Steal Away Home Books In Order
- Steal Away Home (1994)
- Soon Be Free (2000)
Novels
- Arriving At a Place You’ve Never Left (1977)
- What Do You Do in Quicksand? (1979)
- What Do You Do Quiksa (1981)
- Two Truths In My Pocket (1982)
- This Old Man (1984)
- Pig-Out Inn (1987)
- Skin Deep (1994)
- Swindletop (2000)
- Miriam’s Well (2001)
- The Moxie Kid (2002)
- Journey to Jamestown (2005)
- Shanghai Shadows (2006)
- The Secret of Laurel Oaks (2008)
- Rebel Spirits (2013)
- The Stowaway Kid (2019)
- Red Menace (2020)
- Eddie Whatever (2021)
Non fiction
- Strike! Mother Jones and the Colorado Coal Field War (2012)
Steal Away Home Book Covers
Novels Book Covers
Non fiction Book Covers
Lois Ruby Books Overview
Steal Away Home
When twelve year old Dana Shannon starts to strip away wallpaper in her family’s old house, she’s unprepared for the surprise that awaits her. A hidden room containing a human skeleton! How did such a thing get there? And why was the tiny room sealed up? With the help of a diary found in the room, Dana learns her house was once a station on the Underground Railroad. The young woman whose remains Dana discovered was Lizbet Charles, a conductor and former slave. As the scene shifts between Dana’s world and 1856, the story of the families that lived in the house unfolds. But as pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place, one haunting question remains why did Lizbet Charles die?
Soon Be Free
I ask you, why do weird things always happen to me? Thirteen year old Dana Shannon is no stranger to intrigue. Not long ago she discovered a skeleton behind a wall in her family’s house a house in Lawrence, Kansas, that was once owned by a Quaker family, the Weavers. The diary Dana found in the sealed off room revealed that the skeleton belonged to a runaway slave named Lizbeth Charles. Now Dana’s house is a newly refurbished bed and breakfast, and the first guests are two shady characters who believed the house is hiding another secret. When Dana gets in their way, she becomes embroiled in a second mystery, this one involving slaves and the Weavers again, and somehow Delaware Indians. As Dana tried to fit the puzzle pieces together, alternate chapters tell the story of James Baylor Weaver, a thirteen year old boy, in 1857. It is up to James to fulfill a promise Lizbeth made before her death. He must travel hundreds of miles to retrieve four slaves and bring them to freedom. The journey will test his strength, endurance, and courage; it will also test his character, when he has to make a terrible choice…
Readers of Soon Be Free will quickly be caught up in this fast paced mystery adventure that links teenagers from two different centuries.
Swindletop
In 1901, twelve year old Jake and his sister travel from Lithuania to Texas and find a totally different world, including suffragettes, swindlers, a mysterious youth with strange powers, and a compassionate rabbi.
The Moxie Kid
One Texas summer, eleven year old Jonathan Wigget meets an aging con artist, becomes a hometown hero, and tries to figure out who is killing the town’s cats.
Journey to Jamestown
My Side of the Story is completely unique approach to historical fiction. Read the story of one youngster’s life in turbulent times, then flip the book and find out first hand how another child reacts to the same events with very different feelings and results! 12 year old Elias is one of the first people to arrive in Jamestown as the English colonists land on America’s east coast. Elias is an apprentice surgeon, and is both excited and a little frightened at the new life he is starting out. Initally the new arrivals are friendly with native Pamunkee tribes, but when the settlers establish new ways, friction and tough times result. In the woods Elias comes across a young Pamunkee boy who only speaks in the native tongue. But the boy’s sister speaks some English and flax coloured hair. Elias is intrigued by this girl and begins a friendship with her, a friendship that will be sorely tested by the conflicts of the natives and colonists…
13 year old Sacahocan is a bright Pamunkee Indian girl. She witnesses the arrival of the fleet of English ships and is anxious like her fellow tribespeople. Her life is at an important stage she is soon to be married to Kecuttannowas, and the preparations for the ceremony are under way. However, fate intervenes. Not only are the colonists causing trouble for her people, she has also met a young English boy Elias who she likes spending time with. What will happen when events outside her control force Sacahocan to decide between her logic and her feelings?
Shanghai Shadows
It’s 1939, and the Shpann family has escaped their home in hopes of a better life in occupied China. Ilse, her brother, and their parents are shocked at the small size of their new lodgings, in which they practically live on top of each other and their neighbors; only then does Ilse start to realize that their life here as stateless refugees will be far more harsh than expected. Their family strains to make end meet as her mother finds only part time work in a bakery, while her musician father cannot find work at all. Ilse soon learns that her brother, Erich, has joined REACT, an underground resistance organization that masterminds sabotage missions and smuggles information. She fears for her brother’s safety, but craves adventure herself and talks her way into running occasional missions, as a gutsy if unlikely spy. Life grows tighter and tighter for the Shpanns as they are forced to relocate to Shanghai’s Jewish ghetto, but the family always manages to take solace in one another that is until a mother’s secret threatens to tear them all apart. In this gripping historical novel from Lois Ruby, a young gril struggles to grow up while her family struggles just to survive as European Jews against the unforgiving and alien backdrop of World War II China.
The Secret of Laurel Oaks
When Lila and her family visit Laurel Oaks Plantation in Louisiana, her parents and brother scoff at the claim that the house is haunted. But secretly, Lila suspects there are ghostly presences willing to communicate with her, and her alone. One spirit eager to tell her story is Daphne, a slave girl at Laurel Oaks in the 1840s, who was blamed for the poisoning deaths of two girls and their mother. Daphne’s spirit senses that Lila is the very person she s been waiting for, the one who can prove her innocence so her spirit can rest at long last. Shifting back and forth from Lila s world in the present to Daphne s world in the past, the true story of what really happened that fateful night finally comes to light. Laurel Oaks is a thinly disguised version of the legendary Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana, which is on the Smithsonian’s list of the ten most haunted places in America. This novel was inspired by the author’s visit to the plantation and her experiences there.
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