Best Selling Books by Richard Peck

Chillicothe, Ohio, founded in 1796, became the capital of the Northwest Territory in 1800 and the capital of Ohio in 1803. Cheap land in the Virginia Military District drew settlers to the area in the 1790s. These early settlers came to the Chillicothe area with the idea of building a new state, and the State of Ohio constitution was signed in Chillicothe in 1803. Chillicothe was the capital of Ohio for two separate periods of time: 18031810 and 18121816. This visual history of Chillicothe contains over 220 historic images, including maps dating back to 1783 that illustrate land claims made by Virginia and other states. The images presented herein take the reader through the days of the Ohio and Erie Canal, the high time of the railroad, and the period when Camp Sherman, a World War I training camp, was located just north of town. Many of the buildings pictured survive and are preserved as part of Chillicothes downtown business district. With the exception of the presence of automobiles, many of the street scenes look almost the same today as they did in the mid-1800s. Chillicothe survives today as a city with a population of over 22,000, in the midst of many historical attractions and a major, annual outdoor drama called Tecumseh.

Blossom, high school freshman and possessor of "second sight," helps an Egyptian princess, dead for 3500 years, to regain her tomb, and in addition saves a suffragette school teacher from losing her job in 1914.

Todd sees his perfect world start to unravel when his sister becomes influenced by a member of a fundamentalist sect and he begins to notice censorship in his community.

When Jessica''s parents divorce and her father leaves, Jessica decides that the best way to punish her mother is to retreat to her room, a shrine to her glamorous traveling photographer dad. Then Jessica''s mother offers to let her visit her father in Mexico for the holidays, at the fabulous house of her father''s uncle Lucius, a famous painter. Jessica is thrilled. Once there, she falls under the spell of Lucius''s home, and his Christmas guests, Brooke and Tony, who are college age. Together the three young people race around Acapulco in an old Jeep, swim, and go dancing. It''s paradise. Except for dad. Here in paradise he''s not the father Jessica dreamed of at all....

In her new high school, where her mother has taken a job as counselor, Chelsea experiences joys and sorrows as she makes choices about new friends and learns they are not always what they seem.

We introduce subsistence requirements in food consumption into a simple new-Keynesian model with flexible food and sticky non-food prices. We study how the endogenous structural transformation that results from subsistence affects the dynamics of the economy, the design of monetary policy, and the properties of inflation at different levels of development. A calibrated version of the model encompasses both rich and poor countries and broadly replicates the properties of inflation across the development spectrum, including the dominant role played by changes in the relative price of food in poor countries. We derive a welfare-based loss function for the monetary authority and show that optimal policy calls for complete (in some cases nearcomplete) stabilization of sticky-price non-food inflation, despite the presence of a foodsubsistence threshold. Subsistence amplifies the welfare losses of policy mistakes, however, raising the stakes for monetary policy at earlier stages of development.

A textbook using a variety of problems, activities, and exercises to introduce the techniques of creative writing.

Using a broad range of literature to examine the political culture of white South Africa, Peck finds both a preoccupation with political issues and a dislike for politics. The literature examined ranges from South African propaganda, through a variety of bestsellers—adventure stories and mystery novels written by authors such as Wilbur Smith and James McClure—to self-conscious literary works of the canonical white South African authors such as Alan Paton, André Brink, and Nadine Gordimer. The study gives attention to anti-political features of the liberal tradition that dominated South African writing, and to the failure of writers who undermined that tradition to generate a more positive view of politics. The morbid fascination with politics that is found across the full spectrum of creative writing is a reflection of the circumstances in which writers found themselves, but it is still a worrisome feature of the white South African political culture.

In 1893, thirteen-year-old Rosie and members of her family travel from their Illinois farm to Chicago to visit Aunt Euterpe and attend the World''s Columbian Exposition which, along with an encounter with Buffalo Bill and Lillian Russell, turns out to be a life-changing experience for everyone.

In 1937, during the Depression, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice, initially apprehensive about leaving Chicago to spend a year with her fearsome, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois, gradually begins to better understand and admire her grandmother''s unusual qualities.

In rural Indiana in 1904, fifteen-year-old Russell''s dream of quitting school and joining a wheat threshing crew is disrupted when his older sister takes over the teaching at his one-room schoolhouse after mean, old Myrt Arbuckle "hauls off and dies."

Ghosts I have been: Blossom Culp''s gift of second sight, which she discovers gradually, leads her into some unusual adventures.

Nineteen literary selections by Carson McCullers, John Updike, Pablo Neruda, and others, with explanations of the literary devices used. Includes a handbook on writing a literary paper.

Daytime at Grandma''s house is fine, but bedtime is terrifying when a monster seems to be about.

In 1937, during the Depression, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice, initially apprehensive about leaving Chicago to spend a year with her fearsome, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois, gradually begins to better understand and admire her grandmother''s unusual qualities.

Rob and Soup vie for the prize in their town''s "Vermont Mardy Grah."

A self-help book using forensic techniques to better public speaking