He heads down to Mulberry, Texas, to keep a promise to his fallen Union army brother-in-arms, Joe Farrell, to make sure that his family is safe. But what Sam finds is the Farrell family in shambles: a gang of former Confederate soldiers are harassing them because of Joe's Union service. In desperation, Joe's widow, Julia, has married the gang's sadistic leader -- a man Sam had haunting his dreams since the war. To rescue Julia, Sam will need to rely on his wits as much as his guns, and he'll need the help of the whole Farrell clan, including Joe's disarming younger sister, Mary. This is a new release of an edition originally published by C.J. Petit.

    But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream," this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada.We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. Now, celebrated historian Michael Wallis—beloved for his myth-busting portraits of legendary American figures—continues his life’s work of parsing fact from fiction to tell the true story of one of the most embroidered sagas in Western history.Wallis begins the story in 1846, a momentous "year of decision" for the nation, when incredible territorial strides were being made in Texas, New Mexico, and California. Against this dramatic backdrop, an unlikely band of travelers appeared, stratified in age, wealth, education and ethnicity. At the forefront were the Donners: brothers George and Jacob, true sons of the soil determined to tame the wild land of California; and the Reeds, headed by adventurous, business-savvy patriarch James. In total, the Donner-Reed group would reach eighty-seven men, women, and children, and though personal motives varied—bachelors thirsting for adventure, parents wanting greater futures for their children—everyone was linked by the same unwavering belief that California was theirs for the taking.Skeptical of previous accounts of how the group ended up in peril, Wallis has spent years retracing its ill-fated journey, uncovering hundreds of new documents that illuminate how a combination of greed, backbiting, and recklessness led the group to become hopelessly snowbound at the infamous Donner Pass in present-day California. Climaxing with the grim stories of how the party’s paltry rations soon gave way to unimaginable hunger, Wallis not only details the cannibalism that has in perpetuity haunted their legacy but also the heroic rescue parties that managed to reach the stranded, only to discover that just forty-eight had survived the ordeal.An unflinching and historically invaluable account of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny, The Best Land Under Heaven offers a brilliant, revisionist examination of one of America's most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes.

    In this art she finds refuge from her crumbling marriage and the feeling that her once-vibrant life is slipping away. Then an antique German edition takes her breath away. Slipped covertly into the endpapers is an intriguing missive, the first part of a secret…from one bookbinder to another.Two hundred years ago, Clarice von Harmel defied the constraints of family and society to engage in a profession forbidden to women. Within three separate volumes, Clarice bound her own hidden story filled with pain, longing, and love beyond all reason. A confession that now crosses centuries to touch the heart of a stranger.With the help of book collector Tomaso Leoni, Sofia connects the threads of Clarice’s past, page by page, line by line, town by town. She’s determined to make Clarice’s voice heard. With each new revelation, Clarice is giving Sofia the courage to find her own voice and hope for the future she thought was lost.

    The men in charge all too frequently appeared to be fighting against the administration in Washington instead of for it, increasingly cast as political pawns facing down a vindictive congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War. President Lincoln oversaw, argued with, and finally tamed his unruly team of generals as the eastern army was stabilized by an unsung supporting cast of corps, division, and brigade generals. With characteristic style and insight, Stephen Sears brings these courageous, determined officers, who rose through the ranks and led from the front, to life.

    She immediately became enamored with tales of Holmes and his esteemed biographer Dr. John Watson, and later, began spinning these quintessential characters into her own works of fiction—from her acclaimed debut novel, Dust and Shadow, which pitted the famous detective against Jack the Ripper, to a series of short stories for the Strand Magazine, whose predecessor published the very first Sherlock Holmes short story in 1891.Faye’s best Holmes tales, including two new works, are brought together in The Whole Art of Detection, a stunning collection that spans Holmes’s career, from self-taught young upstart to publicly lauded detective, both before and after his faked death over a Swiss waterfall in 1894. In The Lowther Park Mystery, the unsociable Holmes is forced to attend a garden party at the request of his politician brother and improvises a bit of theater to foil a conspiracy against the government. The Adventure of the Thames Tunnel brings Holmes’s attention to the baffling murder of a jewel thief in the middle of an underground railway passage. With Holmes and Watson encountering all manner of ungrateful relatives, phony psychologists, wronged wives, plaid-garbed villains, and even a peculiar species of deadly red leech, The Whole Art of Detection is a must-read for Sherlockians and any fan of historical crime fiction with a modern sensibility.

    Determined to prove she is capable of running the business on her own, Claire must compete against a wealthy businessman who wants to bring her down. Two Wolves, half Cheyenne, scouts for the U. S. Army. He is determined to prove that white men have been committing raids against their own kind in order to fuel the fires of hatred of Colorado citizens against the Cheyenne. When he rescues Claire from just such an attack, he is struck by her fiery independence and youthful beauty. Most of all, he admires her brave attempt to save her father’s business and to help Two Wolves prove that her attack was by white men, led by the very businessman who is her competitor. Through events that keep forcing these two together and cause Two Wolves to risk his life in Claire’s defense more than once, a bond develops that turns into a steamy attraction between a tiny, red-headed young white woman and a powerful, brave, handsome Indian warrior. This attraction leads to a hot, forbidden romance that develops into a memorable “against-all-odds” love story. Set against the true history of atrocities committed by the Colorado militia against peaceful Cheyenne, CAPTURE MY HEART brings to light the struggle of the southern Cheyenne to survive amid more and more white settlement; and it shows the courage of Indians and certain brave whites alike in trying to keep the peace during one of the most difficult periods in Colorado history.

    In the summer of 1877, General Oliver Otis Howard, a champion of African American civil rights, ruthlessly pursued hundreds of Nez Perce families who resisted moving onto a reservation. Standing in his way was Chief Joseph, a young leader who never stopped advocating for Native American sovereignty and equal rights. Thunder in the Mountains is the spellbinding story of two legendary figures and their epic clash of ideas about the meaning of freedom and the role of government in American life.

    Having spent her first full year away at college, she has gained a new appreciation for her peaceful home and new friend, Walter. Walter jumps at the chance to work at Quail Crossings when the opportunity presents itself. Not only does Walter want to learn his chosen trade of agriculture, but he also wants to be closer to Alice who has resisted his romantic advances. The peaceful summer Alice has envisioned with her family and friend quickly dissolves as a stranger arrives proclaiming Quail Crossings as his own. Between the stranger and a natural disaster, the only home Alice has ever known could be destroyed forever. Alice and the whole clan must put their lives in danger to save the very thing that has brought them together … Quail Crossings ... or say goodbye to it forever.

    Victoria's matchmaking plans were further complicated by the tumultuous international upheavals of the time: revolution and war were in the air, and kings and queens, princes and princesses were vulnerable targets.Queen Victoria's Matchmaking travels through the glittering, decadent palaces of Russia and Europe, weaving in scandals, political machinations and family tensions to enthralling effect. It is at once an intimate portrait of a royal family and an examination of the conflict caused by the marriages the Queen arranged. At the heart of it all is Victoria herself: doting grandmother one moment; determined Queen Empress the next.

    Not only does she love him with all her heart, but the discoveries they have made could turn the scientific world on its head. When Charles is unable to make the long sea journey to present his findings to the prestigious Royal Society in England, Rosie must venture forth in his stead. What she discovers there will change the lives of future generations. 1908 Sydney, NSWTamsin Alleyn has been given a mission: travel to the Hunter Valley and retrieve an old sketchbook of debatable value, gifted to the Public Library by a recluse. But when she gets there, she finds there is more to the book than meets the eye, and more than one interested party. Shaw Everdene, a young antiquarian bookseller and lawyer seems to have his own agenda when it comes to the book – and Tamsin. In an attempt to discover the book's true provenance Tamsin decides to work with him.The deeper they delve, the more intricate the mystery becomes. As the lives of two women a century apart converge, discoveries rise up from the past and reach into the future, with irrevocable consequences...

     Miss Emily Wallis is a bluestocking whose parents have caused enough scandal for her to retreat from society. Mrs Agnes Jones is living a lie which she is desperately trying to keep hidden. Viscount Robert Wilding is suffering from his injuries gained at Salamanca and the loss of his brothers. Three damaged individuals who are on life-changing journeys in ways they could never have foreseen. None of them will ever be the same again.

    Smoke fills the horizon and blood soaks the prairie as the Sioux fight to drive white settlers from their ancestral homeland. Sarah Wakefield and her young son and baby daughter are fleeing for their lives when two warriors capture them. One is Hapa, who intends to murder them. The other is Chaska, an old acquaintance who promises to protect the family. Chaska shelters them in his mother’s tepee, but with emotions running so high among both Indians and whites, the danger only intensifies. As she struggles to protect herself and those she loves, Sarah is forced to choose between doing what others expect of her and following her own deep beliefs.

    But what happened after the Queen married her handsome prince? Did they live happily ever after, or did their marriage, like so many royal marriages past and present, fizzle into a loveless round of duty?This all-new companion book by Daisy Goodwin and Sara Sheridan transports us to the private world of Victoria and Albert. Though first cousins, they could not have been more different: Victoria was impulsive, emotional, and capricious, Albert cautious, self-controlled, and logical. But together they forged a bond with each other and with their people that would change the world. Drawing on letters and diaries and fresh insights into royal history, this gorgeous book charts the constant ebb and flow of power within the couple’s surprisingly ardent and modern marriage.Sumptuously illustrated and full of rich insider detail, Victoria & Albert takes us behind the scenes of the magnificent TV drama, including fascinating, in-depth information on the actors, the props, and the costumes – and bringing an extraordinary royal marriage even more fully to life.

     Boston 1868...At the insistence of her parents, sixteen-year-old Katie O'Neil reluctantly left her beloved Galway. She joined her cousin, Moira Murphy to work as a nanny and domestic. In mid-nineteenth century Boston, Irish domestics were often referred to as Kitchen Canaries and considered property of their employers. The young women are violated by their employer, Charles Brennan. Their shame and guilt is so great, they keep the abuse a secret even from each. When Katie becomes pregnant, Charles Brennan's victims, Moira, his wife Rose, and the negro household help, bond together to hide the newborn. In this post-Civil War era, Boston is bustling with change as wealthy Englishmen and Boston Brahmins expand world trade routes, build railroads and develop land. Immigrants from Ireland, Italy and Poland establish neighborhoods, existing in overcrowded, disease-ridden shacks and tenements. They, and negroes flocking North, suffer hate, humiliation and rejection from the establishment. The only value they have to the rich Bostonians is their willingness to work for little money performing menial or back-breaking, dangerous jobs on the docks, and building railroads. This story is about the goodness of others, black, white, Irish and English whose strength prevails to overcome evil and guide Katie and Moira to true redemption. The sequel, Through the Open Door is now available.

