Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Secret of Laurel Oaks
    Unavailable
    The Secret of Laurel Oaks
    Unavailable
    The Secret of Laurel Oaks
    Ebook273 pages3 hours

    The Secret of Laurel Oaks

    By Lois Ruby

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A haunting historical mystery based on real life events, told in the alternating points of view of a contemporary girl and a 19th century slave accused of a horrible crime.

    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 middle grade novel was inspired by the author's visit to the plantation and her experiences there.

    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 2, 2008
    ISBN9781429940276
    Unavailable
    The Secret of Laurel Oaks
    Author

    Lois Ruby

    Lois Ruby is the author of 18 books for middle graders and teens, including Steal Away Home, Miriam’s Well, The Secret of Laurel Oaks, Rebel Spirits, Skin Deep, and The Doll Graveyard. Her fiction runs the gamut from contemporary to historical and from realistic to paranormal. An ex-librarian, Ruby now writes full-time, in addition to speaking to bookish groups, presenting at writing workshops, and touting literacy and the joys of nourishing, thought-provoking reading in schools across the country. Ruby and her husband live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains.

    Read more from Lois Ruby

    Related to The Secret of Laurel Oaks

    Related ebooks

    YA Historical For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      NEW ENGLAND By The BOOK

      Sep 10, 2021

      SHORTLY AFTER I met my wife, she told me she hoped to one day visit Emily Dickinson’s house in New England. She was working at a publishing house in Paris’s 14th Arrondissement, across the street from Montparnasse Cemetery, where some of France’s mos

      11 min read

    • Article

      Little House

      Jun 5, 2023

      On Monday nights our mother made popcorn and served it to us in mugs with milk poured over. My younger sister and I carried our mugs into the family room and ate the popcorn with spoons, like cereal. We were five and seven. Until we were allowed to s

      21 min read

    • Article

      Home Bound

      May 18, 2020

      Home Bound
      6 min read

    • Article

      There’s No Place Like Home: An Artist Reconnects to the Whispers of Her Past

      Apr 7, 2023

      Estimated reading time: 13 minutes — I would be remiss in telling you how two suburbanites found home at our farm, ‘Oakhaven’, without first sharing our motives. There were a few. We had been watching the steady decline of the small towns we love fo

      8 min read

    • Article

      Above Santa Cruz

      Jul 2, 2019

      Above Santa Cruz
      5 min read

    • Article

      Sadie: A Ghost Story

      Aug 4, 2017

      Sadie: A Ghost Story
      3 min read

    • Article

      Beyond Rose Street

      Nov 10, 2021

      “Don’t tell anyone what happened to Tyler.” I stop running just long enough to turn, hoping for more instructions, but Leyton is already sprinting up his porch steps and through his front door. “Should we—” He slams the door behind him. Even from whe

      20 min read

    • Article

      Watching The World Go By

      Aug 3, 2021

      I think almost every house in Kansas had a porch swing. It was 1950 and no one had air conditioning, so we waited until the sun had gone down below the giant elm trees, and then people would wander out to their porches to sit in their porch swings an

      4 min read

    • Article

      L’amour vrai

      Oct 27, 2022

      L’amour vrai
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Plain Little House

      Apr 8, 2019

      The house is real, not imaginary. But it is also a place lodged deep in the imagination, a dream place whose actual coordinates have been forgotten. In the last years of her very long life, my mother’s memory, eroded by time and general anaesthetics,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Dolly’s Star Turn

      Jul 12, 2023

      Dolly’s Star Turn
      7 min read

    • Article

      ‘The End of the Day’: Featured Fiction from Bill Clegg

      Sep 30, 2020

      An excerpt from a novel Kirkus called "A moody, atmospheric domestic drama with a mystery novel somewhere in its family tree." The post ‘The End of the Day’: Featured Fiction from Bill Clegg appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Benjamin Nugent

      Jun 15, 2018

      Claire’s roommates threw her out on November third, for falling behind on rent and hogging the Xbox. During the next three weeks, she lived in other people’s houses. She missed the Xbox, but couch surfing was like a game. She had to not smell like co

      20 min read

    • Article

      How I Demolished My Life

      Dec 28, 2021

      How I Demolished My Life
      11 min read

    • Article

      In Dogs We Trust

      Jan 18, 2022

      In Dogs We Trust
      6 min read

    • Article

      Intelligent Creatures

      Jul 6, 2023

      Intelligent Creatures
      19 min read

    • Article

      Dolly’s Star Turn

      Aug 9, 2023

      Dolly’s Star Turn
      7 min read

    • Article

      Dolly’s Star Turn

      Jul 12, 2023

      Dolly’s Star Turn
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tomorrows

      Mar 15, 2022

      The night, as most nights, was like a dream. At ten, once I’d fed the dog the last scraps off the stove. Once I’d cursed the cat for scratching up my mama’s antique furniture, then welcomed him back into my arms. Once I’d slicked my hair into a ponyt

      26 min read

    • Article

      What Ray Charles Says

      Mar 1, 2024

      The nighttime is the right time to be with the one you love, says Ray,but according to Hamlet, it’s when “churchyards yawn and hell itselfbreathes out contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,”says Hamlet, “and do such bitter business as

      2 min read

    • Article

      “Really?”

      Jun 2, 2022

      “Really?”
      6 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Apr 21, 2022

      It Happened to Me…
      8 min read

    • Article

      THE HOUSE with the BLUE DOOR

      May 7, 2020

      THE HOUSE with the BLUE DOOR
      6 min read

    • Article

      Squirrel King

      May 9, 2019

      Squirrel King
      2 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Secret of Laurel Oaks

    4/5

    5 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      The fact that I stayed up well past my bedtime to finish this should be review enough. An excellent ghost story, with just the right amount of spookiness, and really interesting historical detail.
    • 3/5
      I was hoping for a great ghost story but was disappointed in the implausible tone of the book... that is, it was supposed to be scary but ended up more like a social studies lesson on plantation life. It may find a warmer reception with a young adult audience.
    • 4/5
      LilaWhen thirteen-year-old Lila and her family visit Laurel Oaks Plantation in Louisiana, her parents and brother scoff at the claim that the house is haunted. Lila isn’t so ready to dismiss the idea. Ever since her friend Roberto died, she’s been hearing his voice in the middle of the night. But there are no such things as ghosts, are there? Maybe here, at Laurel Oaks, Lila will find out for sure….
    • 5/5
      I thought this book was a fantastic book!!!!! New things came in every chapter that just made your jaw drop!!!!!! Sometimes, throughout the book, i wished i could be there just to see the stuff that was happening for myself!!!!!! I highly recommend this book!!!!!!!