Escape From Monticello

Letters in a mysterious journal between two sisters describe a lost collection and a missing treasure. As Sam, Derek, and Caitlin realize the letters were from Thomas Jefferson's granddaughters, they set out to do what they do best--solve the mystery! When the journal is stolen, the kids are forced to hunt down clues by following Jefferson's footsteps to The University of Virginia, his mountaintop home of Monticello, and a little-known retreat called Poplar Forest. But this isn't a typical walk through history. Someone from the kids' past is lurking in the shadows, bent on revenge and threatening to take much more than just the treasure. Escape from Monticello is the eighth book in The Virginia Mysteries series. The story is the perfect complement to social studies units, field trips, and family vacations related to Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, and Jack Jouett.

Letters in a mysterious journal between two sisters describe a lost collection and a missing treasure. As Sam, Derek, and Caitlin realize the letters were from Thomas Jefferson's granddaughters, they set out to do what they do best--solve the mystery! When the journal is stolen, the kids are forced to hunt down clues by following Jefferson's footsteps to The University of Virginia, his mountaintop home of Monticello, and a little-known retreat called Poplar Forest. But this isn't a typical walk through history. Someone from the kids' past is lurking in the shadows, bent on revenge and threatening to take much more than just the treasure. Escape from Monticello is the eighth book in The Virginia Mysteries series. The story is the perfect complement to social studies units, field trips, and family vacations related to Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, and Jack Jouett.

Join Kyle as he uses all his gamer skills to solve the puzzle that is Mr Lemoncello's extraordinary library. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets A Night in the Museum in this the action-packedNew York Times bestseller from Chris Grabenstein, coauthor of I Funny and other bestselling series with James Patterson! Kyle Keeley is the class clown and a huge fan of all games - board games, word games, and particularly video games. His hero, Luigi Lemoncello, the most famous and creative gamemaker in the world, just so happens to be the genius behind the town's brand-new super library that is as much a home for tech and trickery as it is for stories. Kyle is lucky enough to win a coveted spot as one of twelve kids invited for a puzzle-packed lock-in on the library's opening night, hosted by Mr. Lemoncello. But when morning comes, the doors stay locked. Kyle and the other kids must solve every clue and figure out every secret riddle to find the hidden escape route . . . !

“A badass debut by any measure—nimble, knowing, and electrifying.” —Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Nickel Boys and Harlem Shuffle "...'My Monticello' is, quite simply, an extraordinary debut from a gifted writer with an unflinching view of history and what may come of it." — The Washington Post Winner of the Weatherford Award in Fiction A winner of 2022 Lillian Smith Book Awards A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America. Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, “My Monticello,” tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation. In “Control Negro,” hailed by Roxane Gay as “one hell of story,” a university professor devotes himself to the study of racism and the development of ACMs (average American Caucasian males) by clinically observing his own son from birth in order to “painstakingly mark the route of this Black child too, one whom I could prove was so strikingly decent and true that America could not find fault in him unless we as a nation had projected it there.” Johnson’s characters all seek out home as a place and an internal state, whether in the form of a Nigerian widower who immigrates to a meager existence in the city of Alexandria, finding himself adrift; a young mixed-race woman who adopts a new tongue and name to escape the landscapes of rural Virginia and her family; or a single mother who seeks salvation through “Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse.” United by these characters’ relentless struggles against reality and fate, My Monticello is a formidable book that bears witness to this country’s legacies and announces the arrival of a wildly original new voice in American fiction.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote his epitaph, he listed as his accomplishments his authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia statute of religious freedom, and his founding of the University of Virginia. He did not mention his presidency or that he was second governor of the state of Virginia, in the most trying hours of the Revolution. Dumas Malone, author of the epic six-volume biography, wrote that the events of this time explain Jefferson's "character as a man of action in a serious emergency." Joseph Ellis, author of American Sphinx, focuses on other parts of Jefferson's life but wrote that his actions as governor "toughened him on the inside." It is this period, when Jefferson was literally tested under fire, that Michael Kranish illuminates in Flight from Monticello.Filled with vivid, precisely observed scenes, this book is a sweeping narrative of clashing armies--of spies, intrigue, desperate moments, and harrowing battles. The story opens with the first murmurs of resistance to Britain, as the colonies struggled under an onerous tax burden and colonial leaders--including Jefferson--fomented opposition to British rule. Kranish captures the tumultuous outbreak of war, the local politics behind Jefferson's actions in the Continental Congress (and his famous Declaration), and his rise to the governorship. Jefferson's life-long belief in the corrupting influence of a powerful executive led him to advocate for a weak governorship, one that lacked the necessary powers to raise an army. Thus, Virginia was woefully unprepared for the invading British troops who sailed up the James under the direction of a recently turned Benedict Arnold. Facing rag-tag resistance, the British force took the colony with very little trouble. The legislature fled the capital, and Jefferson himself narrowly eluded capture twice.Kranish describes Jefferson's many stumbles as he struggled to respond to the invasion, and along the way, the author paints an intimate portrait of Jefferson, illuminating his quiet conversations, his family turmoil, and his private hours at Monticello. "Jefferson's record was both remarkable and unsatisfactory, filled with contradictions," writes Kranish. As a revolutionary leader who felt he was unqualified to conduct a war, Jefferson never resolved those contradictions--but, as Kranish shows, he did learn lessons during those dark hours that served him all his life.

For readers of Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, the spellbinding history of the epic rivalry that shaped our republic: Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and their competing visions for America. The decade of the 1790s has been called the “age of passion.” Fervor ran high as rival factions battled over the course of the new republic-each side convinced that the other's goals would betray the legacy of the Revolution so recently fought and so dearly won. All understood as well that what was at stake was not a moment's political advantage, but the future course of the American experiment in democracy. In this epochal debate, no two figures loomed larger than Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Both men were visionaries, but their visions of what the United States should be were diametrically opposed. Jefferson, a true revolutionary, believed passionately in individual liberty and a more egalitarian society, with a weak central government and greater powers for the states. Hamilton, a brilliant organizer and tactician, feared chaos and social disorder. He sought to build a powerful national government that could ensure the young nation's security and drive it toward economic greatness. Jefferson and Hamilton is the story of the fierce struggle-both public and, ultimately, bitterly personal-between these two titans. It ended only with the death of Hamilton in a pistol duel, felled by Aaron Burr, Jefferson's vice president. Their competing legacies, like the twin strands of DNA, continue to shape our country to this day. Their personalities, their passions, and their bold dreams for America leap from the page in this epic new work from one of our finest historians. From the award-winning author of Almost a Miracle and The Ascent of George Washington, this is the rare work of scholarship that offers us irresistible human drama even as it enriches our understanding of deep themes in our nation's history.