    She is told she must give up her daughter to avoid a life of poverty and shame. But she chooses to keep her.Pregnant, abandoned by her lover, and banished from her Quaker home and teaching position, Lilli de Jong enters a charity for wronged women to deliver her child. She is stunned at how much her infant needs her and at how quickly their bond overpowers her heart. Mothers in her position have no sensible alternative to giving up their children, but Lilli can't bear such an outcome. Determined to chart a path toward an independent life, Lilli braves moral condemnation and financial ruin in a quest to keep herself and her baby alive. Confiding their story to her diary as it unfolds, Lilli takes readers from an impoverished charity to a wealthy family's home to the perilous streets of a burgeoning American city. Lilli de Jong is at once a historical saga, an intimate romance, and a lasting testament to the work of mothers. "So little is permissible for a woman," writes Lilli, yet on her back every human climbs to adulthood."

    One of the wagons belongs to the Applegates. The husband Hank, his wife, Lorie and their eight-year-old son, Mark. Lorie has made up her mind that when they reach the next fort she will stay with her son. She can no longer allow Hank to verbally abuse her and the worst of it is his abuse of Mark. Before they reach the safety of the fort, Hank as an accident and can't be moved. He insist that Lorie and Mark stay behind with him. She agrees, but later as food is getting low and he shows no sign of improving she becomes more worried about Mark. As a storm approaches she decides to get Mark to safety. She leaves in the early morning before Hank is a wake. Before long they are caught in a blizzard and lost. Join them and live a life with them they never would have expected. If you enjoy the story please leave a review. Check out the other Frontier Adventures by CR Wilson on Kindle eBooks and in paperback on Amazon.

    As David prepares to travel with the 1843 wagon train across the Oregon Trail, he proposes marriage to Rachel. Her decision to accept is based on her need for a husband and a father for her three young children. The hardships of the journey west can either bring the couple together or destroy hopes of ever having a marriage based on love. Can Rachel overcome her guilt at re-marrying so soon after her husband’s tragic death?

    Few people living in 1860 would have dared imagine either event, and yet, in retrospect, both seem to have been inevitable.In a beautifully crafted narrative, Edward L. Ayers restores the drama of the unexpected to the history of the Civil War. From the same vantage point occupied by his unforgettable characters, Ayers captures the strategic savvy of Lee and his local lieutenants, and the clear vision of equal rights animating black troops from Pennsylvania. We see the war itself become a scourge to the Valley, its pitched battles punctuating a cycle of vicious attack and reprisal in which armies burned whole towns for retribution. In the weeks and months after emancipation, from the streets of Staunton, Virginia, we see black and white residents testing the limits of freedom as political leaders negotiate the terms of readmission to the Union. With analysis as powerful as its narrative, here is a landmark history of the Civil War.

    Stanton raised, armed, and supervised the army of a million men who won the Civil War. He organized the war effort. He directed military movements from his telegraph office, where Lincoln literally hung out with him. He arrested and imprisoned thousands for “war crimes,” such as resisting the draft or calling for an armistice. Stanton was so controversial that some accused him at that time of complicity in Lincoln’s assassination. He was a stubborn genius who was both reviled and revered in his time.Stanton was a Democrat before the war and a prominent trial lawyer. He opposed slavery, but only in private. He served briefly as President Buchanan’s Attorney General and then as Lincoln’s aggressive Secretary of War. On the night of April 14, 1865, Stanton rushed to Lincoln’s deathbed and took over the government since Secretary of State William Seward had been critically wounded the same evening. He informed the nation of the President’s death, summoned General Grant to protect the Capitol, and started collecting the evidence from those who had been with the Lincolns at the theater in order to prepare a murder trial.Now with this worthy complement to the enduring library of biographical accounts of those who helped Lincoln preserve the Union, Stanton honors the indispensable partner of the sixteenth president. Walter Stahr’s essential book is the first major biography of Stanton in fifty years, restoring this underexplored figure to his proper place in American history.

    When she arrives, her husband-to-be is waiting, but not for her. When he disregards his mail-order bride, Sarah decides to take matters into her own hands. Not one to give up on her dream to live out west, Sarah decides to find a job and start a new life with or without a husband. The timing could not be worse. With hopes of avoiding his mother’s meddling at all costs Robert Fields had planned to get married as soon as his bride arrived. That Sarah and his parents arrived in the same coach was an unfortunate catastrophe. Not wanting to let on that Sarah was there for him, he hustles his parents home with the intent of later explaining to Sarah and going forward with the marriage quickly… and quietly. A compelling American western historical romance

    But for Sergeant James Taft, there seems to be no end in sight. He had seldom considered what he would do after the war, because he never believed he would live through it. James briefly returns to Pennsylvania in an unsuccessful attempt to work as a farmer. He then sets out to find peace and somehow vanquish the ghosts in his soul. What he can't possibly see before him as he rides west, is the epic story of tragedy, triumph and finding oneself. "It's unfortunate, but true, that darkness must often be complete, before we notice the subtle glimmer of hope." - Doc Jefferies, Ever the Wayward Sky.

     Rather than abandoning his parish in search of the truth, Father Paul’s quest is a simple one: to find the true essence of Christianity. A Modern Day Apostle to the Downtrodden Set against the backdrop of a harsh and cold Russian countryside along the River Volga, with its unyielding poverty and hardships, The Archbishop follows Father Paul as he searches to understand God and the parlous state of the world around him. It is not until he meets the eponymous Archbishop that he finds revelations that do more than just answer his soul-searching questions. More than this, he finds a true shepherd determined to spread a more authentic message of Christ to the people who follow him. But even the divine truth that Father Paul finally finds in this dreary, cold hamlet where religion seems to be fading from relevance is not free from earthly machinations. Although he discovers something that will change his life forever, the realities of the world around him remain unyielding and unchanging. The Archbishop is a book that does not shy away from asking big questions – nor from answering them. Author Hieromonk Tihon’s identity has long since been lost to history and his fate unknown, but the vivid characters and intricately drawn world created in this book have indicated that The Archbishop may be an autobiographical work. Condemned, burned, and banned by iconoclastic Bolsheviks during the earliest years of Soviet Russia as it pushed an agenda of militant atheism, The Archbishop's spiritual guidance was almost lost among countless other Eastern Orthodox works. The Archbishop provides deep spiritual insight and guidance into a world distant from ours, despite the chasms of difference in culture, time, and space. Sometimes funny, often tragic, and other times angering, this hidden Orthodox gem does not shy away from asking big questions – nor from answering them. It remains a work full of spiritual lessons that will resonate profoundly with the modern-day American Orthodox clergy and their laity.

    “Shoot’em down! Don’t let them rally!” For two years, the terrible and bloody Civil War raged in the United States of America, tearing at the very fabric of its glorious founding. In the midst of utter turmoil a young boy, Anderson Roach, longed to join his brother as part of the famed Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry. With his brother gone fighting for nearly two years, Anderson was now ready to leave the farm and prove himself by joining the ranks of men on the battlefield. Little did Anderson know that his dreams of adventure and heroism would soon be met with the harsh reality of soldiering in the Union Army. With each step, he would walk hand in hand with death and experience the physical and mental anguish of war.

     In this collection of novellas, Rice takes her readers on a journey through time, searching for romance in the most unlikely places. Prepare to be swept away as a ghost leads a lonely gentleman into the arms of a lady who steals his forgotten heart in "Deceiving Appearances." Continue to revel in the merriment while a bit of Valentine magic changes the hardened heart of a woman spurned by a rake in "Fathers and Daughters." Romance will continue to spark in "Lady Invisible" when a hoyden lady and a military man find solace and love in an unconventional way. And finally, see how true love blossoms amidst the anguish of rejection in “The Borrowed Groom.” Buy now and let these stories of love, heartache, and redemption reveal the most basic truth of all: love comes at the most unexpected times. Regency Love and Laughter series: Crossed in Love Mad Maria’s Daughter Artful Deceptions All A Woman Wants

    While Forrest goes to college, quick witted Annet works at Keizer Manor, the museum where the oils from 19th century master painter Alexander Keizer are exhibited.After the celebration of the Manor’s 200-th anniversary, they quarrel and take a stroll through the dunes to make up. When dark clouds roll in, the beautiful sunny weather turns into a thunderstorm so violent that they get separated.The next morning, Forrest finds himself alone. So does Annet.Regaining consciousness in a monastery, Annet is convinced the nuns are playing a prank on her. It can't be the 1800's! She's a pregnant Twenty-first Century woman and doesn't belong there. But how will she get back to her own time?

    In an attempt to suppress this new faith, the US Army killed over two hundred Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek. Louis Warren's God's Red Son offers a startling new view of the religion known as the Ghost Dance, from its origins in the visions of a Northern Paiute named Wovoka to the tragedy in South Dakota. To this day, the Ghost Dance remains widely mischaracterized as a primitive and failed effort by Indian militants to resist American conquest and return to traditional ways. In fact, followers of the Ghost Dance sought to thrive in modern America by working for wages, farming the land, and educating their children, tenets that helped the religion endure for decades after Wounded Knee. God's Red Son powerfully reveals how Ghost Dance teachings helped Indians retain their identity and reshape the modern world.

     Colonel Francis Wolfe, military hero and the new Earl of Warenton, is prepared to do his duty and marry well. He has almost decided upon the well bred and beautiful Miss Sylvia Renleigh, without ever noticing the quiet young woman who is her aunt's over-worked companion. Until Elise practically walks under the hooves of his stallion. It never enters his head that she was daydreaming of him. Impoverished emigrée, Elise de Sancerre, knows that the earl would never normally look at her. Yet when they meet again at a masked ball, where the world expects him to propose to Sylvia, everything changes. Throw a managing sister and a missing tiara into the equation and all bets are suddenly off. Enjoy this delightful Regency tale!

    What America Needs Now.Bestselling authors William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone give the classic American hero a real shot in the arm--in this epic story of a Rebel doctor fighting for justice in the aftermath of the Civil War . . .VENGEANCE WITH A SCALPEL On the blood-stained battlefields of a divided nation, Dr. Samuel Knight used his surgical skills to treat wounded Confederate soldiers. In the brutal prison camps of the Union Army, he offered his healing services to fellow captives who'd given up hope. But now, with the war over and the South in ruins, the good doctor faces his hardest challenge yet: to save himself . . .Penniless and hungry, Knight has to beg, borrow, and steal to survive in a post-war hell that used to be his country. By the time he reaches his home in East Texas, it's been taken over. Ruthless Union soldiers rule over the town with an iron fist. A Yankee carpetbagger is living in his old house--and the jackal has forced Knight's wife to marry him. A normal man might give up, but Dr. Samuel Knight is going to take back what belongs to him. With a heartfull of grit and a hunger for revenge and with swift, surgical precision, he'll stick a bullet in every dead man walking . . .

    Delamirie, a 1700s court case before the King's Bench against Paul de Lamerie, a silversmith. In the vein of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, Infants of the Brush is set in a time when London society ignored the ills of child labor. Unlike the gleeful chimney sweeps portrayed in Mary Poppins, climbing boys were forced up burning flues to dislodge harmful soot and coal ash.Egan Whitcombe is just six years old when he is sold to Master Armory for a few coins that his family desperately needs. As one of Master Armory's eight broomers, Egan quickly learns that his life depends on absolute obedience and the coins he earns.Pitt, the leader of Master Armory's broomers, teaches Egan to sweep chimneys and negotiate for scraps of bread. Broken and starving, the boys discover friendship as they struggle to save five guineas, the cost of a broomer's independence.

