Betsy James

After seventeen-year-old Kat leaves the Creek home of her mother's sister, she returns to Downshore and becomes embroiled in upheaval there and in the land of the Rigi, as well as in Nall's quest to go to the Gate.

Listening at the Gate

Sixteen-year-old Kat, child of a disastrous and scandalous marriage, rescues a Rigi man from the sea during the week of the Long Night Dance and begins to realize that a person's value does not come from his background or appearance.

Long Night Dance

Seventeen-year-old Kat's struggle to learn the ways of her dead mother's people in the hill country is complicated by her failure in the bear ceremony, a spiritual rite of passage, and her attraction to the blind outcast Raim. By the author of Long Night Dance. Reprint.

Dark Heart

Paul Morin

For the Anasazi, life depends on precious rainfall. But after weeks without rain, the land is drying up and the corn is dying. Soon Sosi's family will have to find a new place to live. Her mother and father are cross and tired as they pack; no one has time for Sosi.
So she runs away, down to the bank of the small pool, and makes a family of mud dolls that dry in the hot sun. Here there is no crying or arguing. The mud father tells his mud daughter, You are my lark, my lizard. I will weave robes for you and never scold. Sosi makes the mud girl dance for rain.
And the rain does come, bringing Sosi back to the family that needs her most of all.

The Mud Family

In this free retelling of an old Scottish ballad, Jan, who is convinced her friend Tam is not dead but has only disappeared, follows the advice of a wise old woman and with the help of a red cloak releases him from capture by elves.

The Red Cloak

Roadsouls explores the power of art and creativity for transforming not only one's own life but also the world one lives in. Timid Duuni has spent her life as abused and guarded property. Blind, arrogant Raím is determined to be again what he once was: hunter, lover, young lord of the earth. Desperate to escape their lives, the two lift up their hands to the passing Roadsoul caravan, and are--literally--flung together naked. Each of them soon learns that saying "yes" to the Roadsouls is more than just accepting an invitation to a new life--it's a commitment that can't be reversed. For Duuni and Raím, nothing is as it was. Lost to their old lives, hating each other, they are swept out of their cruel old certainties into an unknown, unknowable, ever-changing world of journey and carnival, artists and wrestlers and thieves. Behind them, inexorable, pads a lion. Inexorable, too, is Duuni and Raím's inevitable encounter with it, an encounter that will change everything.

Roadsouls

Seventeen-year-old Kat's struggle to learn the ways of her dead mother's people in the hill country is complicated by her failure in the bear ceremony, a spiritual rite of passage, and her attraction to the blind outcast Raim.

JOURNEY TO THE EDGE OF THE WORLD... In her father's village Kat is scorned for her fiery red hair, the legacy of her father's shameful marriage to a native woman. Her only true home is with Nall, a man who appeared to her from the depths of the sea, an outsider too. Now a war is breaking out, and Kat's beloved brother, Dai, is taken prisoner. Kat realizes that the only way she can save him is to join Nall on a dangerous quest that will take them to the last boundary of all -- the Gate where the world was born. It is during this journey that Kat must confront not only the earthly battle that is tearing her world apart, but the struggle within herself and with the man she loves.

After her best friend Mary Ann moves away, Amy finds a praying mantis and names her Mary Ann.

Betsy James

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