Young Gabe's is a story of heartache and jubilation. He's a child slave freed after the Civil War. He sets off to reunite himself with his mother who was sold before the war's end. "Come morning, the folks take to the road again, singing songs, telling stories, and dream-talking of the lives they're gonna live in freedom. And I follow, keeping my eyes open for my mama. Days pass into weeks, and one gray evening as Mr. Dark laid down his coat, I see a woman with a yellow scarf 'round her neck as bright as a star. I run up to grab her hand, saying, Mama?" Gabe's odyssey in search of his mother has an epic American quality, and Keith Shepherd's illustrations—influenced deeply by the narrative work of Thomas Hart Benton—fervently portray the struggle in Gabe's heroic quest. Selected as a 2012 Skipping Stones Honor Book and for the 2012 IRA Teacher's Choices Reading List. A. LaFaye hopes Walking Home to Rosie Lee will honor all those African American families who struggled to reunite at the end of the Civil War and will pay her respects to those who banded together through the long struggle for freedom. She is the author of the Scott O'Dell Award-winning novel Worth and lives in Tennessee with her daughter Adia. Keith Shepherd is a painter, graphic designer, and educator working out of Kansas City, MO. His painting "Sunday Best" is part of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum's permanent collection. He describes his work as being "motivated by family, religion, history, and music."

"I was nineteen years old, still soft at the edges, but with a confident belief in good fortune. I carried a small rolled-up tent, a violin in a blanket, a change of clothes, a tin of treacle biscuits, and some cheese. I was excited, vain-glorious, knowing I had far to go; but not, as yet, how far." Despite this romantic and optimistic opening, what Lee finds is the most primitive and feudal country in Europe, a peninsula untouched by the modern world, a land of labor without dignity, a church devoid of compassion, and a country ripe for revolutionary change.

A memoir of the Spanish Civil War with “the plainness of Orwell but the metaphorical soaring of a poem . . . An extraordinary book” (The New York Times Book Review). In December 1937 I crossed the Pyrenees from France—two days on foot through the snow. I don’t know why I chose December; it was just one of a number of idiocies I committed at the time. Such was Laurie Lee’s entry into the Spanish Civil War. Six months after the Nationalist uprising forced him to leave the country he had grown to love, he returned to offer his life for the Republican cause. It seemed as simple as knocking on a farmhouse door in the middle of the night and declaring himself ready to fight. It would not be the last time he was almost executed for being a spy. In that bitter winter in a divided Spain, Lee’s youthful idealism came face to face with the reality of war. The International Brigade he sought to join was not a gallant fighting force, but a collection of misfits without proper leadership or purpose. Boredom and bad food and false alarms were as much a part of the experience of war as actual battle. And when the decisive moment finally came—the moment of him or the enemy—it left Lee feeling the very opposite of heroic. The final volume in Laurie Lee’s acclaimed autobiographical trilogy—preceded by Cider with Rosie and As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning—is a clear-eyed and vital snapshot of a young man, and a proud nation, at a historic crossroads.

The essential Laurie Lee, a collection of occasional writings full of his unique vision and irresistible charm All of the wit and wisdom and poetry that made Laurie Lee one of the most celebrated English writers of the twentieth century can be found in this compilation of “first loves and obsessions.” In Part One, Lee revisits his idyllic boyhood in the Cotswolds village made famous by his bestselling autobiography, Cider with Rosie. In Part Two, he turns his attention to an earnest consideration of abstract concepts such as the power of charm, the pleasures of appetite, and the meaning of paradise. And in the final and longest section, the author of the acclaimed Spanish travelogues As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Rose for Winter tells the stories of his many other journeys—from sun-dappled Tuscany to melancholy Warsaw to the enchanting and exotic Sugar Islands of the Caribbean.