    Desperate to save her childhood, fifteen-year-old Bridie is determined to smuggle a notebook filled with her father's fairy tales to the far side of the world. When Rhys Bevan, a soft-voiced young storyteller and fellow traveller realises Bridie is hiding something, a magical friendship is born. But Rhys has his own secrets and the words written in Bridie’s notebook carry a dark double meaning. As they inch towards their destination, Rhys's past returns to haunt him. Bridie grapples with the implications of her dad’s final message. The pair take refuge in fairy tales, little expecting the trouble it will cause.

    Two profoundly moving, candid histories and a powerful novel illuminate important aspects of the Native American story.  Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: The #1 New York Times bestseller that awakened the world to the destruction of American Indians in the nineteenth-century West, Dee Brown’s groundbreaking history focuses on the betrayals, battles, and systematic slaughter suffered by Native American tribes between 1860 and 1890, culminating in the Sioux massacre at Wounded Knee. “Shattering, appalling, compelling . . . One wonders, reading this searing, heartbreaking book, who, indeed, were the savages” (The Washington Post).  The Fetterman Massacre: A riveting account of events leading up to the Battle of the Hundred Slain—the devastating 1866 conflict at Wyoming’s Ft. Phil Kearney that pitted Lakota, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne warriors—including Oglala chief Red Cloud, against the United States cavalry under the command of Captain William Fetterman. Based on a wealth of historical resources and sparked by Brown’s narrative genius, this is an essential look at one of the frontier’s defining conflicts.  Creek Mary’s Blood: This New York Times bestseller fictionalizes the true story of Mary Musgrove—born in 1700 to a Creek tribal chief—and five generations of her family. The sweeping narrative spans the Revolutionary War, the Trail of Tears, and the Civil War—in which Mary’s descendants fought on both sides of the conflict. Rich in detail and human drama, Creek Mary’s Blood offers “a robust, unfussed crash-course in Native American history that rolls from East to West with dark, inexorable energy” (Kirkus Reviews).

    It also gives fascinating insight and knowledge into the country's first efforts to help newly freed slaves while also illustrating the many struggles and achievements of African Americans during the war.It was a mild May morning in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1862, the second year of the Civil War, when a twenty-three-year-old enslaved man named Robert Smalls boldly seized a Confederate steamer. With his wife and two young children hidden on board, Smalls and a small crew ran a gauntlet of heavily armed fortifications in Charleston Harbor and delivered the valuable vessel and the massive guns it carried to nearby Union forces. Smalls’ courageous and ingenious act freed him and his family from slavery and immediately made him a Union hero. It also challenged much of the country’s view of what African Americans were willing to do for their freedom. In Be Free or Die, Cate Lineberry tells the remarkable story of Smalls’ escape and his many accomplishments during the war, including becoming the first black captain of an Army vessel. In a particularly poignant moment, Smalls even bought the home that he and his mother had once served in as house slaves.

     Kate Hamilton is companion to the dullest and meanest woman in England, but she is looking forward to going home for Christmas and her sister Mary’s wedding. When her employer refuses to release her, Colonel Robert Woodgate comes to the rescue. Robert now owns Malton Manor, Kate’s old home in the village of Malton. Recently returned from the Boer War and recovering from his injuries, Robert has been reclusive and morose. Clashing several times over his plans and sweeping changes in the village, their relationship has always been tempestuous. But when Kate returns to Malton, she discovers her sister’s wedding is to take place at Malton Manor and everyone is convinced the Colonel has an ulterior motive. Can Kate resist the lure of her old home and the memories it holds? And does she have the courage to break down Robert’s defences to find happiness at last?

    Inside, he found two bodies sprawled on an ornate bed, blood oozing from their mouths. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary appeared to have shot his seventeen-year-old mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera as she slept, sat with the corpse for hours and, when dawn broke, turned the pistol on himself.A century has transformed this bloody scene into romantic tragedy: star-crossed lovers who preferred death together than to be parted by a cold, unfeeling Viennese Court. But Mayerling is also the story of family secrets: incestuous relationships and mental instability; blackmail, venereal disease, and political treason; and a disillusioned, morphine-addicted Crown Prince and a naïve schoolgirl caught up in a dangerous and deadly waltz inside a decaying empire. What happened in that locked room remains one of history’s most evocative mysteries: What led Rudolf and mistress to this desperate act? Was it really a suicide pact? Or did something far more disturbing take place at that remote hunting lodge and result in murder?Drawing interviews with members of the Habsburg family and archival sources in Vienna, Greg King and Penny Wilson reconstruct this historical mystery, laying out evidence and information long ignored that conclusively refutes the romantic myth and the conspiracy stories.

     The society in which these events took place, and the personalities of those involved, are vividly brought to life in a collection that will keep the reader enthralled.

    His name fit him perfectly. It fed every fantasy that Gussie Horton had conjured about Indians and forbidden love. His neighbors whispered that he was a murdering half-breed, which was true. But Gussie believed in second chances, and more importantly, her heart told her to believe in Max Lonestar. Was she a fool to hitch her wagon to his star? Would he be her one true love or her final downfall?

    Many of these pieces engage with social movements like abolition, women's suffrage, temperance and civil rights, but the thematic centre is black women's intellect and personal ambition. The diverse selection includes well-known writers like Sojourner Truth, Hannah Crafts and Harriet Jacobs, as well as lesser-known writers like Ella Sheppard, who offers a firsthand account of life in a world-famous singing group. Taken together, these incredible works insist that the writing of black women writers be read, remembered and addressed.

    Did the artist do it or was it one of the family members--all of whom had motive and opportunity? Join Carl Brooke and Captain Barnwell as they uncover the clues and weed through the red herrings to discover the surprising identity of the murderer.

    An eighteenth-century English gentleman was required to have what was known as 'bottom', a shipping metaphor that referred to stability. Taking part in a duel was a bold statement that you had bottom. William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne certainly had bottom, if not a complete set of gonads following his duel with Colonel Fullarton, MP for Plympton. Both men missed with their first shots, but the colonel fired again and shot off Shelborne's right testicle. Despite being hit, Shelborne deliberately discharged his second shot in the air. When asked how he was, the injured Earl coolly observed his wound and said, 'I don't think Lady Shelborne will be the worse for it.' The cast of characters includes imperious, hard-drinking and highly volatile Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who is remembered today as much for his brilliant scientific career as his talent for getting involved in bizarre mishaps, such as his death as a result of his burst bladder; the Marquess of Queensberry, a side-whiskered psychopath, who, on a luxury steamboat in Brazil, in a row with a fellow passenger over the difference between emus and ostriches, and knocked him out cold; and Thomas, 2nd Baron Lyttelton, a Georgian rake straight out of central casting, who ran up enormous gambling debts, fought duels, frequented brothels and succumbed to drug and alcohol addiction.Often, such rakes would be swiftly packed off on a Grand Tour in the hope that travel would bring about maturity. It seldom did.

    Faction fighting has left the parish of Doon divided between the followers of the Bradys and the Donnellans. Caitriona Brady is the widow of John, the Brady champion, killed two years ago. Matched with John aged eighteen, Caitriona didn’t love him and can’t mourn him. Now John’s mother is dead, too, and Caitriona is free to marry again.Michael Warner is handsome, loves her, and he hasn’t allied himself with either faction. But what secret is he keeping from her? Is he too good to be true?

    One man stepped forward. Born into an impoverished frontier farm in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln rose to prominence in Illinois before taking on the biggest threat to its existence the United States had ever faced.Lincoln delivered his inaugural address, then was given the presidential oath of office by Chief Justice Roger Taney, whose Dred Scott decision had further divided the nation and enlarged the growing rift between free states and slave states. Lincoln pondered whether he would be able to keep the Union together. "We must not be enemies. We must be friends."Lincoln tried to reassure the South: "The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without yourself being the aggressors."He pleaded with them not to destroy the vision of the Founders, who established the Constitution “to form a more perfect union.” But he was also firm: "You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ it."After being sworn into office, Lincoln traveled alone by carriage up muddy Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. Just over a month later, the Confederate army fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, beginning the Civil War. The conflict that followed over the next four years would be the bloodiest and most divisive struggle ever faced by America. The responsibility for saving the nation fell squarely on Lincoln.Vividly written and packed with colorful and rare illustrations, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America is the fascinating story of how a self-taught boy from Kentucky changed the world.

    Bursting with intrigue and suspense, they resurrect the deepest and darkest of all our fears: that a monster lurks, and it lurks within us. Introductions by Dr Maria Mellins and Dr Peter Howell, Senior Lecturers in Gothic literature at St Mary's University, London, this collection offers additional insight into these audiobooks, their authors and their legacies. Starting with Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Richard Armitage tells the story of a conflicted man who seeks to free the monster inside him from the clutches of his conscience. Following his celebrated performances of David Copperfield and David Hewson's Romeo and Juliet for Audible, Armitage delivers another powerhouse performance as the narrator of this Gothic tale. Shilling shocker enthusiast Stevenson was celebrated throughout his life. In contrast to Mary Shelley, who was often overshadowed by her husband's work, Stevenson lived comfortably by his pen. It was only with the release of Frankenstein that Shelley finally distinguished herself. Frankenstein was groundbreaking in its ability to fuse passion and romance with gore and horror. Narrated by Dan Stevens, who rose to fame through Downton Abbey, and Beauty and the Beast, the story of science student Victor Frankenstein has been artfully retold. Testing the limits of science, Frankenstein fashions a living being from the conjoined body parts of rotting cadavers. Horrified at the end result, he abandons his monster, leaving him to endure a life of isolation and loneliness. A poignant example of human weakness and our inability to take responsibility for our actions, Frankenstein is both moving and terrifying. That leads us to the gruesome tale of Count Dracula, the bloodthirsty father of the undead. Narrated by Greg Wise, star of The Crown and Sense and Sensibility; Greg depicts a young lawyer whose services are hired by a sinister Transylvanian count. Releasing Dracula 80 years after Frankenstein, Bram Stoker was greatly influenced by Shelley's writing style and similarly propels the story along through diary entries, letters and newspaper cuttings. Possessed of grisly imagery and unexpected twists, it's no wonder that Dracula still manages to shake us to our very core. All that remains is to offer a note of caution: this collection is not for the fainthearted. Old as these tales may be, do not mistake the unsettling nature of their content. Grab some popcorn, turn the speakers up and enjoy. Just don't say we didn't warn you.

    Abandoned by her family for the new world, she receives a proposal from the island's aging tailor. For the price of a roof over her head, she accepts.Meanwhile the island is alive with gossip about the strangers who have arrived from the mainland, armed with mysterious equipment which can reportedly steal a person's words and transmit them through thin air. When Nuala is sent to cook for these men - engineers, who have been sent to Rathlin by Marconi to conduct experiments in the use of wireless telegraphy - she encounters an Italian named Gabriel, who offers her the chance to equip herself with new skills and knowledge. As her friendship with Gabriel opens up horizons beyond the rocky and treacherous cliffs of her island home, Nuala begins to realise that her deal with the tailor was a bargain she should never have struck.

