NCW Libraries

Sent into an arranged marriage, Tan Yunxian, forbidden to continue her work as a midwife-in-training as well as see her forever friend Meiling, is ordered to act like proper wife and seeks a way to continue treating women and girls from every level of society in fifteenth-century China. "According to Confucius, "an educated woman is a worthless woman," but Tan Yunxian--born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness--is...

This is the little-known story of how a newly independent nation was challenged by four Muslim powers and what happened when America's third president decided to stand up to intimidation. When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, America faced a crisis. The new nation was deeply in debt and needed its economy to grow quickly, but its merchant ships were under attack. Pirates from North Africa's Barbary coast routinely captured American sailors...

Chronicles the history of fourteen lost European kingdoms and what their stories can teach the modern world, providing narrative accounts of the rise and fall of nations ranging from Tolosa to the Soviet Union.

"In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother,...

"The story of the land in the Northwest flows from the cataclysmic ice-age floods. So it only follows that the stories of the people in this terrain are inextricably linked to the aftereffects of that great deluge. These are the genesis stories of a region. Included are the controversy over the provenance and ownership of a meteor that fell to earth in rural Oregon; the mystery of the aurora borealis as observed by 18th-century explorer David Thompson;...

"A daring and magnificent account of Iceland's most famous female sea captain who constantly fought for women's rights and equality-and who also solved one of the country's most notorious robberies. Many people may have heard the old sailing superstition that having women onboard a ship was bad luck. Thus, the sea remains in popular knowledge a male realm. When we think of examples of daring sea captains, swashbuckling pirates, or wise fishermen,...