'I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.' 'This trilogy is a sequence of early recollections, beginning with the dazzling lights and sounds of my first footings on earth in a steep Cotswold valley some three miles long. For nineteen years this was the limit of my world, then one midsummer morning I left home and walked to London and down the blazing length of Spain during the innocent days of the early thirties. Never had I felt so fat with time, so free to go where I would. Then such indulgence was suddenly broken by the savage outbreak of the Civil War . . .' - Laurie Lee

2020 Kansas Notable Book STARRED REVIEW! "The historic town of Nicodemus, Kansas, springs to life through expressive artwork done in softly fluid lines and hues, conveying all of the hope and joy of the movement."—Foreword Review A family leaves behind sharecropping to settle the frontier and find a new kind of freedom. When Dede sees a notice offering land to black people in Kansas, her family decides to give up their life of sharecropping to become homesteading pioneers in the Midwest. Inspired by the true story of Nicodemus, Kansas, a town founded in the late 1870s by Exodusters—former slaves leaving the Jim Crow South in search of a new beginning—this fictional story follows Dede and her parents as they set out to stake and secure a claim, finally allowing them to have a home to call their own.

Eleven-year-old Nissa's life has never been perfect. Living in the small town of Harper, Louisiana, with a mama like hers, circa 1933, has led to lots of mean rumors. But now Mama is gone, and all the townsfolk talk about is who she might have run off with. Nissa's memories of the Sundays her mama would come home smelling of sawdust lead her to suspect the rumors could be true. Did her mama go away with the Sawdust Man? And if so, does it mean she's never coming back? A. LaFaye's powerful first novel beautifully explicates the world of a child in distress and how she copes with something beyond her understanding.

At all times wonderfully evocative and poignant, Cider With Rosie is a charming memoir of Laurie Lee's childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a world that is tangibly real and yet reminiscent of a now distant past. In this idyllic pastoral setting, unencumbered by the callous father who so quickly abandoned his family responsibilities, Laurie's adoring mother becomes the centre of his world as she struggles to raise a growing family against the backdrop of the Great War. The sophisticated adult author's retrospective commentary on events is endearingly juxtaposed with that of the innocent, spotty youth, permanently prone to tears and self-absorption. Rosie's identity from the novel Cider with Rosie was kept secret for 25 years. She was Rose Buckland, Lee's cousin by marriage. "From the Paperback edition."

'Full of heart and hope' Heidi Swain. Has she already met The One? What if Mr Right had come along at the wrong time...? Evie Grant is forty-five years old, a widow, and single mum of two children about to leave the nest. Suddenly alone in the family home, Evie realizes she hates her job, hardly goes out and hasn't had a date since who knows when... So it feels like fate when the opportunity arises for a girls trip to New York City. Staying with her sister on the Upper East Side, Evie is enchanted by a snow-covered city consumed by preparing for Christmas. Bobble hat firmly on, Evie is walking through the city one day when she bumps into Daniel Roberts, Hollywood heartthrob and one-time boyfriend of hers. It's now or never for Evie – but she open her heart to the possibility of a new beginnings and true happiness once again...? Funny, real and wonderfully romantic, this is the perfect feel-good read to keep you warm this winter! Praise for Jane Lacey-Crane: 'A beautifully written, emotional tale that will have you captivated from the off!' Rach. 'A story which made me feel all fuzzy inside and smiley on the outside from the first page right up until the end' SC. 'Fantastic read, good storyline, great twists and flowed well... My only complaint is that i got no housework done today as i couldn't put my kindle down!' 'An outstanding debut from a writer we're sure to hear more from! By turns funny, and heart-wrenching, it rarely takes anything for granted, and it gives us some laugh-out-loud moments too!' Mycroft.

Stella Reid is fighting to save the home she loves. After her father is killed and her mother succumbs to yellow fever, it's up to Stella to run Oak Grove, her family's plantation. Unlike most Southerners, Stella sees herself as equal to the African Americans she works side-by-side with in the cotton fields. The white Southerners reject her, and the freed men can't trust her after generations of enduring the horrors of slavery. So Stella stands alone as she fights to follow through on her father's dream to leave Oak Grove to her and the slaves. His will is nowhere to be found. Now, the bank has foreclosed on the plantation -- and the day of the auction is rapidly approaching. With no legal claim to the land, Stella is confronted with the possibility of losing Oak Grove, the only home she's ever known. In this inspiring novel, A. LaFaye, winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, recounts a young woman's struggle to save her family's land and preserve their memory, illuminating the harsh realities faced by women and freed slaves during the turbulent years after the Civil War.