Books with author Ann Warren Turner

The intrigue and mysticism of ancient Egypt comes to life in Ann Turner's spectacular addition to The Life and Times series. In the time of the Pharoah Hatshepsut's rule, the Egyptian days could pass as slowly as the Nile's lazy waters, or as quickly as the Nile's rising floodwaters. Maia and her brother are orphaned and living with a cold, judgmental aunt and uncle in Thebes. Searching for a way out of their house, Maia pleads with her brother, Sethnet, who is learning to be a scribe, to teach her how to write. He agrees, and this is to be her saving skill.

The religious sect known as Shakers, who at their height (ca. 1825) probably only numbered around 4000, has always exerted a profound influence on the American imagination. Perhaps it was their simplicity, or their celibacy, or their strict rules for communal living, but while other utopian communities have long since been forgotten, the Shakers live on. Founded by Mother Ann Lee in the eighteenth century, they soon had active communities throughout the Midwest and as far south as Kentucky. Dedicated to serving God, they lived simple, agrarian lives in harmony with the changing seasons, content with what they could provide with their own hands and labor. Although living communities have all but disappeared, their influence survives - in everything from the clothes pin to the seed packet.Their spare motto, "Hands to Work, Hearts to God" is repeated like a mantra in the charming rhymed text by Ann Turner. Coupled with the chaste, sensitive, almost elegiac paintings by artist Wendell Minor, this lovely paperback reprint of the hardcover original brings back the virtues of hard work, simple needs, rural living, and an admirable religious order we would do well to contemplate.