    Baltimore-based artist David Plunkert takes you on a dark journey into the gothic stories and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. Classic stories of the macabre take on a whole new meaning when you experience them accompanied by David Plunkert's mystical, and sometimes haunting, interpretations. With this edition of the Classics Reimagined series, you'll find these densely written classics boring…nevermore.The Classics Reimagined series is a library of stunning collector's editions of unabridged classic novels illustrated by contemporary artists from around the world. Each artist offers his or her own unique, visual interpretation of the most well-loved, widely read, and avidly collected literature from renowned authors. From The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and from Jane Austen to the Brothers Grimm, collect every beautiful volume.

    The daring director-actress Rosina Filippi shaped Austen's reputation with her pioneering dramatizations, leading thousands of young women to ventriloquize Elizabeth Bennet's audacious lines before drawing room audiences. Even the supposedly staid history of Austen scholarship has its bizarre stories. The author of the first Jane Austen dissertation, student George Pellew, tragically died young, but he was believed by many, including his professor-mentor, to have come back from the dead.Looser shows how these figures and their Austen-inspired work transformed Austen's reputation, just as she profoundly shaped theirs. Through them, Looser describes the factors and influences that radically altered Austen's evolving image. Drawing from unexplored material, Looser examines how echoes of that work reverberate in our explanations of Austen's literary and cultural power. Whether you're a devoted Janeite or simply Jane-curious, The Making of Jane Austen will have you thinking about how a literary icon is made, transformed, and handed down from generation to generation.

    The book's unique blend of intellectual, religious, and social history offers perspectives on the movement's leaders as well as its followers, and demonstrates that, far from being a throwback to the Middle Ages, Hasidism is a product of modernity that forged its identity as a radical alternative to the secular world.Hasidism originated in southeastern Poland, in mystical circles centered on the figure of Israel Ba'al Shem Tov, but it was only after his death in 1760 that a movement began to spread. Challenging the notion that Hasidism ceased to be a creative movement after the eighteenth century, this book argues that its first golden age was in the nineteenth century, when it conquered new territory, won a mass following, and became a mainstay of Jewish Orthodoxy. World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Holocaust decimated eastern European Hasidism. But following World War II, the movement enjoyed a second golden age, growing exponentially. Today, it is witnessing a remarkable renaissance in Israel, the United States, and other countries around the world.Written by an international team of scholars, Hasidism is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand this vibrant and influential modern Jewish movement.

    Her list of suspects is short, and the reader, like Fanny, has plenty of reasons to suspect any one of them. And that’s half the fun of reading this novel: will the one you picked out early in the story be the right one? --Reader's Favorite review. Gilded Age New Orleans is overrun with prostitutes, pornographers, and a malicious Jack the Ripper copycat. As threatening letters to newspaper editors proclaim, no woman is safe from his blade. Desperate to know who murdered her favorite student, ambitious typewriting teacher Fanny Newcomb launches into a hunt for the self-proclaimed Irish Channel Ripper. Fanny quickly enlists the help of her well-connected employers--Principal Sylvia Giddings and her sister Dr. Olive--and together the women forge through saloons, cemeteries, slums, and houses of prostitution. Fanny's good intentions quickly infuriate her longtime beau Lawrence Decatur, while her reckless persistence confounds the talented police detective Daniel Crenshaw. Reluctantly, Lawrence and Daniel also lend their talents to Fanny's investigation. As the murderer sets a date for his next heinous crime, can Fanny Newcomb and her crew stop the Irish Channel Ripper before he kills again?

    But when her father is taken prisoner by a monstrous Beast, Belle’s life is forever changed. Taking her father’s place to set him free, she finds herself in the midst of a mysterious enchantment unlike anything she could ever have imagined. Join Belle on this unforgettable adventure as she tells her own story! Discover the secrets in the Beast’s enchanted castle and explore this incredible world, all through Belle’s perspective. Includes foldouts and flaps that reveal hidden surprises!

     If anything, Karl Marx’s life reminds us of the power of the pen over the sword. During his lifetime, he lived in relative obscurity. Rather than making any waves, Marx was usually lucky just to make the rent. And to make the ongoing hardship of his life even worse, Karl Marx was afflicted with boils from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. This painful skin condition in his later years made even his beloved vocation of writing rather difficult. But his pen would indeed demonstrate its power, and by the time 70-some years had passed since his demise, one-third of the entire planet would be living under regimes based upon his ideology. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Makings of a Revolutionary ✓ The Communist Manifesto ✓ Poor and Deported ✓ The Folly of the French ✓ Marx and the Civil War And much more! Love him or hate him, the power of Karl Marx’s pen, and his legacy, cannot be denied.

    The first volunteer killed defending Robert E. Lee’s position in battle was really a German assassin. After fleeing to the United States to escape prosecution for murder, the assassin enlisted in a German company of the Pennsylvania Volunteers in the Mexican-American War and died defending Lee’s battery at the Siege of Veracruz in 1847. Lee wrote a letter home, praising this unnamed fallen volunteer defender. Military records identify him, but none of the Americans knew about his past life of crime.Before fighting with the Americans, Lee’s defender had assassinated Johann Heinrich Rieber, mayor of Bönnigheim, Germany, in 1835. Rieber’s assassination became 19th-century Germany’s coldest case ever solved by a non–law enforcement professional and the only 19th-century German murder ever solved in the United States. Thirty-seven years later, another suspect in the assassination who had also fled to America found evidence in Washington, D.C., that would clear his own name, and he forwarded it to Germany. The German prosecutor Ernst von Hochstetter corroborated the story and closed the case file in 1872, naming Lee’s defender as Rieber’s murderer.Relying primarily on German sources, Death of an Assassin tracks the never-before-told story of this German company of Pennsylvania volunteers. It follows both Lee’s and the assassin’s lives until their dramatic encounter in Veracruz and picks up again with the surprising case resolution decades later.This case also reveals that forensic ballistics―firearm identification through comparison of the striations on a projectile with the rifling in the barrel―is much older than previously thought. History credits Alexandre Laccasagne for inventing forensic ballistics in 1888. But more than 50 years earlier, Eduard Hammer, the magistrate who investigated the Rieber assassination in 1835, used the same technique to eliminate a forester’s rifle as the murder weapon. A firearms technician with state police of Baden-Württemberg tested Hammer’s technique in 2015 and confirmed its efficacy, cementing the argument that Hammer, not Laccasagne, should be considered the father of forensic ballistics.The roles the volunteer soldier/assassin and Robert E. Lee played at the Siege of Veracruz are part of American history, and the record-breaking, 19th-century cold case is part of German history. For the first time, Death of an Assassinbrings the two stories together.

    Women's and/or Gender History, Organization of American HistoriansA Vibe "5 Books on Slavery that Kanye West Needs to Read" SelectionA Huffington Post "Seven Notable New Books on Slavery" SelectionAmericans have long viewed marriage between a white man and a white woman as a sacred union. But marriages between African Americans have seldom been treated with the same reverence. This discriminatory legacy traces back to centuries of slavery, when the overwhelming majority of black married couples were bound in servitude as well as wedlock. Though their unions were not legally recognized, slaves commonly married, fully aware that their marital bonds would be sustained or nullified according to the whims of white masters.Bound in Wedlock is the first comprehensive history of African American marriage in the nineteenth century. Uncovering the experiences of African American spouses in plantation records, legal and court documents, and pension files, Tera W. Hunter reveals the myriad ways couples adopted, adapted, revised, and rejected white Christian ideas of marriage. Setting their own standards for conjugal relationships, enslaved husbands and wives were creative and, of necessity, practical in starting and supporting families under conditions of uncertainty and cruelty.After emancipation, white racism continued to menace black marriages. Laws passed during Reconstruction, ostensibly to secure the civil rights of newly freed African American citizens, were often coercive and repressive. Informal antebellum traditions of marriage were criminalized, and the new legal regime became a convenient tool for plantation owners to discipline agricultural workers. Recognition of the right of African Americans to enter into wedlock on terms equal to whites would remain a struggle into the Jim Crow era, and its legacy would resonate well into the twentieth century.

    With the advent of revolutionary manufacturing technology productivity boomed. Machines were used to spin and weave cloth, steam engines were used to provide reliable power, and industry was fed by the construction of the first railways, a great network of arteries feeding the factories. Cities grew as people shifted from agriculture to industry and commerce. Hand in hand with the growth of cities came rising levels of pollution and disease. Many people lost their jobs to the new machinery, whilst working conditions in the factories were grim and pay was low. As the middle classes prospered, social unrest ran through the working classes, and the exploitation of workers led to the growth of trade unions and protest movements.In this Very Short Introduction, Robert C. Allen analyzes the key features of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, and the spread of industrialization to other countries. He considers the factors that combined to enable industrialization at this time, including Britain's position as a global commercial empire, and discusses the changes in technology and business organization, and their impact on different social classes and groups. Introducing the "winners" and the "losers" of the Industrial Revolution, he looks at how the changes were reflected in evolving government policies, and what contribution these made to the economic transformation.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

    Obliged to support herself she finds purpose and friendship teaching at a charity school in the East End of London. Her peace of mind is shattered at the reappearance of Major Kit Clevedon, back from the Crimea and looking for the kind of relationship that Philippa can ill afford. Trying to find her place and hold on to her hard won respectability, Philippa needs to choose between her work and the man she loves.From the author of the Peninsular War Saga and the Light Division Romances, the first in a new series following the fortunes of the house of Alverstone.

    What she doesn't understand is why her father is trying to push her into a marriage to the pompous and repulsive Sydney businessman Henry W. Bartholomew.When the will is read it becomes clear money, or the lack of it, lay behind her father's plans. Catherine is mortified — as a married woman all her possessions will pass to her husband, the overbearing Bartholomew. Her only alternative is to wait until her twenty-first birthday and inherit the property in her own right, but can she elude such a determined man until then?A chance encounter with a travelling circus and its fiery lead performer, Sergey Petrov, offers the perfect solution and Catherine escapes to the goldfields. But there is more to the circus than spangles and sawdust and Catherine finds herself drawn into a far-reaching web of fraud and forgery...A stunning new novel from the bestselling author of The Horse Thief and The Cedar Cutter

    Most often, this drama focuses on whites who turned west to conquer a continent, extending "liberty" as they went. Great Crossings also includes Native Americans from across the continent seeking new ways to assert anciently-held rights and people of African descent who challenged the United States to live up to its ideals. These diverse groups met in an experimental community in central Kentucky called Great Crossings, home to the first federal Indian school and a famous interracial family.Great Crossings embodied monumental changes then transforming North America. The United States, within the span of a few decades, grew from an East Coast nation to a continental empire. The territorial growth of the United States forged a multicultural, multiracial society, but that diversity also sparked fierce debates over race, citizenship, and America's destiny. Great Crossings, a place of race-mixing and cultural exchange, emerged as a battleground. Its history provides an intimate view of the ambitions and struggles of Indians, settlers, and slaves who were trying to secure their place in a changing world. Through deep research and compelling prose, Snyder introduces us to a diverse range of historical actors: Richard Mentor Johnson, the politician who reportedly killed Tecumseh and then became schoolmaster to the sons of his former foes; Julia Chinn, Johnson's enslaved concubine, who fought for her children's freedom; and Peter Pitchlynn, a Choctaw intellectual who, even in the darkest days of Indian removal, argued for the future of Indian nations. Together, their stories demonstrate how this era transformed colonizers and the colonized alike, sowing the seeds of modern America.

