Ann Rinaldi

The Revolutionary War is raging. Food and firewood are scarce, and Tempe Wick is worried that she will not be able to care for her ailing mother and her family and still maintain their farm in New Jersey, where troops are now camped. Her ability to hold on to her world is further threatened when a mutinous soldier demands that she lend him her beloved horse, Colonel, in exchange for keeping her brother's rum-smuggling activities secret from the authorities....

In 1832, Prudence Crandall begins admitting black girls to her exclusive Connecticut school, scandalizing white society and eventually causing her arrest and the closing of her school.

When a Confederate general threatens to burn Hagerstown, Maryland, unless it pays an exorbitant ransom, twelve-year-old Amelia and her friend find a way to save the town.

In 1542, nine-year-old Lady Elizabeth lives on an estate near London, striving to get back into the good graces of her father, King Henry VIII, and as the years pass she faces his death and those of other close relatives until she finds herself next in line to ascend the throne of England in 1558.

Lady Jane Grey, who at sixteen was Queen of England for nine days before being executed, recounts her life story from the age of nine.

In the summer of 1859, fifteen-year-old Annie travels to the Maryland farm where her father, John Brown, is secretly assembling his provisional army prior to their raid on the United States arsenal at nearby Harpers Ferry.

In the 1880s, young Fanny McCoy witnesses the growth of a terrible and violent feud between her Kentucky family and the West Virginia Hatfields, complicated by her older sister Roseanna's romance with a Hatfield.

In 1861, eighteen-year-old Sarah Tracy, from New York state, comes to work at Mount Vernon, the historic Virginia home of George Washington, where she tries to protect the safety and neutrality of the site during the Civil War, and where she encounters her future husband, Upton Herbert. Includes historical notes.

After serving Martha Washington for twenty years, Oney realizes that she will never be a part of General Washington's family at Mount Vernon. She must make a choice: does she stay where she is, comfortable with the family that she has known since she was born, or does she take liberty into her own hands and, like her father, become one of the Gone?

Sixteen-year-old Jem and her servant struggle to keep things going at home in Trenton, New Jersey, when the family men join the war for independence from the British king.