Blessed with enormous talents and the energy and ambition to go with them, Franklin was a statesman, author, inventor, printer, and scientist. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence and later was involved in negotiating the peace treaty with Britain that ended the Revolutionary War. He also invented bifocals, a stove that is still manufactured, a water-harmonica, and the lightning rod. Franklin's extraordinary range of interests and accomplishments...

A young cadet in Venice's elite military academy has been found hanged, a presumed suicide. Commissario Guido Brunetti is given the case but has difficulty working with a community more concerned with the reputation of the school than the truth. As Brunetti pursues the case he is faced with a wall of silence from everyone involved, including the boy's father. Brunetti is left to wonder if the military protecting its own or has he uncovered a conspiracy...

Wolff presents an engaging, provocative history of American ideas, told through the educations (both in and out of school) of 12 great figures, from Benjamin Franklin to Elvis Presley.

The story of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who ran her father's plantation outside Charleston, South Carolina in the 1700s and struck a bargain with the plantation's slaves--teach her how to make indigo and she would teach them to read.

"Ramsey offers a bold, no-nonsense approach to money matters, providing not only the how-to but also a grounded and uplifting hope for getting out of debt and achieving total financial health. Ramsey debunks the many myths of money (exposing the dangersof cash advance, rent-to-own, debt consolidation) and attacks the illusions and downright deceptions of the American dream, which encourages nothing but overspending and massive amounts of debt. "Don't...

"1965 Growing up in the well-to-do town of Round Hill, North Carolina, Ellie Hockley was raised to be a certain type of proper Southern lady. Enrolled in college and all but engaged to a bank manager, Ellie isn't as committed to her expected future as her family believes. She's chosen to spend her summer break as a volunteer helping to register black voters. But as Ellie follows her ideals fighting for the civil rights of the marginalized, her scandalized...

"In her stunning first novel, Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant mother?and a parent's rage at the discovery of her daughter's sexual secrets. In most ways, Isabelle and Amy are like any mother and her 16-year-old daughter, a fierce mix of love and loathing exchanged in their every glance. That they eat, sleep, and work side by side in the gossip-ridden mill town of Shirley Falls only increases the tension....

Arizona Territory, summer, 1907. Mary Pearl Prine and her sister Esther take their minds off the heat by sneaking banned Jane Austen novels from Aunt Sarah Elliot's bookshelf. Whispered read-alouds and reveries of getting hitched to their own Mr. Darcy swirl through their day dreams. In walks Aubrey Hanna, who whisks Mary Pearl off her feet with a forbidden kiss and hasty engagement. The lustful courtship quickly creates petty tension among the three...