Pines and Plains Libraries

Describes the sights and events a frontier family encounters travelling from South Dakota to the Ozarks.

Fashioned from the same experiences that would inspire the masterpiece "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Life on the Mississippi" is Mark Twain's most brilliant and most personal nonfictional work. It is at once an affectionate evocation of the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholy reminiscence of its passing after the Civil War. A priceless collection of of humorous anecodotes and folktales, and a unique glimpse into Twain's...

Walden is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings.[2] The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. Thoreau also used this time to write his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.First published in 1854, Walden details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near...

"A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history Kentucky, 1850. Jarrett, an enslaved groom, and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. As the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young...

Describes the development of the railroad in North America and its influence on the settling of the West during the nineteenth century.

A biography of the American poet whose compassion led him to nurse soldiers during the Civil War, to give voice to the nation's grief at Lincoln's assassination, and to capture the true American spirit in verse.

Discusses the life and accomplishments of the nineteenth-century American author whose writings broke ground for the modern horror story and detective novel.

"A middle-grade biography about literary icon Louisa May Alcott"--

"Collected nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and occasional writings from thirty-four women who published during the settlement years of the American frontier. Framed by biographical and historical introductions by Susan Cummins Miller, the selections focus on women's experiences and address such issues as isolation, drudgery, frustration, mourning, and mysticism"--Provided by publisher.

After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved." Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things begin to happen. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the...