"Ruby Roland, the Girl Spy; or, Simon Kenton's Protege" by Frederick Whittaker. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
“Rapturous . . . The joyful sense of community within this love story offers a charming and refreshing escape from the modern world.” —Kirkus Reviews Growing up in early twentieth-century Illinois, Ruby Drake is a happy child. But one winter’s night, her beloved parents perish in an accident—and suddenly Ruby finds herself destitute and nearly alone in the world. Her new path eventually takes her to Harvester, Minnesota, where she’s lucky enough to find work on the welcoming Schoonover farm. Kind Emma, forward-thinking Henry, and their hired men—ambitious Dennis and reserved Jake—soon become a second family to the orphaned teenager. Young women are expected to be focused on courtship and marriage, but the industrious, bright Ruby searches for opportunities to expand her horizons at every step. Mastering her responsibilities on the farm. Learning to smoke cigarettes. Borrowing books from the local lending library, reading devotedly and expansively: mythology, romance, poetry. And falling in love with her married neighbor, Roland. But when Ruby is asked to care for Roland’s wife in the wake of tragedy, she is torn between duty and passion, between what has been her lot and what could be, in this story of friendship, romance, and the families we are born with and create—and of one woman’s journey of selfhood on the prairie. “Her novels are a reliably inviting world, full of friendly faces and intimate dramas. However you first make your way to Harvester, you’ll want to return.” —The Wall Street Journal
In contemporary America, the racial wealth gap is growing, with families transmitting race and class inequalities from generation to generation. Yet Americans continue to hold deep-rooted beliefs in the principles of individualism, equal opportunity, and meritocracy. Education, the "Great Equalizer," is supposed to level the playing field, ensuring that every child—regardless of family of origin—gets an equal chance at success. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 200 black and white families, The American Dream and the Power of Wealth starkly reveals the enormous extent to which parents defend their beliefs in the values that lie at the heart of the American Dream. Yet the way wealth is acquired and the way it is used categorically puts children from different families on vastly different educational trajectories, leaving them with uneven sets of opportunities.
A diverse group of New Yorkers are brought together by the search for a missing woman—in this electric novel of secrets, connection, and community. “Riveting . . . mines the delicate and treacherous terrain in which human relationships and social divisions are rooted.”—Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant. During an upstate hike on the aptly named Devil’s Path, Theo divulges a long-held secret—and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he finds himself the prime suspect. As Darla’s and Theo’s families and friends come together to search for her, with Ruby and Katsumi stepping in to broker peace, past and present collide with startling consequences. Set against the pulse of an ever-changing city, The Rich People Have Gone Away connects the lives of ordinary New Yorkers to tell a powerful story of hope, love, and inequity in our times—while reminding us that no one leaves the past behind completely.
Loren Miller was one of the nation’s most prominent civil rights attorneys from the 1940s through the early 1960s and successfully fought discrimination in housing and education. Alongside Thurgood Marshall, Miller argued two landmark civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, whose decisions effectively abolished racially restrictive housing covenants. One of these cases, Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), is taught in nearly every American law school today. Later, the two men played key roles in Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal segregation in public schools. Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist recovers this remarkable figure from the margins of history and for the first time fully reveals his life for what it was: an extraordinary American story and a critical chapter in the annals of racial justice. Born to a former slave and a white midwesterner in 1903, Loren Miller lived the quintessential American success story, blazing his own path to rise from rural poverty to a position of power and influence. Author Amina Hassan reveals Miller as a fearless critic of those in power and an ardent debater whose acid wit was known to burn “holes in the toughest skin and eat right through double-talk, hypocrisy, and posturing.” As a freshly minted member of the bar who preferred political activism and writing to the law, Miller set out for Los Angeles from Kansas in 1929. Hassan describes his early career as a fiery radical journalist, as well as his ownership of the California Eagle, one of the longest-running African American newspapers in the West. In his work with the California branch of the ACLU, Miller sought to halt the internment of West Coast Japanese American citizens, helped integrate the U.S. military and the Los Angeles Fire Department, and defended Black Muslims arrested in a deadly street battle with the LAPD. In 1964, Governor Edmund G. Brown appointed Miller as a Municipal Court justice for Los Angeles County, honoring his ceaseless commitment to improving the lives of Americans regardless of their race or ethnicity. “Either we shall have to make democracy work for every American,” Miller declared, or “we shall not be able to preserve it for any American.” The story told here is of an American original who defied societal limitations to reshape the racial and political landscape of twentieth-century America.
Inspired by her connection and love for the community and its residents, Rey tells the story of this small but interesting town, with black and white photos.
