When Ruben and Jeddy find a dead body in an evening suit washed up on the shore, they are certain it has to do with smuggling liquor. It is spring 1929, Prohibition is in full swing, and many in their community are involved.
Soon the boys, along with Jeddy’s strong-willed sister, Marina, are drawn in, suspected by rival bootlegging gangs of taking something crucial off the dead man. Then Ruben meets the daring captain of the Black Duck, the most elusive smuggling craft of them all, and it isn’t long before he’s keeping dangerous company.
Inspired by very real accounts of the Black Duck, a legendary rum-running boat that worked the New England shores during the era, Newbery Honor winner Janet Taylor Lisle has produced a colorful, original work of historical fiction.
If you love The Great Gatsby, you'll want to read the Flappers series.Power . . . love . . . scandal . . . there’s never enough to go around. In the city that never sleeps, Lorraine Dyer is wide awake. Ever since she exposed Cla...
This Newbery Honor winning, New York Times bestseller celebrates the true spirit of independence on the American frontier.For most of her life, sixteen-year-old Hattie Brooks has been shuttled from one distant relative to another. Tired of bein...
If you love The Great Gatsby, you'll want to read the Flappers series.Joy and tragedy collide in DIVA, the riveting conclusion to the Flappers series, set in the dazzling Roaring Twenties. Parties, bad boys, speakeasies—life in Manha...
It’s 1950, and as the French Quarter of New Orleans simmers with secrets, seventeen-year-old Josie Moraine is silently stirring a pot of her own. Known among locals as the daughter of a brothel prostitute, Josie wants more out of life th...
You’d think every dang person from Lampasas to Houston wanted to go to Galveston this hot August day. Everyone but Seth. Galveston, Texas, may be the booming city of the brand-new twentieth century, filled with opportunites for all, but to Set...
From acclaimed author Patricia Hruby Powell comes the story of a landmark civil rights case, told in spare and gorgeous verse. In 1955, in Caroline County, Virginia, amidst segregation and prejudice, injustice and cruelty, two teenagers fell in love...
Precocious Katy Thatcher comes to realize what a gentle, silent boy did for his family. He meant to help, not harm. It didn’t turn out that way.“The author balances humor and generosity with the obstacles and injustice of Katy’s wo...
If you love The Great Gatsby, you'll want to read the Flappers series.Jazz . . . Booze . . . Boys . . . It’s a dangerous combination. Every girl wants what she can’t have. Seventeen-year-old Gloria Carmody wants the flappe...
Now available in Spanish, the book Horn Book called “a realistic and compelling account of a girl growing up too quickly while coming to terms with the cost of freedom.” I wonder what it would be like to be free? Not to ne...
AudiobooksNow review by Lisa the Librarian on 2008-02-22 13:00:15
A fourteen-year-old interviews an old rum-runner, who tells him the story of his family and friends in 1929, during Prohibition, when everyone was smuggling or taking bribes. This book has marvelous historical details that do not drag the story down, but make it all atmospheric. The characters are well done, except for a the sheriff, who really needed a little more justification. The weakest link is the young journalist, who --at the end-- acts uncommonly stupid when he is supposed to be so clever. But this is a very good story, well told by the narrator, David Ackroyd.
