Young adult fiction featuring gambling, bandits, swordplay, probability and Bayes’ Theorem. An English teacher hopes to engage students with colorful STEM adventures. “In this outstanding collection, Tom addresses the chronic problem of our young women dropping out of STEM studies. … Continued
‘A Rip in the Veil’ is the first book in The Graham Saga, Anna Belfrage’s time slip series featuring time traveller Alexandra Lind and her seventeenth-century husband, Matthew Graham. On a muggy August day in 2002, Alexandra Lind is inexplicably … Continued
Today we join the Coffee Pot Book Club tour for Tom Durwood’s “Ruby Pi and the Math Girls”. A collection of adventure stories. Resourceful girls coming of age and changing history — using mathematics. Rupa plays Sherlock Holmes when she … Continued
Small towns have their ups and downs – and their secrets. Maggie thought she’d escaped her growing-up trauma – a drug addict mother, an abusive stepfather, a boyfriend who dumped her for another girl, and football. But somehow, the problems … Continued
Spain in Renaissance times was a place of strict rules and class distinctions, with the Roman Catholic Church overseeing most aspects of life. Women in particular had well-circumscribed roles and spheres of activity, particularly among the wealthy. Losing one’s respectability … Continued
An interview with the Historical Novel Society on my series, Across the Great Divide
the period of the cattle drives was relatively short, beginning in the 1850s, largely suspended during the Civil War, and ending in the 1890s due to railroad expansion. In the beginning, a group of cowboys would drive a herd of as many as a thousand cattle from pastures in Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico north and east to railheads. The towns at the end of the rails were those of western legend – Abeline, Dodge City, Wichita, Ellsworth, Cheyenne, Denver, Fort Worth, and Dallas.
The Whispering Women by Trish MacEnulty My rating: 4 of 5 stars You are pulled into the world of 1913 NYC, glimpsing through the doors and windows at the less-than-stellar lives of the upper class. MacEnulty gives a compelling vision … Continued
“Act Worthy of Yourselves” an Alternate Ending I wrote the short story “Act Worthy of Yourselves” that asks the question “What if Dr. JosephWarren had survived Bunker Hill?” as part of the Historical Writers Forum anthology “AlternateEndings” because frankly, Dr. … Continued
The man smiled, but his eyes did not. Handing Luther a paper, he said, “What you can do is get out of Indiana. We don’t want your kind here. I’m the sheriff and part of the Superintendent Board for the Colored just formed here in Madison. Maybe you can’t read that, but it says that you came into this state illegally, in violation of the Indiana constitution. You’re an escaped slave from Kentucky. War or no war, slavery is still legal in Kentucky, and unless you have freedom papers or permission from the state of Indiana to be here, you need to git! Someone recognized your wagon—you were at the riots in Evansville. The sheriff there sent me a wire. You’re a troublemaker. You fired a gun at white men. You slaves are just a bunch of escaped monkeys, trying to overrun us. You have twenty-four hours to get out of the state, or I’ll be back with chains and ship you to your owner in Kentucky.”