Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

Twenty-nine-year-old Vanessa Cole is a wild, stunningly beautiful heiress, the adopted only child of a highly regarded New York brain surgeon and his socialite wife. Twice married, Vanessa has been scandalously linked to any number of rich and famous men. But on the night of July 4, 1936, at her parents' country home in a remote Adirondack Mountain enclave known as The Reserve, two events coincide to permanently alter the course of Vanessa's callow...

"'Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes . . . ' Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling an unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave. It's 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the...

On her first trip to Washington, D.C., Elena Standish finally gets to visit her American mother's wealthy parents and their magnificent home. Elena's grandparents are marking a milestone anniversary by throwing an elaborate party with the influential friends of her grandfather, a prominent political industrialist. Even President and First Lady Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt are there, and Elena takes pride in capturing the illustrious guests on camera....

The Great Depression and a strike at the grainmill greatly changes Virginia's life and outlook as her physician father begins to work with the unemployed and the strikers.

It is 1940, and war is raging in Europe. With forty million citizens of German ancestry, there is great pressure within America to stay out of the fight and the Nazi-sympathetic German-American Bund is working feverishly to make sure America does not intervene on the side of a beleaguered Great Britain.

Life during the Great Depression has been hard for Alona Winslow Jennings, but it is turned upside down when she loses her husband in a terrible accident. When she marries Oscar Moran, a wealthy older man her motivation is far more about Oscar providing for her three young sons than any romantic inclinations. Oscar is indeed a good provider, but there is no spark of love between tham. She realizes the error of her decision when she begins to feel...

To help his family during the Depression and avoid becoming a drunk like his father, Moss Trawnley joins the Civilian Conservation Corps, helps build a new camp near Monroe, Montana, and leads the other men in making the camp a success.

In September 1944 eleven-year-old Billie lives with her great aunt, Doff, eagerly waiting for her older brother Leo to return from boot camp, and desperate to find the father that left when she was little. But Leo brings a friend with him, a Navajo named Denny, and the injured dog they have rescued and named Bear--and when the two young men go off to war, Bear becomes the thread that ties them all together, and helps Billie to find a true friend

When his older brother leaves the family farm in order to join the army in 1943, ten-year-old Maury remains behind to deal with his angry father and to care for Ben's injured puppy.

During the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Austria, twelve-year-old Julie escapes to America to live with her relatives in New York City.