While trolling through the family’s past, Zach and Angela uncover the story of how the first McAlisters came to Australia. It all started in the quite Dorset town of Cerne Abbas during the Napoleonic Wars. Vicar’s daughter, Christina Proud marries smithy, and sometime smuggler, Will Jenkins, who soon falls foul of the law. Will is given a choice — take the King’s shilling or the noose. So, Will joins the army and Christina’s begins her odyssey as a camp follower. The battalion is quickly deployed to Spain to join General Arthur Wellesley’s Peninsula Army, fighting against the French. Threatened by platoon Sergeant Jack Newell and with her husband powerless to help, Christina is befriended by Lieutenant Jonathan McAlister who offers her projection. With the French Army massing at Talavera, the battalion marches into battle. Under the blistering Spanish sun, Christina must now fight for her life and those she loves. Beset on all sides by bandits, partisans, deserters, French cavalry and the squalor of a military campaign gone wrong. Living by her wits and managing to get by with broken Spanish. she tries to make her escape to a safe haven and hopefully a ship back to Blighty. But does she make it? Download and read Christina's account of her ghastly experiences in a foreign land. ================= KEYWORDS/TAGS: McAlister’s Lady, Christina, Jonathan, Will, French, Mary, Newell, Grant, Lady, battalion, Lightfoot, officers, Sergeant, women, Rodney, Major, Toff, Dandy-Jim, Jamieson, Jenkins, ship, wound, Proud, Weymouth, British, French, Annabelle, family, Reverend, declare, orders, musket, wives, river, Bill, Sea-Snake, Chesil Bay, love, Wellesley’s, infantry, Sheriff, Dorset, Ball, East, smuggle, East Indiaman, Portland Bill, General, Spanish, Portuguese, Lisbon, cargo, Lord, ammunition, Lieutenant, Battalion, cargo landers, column of soldiers, lighthouse, barracks, Rosemary, Nazario, Fleming, Monroe, troops, pistol, major, wreck, Cerne Abbas, John, baby, born, birth, contraband, partisans, abandoned, protest, Talavera, Stephen, Jesenia, Colonel, carts, west, casualties, Frenchmen, fusiliers, infection, puss, daughter, Portugal, redcoats, surgeon, Wally, Boyle, enemy, South, Army, treacherous, commission, survivors, ridgeline, Caldecott, musketry, froggies, frogs, pinnaces, sergeant, brigade, weapons, Estela, Grogan, London, Yeovil, bodies, Harold, Spain, Jack, Dorchester, Osmington, Colquhoun, venture, Yeomanry, Marshall, cavalry, England, Australia, powder, Court, trial, Sentence, Cells, Guard, Judge, Wales, Port, camp-follower, camp follower,

For any readers who have visited Union Square in New York, maybe you have seen a bronze statue standing among the trees of the park. It represents a tall young man, in the close-fitting uniform of an American General of the Revolution. He is erect and with his right hand he clasps a sword against his breast. His left hand is stretched out toward the statue of Washington. His name was Marie Jean Paul Roch Yves Gilbert Motier, better known as Marquis de Lafayette. The story of his whole life is one of the most interesting that has ever been written. This short volume will give only the story of his services to the United States of America, and of his life during the few years in which those services were rendered. The statue was set up in honor of these great services. If you ever embark upon reading the history of the USA, his name will forever be linked with that of General Washington. They were both brave, faithful, just, and generous, and both honored the name of American citizen—a title which Lafayette proudly claimed so long as he lived. =========== KEYWORDS/TAGS: 73, 77, Boy General, action, adventure, admiration, America, André, army, Arnold, attack, Austria, battalion, battle, Boston, brave, British, campaign, Canada, cannon, capture, Carlisle, cause, character, Clinton, command, commander-in-chief, Commissioners, Congress, Cornwallis, Count, countrymen, courage, Deane, Declaration, d'Estaing, Emperor, enemy, England, English, expedition, fight, fleet, France, freedom, French, gallant, garrison, General, government, gratitude, hero, honor, honour, horseback, independence, injustice, Island, Jersey, King, Lafayette, Lee, liberty, Lord, Louis, love, Major-General, march, Marquis de Lafayette, Monmouth, Napoleon, Newport, northward, officers, oppressed, overthrow, Paris, Paul, Philadelphia, Philippe, prison, prisoner, quarters, reconnaissance, reconnoissance, revolution, Revolutionary, River, Rochambeau, services, seventy-seven, seventy-three, soldier, statesman, statue, Sullivan, surrounded, three-cornered, Union, United States, Valley Forge, veteran, victory, Virginia, war, Washington, wound, York, Yorktown, young adult, YA

"A quest story to find the three pieces of a magical engine which can either win the War of 1812 ... or stop it altogether"--

Finding Narnia is Caroline McAlister and Jessica Lanan's captivating picture book biography of two brothers, Jack and Warnie Lewis, whose rich imaginations led to the creation of the magical world of Narnia. Before C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, he was a young boy named Jack who spent his days dreaming up stories of other worlds filled with knights, castles, and talking animals. His brother, Warnie, spent his days imagining worlds filled with trains, boats, and technology. One rainy day, they found a wardrobe in a little room next to the attic, and they wondered, What if the wardrobe had no end? Years later, Jack began to think about what could be beyond that wardrobe, and about a girl named Lucy and her siblings. This picture book biography introduces the beloved creator of The Chronicles of Narnia to a new generation of children who see hidden magic in the world around them.

In 1810, Lucy Bluecrowne, twelve, is bored living ashore with her stepmother and half brother until two nefarious strangers identify her little brother as the pyrotechnical prodigy they need for their evil plan.

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California’s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state’s commitment to prison expansion.