Ann Rinaldi

How could Lizzy Enders's father abandon her at a girls school run by nuns? She's surrounded by Catholics-but she's Methodist! Shunned by the other boarders, Lizzy befriends a wandering carpenter named José, who with just three tools-and unflagging faith-builds an elaborate spiral staircase in the new chapel in mere weeks. When he disappears without a trace, Lizzy realizes that the way she sees things is not always the way they are. Inspired by the...

Fourteen-year-old Rachel Marsh is nanny to John and Abigail Adams’ children and witnesses firsthand how tension builds in the feisty New England town in the two years before it erupts in the Boston Massacre. Friends become foes and families divide as British troops arrive in 1768 to force the outspoken Bostonians to toe the line and obey the British government.

But the idea of liberty and self-government has taken hold, and once considered,

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