The Midwife S Apprentice

In a small village in medieval England, a young homeless girl acquires a home and a new career when she becomes the apprentice to a sharp-tempered midwife.

In Plato’s Theaetetus, Socrates is portrayed as a midwife to the intellect, a metaphor for his task as a dialectician as he seeks to help give birth to wisdom. Thus it is that the author refers to Plato as the midwife’s apprentice. This volume represents an attempt to provide a more manageable account of the author’s two volume magnum opus, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines. An accessible and lucid introduction to Plato’s ideas is provided which nonetheless challenges traditional interpretations. In particular the author is concerned to offer an interpretation of the significance of what Plato said. The chapters are arranged by topic, for ease of comprehension.

In 1849 a twelve-year-old girl who calls herself Lucy is distraught when her mother moves the family from Massachusetts to a small California mining town. There Lucy helps run a boarding house and looks for comfort in books while trying to find a way to return "home."

The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter to be born in five generations of Rares. As a child in an isolated village in Nova Scotia, she is drawn to Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing. Dora becomes Miss B.’s apprentice, and together they help the women of Scots Bay through infertility, difficult labours, breech births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling sex lives. Filled with details as compelling as they are surprising, The Birth House is an unforgettable tale of the struggles women have faced to have control of their own bodies and to keep the best parts of tradition alive in the world of modern medicine.

Shaggy Beard wishes to take me to wife! What a monstrous joke. That dog assassin whose breath smells like the mouth of Hell, who makes wind like others make music, who is so ugly and old! Catherine's in trouble. Caught between a mother who is determined to turn her into the perfect medieval lady and a father who wants her to marry her off to much older and utterly repulsive suitor. Luckily, Catherine has a plan. She has experience outwitting suitors and is ready to take matters into her own hands. A fun and vibrant coming-of-age novel about a 14-year-old girl's fight for freedom and right to self-determination.

Rodzina Clara Jadwiga Anastazya Brodski, a strong and stubborn Polish orphan, leaves Chicago on an orphan train, expecting to be adopted and turned into a slave—or worse, not to be adopted at all. As the train rattles westward, she begins to develop attachments to her fellow travelers, even the frosty orphan guardian, and to accept the idea that there might be good homes for orphans—maybe even for a big, combative Polish girl. But no placement seems right for the formidable Rodzina, and she cleverly finds a way out of one unfortunate situation after another until at last she finds the family that is right for her. Like Karen Cushman's other young girl protagonists, Rodzina is trying to find her place in the world—and she does. The compelling narrative is laced with wry humor and keen observation, full of memorable characters, and a thoroughly researched Afterword.

In the tradition of Arianna Franklin and C. J. Sansom comes Samuel Thomas's remarkable debut, The Midwife's Tale It is 1644, and Parliament's armies have risen against the King and laid siege to the city of York. Even as the city suffers at the rebels' hands, midwife Bridget Hodgson becomes embroiled in a different sort of rebellion. One of Bridget's friends, Esther Cooper, has been convicted of murdering her husband and sentenced to be burnt alive. Convinced that her friend is innocent, Bridget sets out to find the real killer. Bridget joins forces with Martha Hawkins, a servant who's far more skilled with a knife than any respectable woman ought to be. To save Esther from the stake, they must dodge rebel artillery, confront a murderous figure from Martha's past, and capture a brutal killer who will stop at nothing to cover his tracks. The investigation takes Bridget and Martha from the homes of the city's most powerful families to the alleyways of its poorest neighborhoods. As they delve into the life of Esther's murdered husband, they discover that his ostentatious Puritanism hid a deeply sinister secret life, and that far too often tyranny and treason go hand in hand.

After her mother dies in 1975, ten-year-old Lemonade must live with her grandfather in a small town famous for Bigfoot sitings and soon becomes friends with Tobin, a quirky Bigfoot investigator.