Mary Hooper

In Victorian London, impoverished fifteen-year-old orphan Grace takes care of her older but mentally unfit sister Lily, and after enduring many harsh and painful experiences, the two become the victims of a fraud perpetrated by the wealthy owners of several funeral businesses.

In June 1665, excited at the prospect of coming to London to work at her sister Sarah's candy shop, teenaged Hannah is unconcerned about rumors of Plague until, as the hot summer advances and increasing numbers of people succumb to the disease, she and Sarah find themselves trapped in the city with no means of escape.

Fudge finds a genie in the box she bought at a yard sale and plans to use it for a few odd jobs and a birthday present for her father, but her sister and the genie's misinterpretations make it more difficult than she had imagined.

Thrown out of her home by her stepmother in 1670, fifteen-year-old Eliza Rose becomes a companion to Nell Gwyn, a mistress of Charles II, and learns a surprising truth about her parentage.

"Using the common thread of the voyage across the country, Mary Ann weaves together the two stories--Charles and Fannie Crosby's leisurely Victorian tourist trip described in both their diaries--and her own trip, laced with her reflections on her birth country and her own life story. Both journeys start in Brattleboro, Vermont, the author's and her great grandparents' hometown. In October 1871, Chicago just a few days earlier had suffered its catastrophic...