    Born into slavery on a Caribbean plantation, he was able to break from his bondage to lead an army of freed African slaves to victory against the professional armies of France, Spain and Britain in the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804. In this biography, Louverture’s fascinating life is explored through the prism of his radical politics. It champions this ‘black Robespierre’ whose revolutionary legacy had inspired people and movements in the two centuries since his death.For anyone interested in the roots of modern-day resistance movements and black political radicalism, Louverture’s extraordinary life provides the perfect starting point.

    In 1805, Lewis and Clark stumble out of the Rockies on the edge of starvation. The Nez Perce help the explorers build canoes and navigate the rapids of the Columbia, then spend two months hosting them the following spring before leading them back across the snowbound mountains. Daytime Smoke is born not long after, and the tribe of his youth continues a deep friendship with white Americans, from fur trappers to missionaries, even aiding the United States government in wars with neighboring tribes. But when gold is discovered on Nez Perce land in 1860, it sets an inevitable tragedy in motion.Daytime Smoke’s life spanned the seven decades between first contact and the last great Indian war. Capturing the trajectory experienced by so many native peoples—from friendship and cooperation to betrayal, war, and genocide—this sweeping novel, with its large cast of characters and a vast geography, braids historical events with the drama of one man’s remarkable life. Rigorously researched and cinematically rendered, The Coming is a page-turning, heart-stopping American novel in a classic mode.

     It has been several decades now since Francisco Franco’s passing in 1975, and yet his legacy still seems very much in the air. Depending on who you talk to, Franco was a fascist and a peacemaker, a destroyer and a savior, an idiot and a genius. Even after all this time, opinions of just who Franco was and how he contributed to modern civilization are up for open debate. Inside you will read about... ✓ Franco’s Conquest ✓ Allying with Mussolini ✓ Ein Fuhrer and Un Caudillo ✓ The Last Fascist Standing ✓ The End of Colonial Power ✓ The Spanish Miracle ✓ The Last Days of Francisco Franco And much more! Franco himself believed that he was doing a great service to his people. He never tired of making grandiose statements about his perceived mission to save Spanish society. Whether this was deluded self-righteousness is for others to decide. Discover Francisco Franco’s story in this book and draw your own conclusions.

    These are the stories - many untold until now - of thirty-four individuals who have pushed the boundaries of love, bravery, suffering and terror beyond the imaginable. They span four centuries and four continents. There is the courage of Edward Seagar who survived the Charge of the Light Brigade; the cunning of Krystyna Skarbek, quick-thinking spy and saboteur during the Second World War; the skullduggery of Benedict Arnold, who switched sides in the American War of Independence and the compassion of Magdalene de Lancey who tenderly nursed her dying husband at Waterloo. Told with vivid narrative flair and full of unexpected insights, War Stories moves effortlessly from tales of spies, escapes and innovation to uplifting acts of humanity, celebrating men and women whose wartime experiences are beyond compare.

    Foreign observers were terrified that Japan would lapse into violent xenophobia. But the new Meiji government took an opposite course. It copied best practices from around the world, building a powerful and modern Japanese nation with the help of European and American advisors. While revering the Japanese past, the Meiji government boldly embraced the foreign and the new. What explains this paradox? How could Japan's 1868 revolution be both modern and traditional, both xenophobic and cosmopolitan?To Stand with the Nations of the World explains the paradox of the Restoration through the forces of globalization. The Meiji Restoration was part of the global long nineteenth century during which ambitious nation states like Japan, Britain, Germany, and the United States challenged the world's great multi-ethnic empires--Ottoman, Qing, Romanov, and Hapsburg. Japan's leaders wanted to celebrate Japanese uniqueness, but they also sought international recognition. Rather than simply mimic world powers like Britain, they sought to make Japan distinctly Japanese in the same way that Britain was distinctly British. Rather than sing God Save the King, they created a Japanese national anthem with lyrics from ancient poetry, but Western-style music. The Restoration also resonated with Japan's ancient past. In the 600s and 700s, Japan was threatened by the Tang dynasty, a dynasty as powerful as the Roman empire. In order to resist the Tang, Japanese leaders borrowed Tang methods, building a centralized Japanese state on Tang models, and learning continental science and technology. As in the 1800s, Japan co-opted international norms while insisting on Japanese distinctiveness. When confronting globalization in 1800s, Japan looked back to that ancient globalization of the 600s and 700s. The ancient past was therefore not remote or distant, but immediate and vital.

    It today hosts carousels from all three of the most important historic American carousel makers -- the only city anywhere with that distinction! What's more, each carousel has been restored close to its original condition. -Circles of Delight- celebrates the beauty and diversity of these traditional, hand-carved wood carousels of the Golden Gate City. With its vibrant photos and informative profiles, it is bound to delight carousel lovers of all ages. ///////////////////////////////////////////////// Aaron Shepard is an independent writer and photographer. He has been entranced by carousels since childhood -- but his love and interest were rekindled when his wife, Anne L. Watson, wrote a novel about a young carousel restorer. When a business trip brought them to San Francisco in April 2004, Aaron spent three days photographing the city's carousels, giving him the photos for this book. He currently lives in Friday Harbor, Washington. ///////////////////////////////////////////////// -Filled with beautiful photography. . . . You will treasure this book.- -- Bette Largent, President, National Carousel Association ///////////////////////////////////////////////// CONTENTS San Francisco Zoo Carousel Yerba Buena Gardens Carousel Golden Gate Park Carousel ///////////////////////////////////////////////// BISAC SUBJECTS: ANT001000 ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES / Americana TRV019000 TRAVEL / Pictorials PHO019000 PHOTOGRAPHY / Subjects & Themes / Regional ART015020 ART / American / General CRA003000 CRAFTS & HOBBIES / Carving TRV025130 TRAVEL / United States / West / Pacific (AK, CA, HI, OR, WA)

    The writing flows nicely and again Mr. Boutwell paints vivid word pictures of another era. Lovely language and great mystery." --Amazon reviewer of The Curse of the Mad Sheik (included in this collection) Carl Brooke, a scholar of ancient near eastern languages, now spends his twilight years chronicling the adventures of his youth as a leading member of the Agora Society, a society dedicated to the betterment of man. Fans of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot will enjoy Carl Brooke and his Agora Society in these five very different cases. This collection includes five complete stories in the Agora Mystery Series: 1) Two Tocks before Midnight The Strange Affair of October 24th, 1859: When a flurry of forgeries appear in museums and among collectors, the members of the Agora, a society dedicated to the betterment of man, take it upon themselves to stop the rogues. 2) The Penitent Thief A string of thefts ends in a grisly murder. Certain evidence leads Captain Barnwell to suspect a former thief, Rutherford Nordlinger as the culprit. Carl Brooke becomes personally involved as Nordlinger's guilt is questioned. 3) The Peace Party Massacre Kidnapped! An honorable man has gone missing and his wife is not in the least helpful. The sheriff dithers and every day brings death closer to a reality. 4) The Curse of the Mad Sheik Murder and intrigue abound. At the center of it all appears a mysterious sheik and his cursed ruby. 5) The Captain's Play Captain Barnwell, a long-time honorary member of the Agora Society, presents to the members a solved case one clue at a time. Three suspects. One murderer. Who is the murderer and why? GET ALL FIVE STORIES IN ONE. File under: Cozy Murder Mystery Series, Whodunnits, Amateur Sleuths, 19th Century Detectives, Light Thrillers, Kindle Unlimited, Mystery Series

    A fierce partisan whose nationalist vision made him Thomas Jefferson’s bitter rival. An unfaithful husband whose commitment to personal honor brought his life to a tragic early end. The amazing success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton has stoked an extraordinary resurgence of interest in Alexander Hamilton, the brilliant and divisive founder who profoundly shaped the American republic. Now, Library of America presents an unrivaled portrait of Hamilton in his own words, charting his meteoric rise, his controversial tenure as treasury secretary, and his scandalous final years, culminating in his infamous duel with Aaron Burr. Selected and introduced by acclaimed historian Joanne B. Freeman, here is a reader’s edition of Hamilton’s essential public writings and private letters, plus the correspondence between Burr and Hamilton that led to their duel and two conflicting eyewitness accounts of their fatal encounter.

    When Stella finds Evelyn one morning apparently dead from an accidental--or perhaps intentional--poisoning, she is shocked and horrified. But it is nothing compared to her horror when Evelyn reawakens. Stella believes her friend's body is animated by something evil. Is Stella insane, or has a spirit of darkness actually taken possession of Evelyn?When originally published in 1896, The Statement of Stella Maberly was subtitled 'Written by Herself' and presented as the real-life confession of a possibly mad woman, but the identity of the book's true author, F. Anstey (1856-1934), famous for his oft-filmed bodyswap novel Vice Versa (1882), was soon revealed. This first-ever scholarly edition of Anstey's lost classic features a new introduction and notes by Peter Merchant, plus the first-ever appearance of unpublished manuscripts pertaining to the novel, including a 1916 screenplay for a never-produced film version, An Evil Spirit.

    He had just broken up with a prostitute and had written about cutting women's stomachs open.At the same time, a few yards from his refuge, a woman was knifed, as part of a spate of prostitute murders, which one coroner said was by someone who had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge.Richard A. Patterson sets out a compelling case for English poet Francis Thompson as the prime suspect for Jack the Ripper in this must-read for Ripperologists the world over.

    Though she proves herself a skilled nurse, Victoria finds she is no where near as revered as her namesake. And worse, she is falling for her patient’s betrothed brother, the Earl of Cheriton.CHERISHEDBuckling to the pressure of his position, Robb Merrick, Earl of Cheriton, becomes engaged to a darling of society. Yet, to his great consternation, he finds himself captivated by his brother’s nurse. She makes Robb feel alive, instead of choked by his title and position. He craves the freedom to pledge his love and loyalty, but ending his betrothal means entangling them all in a horrendous scandal. He is an honorable gentleman; Robb can’t break his vow. Yet if he doesn’t, all hope of happiness is lost.

    Their duel triggered a war that capped a decades-long genocidal attack that was emblematic of the United States’ conquest of Native America’s peoples and lands. Robert Aquinas McNally tells the wrenching story of the Modoc War of 1872–73, one of the nation’s costliest campaigns against North American Indigenous peoples, in which the army placed nearly one thousand soldiers in the field against some fifty-five Modoc fighters. Although little known today, the Modoc War dominated national headlines for an entire year. Fought in south-central Oregon and northeastern California, the war settled into a siege in the desolate Lava Beds and climaxed the decades-long effort to dispossess and destroy the Modocs. The war did not end with the last shot fired, however. For the first and only time in U.S. history, Native fighters were tried and hanged for war crimes. The surviving Modocs were packed into cattle cars and shipped from Fort Klamath to the corrupt, disease-ridden Quapaw reservation in Oklahoma, where they found peace even more lethal than war.The Modoc War tells the forgotten story of a violent and bloody Gilded Age campaign at a time when the federal government boasted officially of a “peace policy” toward Indigenous nations. This compelling history illuminates a dark corner in our country’s past.

