Mass.) Riverside Press (Cambridge

It was high hot noon on the Casket Ridge. Its very scant shade was restricted to a few dwarf Scotch firs, and was so perpendicularly cast that Leonidas Boone, seeking shelter from the heat, was obliged to draw himself up under one of them, as if it were an umbrella. Occasionally, with a boy's perversity, he permitted one bared foot to protrude beyond the sharply marked shadow until the burning sun forced him to draw it in again with a thrill of satisfaction....

With eleven short stories, Sarah Orne Jewett's The Life of Nancy is a serene and heart-touching collection of 19th-century fiction. In A War Debt, Tom Burton finds himself stuck in Boston, as he is the primary caretaker of his grandmother. Though he has long given up the dream of a vacation, he is forced to a long trip to Virginia, when his grandmother admits guilt over possessing an item stolen during the war, and is desperate for it to be returned...

In early March 1867, Muir was injured while working at a wagon wheels factory: a tool he was using slipped and struck him in the eye. This accident changed the course of his life. He was confined to a darkened room for six weeks, worried he'd lost his sight forever. When he did recover, the world looked completely different and life had taken on a new meaning for him. Muir later said, "This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to...

Though starkly different from Pollyanna, the book that propelled author Eleanor H. Porter to worldwide acclaim, the engrossing novel Dawn plumbs some of the same themes as its predecessor, including the importance of always maintaining an optimistic outlook on life, no matter how dire the circumstances you are facing. Set against the backdrop of World War I, the novel's protagonist is a young man whose vision is gradually degrading.

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A series of three poems by Holmes set in Revolutionary America. Dorothy Q of the title poem was Holmes' great-grandmother, Dorothy Quincy. -- vendor's description.