Title: City of Orphans
Description: The streets of 1893 New York are full of life: crowded, filthy, dangerous. If you are a newsboy like thirteen-year-old Maks Geless, you need to watch out for Bruno, leader of the Plug Ugly Gang whose shadowy, sinister boss is plotting to take control of all the newsies on the lower East Side. With Bruno's boys in fierce pursuit, Maks discovers Willa, a strange girl who lives alone in an alley. It is she, stick in hand, who fights off the Plug Uglies -- but further dangers await. Maks must find a way to free his sister Emma from The Tombs, the city jail where she has been imprisoned for stealing a watch at the glamorous new Waldorf Hotel. Maks, believing her innocent, has only four days to prove it. Fortunately, there is Bartleby Donck, the eccentric lawyer (among other employments) to guide Maks and Willa in the art of detection. Against a backdrop alive with the sights and sounds of tenement New York, Maks, as boy detective, must confront a teeming world of wealth and crime, while struggling against powerful forces threatening new immigrants and the fabric of family love. - Publisher.
Subjects: Homeless persons, History, Mystery and detective stories, Gangs, Immigrants, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (New York, N.Y.), Family life, Fiction, Detective and mystery stories, Juvenile fiction, Pandillas, Families, Vida en familia, Familias, Inmigrantes, Ficción juvenil, Desamparados, Niños, Homeless girls, Spanish language materials, Literatura juvenil, Historical fiction, Mystery fiction, Children's fiction, Family life, fiction, New york (n.y.), history, fiction, Gangs, fiction, Homeless persons, fiction, Emigration and immigration, fiction, Hotels, motels, etc., fiction
Places: New York (State), New York (N.Y.), New York
Time periods: 1865-1898