    The shocking events at Fort Sumter are having devastating effects on Alexander Swaney, living on his family farm in Pennsylvania just a few miles north of the border with western Virginia. He watches as Virginia fights its own civil war, as the disaffected western counties, long neglected by Richmond, attempt to secede from the rest of the state. Their political struggle produces the first land conflicts of the larger War of the Rebellion, involving the future military giants George McClellan, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee fighting in the rugged mountains of western Virginia, soon to be a new state.As events sweep Alexander along in their path, he struggles to maintain some control over his destiny. Should he volunteer to join the Union army and fight to preserve the and he loves, but leave behind the girl he hopes to marry, as well as his family, at the mercy of marauders and bushwhackers? Adding to Alexander’s confusion is the fact that Sophia isn’t sure she’s ready to marry him, and a rival for her affections is on the scene in the form of his cousin Tip, a rake who has had his eye on Sophia.Fortunately, Alexander has a close friend in Harry Hagans, a young pastor who also feels the call to arms from his desire to bring an end to slavery. As the storms of war bear down on them, Harry and Alexander share a convoluted journey, ultimately arriving at their military home, the 1st Regiment of Loyal Virginia Volunteer Cavalry, later to become the 1st West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry. Along the way, their friendship is threatened when Harry reveals a dark secret that shakes Alexander’s trust. A detailed glimpse into a portion of Civil War history largely unknown, Storm Coming is a luminous story of a young man’s coming of age and the birth of a new state out of the storms of war.

    Striking workers clash with police…illness and injury lurk around every corner…and twelve-year-old Addie must find her way through it all. Torn between her gruff Papa—who owns a hat shop and thinks the workers should be content with their American lives—and her beloved Uncle Chaim—who is active in the protests for the eight-hour day—Addie struggles to understand her topsy-turvy world, while also keeping her family intact. Set in a Jewish neighborhood of Chicago during the days surrounding the Haymarket Affair, this novel vividly portrays one immigrant family’s experience, while also eloquently depicting the timeless conflict between the haves and the have-nots.

    Takoda, a young Lakota warrior, is compelled to fight for his life after his father is killed in a hunting accident, facing murderous beaver trappers and brutal treatment at the hands of a ruthless band of buffalo hunters. However, his future is to become defined by the dark influence of Theodore Winthrop, a Minnesotan senator who wants to rid the plains of the native tribes. Takoda’s survival depends on a chance encounter with a wagon train, where he meets Carla Kopp, with whom he is destined to unveil the scope of Winthrop’s political and military subterfuge, a plan to steal four hundred million dollars in gold, and strategies designed to challenge the Lakota’s very existence.

    Dr. John McLoughlin, the proprietor of Rainy Lake House, was in charge of the borderlands west of Lake Superior, where he was tasked with opposing the petty traders who operated out of US territory. Major Stephen H. Long, an officer in the US Army Topographical Engineers, was on an expedition to explore the wooded borderlands west of Lake Superior and the northern prairies from the upper Mississippi to the forty-ninth parallel. John Tanner, a "white Indian" living among the Ojibwa nation, arrived in search of his missing daughters, who, Tanner believed, were at risk of being raped by the white traders holding them captive at a nearby fort.Rainy Lake House weaves together the captivating stories of these men who cast their fortunes in different ways with the western fur trade. Drawing on their combined experiences, Theodore Catton creates a vivid depiction of the beautiful and dangerous northern frontier from a collision of vantage points: American, British, and Indian; imperial, capital, and labor; explorer, trader, and hunter. At the center of this history is the deeply personal story of John Tanner's search for kinship: first among his adopted Ojibwa nation; then in the search for his white family of origin; and finally in his quest for custody of his half-Indian children.Rainy Lake House is a character-driven narrative about ambition, adventure, alienation, and revenge. Catton deftly crafts one grand narrative out of three and reveals the perilous lives of the white adventurers and their Indian families, who lived on the fringe of empire.

    Charles Dickens was born in an age of great social change. He survived childhood poverty to become the most adored and influential man of his time. Throughout his life, he campaigned tirelessly for better social conditions, including by his most famous work, A Christmas Carol. He wrote this novella specifically to “strike a sledgehammer blow on behalf of the poor man’s child”, and it began the Victorians’ obsession with Christmas.This new book, written by one of his direct descendants, explores not only Dickens’s most famous work, but also his all-too-often overlooked other Christmas novellas. It takes the readers through the seasonal short stories he wrote, for both adults and children, includes much-loved festive excerpts from his novels, uses contemporary newspaper clippings, and looks at Christmas writings by Dickens’ contemporaries. To give an even more personal insight, readers can discover how the Dickens family itself celebrated Christmas, through the eyes of Dickens’s unfinished autobiography, family letters, and his children’s memoirs.In Victorian Britain, the celebration of Christmas lasted for 12 days, ending on 6 January, or _Twelfth Night_. Through Dickens and Christmas, readers will come to know what it would have been like to celebrate Christmas in 1812, the year in which Dickens was born. They will journey through the Christmases Dickens enjoyed as a child and a young adult, through to the ways in which he and his family celebrated the festive season at the height of his fame. It also explores the ways in which his works have gone on to influence how the festive season is celebrated around the globe.

    [Frederick] Douglass in Brooklyn shows how the great author and agitator associated with radicals--and he associated with the president of the United States. A fine book.”--Errol Louis, host of NY1's Road to City Hall "This collection of Douglass’s speeches in Brooklyn displays the power of the former slave’s oratory before, during, and after the Civil War. Editor Hamm, a professor of media studies, places a selection of carefully reconstructed speeches in this slim volume, and gives useful context on how they were locally received. A concise introduction provides detail about 19th-century Brooklyn and its conflicted legacy of racial prejudice and abolitionism. When Douglass’s own words are reproduced, his talent as a writer and the sheer monstrousness of slavery are both driven home."-- Publishers Weekly "A collection of rousing 19th-century speeches on freedom and humanity. The eloquent orator Frederick Douglass (c. 1818-1895) delivered eight impressive speeches in Brooklyn, New York, ‘far from a bastion of abolitionist support,’ which, even as late as 1886, had only a small black population...Editor Hamm provides helpful introductions and notes and gives illuminating context and perspective by including their coverage in the ‘virulently proslavery’ Brooklyn Eagle...Covering one speech, the Eagle defended its claim of black inferiority by asserting, ‘the abject submission of a race who are content to be enslaved when there is an opportunity to be free, gives the best evidence that they are fulfilling the destiny which Providence marked out for them.’ Proof that Douglass' speeches, responding to the historical exigencies of his time, amply bear rereading today."-- Kirkus Reviews “Although he never lived in Brooklyn, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass had many friends and allies who did. Hamm has collected Douglass’s searing antislavery speeches (and denunciations of him by the pro-slavery newspaper the Brooklyn Eagle) delivered at Brooklyn locales during the mid-19th century.”-- Publishers Weekly , A notable African-American Title"This timely volume [presents] Douglass’ towering voice in a way that sounds anything but dated."-- Philadelphia Tribune "Though he never lived there, Frederick Douglass and the city of Brooklyn engaged in a profound repartee in the decades leading up to the Civil War, the disagreements between the two parties revealing the backward views of a borough that was much less progressive than it liked to think...Hamm...[illuminates] the complexities of a city and a figure at the vanguard of change."-- Village Voice This volume compiles original source material that illustrates the complex relationship between Frederick Douglass and the city of Brooklyn. Most prominent are the speeches the abolitionist gave at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Plymouth Church, and other leading Brooklyn institutions. Whether discussing the politics of the Civil War or recounting his relationships with Abraham Lincoln and John Brown, Douglass’s towering voice sounds anything but dated. An introductory essay examines the intricate ties between Douglass and Brooklyn abolitionists, while brief chapter introductions and annotations fill in the historical context.Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was an abolitionist leader, spokesman for racial equality, and defender of women’s rights. He was born into slavery in Maryland and learned to read and write around age twelve, and it was through this that his ideological opposition to slavery began to take shape. He successfully escaped bondage in 1838. In 1845, he published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which became a best seller in the US and was translated into several languages. He went on to advise President Abraham Lincoln on the treatment of black soldiers during the Civil War and continued to work for equality until his death.

    Drawing on a range of sources that have never before come to light, Juliette Wells solves the long-standing bibliographical mystery of how and why the first Austen novel printed in America-the 1816 Philadelphia Emma-came to be. She reveals the responses of this book's varied readers and creates an extended portrait of one: Christian, Countess of Dalhousie, a Scotswoman living in British North America. Through original archival research, Wells establishes the significance to reception history of two transatlantic friendships: the first between ardent Austen enthusiasts in Boston and members of Austen's family in the nineteenth century, and the second between an Austen collector in Baltimore and an aspiring bibliographer in England in the twentieth.

    Bentley]The Island Mystery [George A. Birmingham]Four Max Carrados Detective Stories [Ernest Bramah Smith]The Wisdom of Father Brown, The Innocence of Father Brown [G.K Chesterton]The Secret Adversary [Agatha Christie]The Mysterious Affair at Styles [Agatha Christie]No Name [Wilkie Collins]The Woman in White [Wilkie Collins]Hunted Down [Charles Dickens]The Trial for Murder [Charles Dickens]The Mystery of Cloomber [Arthur Conan Doyle]The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [Arthur Conan Doyle]The Spider [Hanns Heinz Ewers]The Middle Temple Murder [Joseph Smith Fletcher]Dead Men's Money [Joseph Smith Fletcher]The Red Thumb Mark [R. Austin Freeman]The Cat's Eye [R. Austin Freeman]The Honor of the Name [Émile Gaboriau]The Man Who Ended War [Hollis Godfrey]The Rome Express [Arthur Griffiths]Arson Plus [Samuel Dashiell Hammett]Desperate Remedies [Thomas Hardy]Green Tea [Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu]The Seven Secrets [William Le Queux]Eight Strokes of the Clock [Maurice Leblanc]The Phantom of the Opera [Gaston Leroux]The Lodger [Marie Adelaide Lowndes]The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel [A. E. W. Mason]The Mysterious Card Unveiled [Cleveland Moffett]The Mysterious Card [Cleveland Moffett]The Evil Shepherd [Edward Phillips Oppenheim]The Double Four [Edward Phillips Oppenheim]The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective [Catherine Louisa Pirkis]The Mystery of Marie Rogêt [Edgar Allan Poe]The Murders in the Rue Morgue [Edgar Allan Poe]The Black Cat [Edgar Allan Poe]The Green Eyes of Bâst [Sax Rohmer]Whose Body? [Dorothy Leigh Sayers]The Lady, or the Tiger? [Frank R. Stockton]Catherine: A Story [William Makepeace Thackeray]Tom Sawyer, Detective [Mark Twain]and more...

