Helen Plum Library

Set near and on Lake Ontario in the 1750s, The Pathfinder is chronologically the third installation of James Fenimore Cooper's gripping Leatherstocking Tales. While the French Indian War rages on, Mabel, a nineteen-year-old young woman, is travelling to see her father, Sergeant Thomas Dunham. Accompanied by her uncle and two Native Americans, Smashing Arrows and June Dew, Mabel treks through the dense forests of upstate New York, towards her father's...

I am an ardent student of American history, as a matter of fact, that most colonists came here chasing a dream or more strongly we came chasing the essence of love, either in search of or escape from. This, then begs a closer examination of what this term "love" truly is. If we take the Biblical description of "love", which is probably what most colonists had for reference, then we find Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not...

Set in 1793 and 1794, The Pioneers tracks the changes of a small town called Templeton, built on the advancing frontier of New York. Natty Bumppo, a hero raised by Native Americans, lives in a cabin, secluded in a forest near Templeton. As the Christmas Eve snow falls, Natty, more commonly known as Leatherstocking, embarks on a tense hunt for a deer. As he tracks the deer down, he runs into Judge Marmaduke Temple, the man who founded the town of Temple....

Jeffery Farnol's exceptional gifts as a story-teller have long had world-wide recognition, and as a writer of tales of adventure he has few peers. The story opens in Virginia in 1774, at the moment when resentment at King George's treatment of the American Colonies and anger at Gaye's misguided high-handedness in Massachusetts, and particularly Boston, is blazing up to rebellion. George Charteris, Lord Wraybourne, a loyal Tory peer settled in Virginia,...

It's 1692, and the people of Salem, Massachusetts, are on edge. Amid squabbles over religion and land and fears of hostile natives lurks the ever-present terror of the devil's influence. When young girls suddenly begin to claim they are being tormented by local "witches," a chilling hysteria grips the town. At the center of the maelstrom is one family, headed by the well-respected Thomas Putnam, whose daughter Ann happens to be one of the accusing...

Twelve-year-old Maggie Diele is on, the adventure of a lifetime. Traveling to newly acquired Kentucky, Maggie and her family embark on a trek through the Appalachian Mountains to the Cumberland Gap. There, her family, and others like them will follow Daniel Boone through the Gap to the dangerous settlement of Boonesborough in 1776. The country is in turmoil as the Revolutionary War begins. The newly arrived settlers find the area rugged and prone...

Through his struggles before, during, and after the Revolutionary War, the well-respected Judge Ogden of the highly regarded Ogden family had to resolve differences, both in his outward appearance and inside of his head. Trying to be balanced in judging his response to the Stamp Act and leaving his high position in the New Jersey Legislature gave him pause to his usefulness in the oncoming war. Detached from his cherished church and removed from the...

Just as Marike takes her first adult steps toward love and independence, her lover is called away to take up arms against the British. Soon she finds the blissful life she had envisioned for herself dashed and she must use her wits and inner strength to find her way. Set against the backdrop of revolutionary era New York, Rae's ninth novel brings this period to vivid and thrilling life.

Sally Townsend, of Loyalist Oyster Bay, Long Island, walks a tightrope of allegiances. While appearing neutral, she secretly helps the Patriot cause. When the dashing British Officer, Lt. Colonel John Graves Simcoe, moves into her home, Sally is taken with the handsome, though sometimes ruthless officer. Simcoe is immediately infatuated with the beautiful Sally and proposes marriage. She wants to accept until she discovers he's at the head of a plot...

For thousands of years two distinct cultures evolved unaware of one another's existence. Separated by what one culture called The Great Sea and known to the other as the Atlantic Ocean, the course of each culture's future changed irreversibly four hundred years ago. In 1620 the Mayflower delivered 102 refugees and fortune seekers from England to Cape Cod, where these two cultures first encountered one another. The English sought religious freedom...