Lamar Public Library

The Alden children travel on a Mississippi paddle-wheel steamer to visit an old family friend in his cabin near Hannibal, Missouri, and try to discover who is responsible for the mysterious activities near the house.

On a bright June day in 1965, a dozen girls -- classmates at a Blue Ridge women's college -- launch a ramshackle raft on a trip down the Mississippi. Thirty-five years later, four of the "girls" reunite to cruise the river again on a luxury steamboat and rediscover themselves

Called "the veriest trash" by a member of the Concord, Massachusetts Library Board that banned the novel when it was first published, Huckleberry Finn has come to be viewed, as H.L. Mencken put it, as "one of the great masterpieces of the world." Ernest Hemingway wrote that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn....There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." A daringly ironic...

"Mark Twain's classic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has been enjoyed by generations of readers across the world since its publication in 1876. With its humorous glimpses into life in nineteenth-century, small-town America, this novel has provided unique social commentary that continues to be discussed in classrooms today. Tom Sawyer, a mischievous boy growing up in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, is constantly getting in and out of...

Focuses on this American author's connection with steamboats on the Mississippi River while also presenting a history of the craft.

A story of life on the Mississippi River a few years before the War of 1812. Owen Naylor and Charlotte Dumaine, of Natchez-Under-the-Hill, are united in their effort to put steam power on the river. Their efforts are not appreciated by the keelboat men, who fight steam with fire, violence, and murder.

A modern-day Huck Finn, Buck casts off down the river accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Over the course of his voyage, Buck steers his fragile wooden craft through narrow channels dominated by massive cargo barges, rescues his first mate gone overboard, sails blindly through fog, clashes with overzealous period reenactors, and much more. In addition, he charts his own geographical and emotional journey while also delivering a richly...

After the devastation in France just as World War I, Sam Simoneaux went back to New Orleans eager for a normal life. But when a little girl disappears from a department store on his shift, he loses his job and soon joins her parents working on a steamboat plying the Mississippi. Sam comes to suspect that on the downriver journey someone had seen this magical child and arranged to steal her away, and this quest leads him not only into this raucous...

After her father, a prominent Natchez businessman, loses their fortune and home in 1850, Julienne Ashby aims to resuscitate their last possession - a dilapidated steamboat - to make a profit and restore the Ashby name along the mighty Mississippi. Desperate for help, Julienne hires Dallas Bronte, a captain whose drinking has scarred his reputation. The struggles they face are as challenging as the mutual feelings of love and hate they must sort out....