     London, 1853. Annie Stride is a beautiful, flame-haired young woman from the East End of London. She is also a whore. On a bleak January night Annie stands on Waterloo Bridge, watching the icy waters of the Thames writhe beneath her as she contemplates throwing herself in. At the last minute she's rescued by a handsome young man. Her saviour, Francis Maybrick Gill, is a talented artist. He takes Annie as his muse, painting her again and again and transforming her from a fallen woman into society's darling, taking her far away from her old life. But there is darkness underpinning Annie's lavish new lifestyle. In London and in Florence, prostitutes are being murdered. There's someone out there who knows who Annie really is - and they won't let her forget where she came from...

    Each page contains beautifully illustrated characters to find and details to spot, accompanied by abridged text. Search for the Bennet family at their home in Longbourne, Jane and Bingley falling in love at the Netherfield Ball, Lizzie and Darcy strolling around Pemberley, and much more. This seek-and-find book is the perfect way to introduce younger children to the world of Jane Austen.

    He was one of a number of Māori who, after encountering European explorers, traders and missionaries in New Zealand, seized opportunities to travel beyond their familiar shores to Australia, England and Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They sought new knowledge, useful goods and technologies, and a mutually benefi cial relationship with the people they knew as Pākehā. On his epic journey Tuai would visit exotic foreign ports, mix with teeming crowds in the huge metropolis of London, and witness the marvels of industrialisation at the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire. With his lively travelling companion Tītere, he would attend fashionable gatherings and sit for his portrait. He shared his deep understanding of Māori language and culture. And his missionary friends did their best to convert him to Christianity. But on returning to his Māori world in 1819, Tuai found there were difficult choices to be made. His plan to integrate new European knowledge and relationships into his Ngare Raumati community was to be challenged by the rapidly shifting politics of the Bay of Islands. With sympathy and insight, Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins uncover the remarkable story of one of the first Māori travellers to Europe.

    Edward Garth the farm-boy, Susannah Gough the prostitute, Jacob Bellett the silk weaver and Ann the urchin are all brought together to a place as unlikely as inhabiting the moon or the stars... the Great South Land! This is the back page blurb to book 1 Of Angels and Eagles: - 'In the early years of the industrial revolution London was expanding rapidly, poverty was increasing and merely existing was a challenge for the lower classes who too often fell foul of the ruthless criminal laws of the time. The city was full of unemployable wretches living in deplorable conditions and they were looked upon as disrupting the lives of the upper classes. Some of the lower classes were more fortunate than others, they had jobs but even they could fall victim to greedy opportunists. This is the setting into which four souls were cast; Edward the farm-boy, Susannah the prostitute, Jacob the silk weaver and Ann the urchin. Convicted of their alleged crimes, they suffered in London’s notorious prisons until their transportation across the oceans to the bottom of the world, to the Great South Land. Circumstance conspired to bring them all together, to an improbable location, as distant from their imaginations as the likelihood of inhabiting the moon or the stars. Susannah, spirited and optimistic, inspires the others as they make their lives on Norfolk Island, the place of Angels and Eagles. ' After 20 years making a home for themselves on Norfolk Island, farming land and carving out an existence, they are forced to the island and the Garths and Belletts resettle in Van Diemen's Land. Beset by the hardships and challenges of starting again in an untamed land, the families must contend with disease, bushrangers and the growing conflict between the newly arrived settlers and the aboriginals who have occupied the land for centuries. For James Garth, the eldest son of Edward and Susannah, exploration and adventure hold the key to their new life, but as triumph and tragedy visit his family in equal measure, can he find a way to make his dreams a reality? And will the next generation possess the strength of character and will to fulfil the promise of tomorrow? Love, tenacity, resolve, purposefulness...PERSEVERANCE. Perseverance, Book Two of the Garth Trilogy, is the sequel to Of Angels and Eagles. Review - Of Angels and Eagles: ‘The characters of the book generally tell their own stories in the course of the narrative. This technique is masterfully done and sustains the reader throughout… By the end of the book we have been introduced to the coming of age of some of the next generation, and already we have been given inklings as to how their lives will intertwine as the move is made to Van Diemen’s Land. Your reviewer can hardly wait to know more, and is keenly looking forward to Book Two… A great read thoroughly recommended’ - Founders Magazine, November 2016

    They will tell you that, but do not believe them; I have pronounced that word in order to destroy in you immediately the striking impression that it produces. Those people are wicked; they were my friends once, but now they spy on me and say perfidious things about me, because they are jealous. And I shall tell you with what reason: they are jealous of not having understood their soul as well as me. There are people who cannot see and who wish ill on others because of that; but not everyone can sense things in the same way, can they, Monsieur? One must be reasonable."Camille Mauclair’s Les Clefs d’or, originally published in 1897, is one of the most significant Symbolist prose collections of the fin de siècle. The present volume, The Frail Soul and Other Stories, contains eleven pieces from this masterwork, brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Brian Stableford.

    She is rescued from drowning by Major Mark Roper, a stranger to the area, who takes her back to his temporary quarters at Brockhill Manor. Hearing her story, Mark vows to protect her until the would-be murderer is taken up. How to find one unknown man before he can come back to finish her off is a challenge to which Mark rises with the aid of his brother, his batman, and some old army friends. During her enforced convalescence at the Manor, and with new friends to support her, Lydia discovers the strength and the determination to fight for herself; but there is more than one enemy waiting for her to fail, and past secrets which could shatter all her hopes. This is a novel to curl up with on a rainy afternoon; traditional Regency romance at its best.

     On her journey of self discovery, Belle sacrifices her freedom to save her father and finds herself in the castle of a prince who's been turned into a mysterious beast. Secluded in the castle, Belle befriends the enchanted staff and ultimately the Beast as well, and learns that true beauty comes from deep within. Experience the timeless Disney classic in a whole new way with this gorgeous graphic novel companion to the film. Featuring over a thousand frames from the movie and lyrics from all the iconic songs, the Disney Beauty and the Beast Cinestory Comic will transport you to Belle's captivating world.

    --Washington RoeblingHis father conceived of the Brooklyn Bridge, but after John Roebling's sudden death, Washington Roebling built what has become one of American's most iconic structures--as much a part of New York as the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Yet, as recognizable as the bridge is, its builder is too often forgotten--and his life is of interest far beyond his chosen field. It is the story of immigrants, of the frontier, of the greatest crisis in American history, and of the making of the modern world.Forty years after the publication of The Great Bridge, David McCullough's classic chronicle of how the East River was spanned, Erica Wagner has written a fascinating biography of one of America's most distinguished engineers, a man whose long life was a model of courage in the face of extraordinary adversity. Chief Engineer is enriched by Roebling's own eloquent voice, unveiled in his recently-discovered memoir that was previously thought lost to history.The memoir reveals that his father, John-a renowned engineer who made his life in America after humble beginnings in Germany-was a tyrannical presence in Washington's life, so his own adoption of that career was hard won. A young man when the Civil War broke out, Washington joined the Union Army, building bridges that carried soldiers across rivers and seeing action in many pivotal battles, from Antietam to Gettysburg-aspects of his life never before fully brought to light. Safely returned, he married the remarkable Emily Warren Roebling, who would play a crucial role in the construction of the unprecedented Brooklyn Bridge. It would be Washington Roebling's grandest achievement-but by no means the only one.Elegantly written with a compelling narrative sweep, Chief Engineer will introduce Washington Roebling and his era to a new generation of readers.

    Brimming with vivid detail and relatable characters, each chapter of Black Beauty's long and varied life communicates an important message about kindness, sympathy and understanding.Following the success of the double Audie award-winning Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book: The Mowgli Stories, Audible Originals UK are excited to announce this reimagination of Sewell's unique concept as an animal-based audio drama for all the family.Black Beauty features lead performances from Samuel West (BAFTA nominated; Mr Selfridge, Howards End), Samantha Bond (SAG nominated; Downton Abbey, James Bond), Paul Thornley (Harry Potter & the Cursed Child, Les Misérables) and Tamzin Outhwaite (EastEnders, Great Expectations, Foyle's War) as well as the original theme music 'Galloping Home' by Denis King.

    No city was more fervently attached to slavery, and no city was seen by the North as a greater threat to the bonds barely holding together the Union. And so, with Abraham Lincoln's election looming, Charleston's leaders faced a climactic decision: they could submit to abolition--or they could drive South Carolina out of the Union and hope that the rest of the South would follow.In Madness Rules the Hour, Paul Starobin tells the story of how Charleston succumbed to a fever for war and charts the contagion's relentless progress and bizarre turns. In doing so, he examines the wily propagandists, the ambitious politicians, the gentlemen merchants and their wives and daughters, the compliant pastors, and the white workingmen who waged a violent and exuberant revolution in the name of slavery and Southern independence. They devoured the Mercury, the incendiary newspaper run by a fanatical father and son; made holy the deceased John C. Calhoun; and adopted "Le Marseillaise" as a rebellious anthem. Madness Rules the Hour is a portrait of a culture in crisis and an insightful investigation into the folly that fractured the Union and started the Civil War.

    Authors Michael Edmonds and Samantha Snyder plumbed the depths of the Wisconsin Historical Society’s collections to research and compose lively portraits of eighty of these notable individuals: mayors, ministers, mystics, murderers, and everything in between. Each story is followed by recommended sources for readers’ continued exploration. Whether read on the fly or all in one sitting, these short, colorful narratives will intrigue and inform as you delve into Wisconsin’s diverse and diverting history.

    Williard Sterne Randall documents an unremitting fifty-year-long struggle for economic independence from Britain overlapping two armed conflicts linked by an unacknowledged global struggle. Throughout this perilous period, the struggle was all about free trade.Neither Jefferson nor any other Founding Father could divine that the Revolutionary Period of 1763 to 1783 had concluded only one part, the first phase of their ordeal. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 at the end of the Revolutionary War halted overt combat but had achieved only partial political autonomy from Britain. By not guaranteeing American economic independence and agency, Britain continued to deny American sovereignty.Randall details the fifty years and persistent attempts by the British to control American trade waters, but he also shows how, despite the outrageous restrictions, the United States asserted the doctrine of neutral rights and developed the world’s second largest merchant fleet as it absorbed the French Caribbean trade. American ships carrying trade increased five-fold between 1790 and 1800, its tonnage nearly doubling again between 1800 and 1812, ultimately making the United States the world’s largest independent maritime power.

    Clara, an unassuming girl of fourteen, is fascinated by sixteen-year-old Geneva’s boldness. With little besides chores to occupy their time in a territory with no neighborhoods or schools, the girls become fast friends. ALBERT, Clara’s widowed father, provides her with a comfortable life, but she also wants his love and devotion. Instead, she gets a stepmother when Albert secretly marries Geneva. Feeling betrayed by her pa and a girl she idolizes, she wants nothing to do with her former friend. Complicating Clara’s predicament, she and Geneva are linked by blood and marriage, forcing them to be together at family gatherings. Sparks fly in southwestern Colorado as the two young women engage in a clash of wills that lasts from 1885 to the flu epidemic of 1918.

