The best books on Central Park

What is my book about?

Plantations conjure up visions of southern leisure and wealth, but their tourism landscapes are cultivated as carefully as their fields once were to produce cotton for world markets. My book looks at the long transition of one plantation on the Georgia coast from a site of sea island cotton cultivated by dozens of enslaved laborers to a state historical park. I highlight how natural forces always shaped human ideas, and vice versa. It’s a tale of sorrow and hope, challenge and promise, environment and humanity—forces that shape all of our historical landscapes.

What is my book about?

Eileen Charbonneau has written her own love song to New York City in Book 2 of her Code Talker Chronicles series: Watch Over Me. In the crucible of World War II, OSS agents New Yorker Kitty Charante and Navaho Code talker Luke Kayenta are unlikely partners. Still, they leap hurdles of class, race, and their soul-searing time as they elude capture and death by Nazi agents—agents determined to crack and share the Navajo code with their Japanese allies. Kitty and Luke’s wild weekend takes them from the Empire State Building to the lower East Side to the nightclubs of Harlem to a confrontation aboard a U-Boat off Coney Island.

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June Sparrow and her best friend—a miniature pig named Indigo Bunting—have always been fine on their own. June is a fabulously wealthy orphan who's lived in New York City her whole life. On June's twelfth birthday, she suddenly loses her fortune and is forced to move in with an aunt she's never even met in the tiny town of Red Bank, South Dakota. June has to live on a farm with her grouchy Aunt Bridget, who sees her best friend as potential bacon! One day, June finds a mysterious "Penny Book" that her mother used to keep. She's instantly intrigued by what her mother called the Big One, the rarest and most valuable of all pennies. Finding it could be June's ticket back to New York and her old life. But is that what she really wants?

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From before its earliest settlement to the vibrant metropolis that exists today, the island of Manhattan has always been a place of struggle, growth, and transformation. Through dazzling maps and informative sidebars, Manhattan: Mapping the Story of an Island explores how humans, history, and natural events have shaped this tiny sliver of land for more than 400 years. Discover how a small rodent began an era of rapid change for the island. Learn about the people who built New York City, and how a street plan projected the city’s future. Marvel at how epic fires and storms led to major feats of engineering above and below ground. From The Battery downtown up to Inwood, every inch of the island has a story to tell.

What is my book about?

Plenty of books have been written about medieval hospitals and charity – that is to say, about the ways in which medieval religious and secular elites defined, approached, and attempted to ameliorate or control poverty and the poor in the high and late Middle Ages. Mine was the first study to attempt to depict the on-the-ground daily lives of the poor themselves, and to outline the ways in which elites drew on socio-economic and religious differences in order to create subcategories of the genders “male” and “female.”

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Scoochie’s Adoption Story is a Firebird Book Awards multi-category winner – 1st place in Adoption, 1st place in LGBTQ+ Families, and 2nd place in Parenting & Family

Scoochie was adopted by her two daddies through an open adoption. In Scoochie's Adoption Story, Scoochie takes you on the journey of her and her daddies’ adoption experience. Narrated by the book's main character, Scoochie's Adoption Story is told in child-friendly language with adoption concepts presented in a manner that is easy for children to understand. It is a celebration of family, regardless of family composition or how a family has been created. Through text and illustration, the story represents a wide variety of families and sends a strong message of diversity and inclusion. 

What is my book about?

What does it mean to be a Jewish woman in America? In a gripping historical narrative, Pamela S. Nadell weaves together the stories of a diverse group of extraordinary people--from the colonial-era matriarch Grace Nathan and her great-granddaughter, poet Emma Lazarus, to labor organizer Bessie Hillman and the great justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to scores of other activists, workers, wives, and mothers who helped carve out a Jewish American identity.

The twin threads binding these women together, she argues, are a strong sense of self and a resolute commitment to making the world a better place. Nadell recounts how Jewish women have been at the forefront of causes for centuries, fighting for suffrage, trade unions, civil rights, and feminism, and hoisting banners for Jewish rights around the world. Informed by shared values of America's founding and Jewish identity, these women's lives have left deep footprints in the history of the nation they call home.

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In this sweet and gentle picture book, Bear wakes one day to find his Smile gone and enlists his friends to help him find it. Bear and Smile are always together. They wake up together, swim by the waterfall together, and eat honey together. But one day, Bear wakes up and Smile is nowhere to be found. With the help of his woodland friends, will Bear be able to find his Smile again?

This tender and special debut picture book explores sadness with a light touch and shows that sometimes a good friend can make all the difference.

What is my book about?

In fall 1978, teenager Theresa Allore went missing near Sherbrooke, Quebec. She wasn't seen again until the spring thaw revealed her body in a creek. Shrugging off her death as a result of 1970s drug culture, police didn't investigate. Patricia Pearson started dating Theresa's brother, John, after Theresa's death. Though the two teens went their separate ways, the family's grief, obsession with justice, and desire for the truth never left Patricia. 

In 2001, John had just moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina when the cops came to the door. They determined that a young girl had been murdered and buried in the basement. Unable to rest without closure, he reached out to Patricia, an accomplished crime journalist and author, and they found answers more alarming than they could have imagined.