New Releases by Robert Newton Peck

Arly, an orphan in search of a home and a family, escapes from a brutal migrant labor camp, joins a traveling religious show, and battles a devastating Florida hurricane.

With over 65 books published, including the breathtaking (and somewhat autobiographical) A Day No Pigs Would Die, Robert Newton Peck has enjoyed an illustrious writing career. Now, in an autobiography as unique as he is, Peck tells his story through the people in his life. From his roots as a poor Vermont farmer’s son to his years as a soldier in World War II, from his time slogging away in a paper mill to his semi-retirement in Florida, Peck shows us people who too often go unseen and unheard–the country’s poor and uneducated. “For decades, I’ve examined the autobiographies of my fellow authors. Bah! Many could have been titled And Then I Wrote . . . So instead of my life and lit, here is the unusual, a tarnished treasury of plain people who enriched me, taught me virtues, and helped me hold a mite of manhood. They’re not fancy folk, so please expect no long-stemmed roses from a florist. They are, instead, the unarranged flora that I’ve handpicked from God’s greenhouse . . . weeds in bloom.” From the Hardcover edition.

In HOW to write fiction like a pro: A simple-to-savvy toolkit for aspiring authors, celebrated author Robert Newton Peck provides emerging writers with the power tools they need to start building their own books. Readers will learn everything from pacing a story and writing dialogue that flows to molding the tangible "stuff" of life into characters and storylines of fiction. HOW is written in the straightforward, earthy, and humorous voice that fans of Rob's fiction have come to know and love. Informative but not preachy, HOW's lighthearted style immediately engages readers, inspiring them to take up the tools and write from their own lives and their own strengths.Learning isn't a load. It's laughter.Aspiring authors are sure to learn--and laugh--as they discover HOW to write fiction like a pro.

Tugwell Dockery hasn't spoken since the horrific events that unfolded one afternoon six years ago at his grand-father's ranch. Now he's back there, newly orphaned, living with his grandfather and gutsy great-aunt. The only person who understands him is his brother, Broda Joe. But Broda Joe's in jail, and Tug hasn't seen him in two years. Now, more than ever, Tug needs Bro, but their reunion will cost them more than they ever expected.

In 1938, with the help of a doctor and her elderly, horse-thieving father, a seventeen-year-old orphan steals thirteen horses from Chickalookee, Florida's doomed rodeo and finds a family in the process.

From the author of "A Day No Pigs Would Die" comes a powerful coming-of-age novel about letting go of old dreams and realizing new ones, combining the importance of family with lively baseball action that won't soon be forgotten.

"Rural Vermont during the 1920's is the setting for this nostalgic account of episodes in the lives of young Robert Peck and his pal, Soup."--starred, School Library Journal

Rob is determined to keep the family together following the death of his father.

Originally published in hardcover in 1972, A Day No Pigs Would Die was one of the first young adult books, along with titles like The Outsiders and The Chocolate War. In it, author Robert Newton Peck weaves a story of a Vermont boyhood that is part fiction, part memoir. The result is a moving coming-of-age story that still resonates with teens today.

Swish! Soup and Rob have basketball fever. The entire town of Learning, Vermont, is psyched up for the big game against their archrival, Pratt Falls. But there's trouble. The Learning Groundhogs' star center, Shorty Smith, has sprained his ankle. Soup and Rob have a plan. Their new friend Piffle Shootensinker, a seven-foot-tall European basketball star from Pretzelstein, has just moved to town. Piff has a problem. He's homesick, he misses his dog, and can sink a basket only when he hears the music of his homeland on the spitzentootle. What's a spinzentootle? It doesn't take Rob and Soup long to learn. Can they locate one (and also find a dog) in time to inspire Piff to lead the Learning Groundhogs to victory?

