My Mom died when I had just turned 15 - leaving me, my 5 year old brother and our Dad to cope with life on a Northern MN farm during the 40's, 50's and 60's. Farm work is hard,tough work as I struggled to cook all meals on our wood burning cook stove, hand carry from a distance all water for our home, weekly cleaned our entire 2 story home, baked all bread for next week and washed all the clothes for our family. Which had to be hung on outdoor lines - summer or winter where they froze on the line I had to bring back into the house to hang wherever to finish drying. Electricity brought only one appliance - an iron. Our farm did not have: a phone, frig or a freezer which was an unknown item to our farm family. Trying to balance being a high school teenager with all of my farm/family responsibilities was difficult as I loved and respected my family and at same time wanted to be more involved with school activities and friends. A college education was my dream, I never discussed this with my Dad as he was struggling with lack of income and available job opportunities. My college education became a reality much later in my adult life when I realized I alone had the total financial responsibly for my 4 young children. However difficult this was, lessons learned during my growing up years prepared me for life challenges. And unfortunately there were almost over whelming situations to live through and onward.

A heart-wrenching novel in verse about a poor girl surviving the Irish Land Wars, by a two-time Newbery Honor-winning author. For Anna, the family farm has always been home... But now, things are changing. Anna's mother has died, and her older siblings have emigrated, leaving Anna and her father to care for a young sister with special needs. And though their family has worked this land for years, they're in danger of losing it as poor crop yields leave them without money to pay their rent. When a violent encounter with the Lord's rent collector results in Anna and her father's arrest, all seems lost. But Anna sees her chance and bolts from the jailhouse. On the run, Anna must rely on her own inner strength to protect her sister--and try to find a way to save her family. Written in verse, A Slip of a Girl is a poignant story of adversity, resilience, and self-determination by a master of historical fiction, painting a haunting history of the tensions in the Irish countryside of the early 1890s, and the aftermath of the Great Famine. A Junior Library Guild Selection A Bank Street Best Book of the Year

This absorbing work tells the tragic story of a Donegal girl named Norah Ryan. Righteous and intelligent Norah left her homeland after her father's death, desiring a better life across the water. Unable to get out of the cycle of poverty, Norah's fate is drastically affected when she becomes pregnant by Alec Morrison, the son of the farmer on whose land she lived and worked in awful conditions. Set in Ireland and Scotland in the early 1900s and based on actual events, 'The Rat-Pit' follows her struggles against poverty.

“Engel captures the spirit of Doyle’s tone in the Holmes sagas without it being a stilted or pale imitation . . . A lively, engaging page-turner.” —Curled Up With a Good Book Howard Engel is the award-winning writer whose Benny Cooperman mysteries garner rave international reviews—fans stretch from Canada to Japan, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and the United States. His latest, Mr. Doyle & Dr. Bell, is a brilliant departure from the Cooperman series. The year is 1879, and in Edinburgh, Alan Lambert has been tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang for the murder of a dazzling opera star and her lover. But Lambert’s brother believes he’s innocent and pleads with Dr. Bell, a celebrated professor of anatomy, to uncover the truth. Bell agrees and sets out to crack the case with his keen powers of deduction and the help of his student, Arthur Conan Doyle. “Charming . . . [This book] will satisfy the craving of Sherlockians for another dose of gaslight and fog.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto) “Provides mystery buffs with more to ponder than your average whodunit . . . More intriguing than the actual plot, though, is the combination of fact with fiction that gives readers a glimpse of the real life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—his character, his influences, and the era in which he lived.” —Quill & Quire