Murderous ghosts and buried family secrets threaten young Eleanor and Alice Roosevelt in this thrilling middle-grade novel that puts a supernatural spin on alternate history. It's 1898 in New York City and ghosts exist among humans. When an unusual spirit takes up residence at the Roosevelt house, thirteen-year-old Eleanor and fourteen-year-old Alice are suspicious. The cousins don't get along, but they know something is not right. This ghost is more than a pesky nuisance. The authorities claim he's safe to be around, even as his mischievous behavior grows stranger and more menacing. It's almost like he wants to scare the Roosevelts out of their home - and no one seems to care! Meanwhile, Eleanor and Alice discover a dangerous ghost in the house where Alice was born and her mother died. Is someone else haunting the family? Introverted Eleanor and unruly Alice develop an unlikely friendship as they explore the family's dark, complicated history. It's up to them to destroy both ghosts and come to terms with their family's losses. Told from alternating perspectives, thrills and chills abound in Dianne K. Salerni's imaginative novel about a legendary family and the ghosts that haunt their secrets. A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Murderous ghosts and buried family secrets threaten young Eleanor and Alice Roosevelt in this thrilling middle-grade novel that puts a supernatural spin on alternate history. It's 1898 in New York City and ghosts exist among humans. When an unusual spirit takes up residence at the Roosevelt house, thirteen-year-old Eleanor and fourteen-year-old Alice are suspicious. The cousins don't get along, but they know something is not right. This ghost is more than a pesky nuisance. The authorities claim he's safe to be around, even as his mischievous behavior grows stranger and more menacing. It's almost like he wants to scare the Roosevelts out of their home - and no one seems to care! Meanwhile, Eleanor and Alice discover a dangerous ghost in the house where Alice was born and her mother died. Is someone else haunting the family? Introverted Eleanor and unruly Alice develop an unlikely friendship as they explore the family's dark, complicated history. It's up to them to destroy both ghosts and come to terms with their family's losses. Told from alternating perspectives, thrills and chills abound in Dianne K. Salerni's imaginative novel about a legendary family and the ghosts that haunt their secrets. A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Presents a breakthrough portrait of America's longest-serving first lady that covers her major contributions throughout critical historical events and her essential role in advancing international human rights.

At the turn of the twentieth century, in the brownstones of New York City and the country houses of Long Island and the Hudson River Valley, a generation of young Roosevelt cousins shared carriage rides to school and dancing class. Together they rode their horses and fished and swam in landscapes they would know until the end of their lives. When they grew older, the cousins saw one another often in Fifth Avenue ballrooms and at family weddings, and frequently at the Long Island home of their patriarch and hero, President Theodore Roosevelt. There, grounded in a warm and steady love, they followed him on hikes, climbing over pasture stiles and running down steep sandy slopes, and they listened to his speeches at Fourth of July celebrations. The cousins were numerous. Five girls--Eleanor, Alice, Christine, Elfrida, and Dorothy--all born in one ten-month period, were known during their debutante year as the "Magic Five." Although the public later came to see Alice and Eleanor as polar opposites, in Donn's compelling account we learn that they were more similar than people supposed. Alice, perceived as beautiful, witty, sophisticated, and dedicated to enjoying herself, was often unhappy and tortured by self-doubt. Eleanor, described later (usually by herself) as serious, mousy, and driven by duty to reform the world, was tough as nails and knew exactly how to gain and hold power. As a debutante she was lively, almost beautiful, and very popular, pursued by many eligible swains. And as children and young women they were best friends--Alice wrote in her diary that the person with whom she would most want to be marooned on a desert island was Eleanor. But the Roosevelt clan wasnot always supportive. Sometimes they ostracized members who they felt didn't uphold the family's values. Theodore had urged his nieces as well as his nephews to lead lives of public service, a goal that united them and gave direction and purpose to the family, but when the young Roosevelts began to compete for public office, family members began to take sides. Protective and increasingly bitter, Alice saw in her cousin Franklin's success a threat to her brother Ted's future. Franklin's mother and Eleanor perceived his cousins to be dangerous political rivals. Theodore couldn't have known, when he encouraged the young cousins to battle for the welfare of others, that their personal struggles for independence would rupture the Roosevelt clan. But as the young people jockeyed for position, they found themselves on a collision course, for only one man could be president. There have been many Roosevelt biographies, and much about their lives is widely known. Linda Donn, a historian whose earlier book, Freud and Jung, also dealt with duality, here demonstrates that there is still much more to know about this fascinating family. We can easily find ourselves in the Roosevelt cousins' struggles, discovering that independence can sometimes come at the price of family unity and acceptance, and that an unwillingness to pay that price can incur an even greater one: never coming to know oneself.

A Richmond Times-Dispatch Best Book of the Year When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, his beautiful and flamboyant daughter was transformed into “Princess Alice,” arguably the century’s first global celebrity. Thirty-two years later, Alice’s first cousin Eleanor moved into the White House as First Lady. The two women had been born eight months and twenty blocks apart in New York City, spent much of their childhoods together, and were far more alike than most historians acknowledge. But their politics and personalities couldn’t have been more distinct. Democratic icon Eleanor was committed to social justice and hated the limelight; Republican Alice was an opponent of big government who gained notoriety for her cutting remarks. The cousins liked to play up their rivalry—in the 1930s they even wrote opposing syndicated newspaper columns and embarked on competing nationwide speaking tours. When the family business is politics, winning trumps everything. Lively, intimate, and stylishly written, Hissing Cousins is a double biography of two extraordinary women whose entwined lives give us a sweeping look at the twentieth century in America.

Alice and Eleanor, A Contrast in Style and Purpose explores the lifelong personal struggles, political involvement, and private relationship of these remarkable women. Each chapter begins with a fictionalized event to make the characters come alive with immediacy and vitality.

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