The most pivotal and yet least understood event of Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated life involves the brutal murders in 1914 of seven adults and children dear to the architect and the destruction by fire of Taliesin, his landmark residence, near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Unaccountably, the details of that shocking crime have been largely ignored by Wright’s legion of biographers—a historical and cultural gap that is finally addressed in William Drennan’s exhaustively researched Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders. In response to the scandal generated by his open affair with the proto-feminist and free love advocate Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Wright had begun to build Taliesin as a refuge and "love cottage" for himself and his mistress (both married at the time to others). Conceived as the apotheosis of Wright’s prairie house style, the original Taliesin would stand in all its isolated glory for only a few months before the bloody slayings that rocked the nation and reduced the structure itself to a smoking hull. Supplying both a gripping mystery story and an authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, Drennan wades through the myths surrounding Wright and the massacre, casting fresh light on the formulation of Wright’s architectural ideology and the cataclysmic effects that the Taliesin murders exerted on the fabled architect and on his subsequent designs. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Outstanding Book, selected by the Public Library Association

Death on the Prairie is a sweeping narrative history of the Indian wars on the western plains that never loses sight of the individual actors. Beginning with the Minnesota Sioux Uprising in 1862, Paul I. Wellman shifts to conflicts in present-day Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, and South Dakota, involving, most spectacularly, the Sioux, but also the Cheyennes, Arapahos, Comanches, Kiowas, Utes, and Nez Perces—all being ezed out of their hunting grounds by white settlers. There is never a quiet page as Wellman describes the Sand Creek Massacre (1864), the Fetterman Massacre (1866), the Battle of the Washita (1868), the Battle of Adobe Walls (1874), the Battle of the Little Big Horn (1876), the Nez Perce War (1877), the Meeker Massacre (1879), and the tragedy at wounded Knee (1890) that ended the fighting on the plains. Celebrated chiefs (Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Black Kettle, Satanta, Joseph, Ouray, Sitting Bull) clash with army officers (notably Custer, Sheridan, Miles, and Crook), and uncounted men, women, and children on both sides are cast in roles of fatal consequence.

Chloe Ellefson and her sister, Kari, have long dreamed of visiting each historic site dedicated to Laura Ingalls Wilder. When Chloe takes custody of a quilt once owned by the beloved author, the sisters set out on the trip of a lifetime, hoping to prove that Wilder stitched it herself. But death strikes as the journey begins, and trouble stalks their fellow travelers. Among the "Little House" devotees are academic critics, greedy collectors, and obsessive fans. Kari is distracted by family problems, and unexpected news from Chloe's boyfriend jeopardizes her own future. As the sisters travel deeper into Wilder territory, Chloe races to discover the truth about a precious artifact—and her own heart—before a killer can strike again.

This three-part work presents a comprehensive look at a unique woman whose life spanned almost the full 20th Century. Educated well beyond her peers in the 1920's, never satisfied with less than the high standards her upbringing had trained her to value and expect, Eva Marshall Totah struck out across the world to pursue her calling. She sought to pass on her prairie-bred character to those around her, to create beauty and to uplift her surrounding environment. Readers interested in the history of the American Midwest and the history of American Quakers will be drawn to her story, which begins with her birth in the claim shanty of her parents' homestead in the new State of South Dakota. Genealogy buffs will enjoy the well-documented family genealogical histories of Eva's eight great grandparents. Students of the history of the modern Middle East will be fascinated by her first-person accounts of life in Palestine during the waning years of the British Mandate, before the creation of Israel. Part I The Autobiography of Eva Marshall Totah From the South Dakota prairie, a young Quaker woman was recruited in 1927 to teach for a year in the Holy Land. Well-prepared by her college and graduate studies, as well as two years as a Bible teacher in a Chicago after-school religious education program, she ventures overseas. Not realizing there were Arabs in Palestine, Eva Rae Marshall was expecting to teach Jewish children at the Friends' Girls School in Ramallah. Discovering the varied religious landscape in Jerusalem's environs was only one of many surprises in store for her! In Eva's autobiography, she recounts her childhood in Wessington Springs, South Dakota and the choices she made that took her across the world at a time when most women did not even finish high school. Always supported and guided by her loving parents, Eva describes how she found her life's purpose at the Quaker school in Palestine among the varied and colorful religious groups that called the country their home, and recounts her travels throughout the surrounding Levantine region during the British Mandate period. Eva found love and purpose in Palestine, eventually marrying a Palestinian Quaker, Dr. Khalil Totah. She spent 17 years in Palestine before she and Dr. Totah moved their family to America, sailing on a Liberty Ship through the mine-strewn Mediterranean waters during World War II. After several years on the East Coast, Eva lived the rest of her years in California. Part II Eva's Letters Home from Palestine (1927 - 1944) The second section contains Eva's letters to her family in South Dakota from Palestine. The letters are the only ones known to remain from a correspondence that was carried on weekly for 17 years. They span from her arrival in 1927 to the family's departure from Palestine in 1944, and include remarkable observations of the colorful life of the Middle East of that period. Part III Genealogy of Eva Marshall Totah The third portion of the book contains well researched genealogy and family history narratives of eight of Eva's ancestral families: Jesse Marshall, Mary Pickering, William Owen Lancaster, Olive Ruddick, Phillip Strahl, Rhoda Ann French, Arthur Ginn and Mary Eliza Barton. Since Eva was of almost completely Quaker stock, the research benefits from the volume of rich sources of information available on members of the Society of Friends. Eva Rae Marshall was also a direct descendant of Mayflower pilgrim Stephen Hopkins.

In May 1928, the body of George Edey was discovered on his Saskatchewan farm, leading to the swift arrest of a deaf and mentally disabled farmhand named Mike Hack. Following a three-day murder trial, Hack was quickly convicted and sentenced to death. Denied clemency, in January 1929 he was hanged in the courtyard of the Regina Jail at twenty-seven years of age and buried in an unmarked grave. Prairie Justice dissects this case, revealing its implications for important themes in the history of the Canadian criminal justice system. Wayne Sumner meticulously traces the narrative of the case, analysing each step from the initial murder investigation to the subsequent arrest, trial, conviction, denial of clemency, and execution of the man accused. Drawing on a personal connection to the case rooted in his family history – his father’s hometown was the village where the crime occurred, and both his grandfather and great-grandfather were involved in the investigation – Sumner uncovers deeper and more universal reasons to share the story. The book punctuates the narrative with insightful analysis on key criminal justice themes illustrated by the case: unfitness to stand trial, the defence of insanity, ineffective assistance of counsel, wrongful conviction, and miscarriage of justice. Ultimately, Prairie Justice exposes how access to justice can be merely illusory for the poor and marginalized.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR The first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie books Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls—the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser—the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series—masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder’s biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books. The Little House books, for all the hardships they describe, are paeans to the pioneer spirit, portraying it as triumphant against all odds. But Wilder’s real life was harder and grittier than that, a story of relentless struggle, rootlessness, and poverty. It was only in her sixties, after losing nearly everything in the Great Depression, that she turned to children’s books, recasting her hardscrabble childhood as a celebratory vision of homesteading—and achieving fame and fortune in the process, in one of the most astonishing rags-to-riches episodes in American letters. Spanning nearly a century of epochal change, from the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl, Wilder’s dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. With fresh insights and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman whose classic stories grip us to this day.