Bestseller Alan Brennert's spellbinding story about a family of dreamers and their lives within the legendary Palisades Amusement Park

Growing up in the 1930s, there is no more magical place than Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey--especially for seven-year-old Antoinette, who horrifies her mother by insisting on the unladylike nickname Toni, and her brother, Jack. Toni helps her parents, Eddie and Adele Stopka, at the stand where they sell homemade French fries amid the roar of the Cyclone roller coaster. There is also the lure of the world's biggest salt-water pool, complete with divers whose astonishing stunts inspire Toni, despite her mother's insistence that girls can't be high divers.

But a family of dreamers doesn't always share the same dreams, and then the world intrudes: There's the Great Depression, and Pearl Harbor, which hits home in ways that will split the family apart; and perils like fire and race riots in the park. Both Eddie and Jack face the dangers of war, while Adele has ambitions of her own--and Toni is determined to take on a very different kind of danger in impossible feats as a high diver. Yet they are all drawn back to each other--and to Palisades Park--until the park closes forever in 1971.

Evocative and moving, with the trademark brilliance at transforming historical events into irresistible fiction that made Alan Brennert's "Moloka'i "and "Honolulu" into reading group favorites, "Palisades Park "takes us back to a time when life seemed simpler--except, of course, it wasn't.

In 1888, after eight years of waiting and planning, Matt Donahue is finally ready to flee Ireland's oppression and journey to America. He has dreamed of having land of his own and a right to vote. But since the quota for Irish immigration has been filled, Matt must travel to Scotland in order to book passage to America.

On the trip, Matt meets a beautiful young woman named Annie Rice. They share a brief but unforgettable kiss, and as Marr starts his journey to America, he is unable to forget he. Once he arrives in New York City, he begins a correspondence with Annie; as he works his way from Pennsylvania to Ohio and, finally, to Minnesota, their love blossoms through the written word.

From an iron ore mine in Tower, Minnesota, Matt joins a gold rush to Rainy Lake City and eventually buys a parcel of land outside the small village of Koochiching, Minnesota. Finally with the new home to call his own, he returns to Ireland hoping Annie will marry him. But is she already married? Will she move to America against her mother's wishes?

Based on atrue story and filled with vivid historical details, "A Bit of Irish Gold" beautifully captures the immigrant experience.

Summer is approaching - and life is as eventful as ever at Prior's Ford When Tricia and Derek Borland bring home their baby daughter, their elderly neighbours are more than willing to help the new mother. But their enthusiasm begins to wane when it becomes apparent that Tricia is more interested in going out with her friends than looking after her new baby - and is only too ready to take advantage of their kindness. Meanwhile, Lewis Ralston-Kerr and his fiance Ginny are horrified by Ginny's flamboyant mother's determination to sweep aside their desire for a small village wedding and organise a large society affair. What's more, the Prior's Ford Progress Committee have decided that the traditional village summer festival needs pepping up this year ...