Burlington Public Library

A young surveyor dreams of helping complete the Union Pacific railroad and marrying the pretty girl he rescued from the Sioux.

"There are some things in this world that can't be stopped. Like progress, a moving train, and the American Dream. When the bigwigs in Washington decide to build a transcontinental railroad to the West Coast, they need a man who's just as unstoppable to clear a path through Mexican territory. That man is Jamie MacCallister. Jamie knows it's a tough job. The territory is overrun with Apaches. The Apaches are gunning for a fight. And the first patrol...

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway,...

Written by American author and dedicated abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Uncle Toms Cabin" is a poignant novel which shows the harsh reality of a slaves life in the 1800s. Uncle Tom, an African-American slave who believes in the power of Christian faith. The book would be a major contributor to the Civil War because its compelling portrayal of slaves as fellow human beings left little room for compromise: if slaves were indeed...

The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as they move from their little house on the banks of Plum Creek to the wilderness of the unsettled Dakota Territory. Ma and the girls follow Pa west by train where they make their home at a rough railroad camp and plan for their own homestead.

Ohio 1850. For a modest English Quaker stranded far from home, life is a trial. Untethered from the moment she leaves England, fleeing personal disappointment, Honor Bright is forced by family tragedy to rely on strangers in an alien, untamed landscape. The men sweat and spit; the women drink whiskey and shoot copperheads, even as they stitch bonnets and quilts. Nineteenth-century America is practical, precarious, and scarred by the continuing injustice...

It is 1908, and the international tensions are mounting as the world plunges toward war. When a brilliant American battleship gun designer dies in an apparent suicide, the man's grief-stricken daughter turns to the Van Dorn Detective Agency to clear her father's name. Van Dorn puts his chief investigator on the case, and Isaac Bell soon realizes that the clues point to murder. When more suspicious deaths follow, it becomes clear that someone is orchestrating...

"Tom Langdon, a weary and cash-strapped journalist, is banned from flying when a particularly thorough airport security search causes him to lose his cool. Now, he must take the train if he has any chance of arriving in Los Angeles in time for Christmas with his girlfriend. To finance the trip, he sells a story about a train ride taken during the Christmas season."

Kay Scarpetta and her husband Benton Wesley, now a forensic psychologist with the U.S. Secret Service, have relocated to Old Town Alexandria, where she’s headquartered five miles from the Pentagon in a post-pandemic world that’s been torn by civil and political unrest. After just weeks on the job, she’s called to a scene by railroad tracks--a woman’s body has been shockingly displayed, her throat cut down to the spine--and as Scarpetta begins...

Historical account of the growth of the railroad and it's influence on American history