Showing results by author "A. LaFaye" in All Categories

Life for a family on a Nebraska homestead is difficult, with illness and weather causing worries about crops and finances, and conflicts between ranchers and farmers. For 11-year-old Nate's family, the days grow even darker when he gets his leg crushed in a farm accident. To help out, Nate's father brings home John Worth, just off the Orphan Train and dealing with the loss of his own family in a New York City tenement fire.

Under a Dark Summer Sky is set in Florida in 1935 in a small town struggling with the effects of the Depression and at the time of the great hurricane. The racially charged narrative swirls around Missy, with her courageous dedication to duty, who works for the Kincaid family; Henry, a long absent WWI soldier who still loves Missy, the girl he left behind; Henry's sister and Missy's friend, Selma, with her no-nonsense approach to crises; and Sheriff Dwayne Campbell, whose duty is to protect Henry but who has personal reasons for wanting Henry to suffer.

Orphans Clara and Jacob Marley live by their wits, scavenging for scraps in the poorest alleyways of London, in the shadow of the workhouse. Every night, Jake promises his little sister ‘tomorrow will be better’, and when the chance to escape poverty comes their way, he seizes it despite the terrible price. And so Jacob Marley is set on a path that leads to his infamous partnership with Ebenezer Scrooge. As Jacob builds a fortress of wealth to keep the world out, only Clara can warn him of the hideous fate that awaits him if he refuses to let love and kindness into his heart....

Florida, 1935, and the residents of Heron Key are preparing for the Fourth of July barbecue, little realising how much their world is about to change. Domestic helps Missy and Selma are dismembering the alligator that tried to snatch the baby Missy was watching, before they can get ready for the party. Henry, a returned soldier from WW1, is hoping that his comrades in his construction team will not disgrace themselves in front of an already fiercely judgemental community.

Kyna has a deep-seated (and well-earned) fear of the water. So when her adoptive parents announce that they have rented a summer house on Lake Champlain, she begs to be left behind for the summer. Alas, this is not possible. Yet even at the lake Kyna does her best to avoid the water. But when her new friend, Tylo, draws her into his quest for strange water creatures, Kyna finds herself pulled into unexpected discoveries.

The year is 1993. The Ku Klux Klan hold a rally provoking violence from an unexpected quarter which leaves authorities with an extraordinary dilemma: how do you handle a 98-year-old perpetrator who will not speak out except to admit her guilt? The year is 1919. Exiled in disgrace from her family, mixed-race Alicia is shocked by the primitive conditions when she arrives in Key West. Unlike anywhere else in Florida, people just get along - whites, blacks, Cubans, Catholics and Jews.

With Pretty Omens, A. LaFaye has crafted a mesmerizing novel-in-verse inspired by the epic tradition of the myth of Cassandra that will transport you to a small Virginia mountain community where an ordinary girl becomes a hero.

Packende Geschichte nach wahren Begebenheiten. 1993 erschießt eine 96-Jährige Frau aus Kuba ein hochrangiges Mitglied des Ku Klux Klan. Sie gesteht ihre Tat, begründet sie jedoch nicht. Dann springt die Erzählung ins Jahr 1919, eine junge Kubanerin, von ihrer Familie ausgestoßen, kommt nach Key West in Florida. Sie verliebt sich in einen Kriegsveteranen, doch ihre Liebe wird durch die Rassentrennung erschwert. Und dann findet sich noch dazu der Ku Klux Klan in der Stadt ein.