blizzards in American history. The storm of 1888 was a monster, a frozen hurricane that slammed into America's Midwest without warning. Within hours, hundreds would be dead, thousands terrified, lost, and freezing. John's inner strength is seriously tested when he finds himself trapped in the blinding snow, the wind like...

The reminiscences of a New York lawyer, Jim Burden, about his boyhood in Nebraska, particularly a young Bohemian girl named Antonia Shimerda, are set against the backdrop of the American assimilation of the immigrant

Set in 1793 and 1794, The Pioneers tracks the changes of a small town called Templeton, built on the advancing frontier of New York. Natty Bumppo, a hero raised by Native Americans, lives in a cabin, secluded in a forest near Templeton. As the Christmas Eve snow falls, Natty, more commonly known as Leatherstocking, embarks on a tense hunt for a deer. As he tracks the deer down, he runs into Judge Marmaduke Temple, the man who founded the town of Temple....

Serious and dependable, Berta is very different from her pretty, outgoing sister, Glenna. This makes Berta sad and envious until she learns to accept and cherish her own uniqueness.

"I'm just passing' through," the rider said when they asked him his name. And from then on, in the high country around Parrot City, he was called just that, Mr. Passing' Through, a man who rode a blue roan with a skull and crossbones brand and didn't know to keep to himself. And he wouldn't keep to himself. Because something about a parched and dusty ranch appealed to him, and something about a woman's hair made him think of not being alone, and something...