This novel of a doctor’s life shows Robertson Davies at his elegant and entertaining best. “‘Never neglect the charms of narrative for the human heart,’ said Mr. Ramsay.” And we are back at Colborne College listening to the history teacher Dunstan Ramsay, the narrator ofFifth Business. In his audience are three close friends, boys whose lives will closely intertwine: Brocky Gilmartin, who will become a distinguished Professor of English at Waverly University; Charlie Iredale, destined to become an Anglican priest; and our narrator, Jonathon Hullah, soon to be a medical man. “I am an observer,” says Dr. Hullah; like his predecessor inFifth Businesshe has gone through a rich life always slightly on the outside, watching, noticing. His power of observation is the quality that makes him an extraordinary doctor. Known as “The Cunning Man,” he enjoys fame as a diagnostician that attracts even the Governor General, who comes to him with a very personal problem. His skill also makes him a perceptive storyteller and a shrewd chronicler of what he calls “flat-footed, hard-breathing, high-aspiring Toronto.” Jonathon Hullah has watched the growth of the city over a lifetime; first as a boy from Northern Ontario at Colborne College, then as an undergraduate, then as a medical student at the University who falls in love both with the stage and with the lovely Nuala Conor. Away on war service in Europe he loses Nuala to his best friend, but returns to the city with a greater desire to settle down and become a doctor with a practice rooted in somewhat unconventional medical beliefs. When he does, he finds himself thrown into contact with “the Ladies” – the two English artists who establish an artistic salon which everyone attends. He also finds himself thrown into the high drama of the feuds at St Aidan’s Anglican Church, which involve his school friend Charlie Iredale, and which culminate in a very suspicious death at the altar. In the course of Dr. Hullah’s extended memoir, we encounter at least one miraculous cure, and one well-publicised mirac≤ a Bad Breath Contest of Olympian standards; tales of cannibals and of Tsarist bordellos; an extended visit to Salterton; life in the Canadian army in the Second World War; horror in the London Blitz, a row in the dining room of the York Club; the murder of Dr. Hullah’s godson, Conor Gilmartin; medical solutions to several literary mysteries; and much insight into theatre, art and music (including Miss Annie McGruder’s very own composition “Let me call you Jesus”), not to mention the secrets of a doctor’s consulting room. This novel allows Robertson Davies to display his wit (school, he tells us, is “a form of jail with educational opportunities”) and his wisdom in a novel which, of course, never neglects the charm of narrative for the human heart.

Unplanned events erupt on stage during the Thanksgiving pageant when the uncommon cold forces Soup, Rob, and the other pilgrims around the glowing stove, making the fifty-pound live turkey very frisky and setting off bags of corn.

Soup and his best pal, Rob are planning to go on a hayride. Rob hopes it's going to be an ordinary hayride, but he should know better when Soup is in charge. There's no stopping the boys as they fly into action.

Life in quiet Clod's Corners changes drastically for Higbee and his best friend Quincy when the very nasty Striker kids move in and Higbee decides to make them the target of a grand Halloween prank.

A visit from Uncle Virus and his motorcycle gang stimulates Soup to new and ingenious schemes, involving a cache of moonshine, a motorcycle competition, and revenge on the dreaded Janice Riker.

In 1932 in Florida, despite his older brother's objections, fifteen-year-old Ladd finds himself, through a series of unforeseen circumstances, traveling alone more than 100 miles to bring back wild horses for the rodeo and for breeding.

Anticipating the celebration of Miss Kelly Day in honor of the teacher of their one-room school in Learning, Vermont, Soup and Rob save the day from certain catastrophe at the hand of Dr. Elsa Pinkerton Uppit.

Rob and Soup set in motion a wild scheme to catch the eye of the Hollywood talent scout visiting their small Vermont town.

The year she turns twelve on Spanish Hoof, her family's beloved ranch in Florida, Harry gets a pony and learns some hard lessons about life.

Clean and tidy cousin Sexton lends his unusual talent to Soup and Rob as they engage in the town's goat-cart race.

While doing research for a school essay about a reclusive old mountain man, two boys fall into an abandoned mine shaft from which only the old man can rescue them.

A teenage boy risks his own popularity to give friendship and support to a retarded girl who is harassed by her classmates.

The story of Abbott Coe, 16-year-old orphan boy, set in the wilds of Canada in 1754 as the French and Indian War brewed across North America.

Drawings by Hal Frenck.

A young girl living on a Vermont farm relates the events of the day her uncle brought her a genuine "Junior G-man machine gun."

In May 1775 two boys participate in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys and befriend a young British soldier.

A pig's tremendous appetite proves useful when a wolf invades the barnyard.

A Vermont youth becomes involved with Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys despite his father's Tory leanings in the early days of the Revolutionary War.