Annie: History Repeats Itself ... Another Alley Is in Danger

Truman Haden is just ten years old the night his childhood disappears forever. After he is sent to live with his grandfather to escape the ravages of yellow fever that has overtaken his home, Truman learns all his family members have died and receives a letter penned by his father in his final days. The letter holds an important message for Truman: to protect his heritage and honor laws for the good of the southern people. Although Truman is too young to completely understand the words, he knows the message must not be forgotten.

In the midst the Civil War and the events that precede it, Truman grows to adulthood and becomes a lawyer who must learn to honor the promise to his father without surrendering his principles. As Truman quietly makes his presence known in Elmira, New York, he is changed forever by those he encounters: an abolitionist woman whose humanity is tested by her commitment to end slavery; an evangelist who teaches him how to forgive; a young, abandoned slave who values freedom; an older former slave who teaches him dignity; and the many young POWs who live and die for their noble cause.

Based on actual events, this sweeping historical epic tells the tale of the remarkable town of Elmira, New York, one of the most compelling and timeless stories of our country?s crucible years.

The story begins with a shocking revelation, delivered by a disheveled woman who presents herself at the offices of a respectable law firm in London. At first the receptionist suspects this mysterious woman is a vagrant; the clothes that hang on her frail body are filthy, and she seems unable to speak. When the woman requests to see the firm's senior partner, Alexander Armstrong, she is shown the door -- but when Mr. Armstrong learns the name of his visitor, all the office staff is amazed by his reaction. For Irene Baindor is a woman with a past, and her emergence from obscurity signals the unraveling of a mystery that had baffled the lawyer for twenty-six years.

To those around her, Irene Baindor had been a young woman of class and musical talent, the wife of a wealthy and powerful man, and the mother to a beloved baby boy. But behind closed doors she was a woman with a dangerous husband, a husband who would one day act with such cruelty that Irene would be left without most of her voice and memory. It was then that Irene disappeared. What Irene had been doing, and where she had been, gradually emerges over the following weeks, as the unlikely benefactors who had befriended her step forward to reveal the remarkable life she has led.

The moment he lays eyes on Kate, Dr. Rodney Prince is enchanted. He senses in this poverty-stricken patient an intelligence and warmth that's completely unexpected. His own wife, living in the oblivion of velvet cushions and lavish dinner parties, seems crude by comparison. Though they meet only briefly then retreat to their separate worlds, the image of Kate leaves an indelible mark upon his mind.

Rodney knows that Kate's spirit has survived life-long suffering at the hands of men. Her father, an embittered dock worker, directed his violent rages toward Kate and her mother. At age eighteen Kate fell victim to a smooth-talking seducer and became the unwed mother of a child she later compromised her dignity to support. Such circumstances only deepen Rodney's desire to rescue Kate and overturn the codes of a society that serve to keep them apart. As the kindhearted Dr. Prince unintentionally wins over the heart of Kate's fatherless daughter, he and Kate begin to acknowledge that the gap between rich and poor might not be so great after all.

But when one friendly ghost is overly enthusiastic about his duties, the TV show Exceedingly Haunted Homes of England is called in to investigate. A hysterical fear of ghosts takes over the school, and the Invisible Friends are glad that they witness the chaos unheard and unseen. Too bad that the same cannot be said for the ghosts in the world beyond.

The disappearance of the Crown Jewels in a rather Poltergeist-like manner is trouble enough, but a frightening specter caught on film and a knight seen charging through streets and pedestrians spell trouble. Restoration of the peace between the ghostly and human realms may be too much for one boy to handle, but Tom hopes that the help of Grey Arthur and the Invisible Friends may be just what he needs to track down the cause of this supernatural chaos.

In this third installment to the Golden & Grey series, Louise Arnold takes the reader on an exciting adventure full of Laundry Runs, ancient castles, and the ever dark and dangerous woods.