Pines and Plains Libraries

Though he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside Jacob Jankowski's ninety-something-year-old mind. Memories of himself as a young man, tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Memories of a world filled with freaks and clowns, with wonder and pain and anger and passion; a world with its own narrow, irrational rules, its own way of life, and its own way of death. The world...

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices plastered on lampposts. It is simply there. Within these nocturnal black-and-white-striped tents awaits an utterly unique experience, a feast for the senses. Beyond the smoke and mirrors, however, a fierce competition is under way, a contest between two young illusionists.

For the boy, it was the first real chance for a future. For the man, it was one last chance to triumph over his past. Opportunities like these happen only once in a Blue Moon.

"An absolute charmer."—Library Journal Starred Review

"Simply put, this is a ripsnorting good historical yarn full of circus lore, so smartly told by an expert storyteller that it's the kind of book truly deserving that overused term 'page-turner.'"—Chicago

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A novel of star-crossed lovers, set in the circus world circa 1932. When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, grifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there...

Ava is a dancer with a travelling troupe of entertainers. When Clover, a little unicorn, is trapped by Sir Fitzroy and used to lure the other unicorns into danger, Ava hatches a cunning plan. She and Sophy will disguise themselves and foil Sir Fitzroy's plot, and the unicorns will be safe!

"In 1911, Mabel MacGinnis is Europe's strongest woman and has performed beside her father in the Manzo Brothers Circus her entire life. But at his unexpected death, she loses everything she's ever known and sets off in the company of acrobat Jake Cunningham for America in hope of finding the mother she's just discovered is still alive. Isabella Moreau, the nation's most feted aerialist, has given everything to the circus. But age and injury now threaten...

She was only two feet, eight inches tall, but her legend reaches out to us more than a century later. As a child, Mercy Lavinia "Vinnie" Bump was encouraged to live a life hidden away from the public. Instead, she reached out to the immortal impresario P.T. Barnum and married tiny superstar General Tom Thumb in the wedding of the century. A fictionalized account of the Gilded Age and a woman's public triumphs and personal tragedies, this is the...

While on the run from the Queen's Dragons, Dessa rescues a kidnapped prince. But when his father insists on thanking her and her companions, the attention could mean danger.

In this thrilling sixth installment of Scott Chantler's popular Three Thieves graphic novel series, the separate adventures of twins Dessa and Jared play out simultaneously and seem poised to intersect as the book ends. Dessa, along with Topper and Fisk, has managed a daring landing onto the flying island of Astaroth, where she hopes to find her long-lost brother. Instead, they discover a bizarre world where three children are being held by a mysterious...

Elsa Mars is the proprietor of a troupe of human "curiosities" on a desperate journey of survival in the sleepy hamlet of Jupiter, Florida, in 1952. Her menagerie of performers includes a two-headed, telepathic twin, a take-charge bearded lady, a vulnerable strongman, and his three-breasted wife. But strange emergence of an entity will savagely threaten the lives of the townsfolk and freaks alike.