Lone Oaks Crossing (The New Americana Series Book by Janet Dailey
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 0.5 Mb
Overview: In the lush rolling hills of Lone Oaks, KY, the good life is measured in sips of aged bourbon and the thrill of the world’s most famous horse race: the Kentucky Derby . . .
When news of her grandfather’s stroke sends Jo Beth Ellis back to the family farm, she finds it in danger of foreclosure. Lone Oaks Crossing is in rough shape, but Jo has big plans—she’ll use her expertise as a Derby-winning horse trainer to reinvent the property as a healing retreat. But renovating while trying to keep her independent grandfather in check is a huge job for one woman—and even more challenging when she receives her first client, the unruly fourteen-year-old Cheyenne, who is determined to do anything but cooperate. Jo is at the end of her rope when neighbor Brooks Moore offers her a deal she can’t possibly refuse . . .
Jo may have sworn to leave the gambling and vicious competition of horse racing behind her, but training Brooks’s gorgeous thoroughbred is a challenge she can’t resist, especially when sulky Cheyenne takes a shine to him—and when Brooks is sinking an outrageous amount of money into rehabbing the farm, and even rolling up his sleeves to help. With a troubled teen’s spirit and her grandfather’s faith in her on the line, Jo steps into a tentative partnership with the undeniably attractive Brooks. Against all odds, she dreams of winning a trifecta—a champion horse, a happy family, and a forever love.
Genre: Fiction > Romance


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The Caning: The Assault That Drove America to Civil War by Stephen Puleo
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 1.5 MB
Overview: A Turning Point in American History, the Beating of U.S. Senator Charles Sumner and the Beginning of the War Over Slavery
Early in the afternoon of May 22, 1856, ardent pro-slavery Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina strode into the United States Senate Chamber in Washington, D.C., and began beating renowned anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner with a gold-topped walking cane. Brooks struck again and again—more than thirty times across Sumner’s head, face, and shoulders—until his cane splintered into pieces and the helpless Massachusetts senator, having nearly wrenched his desk from its fixed base, lay unconscious and covered in blood. It was a retaliatory attack. Forty-eight hours earlier, Sumner had concluded a speech on the Senate floor that had spanned two days, during which he vilified Southern slaveowners for violence occurring in Kansas, called Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois a “noise-some, squat, and nameless animal,” and famously charged Brooks’s second cousin, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, as having “a mistress. . . who ugly to others, is always lovely to him. . . . I mean, the harlot, Slavery.” Brooks not only shattered his cane during the beating, but also destroyed any pretense of civility between North and South.
One of the most shocking and provocative events in American history, the caning convinced each side that the gulf between them was unbridgeable and that they could no longer discuss their vast differences of opinion regarding slavery on any reasonable level.The Caning: The Assault That Drove America to Civil War tells the incredible story of this transformative event. While Sumner eventually recovered after a lengthy convalescence, compromise had suffered a mortal blow. Moderate voices were drowned out completely; extremist views accelerated, became intractable, and locked both sides on a tragic collision course.
The caning had an enormous impact on the events that followed over the next four years: the meteoric rise of the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln; the Dred Scott decision; the increasing militancy of abolitionists, notably John Brown’s actions; and the secession of the Southern states and the founding of the Confederacy. As a result of the caning, the country was pushed, inexorably and unstoppably, to war. Many factors conspired to cause the Civil War, but it was the caning that made conflict and disunion unavoidable five years later.
Genre: Non-Fiction > History


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Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals by Bill Wasik, Monica. Murphy
Requirements: .M4A/.M4B reader, 399 MB
Overview: A compassionate, sweeping history of the transformation in American attitudes toward animals by the best-selling authors. Over just a few decades at the end of the nineteenth century, the United States underwent a moral revolution on behalf of animals. Before the Civil War, their suffering had rarely been discussed; horses pulling carriages and carts were routinely beaten in public view, and dogs were pitted against each other for entertainment and gambling. But in 1866, a group of activists began a dramatic campaign to change the nation’s laws and norms, and by the century’s end, most Americans had adopted a very different way of thinking and feeling about the animals in their midst. In Our Kindred Creatures, Bill Wasik, editorial director of The New York Times Magazine, and veterinarian Monica. Murphy offer a fascinating history of this crusade and the battles it sparked in American life. On the side of reform were such leaders as George Angell, the inspirational head of Massachusetts’s animal-welfare society and the American publisher of the novel Black Beauty; Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; Caroline White of Philadelphia, who fought against medical experiments that used live animals; and many more, including some of the nation’s earliest veterinarians and conservationists. Caught in the movement’s crosshairs were transformational figures in their own right: animal impresarios such as P.T. Barnum, industrial meat barons such as Philip D. Armour, and the nation’s rising medical establishment, all of whom put forward their own, very different sets of modern norms about how animals should be treated. In recounting this remarkable period of moral transition—which, by the turn of the twentieth century, would give birth to the attitudes we hold toward animals today—Wasik and Murphy challenge us to consider the obligations we still have to all our kindred creatures.
Genre: Audiobooks > Non-Fiction


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The Moment: Thoughts on the Race Reckoning That Wasn't and How We All Can Move Forward Now by Bakari Sellers
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 1.8 Mb
Overview: The New York Times bestselling author of My Vanishing Country examines the modern political landscape and policies that are impacting Black families and communities and offers solutions for a better tomorrow.
In late May in 2020, while discussing the murder of George Floyd on CNN, Bakari Sellers spoke from the heart sharing devastating insight that touched millions around the world: “It’s just so much pain. You get so tired. We have black children. I have a 15-year-old daughter. I mean, what do I tell her? I’m raising a son. I have no idea what to tell him. It’s just—it’s hard being black in this country when your life is not valued and people are worried about the protesters and the looters. And it’s just people who are frustrated for far too long and not have their voices heard.”
In this powerful and persuasive book, Sellers expands on the issues he addressed in his New York Times bestseller My Vanishing Country, examining national politics and policies that deeply impact not only Black people in his home state of South Carolina but the lives of millions of African Americans in communities across the nation. Four years later, Sellers has an answer to the question he raised on CNN, offering much-needed prescriptions to help all Black American lives.
Sellers explores inequities in healthcare, education, early childhood education, and policing, drawing on interviews with numerous thought leaders such as pioneering voting rights and poverty activist the Rev. William Barber, and Ben Crump, the civil rights legend who successfully uses the law to achieve justice for people of color in racially charged cases. He also shares his thoughts on conservative media and the forces and dark money behind firebrands such as Tucker Carlson. This thoughtful and practical work is a timely meditation on the state of our world today and how we can all play a part in making it better for tomorrow.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Educational > Politics


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