The Actual Truthful Adventures Of Becky Thatcher

In 1860, eleven-year-old Becky Thatcher, new to St. Petersburg, Missouri, joins the boys at school in a bet to steal from the Widow Douglas in hopes of meeting a promise to have adventures that she made her brother, Jon, before he died.

Eleven-year-old Tabitha Crum, whose parents were just about to abandon her, is invited to the country estate of a wealthy countess along with five other children and told that one of them will become her heir.

Becky Thatcher wants to set the record straight. She was never the weeping ninny Mark Twain made her out to be in his famous novel. She knew Samuel Clemens before he was "Mark Twain," when he was a wide-eyed dreamer who never could get his facts straight. Yes, she was Tom's childhood sweetheart, but the true story of their love, and the dark secret that tore it apart, never made it into Twain's novel. Now married to Tom's cousin Sid Hopkins, Becky has children of her own to protect while the men of Missouri are off fighting their "un-Civil" War. But when tragedy strikes at home, Becky embarks on a phenomenal quest to find her husband and save her family---a life journey that takes her from the Mississippi River's steamboats to Ozark rebel camps, from Nevada's silver mines to the gilded streets of San Francisco. Time and again, stubborn but levelheaded Becky must reconcile her independent spirit and thirst for adventure with the era's narrow notions of marriage and motherhood. As she seeks to find a compromise between fulfillment and security, she also grapples with ghosts of her past. Can she forgive herself, or be forgiven, for the lies she's told to the men she's loved? Will she ever forget the maddening, sweet-talking, irresponsible Tom Sawyer, the boy who stole her heart as a little girl? And when she is old, and Huck and Tom and Twain only memories, whose shadow will still lie beside her?

Twelve-year-old woodcraft legacy Minna Treat hopes the mysterious messages she finds in bottles under the bridge her mother died on will lead her to her unknown biological father.

From the author of The Actual & Truthful Adventures of Becky Thatcher and Nooks & Crannies comes a “whimsical, heartwarming,” (Kirkus Reviews) and profound tale of love, loss, and family. Eleven-year-old Benjamin Putter has a lump in his throat, and he’s certain it’s a golf ball. He knows it sounds crazy, but everything’s been topsy-turvy since his father died last month. And he doesn’t know how to fix it. Then, one day, something starts tugging at Ben, telling him to hurry to Augusta, Georgia—home of the most famous golf course in the world. Ben might be going a little crazy, but escaping Hilltop, Alabama, sounds like a darn good idea. (And just maybe it will make that lump go away.) As he makes his way to Augusta, Ben partners up with a mysterious runaway named Noni, and they embark on a journey full of strange and wonderful surprises—and possibly magic—at every turn.

Tom Sawyer is a young orphan living with his half brother Sid at their Aunt Polly's house. A bad apple in school, he resists all efforts at correction, except when it comes to courting the lovely Becky Thatcher. Along with his buddy Huck Finn, Tom fools around, plays practical jokes and causes trouble—until the day when the two witness a murder. The greatest American novel comes gets the CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED treatment in this haunting, vibrant adaptation!

In early 1960s Alabama, eleven-year-old Ben, carrying an urn with his father's ashes, sets out on an eventful journey to the Augusta National, "the Sistine Chapel of golf courses," to make peace with his father.

Life has been cruel yet quiet for orphaned, twelve-year-old Stub, but now, charged with ferring a tiny wizard, Orlen, to the country's capital, Maradon Cross, to protect the queendom, her life is suddenly filled with adventure.