Boston Jane The Claim

Fans of Boston Jane: An Adventure and Boston Jane: Wilderness Days will revel in the rip-roaring adventure, romance, and humor of this spectacularly spirited and satisfying conclusion to New York Times bestselling and three-time Newbery Honor–winning author Jennifer L. Holm's acclaimed historical fiction trilogy. Seventeen-year-old Jane Peck is the darling of Washington Territory—more at home in a primitive pioneer settlement in the rugged Northwest than she ever was in the refined world of Philadelphia society. She's outwitted wild animals, vengeful ghosts, and a disloyal fiance, but when her finishing school nemesis Sally Biddle invades Shoalwater Bay, Jane discovers that the most dangerous thing on the frontier might just be an impeccably dressed debutant. As the Biddles charm their way into her close-knit community, Jane finds everything she holds dear threatened—including her true love! Will Jane's claim on happiness slip away?

Fans of adventure, romance, and a strong heroine will love this this action-packed historical trilogy by three-time Newbery Honor winner and New York Times bestselling author Jennifer L. Holm. 1855. The unknown wilds of the Pacific Northwest—a land not yet tamed, and certainly not fitting for a proper young lady! Yet that’s just where Miss Jane Peck finds herself. After a tumultuous childhood on the wrong side of Philadelphia high society, Jane is trying to put aside her reckless ways and be accepted as a proper young lady. And so when handsome William Baldt proposes, she joyfully accepts and prepares to join him in a world away from her home in Washington Territory. But Miss Hepplewhite’ s straitlaced finishing school was hardly preparation for the treacherous months at sea it takes to get there, the haunting loss she’ll face on the way, or the colorful characters and crude life that await her on the frontier.

Girls looking for adventure, romance, and a strong heroine will love the second book in this action-packed historical trilogy by three-time Newbery Honor winner and New York Times bestselling author Jennifer L. Holm. 1854. The Pacific Northwest. Sixteen-year-old Jane Peck has traveled halfway around the world in the name of true love, only to find herself alone on the frontier, abandoned by her no-good fiancé! With nothing of her old life in Philadelphia left to return to, Jane has little choice but to dry her tears, roll up her sleeves, and make the best of things in Washington Territory. But can a proper young lady survive as the only girl in a primitive pioneer settlement? And can she keep her wits about her as she braves a flea-ridden cabin, a perilous manhunt . . . and a blossoming romance with an entirely unsuitable suitor? What would Jane's finishing-school teacher say?! With Boston Jane, Jennifer L. Holm has created a spirited, memorable, and one-of-a-kind heroine who continues to delight and inspire in this acclaimed sequel to the award-winning Boston Jane: An Adventure.

See the difference, read #1 bestselling author Jane Smiley in Large Print * About Large Print All Random House Large Print editions are published in a 16-point typeface Six years after her Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller, A Thousand Acres, and three years after her witty, acclaimed, and best-selling novel of academe, Moo, Jane Smiley once again demonstrates her extraordinary range and brilliance. Her new novel, set in the 1850s, speaks to us in a splendidly quirky voice--the strong, wry, no-nonsense voice of Lidie Harkness of Quincy, Illinois, a young woman of courage, good sense, and good heart. It carries us into an America so violently torn apart by the question of slavery that it makes our current political battlegrounds seem a peaceable kingdom. Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive--a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at twenty, making a good marriage--to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State. Lidie packs up and goes with him. And the novel races alongside them into the Territory, into the maelstrom of "Bloody Kansas," where slaveholding Missourians constantly and viciously clash with Free Staters, where wandering youths kill you as soon as look at you--where Lidie becomes even more fervently abolitionist than her husband as the young couple again and again barely escape entrapment in webs of atrocity on both sides of the great question. And when, suddenly, cold-blooded murder invades her own intimate circle, Lidie doesn't falter. She cuts off her hair, disguises herself as a boy, and rides into Missouri in search of the killers--a woman in a fiercely male world, an abolitionist spy in slave territory. On the run, her life threatened, her wits sharpened, she takes on yet another identity--and, in the very midst of her masquerade, discovers herself. Lidie grows increasingly important to us as we follow her travels and adventures on the feverish eve of the War Between the States. With its crackling portrayal of a totally individual and wonderfully articulate woman, its storytelling drive, and its powerful recapturing of an almost forgotten part of the American story, this is Jane Smiley at her enthralling and enriching best.

The beloved Newbery Honor book by the author of The Fourteenth Goldfish, about a spirited heroine growing up with trying circumstances, a sense of adventure, and tremendous heart. It isn't easy being a pioneer in the state of Washington in 1899. It's particularly hard when you are the only girl ever born in the new settlement. With seven older brothers and a love of adventure, May Amelia Jackson just can't seem to abide her family's insistence that she behave like a Proper Young Lady. She's sure she could do better if only there were at least one other girl living along the banks of the Nasel River. And now that Mama's going to have a baby, maybe there's hope. Inspired by the diaries of her great-aunt, the real May Amelia, three-time Newbery Honor-winning author Jennifer Holm gives a beautifully crafted tale of one young girl whose unique spirit captures the courage, humour, passion and depth of the American pioneer experience.

Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston strategic-consulting firm, confesses he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.