Books With Flair

A 2020 LITA Excellence in Children’s and Young Adult Science Fiction Notable Book! Packed with action and unexpected twists, this addictive page-turner is perfect for fans of Illuminae and Defy the Stars! When Jo steps onto planet Tau Ceti e for the first time, she’s ready to put the past behind her and begin again. After all, as a pioneer, she has the job of helping build a new home away from Earth. But underneath the idyllic surface of their new home, there’s something very wrong. And when Jo accidentally uncovers a devastating secret that could destroy everything they’ve worked for, suddenly the future doesn’t seem so bright. With the fate of the pioneers in her hands, Jo must decide how far she’s willing to go to expose the truth—before the truth destroys them all.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important and dramatic chapter in the American story—the settling of the Northwest Territory by dauntless pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would come to define our country. As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River. McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler’s son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent pioneer in American science. They and their families created a town in a primeval wilderness, while coping with such frontier realities as floods, fires, wolves and bears, no roads or bridges, no guarantees of any sort, all the while negotiating a contentious and sometimes hostile relationship with the native people. Like so many of McCullough’s subjects, they let no obstacle deter or defeat them. Drawn in great part from a rare and all-but-unknown collection of diaries and letters by the key figures, The Pioneers is a uniquely American story of people whose ambition and courage led them to remarkable accomplishments. This is a revelatory and quintessentially American story, written with David McCullough’s signature narrative energy.

Focusing on a series of autobiographical texts, published and private, well known and obscure, Writing the Pioneer Woman examines the writing of domestic life on the nineteenth-century North American frontier. In an attempt to determine the meanings found in the pioneer woman's everyday writings -- from records of recipes to descriptions of washing floors -- Janet Floyd explores domestic details in the autobiographical writing of British and Anglo-American female emigrants.

In this lavishly illustrated new book, the author of Early Life in Upper Canada and other famous histories of pioneer days, relates the story of the Canadian farm and farmer from the primitive to the machine age. Farm life and farm processes are pictured in fascinating detail, and Mr. Guillet quotes generously from books, newspapers, letters and hitherto unpublished archives material, using the words of those who actually witnessed the life of other days–the pioneers themselves, or the more observant of the numerous travellers who visited Canada during the period. The 450 illustrations contained in the two volumes of this work include many never before reproduced. A detailed list of contents and a full index enable the reader to find readily any topic of pioneer life to which he wishes to refer.

Part One: Recognizing the Pioneer Profile Your general personalities and hidden natures are determined. Part Two: Pioneer Profile Dynamics and Variations Analyzing the different level to your Profiles - ranging from Healthy to Under Pressure. Part Three: Intimate Pioneer Profile - The Self with Others Answer the question, "How your Profile engages with intimate other?" Part Four: Social Pioneer Profile - The Self in the World Go deeper into uncovering the Profile's right to belong in the world. Part Five: Career Path Your work style, from the perspective of Profile. Part Six: Dealing with the Pioneer Profile Examining the best way to effectively strike a connection with a person of particular Profile. Part Seven: Paths to Growth for the Pioneer Profile Find out how these extreme qualities are manifested.

A spookily funny mystery story written especially for transgender and gender non-conforming children, their friends, their classmates and peers! Madison and Sunita love field trips. They can’t wait to hike, learn bird calls and play Predator and Prey with their class. Best of all, there’s a pioneer graveyard to explore! But when they arrive at County Conservation Area, mysterious Ranger Ripplehorn says the cemetery is off-limits. It’s too dangerous to visit. Sunita wants to know why. When the two best friends sneak away from the group, they discover their class is in serious danger. Will they solve the mystery and save the day, or will a gobbling ghost turkey get in their way?

"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing," Thomas Jefferson wrote to his good friend James Madison in 1787, upon hearing the news of Shays’ Rebellion. This is the story of how that little rebellion, largely centered in the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts, became part of the cultural legacy Marshall Bloom inherited when he founded the Montague Farm in 1968. The Amherst College graduate, underground journalist and Movement wunderkind revived Daniel Shays’ spirit, stirred in some theater of the absurd, and planted the seeds that blossomed into one of the most concentrated centers of cultural and political radicalism in America.