    The ideology and moral philosophy of the men behind the revolution--including bushido or "the way of the warrior"--informed their actions and would become the foundation of the Emperor-worship of World War II. This first-ever account in English of the assassins who drove the revolution details one of the most volatile periods in Japanese history--also known as "the dawn of modern Japan."

    expedition to traverse the North American continent. During the twenty-eight month ordeal, Colter served as a hunter and scout, and honed his survival skills on the western frontier. But when the journey was over, Colter stayed behind, spending two more years trekking alone through dangerous and unfamiliar territory. Along the way, he charted some of the West’s most treasured landmarks.Historian David W. Marshall crafts this captivating history from Colter’s primary sources, and has retraced Colter’s steps—seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard, and experiencing firsthand how he and his contemporaries survived in the wilderness (how they pitched a shelter, built a fire, followed a trail, and forded a stream)—adding a powerful layer of authority and detail.The American Grit series brings you true tales of endurance, survival, and ingenuity from the annals of American history. These books focus on the trials of remarkable individuals with an emphasis on rich primary source material and artwork.

    After discovering his wife in a compromising way, which will he want to do more?READER ADVISORY: This story contains many elements of BDSM, bondage, and submission. This story is only for readers who enjoy wicked levels of erotica.Reading Parts I-V first is recommended.

    Then she meets Tade Larkin, who tells of better things in the Montana Territory, where he works as a miner. Nora makes the long journey across the country to marry Tade, but life is harsh in the West, and Nora faces challenges she never imagined. Through it all she is sustained by the affection of an unlikely protector and her growing love for the wild untamed landscape of the West.

    Concentrating on aesthetic and decadent authors, Scents and Sensibility introduces a rich selection of poems, essays, and fiction, exploring these texts with reference to both the little-known cultural history of perfume use and the appreciation of natural fragrance in Victorian Britain. It shows how scent and perfume are used to convey not merely moods and atmospheres but the nuances of the aesthete or decadent's carefully cultivated identity, personality, or sensibility.A key theme is the emergence of the olfactif, the cultivated individual with a refined sense of smell, influentially represented by the poet and critic Algernon Charles Swinburne, who is emulated by a host of canonical and less well-known aesthetic and decadent successors such as Walter Pater, Edmund Gosse, John Addington Symonds, Lafcadio Hearn, Michael Field, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Mark Andre Raffalovich, Theodore Wratislaw, and A. Mary F. Robinson. This book explores how scent and perfume pervade the work of these authors in many different ways, signifying such diverse things as style, atmosphere, influence, sexuality, sensibility, spirituality, refinement, individuality, the expression of love and poetic creativity, and the aura of personality, dandyism, modernity, and memory. A coda explores the contrasting twentieth-century responses of Virginia Woolf and Compton Mackenzie to the scent of Victorian literature.

    A judge, bound by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, had just ordered a young African American man who had escaped from slavery in Virginia and settled in Boston to be returned to bondage in the South. An estimated 50,000 citizen rioted in protest. Observing the scene was Amos Adams Lawrence, a wealthy Bostonian, who “waked up a stark mad Abolitionist.” As quickly as Lawrence waked up, he combined his fortune and his energy with others to create the New England Emigrant Aid Company to encourage abolitionists to emigrate to Kansas to ensure that it would be a free state.The town that came to bear Lawrence’s name became the battleground for the soul of America, with abolitionists battling pro-slavery Missourians who were determined to make Kansas a slave state. The onset of the Civil War only escalated the violence, leading to the infamous raid of William Clarke Quantrill when he led a band of vicious Confederates (including Frank James, whose brother Jesse would soon join them) into town and killed two hundred men and boys.Stark Mad Abolitionists shows how John Brown, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Sam Houston, and Abraham Lincoln all figure into the story of Lawrence and “Bleeding Kansas.” The story of Amos Lawrence’s eponymous town is part of a bigger story of people who were willing to risk their lives and their fortunes in the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.

    In presenting the first English-language history of the Khanate of Khoqand (1709–1876), Scott C. Levi examines the rise of that extraordinarily dynamic state in the Ferghana Valley. Levi reveals the many ways in which the Khanate’s integration with globalizing forces shaped political, economic, demographic, and environmental developments in the region, and he illustrates how these same forces contributed to the downfall of Khoqand.             To demonstrate the major historical significance of this vibrant state and region, too often relegated to the periphery of early modern Eurasian history, Levi applies a “connected history” methodology showing in great detail how Central Asians actively influenced policies among their larger imperial neighbors—notably tsarist Russia and Qing China. This original study will appeal to a wide interdisciplinary audience, including scholars and students of Central Asian, Russian, Middle Eastern, Chinese, and world history, as well as the study of comparative empire and the history of globalization.

    In fact, heading into the war, American forces dramatically underestimated the strength of Mexicans’ patriotism and failed to see how bitterly Mexicans resented America’s claims to national and racial superiority. Having regarded the United States as a sister republic, Mexicans were shocked by the scope of America’s expansionist ambitions, and their fierce resistance surprised U.S. political and military leaders, who had expected a quick victory with few casualties. As the fighting intensified over the course of two years, it claimed the lives of thousands of Americans and at least twice as many Mexicans, including many civilians.As stark as they were, the misconceptions that the Mexican-American War laid bare on both sides did not determine the final victor. What differentiated the two countries in battle was not some notion of American unity and loyalty to democracy but the United States’ huge advantages in economic power and wealth―advantages its poorer Latin American neighbor could not hope to overcome.

    Determined to marry for love, in 1890 she wed her cousin, Franz Salvator of Tuscany and bore him 10 children. The dashing Archduke was not faithful. His affair with Stephanie Richter, a young, middle-class Jewish woman with a knack for flattering powerful men, led to an illegitimate child, a royal title of her own and a career as a double-agent in the prelude to World War II. Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe became vital to Adolf Hitler, betraying the German Jews, the British government, and her home country of Austria--until Hitler betrayed her, leaving her without allies or protectors.

    The diary of John Quincy Adams is one of the most extraordinary works in American literature. Begun in 1779 at the age of twelve and kept more or less faithfully until his death almost 70 years later, it is both an unrivaled record of historical events and personalities from the nation's founding to the antebellum era and a masterpiece of American self-portraiture, tracing the spiritual, literary, and scientific interests of an exceptionally lively mind. Now, for the 250th anniversary of Adams's birth, Library of America and historian David Waldstreicher present a two-volume reader's edition based for the first time on the original manuscript diaries, restoring personal and revealing passages suppressed in earlier editions. Volume I begins during the American Revolution, with Adams's first entry, as he prepares to embark on a perilous wartime voyage to Europe with his father, diplomat John Adams, and records his early impressions of Franklin and Jefferson and of Paris on the eve of revolution; it details his abbreviated but eventful years of study at Harvard and his emergence into the world of politics in his own right, as American minister to the Netherlands and to Prussia, and then as a U. S. senator from Massachusetts; and it reveals a young man at war with his passions, before finding love with the remarkable Louisa Catherine Johnson. In passages that form a kind of real-world War and Peace, the diary follows the young married couple to St. Petersburg, where as U.S. minister Adams is a witness to Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Its account of the negotiations at Ghent to end the War of 1812, where Adams leads the American delegation, is the perhaps the most detailed and dramatic picture of a diplomatic confrontation ever recorded. Volume 1 concludes with his elevation as Secretary of State under James Monroe, as he takes the fore in a fractious cabinet and emerges as the principal architect of what will become known as the Monroe Doctrine. Volume 2 opens with the political maneuverings within and outside Monroe's cabinet to become his successor, a process that culminates in Adams's election to the presidency by the House of Representatives after the deadlocked four-way contest of 1824. Even as Adams takes the oath of office, rivals Henry Clay, his Secretary of State, John C. Calhoun, his vice president, and an embittered Andrew Jackson, eye the election of 1828. The diary records in candid detail his frustration as his far-sighted agenda for national improvement founders on the rocks of internecine political factionalism, conflict that results in his becoming only the second president, with his father, to fail to secure reelection. After a short-lived retirement, Adams returns to public service as a Congressman from Massachusetts, and for the last seventeen years of his life he leads efforts to resist the extension of slavery and to end the notorious -gag rule- that stifles debate on the issue in Congress. In 1841 he further burnishes his reputation as a scourge of the Slave Power by successfully defending African mutineers of the slave ship Amistad before the Supreme Court. The diary achieves perhaps its greatest force in its prescient anticipation of the Civil War and Emancipation, an -object, - as Adams described it during the Missouri Crisis, -vast in its compass, awful in its prospects, sublime and beautiful in its issue.-

    Begun in 1779 at the age of twelve, kept more or less faithfully until his death almost 70 years later, and totaling some fifteen thousand closely-written manuscript pages, it is an unrivaled record of historical events and personalities from the nation’s founding to the antebellum era. It is also a masterpiece of American prose, tracing the spiritual, literary, and scientific interests of an exceptionally lively mind. Now, for the 250th anniversary of Adams’s birth, Library of America and historian David Waldstreicher have prepared a two-volume reader’s edition, presenting selections based for the first time on the original manuscripts, restoring personal and revealing passages suppressed in earlier editions.The edition begins with Adams’s very first diary entries, written during the America Revolution, as he prepares to embark on a perilous wartime voyage to Europe with his father, diplomat John Adams, and records his early impressions of Franklin and Jefferson and of Paris in the waning days of the ancien régime. It details his eventful years of study at Harvard and as a law clerk, amid the controversy over the ratification of the new federal Constitution, and his emergence into the world of politics: as American minister to the Netherlands and to Prussia in the 1790s, and then as a stubbornly independent U.S. senator from Massachusetts during the Jefferson administration. And it reveals a young man at war with his passions before finding love with the remarkable Louisa Catherine Johnson.In scenes evocative of War and Peace, the diary follows the young married couple to St. Petersburg, where as U.S. minister Adams is a witness to Napoleon’s fateful invasion of Russia. Its account of the negotiations to end the War of 1812 at Ghent, where Adams leads the American delegation, may be the most detailed and dramatic picture of a diplomatic confrontation ever recorded. From Ghent, Adams moves to Paris, where he observes the tumult of Napoleon’s brief return to power and final fall in June 1815.As Volume 1 concludes, Adams, now secretary of state under James Monroe, takes the fore in a fractious cabinet and emerges as the principal architect of the Monroe Doctrine, one of the most consequential geopolitical statements in history. The diary achieves possibly its greatest force in its prescient foreshadowing of the Civil War and Emancipation, a collective “object,” as Adams describes it during the Missouri Crisis of 1820, “vast in its compass, awful in its prospects, sublime and beautiful in its issue.”A companion Library of America volume presents diary selections from 1821 to 1848.

    Sleeplessness plagued the Union and Confederate armies, and dreams of war glided through the minds of Americans in both the North and South. Sometimes their nightly visions brought the horrors of the conflict vividly to life. But for others, nighttime was an escape from the hard realities of life and death in wartime. In this innovative new study, Jonathan W. White explores what dreams meant to Civil War era Americans and what their dreams reveal about their experiences during the war. He shows how Americans grappled with their fears, desires, and struggles while they slept, and how their dreams helped them make sense of the confusion, despair, and loneliness that engulfed them.White takes readers into the deepest, darkest, and most intimate places of the Civil War, connecting the emotional experiences of soldiers and civilians to the broader history of the conflict, confirming what poets have known for centuries: that there are some truths that are only revealed in the world of darkness. "