Pines and Plains Libraries

As Ayla and Jondalar travel across Ice Age Europe they encounter savage enemies and brave friends in their search for a place they can call home

"As one of the many installments in Jules Verne's Voyage Extraordinaire series, Journey to the Center of the Earth promises high stakes and thrilling adventure. When Professor Otto Lidenbrock bought an ancient runic manuscript, which chronicles the lives of Norwegian Kings, he did not expect to learn of anything but the history of Icelandic leaders. However, upon further inspection, Lidenbrock and his nephew, Axel, find that the manuscript includes...

Seabiscuit was an unlikely champion. He was a rough-hewn, undersized horse with a sad little tail and knees that wouldn't straighten all the way. At a gallop, he jabbed one foreleg sideways, as if he were swatting flies. For two years, he fought his trainers and floundered at the lowest level of racing, misunderstood and mishandled, before his dormant talent was discovered by three men. One was Red Pollard, a failed prizefighter and failing jockey...

Though primarily a biography of Meriwether Lewis, this book also provides fascinating sketches of Thomas Jefferson, William Clark, Sacagawea, & other contemporaries. From the bestselling author of the definitive book on D-Day comes the definitive book on the most momentous expedition in American history and one of the great adventure stories of all time. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis,...

"The conquest of indigenous land in the American East through corrupt treaties and genocidal violence laid the groundwork for the conquest of the American West. Acclaimed author Peter Stark exposes the fundamental conflicts at play through the little-known but consequential struggle between two extraordinary leaders. William Henry Harrison was born to a prominent Virginia family, son of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He journeyed...

The author follows in the footsteps of America's most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators to offer a new perspective on how the most powerful nation on Earth came together. Illuminates the men who toiled fearlessly to discover, connect, and bond the citizenry and geography of the U.S.A. from its beginnings and ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree.

The promise of youth, rites of passage, closing the circle.

Americans in the mid-1840s, facing a nearly empty continent stretching to the west, saw it as their natural right, their "Manifest Destiny," to annex this land to the United States. The young country traveled to its "destiny" over a rough, rutted, dangerous road: the Santa Fe Trail. William Y. Chalfant tells the story of this road - stretching eight hundred miles from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico - during the pivotal period of the...

"Why would a married woman with a thoroughly Protestant background and often more doubt than faith be drawn to the ancient practice of monasticism, to a community of celibate men whose days are centered around a rigid schedule of prayer, work, and scripture? This is the question that Kathleen Norris herself asks as, somewhat to her own surprise, she found herself on two extended residencies at a Benedictine monastery. Yet upon leaving the monastery,...