Introduce your child to different aspects of history and the roles museums play in the community in the children’s book Coolest Collections. What are some of the quirkiest museum collections in the world? Learn about the impact museums have on preserving history and priceless artifacts. Storybook Features: This children’s book features an index, a glossary, bolded text, and new vocabulary to help develop reading skills. 48 pages with vivid photographs Lexile 1080L About Rourke We proudly publish respectful and relevant non-fiction and fiction titles that represent our diverse readers, and are designed to support reading on a level that has no limits!

The earliest known prison memoir by an African American writer—recently discovered and authenticated by a team of Yale scholars—sheds light on the longstanding connection between race and incarceration in America. “[A] harrowing [portrait] of life behind bars . . . part confession, part jeremiad, part lamentation, part picaresque novel (reminiscent, at times, of Dickens and Defoe).”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE In 2009, scholars at Yale University came across a startling manuscript: the memoir of Austin Reed, a free black man born in the 1820s who spent most of his early life ricocheting between forced labor in prison and forced labor as an indentured servant. Lost for more than one hundred and fifty years, the handwritten document is the first known prison memoir written by an African American. Corroborated by prison records and other documentary sources, Reed’s text gives a gripping first-person account of an antebellum Northern life lived outside slavery that nonetheless bore, in its day-to-day details, unsettling resemblances to that very institution. Now, for the first time, we can hear Austin Reed’s story as he meant to tell it. He was born to a middle-class black family in the boomtown of Rochester, New York, but when his father died, his mother struggled to make ends meet. Still a child, Reed was placed as an indentured servant to a nearby family of white farmers near Rochester. He was caught attempting to set fire to a building and sentenced to ten years at Manhattan’s brutal House of Refuge, an early juvenile reformatory that would soon become known for beatings and forced labor. Seven years later, Reed found himself at New York’s infamous Auburn State Prison. It was there that he finished writing this memoir, which explores America’s first reformatory and first industrial prison from an inmate’s point of view, recalling the great cruelties and kindnesses he experienced in those places and excavating patterns of racial segregation, exploitation, and bondage that extended beyond the boundaries of the slaveholding South, into free New York. Accompanied by fascinating historical documents (including a series of poignant letters written by Reed near the end of his life), The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict is a work of uncommon beauty that tells a story of nineteenth-century racism, violence, labor, and captivity in a proud, defiant voice. Reed’s memoir illuminates his own life and times—as well as ours today. Praise for The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict “One of the most fascinating and important memoirs ever produced in the United States.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, The Washington Post “Remarkable . . . triumphantly defiant . . . The book’s greatest value lies in the gap it fills.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Reed displays virtuosic gifts for narrative that, a century and a half later, earn and hold the reader’s ear.”—Thomas Chatterton Williams, San Francisco Chronicle “[The book’s] urgency and relevance remain undiminished. . . . This exemplary edition recovers history without permanently trapping it in one interpretation.”—The Guardian “A sensational, novelistic telling of an eventful life.”—The Paris Review “Vivid and painful.”—NPR “Lyrical and graceful in one sentence, burning with fury and hellfire in the next.”—Columbus Free Press

Abridged and retold in modern English by respected children's authors, this collection of sixteen classic stories makes them accessible to readers as young as six, while retaining all the charm, atmosphere, and sense of adventure that made the original tales world-famous. These dramatic, easy-to-follow stories, charmingly illustrated with verve and humour by specially commissioned artists, deserve to find a home on every child's bookshelf. Included in this boxed set: 1. Alice in Wonderland 2. Treasure Island 3. The Wizard of Oz 4. The Jungle Book 5. The Secret Garden 6. Robin Hood 7. Peter Pan 8. Heidi 9. Anne of Green Gables 10. Little Women 11. Black Beauty 12. The Call of the Wild 13. Robinson Crusoe 14. Wind in the Willows 15. Tom Sawyer 16. Oliver Twist

A collection of the best stories published in 1994.

In this magnificent collection of the most spectacular jewels of the twentieth century, fine jewelry historian Vivienne Becker selects the quintessential bijoux that represent the milestones of jewelry design of the last one hundred years. From Art Nouveau to the brink of the new millennium, Becker’s selections range from the Wiener Werkstätte and Tiffany Studios, Egyptian-inspired Art Deco masterpieces by Cartier and midcentury designs by Verdura for Chanel, exquisite creations by DeBeers, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Graff, to modern designs from a new generation of innovative artists. A new addition to Assouline’s Ultimate Collection, this beautiful volume is a must-have for fine jewelry collectors and lovers of precious objects. Sparkling with stunning photography, this hand-bound luxury limited edition features hand-tipped images and is presented in a linen clamshell case.

Reaching from the sky to the edge of the world, science fiction is the literature of the imagination, and this year's collection gathers into one volume the most imaginative, exciting, and intelligent fiction of 1989. This year's collection features works by many of science fiction's greatest writers--both veterans and newcomers--including: Neal Barret, Jr., Gregory Benford, Alan Brennert, John Crowley, Avram Davidson, Alexander Jablokov, Janet Kagan, William King, Kathe Koja, Nancy Kress, Megan Lindholm, Judith Moffett, Steven Popkes, Mike Resnick, Robert Sampson, Charles Sheffield, Lucius Shepard, Robert Silverberg, S.P. Somtow, Brian Stableford, Bruce Sterling, Michael Swanwick, John Varley, Connie Willis.

This edition of The Year's Best Science Fiction collects twenty-five of the finest works of speculative fiction to see print in 1990, stories from the genre's every edge, and from its heart. Among the many marvels are tales from the field's most accomplished artists: Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Shobies' Story" returns to the Hainish worlds with a reality-defining story, while Joe Haldeman's "The Hemmingway Hoax" embarks from our world on a time-defying trip through other possibilities. Kate Wilhelm, Michael Moorcock, Robert Silverberg, and John Brunner demonstrate too with their stories why they remain among the most popular science fiction writers of all time. With the closing of a decade and cyberpunk virtually becoming reality, many of the leading writers of the eighties have begun to bring new insight and vision to their fiction: Bruce Sterling examines a classic clash of cultures in "We See Things Differently," and James Patrick Kelly's "Mr. Boy" presents a hard-edged story about the guts of growing up. Lewis Shiner's "White City" and Connie Willis's "Cibola" both seek peace--of sorts--amid spectacle, and works by Nancy Kress, Lucius Shepard and Robert Frazier, Pat Murphy, and John Kessel also dazzle and amaze. Among the many other stories in this volume are powerhouse piece by Terry Bisson, Molly Gloss, Ian McDonald, Charles Sheffield, Alexander Jablokov, and Dafydd ab Hugh, as well as towering new mindscapes from young talents such as Jonathan Lethem, Ian R. MacLeod, Greg Egan and Ted Chiang. A wonderful tour through possible, probable, and virtual realities, The Year's Best Science Fiction is an ideal assemblage of the year's short fiction. This volume is essential to anyone who reads sf. "A virtually indispensable series."--Kirkus Reviews