Best of
Historical-Fiction

1968

Once an Eagle


Anton Myrer - 1968
    Damon is a professional who puts duty, honor, and the men he commands above self interest. Massengale, however, brilliantly advances by making the right connections behind the lines and in Washington's corridors of power.Beginning in the French countryside during the Great War, the conflict between these adversaries solidifies in the isolated garrison life marking peacetime, intensifies in the deadly Pacific jungles of World War II, and reaches its treacherous conclusion in the last major battleground of the Cold War -- Vietnam.A study in character and values, courage, nobility, honesty, and selflessness, here is an unforgettable story about a man who embdies the best in our nation -- and in us all.

The Lord John Series (Lord John Grey, #0.5-3)


Diana Gabaldon - 1968
    This thrilling eBook collection—featuring three novels and one collection of novellas—follows Lord John as he defends his country, ferrets out spies, and unravels a haunting family mystery.   LORD JOHN AND THE PRIVATE MATTER   London, 1757. Lord John Grey, a nobleman and a high-ranking officer in His Majesty’s army, has just witnessed something shocking. But his efforts to avoid a scandal are interrupted when the Crown appoints him to investigate the brutal murder of a comrade-in-arms. Obliged to pursue two inquiries at once, Major Grey finds himself ensnared in a web of betrayal that touches every stratum of English society—and threatens all he holds dear.   LORD JOHN AND THE HAND OF DEVILS A Collection of Novellas     In Lord John and the Hellfire Club, Lord John glimpses a stranger at a gentleman’s club—and is drawn into a maze of political treachery and a dangerous underground society. In Lord John and the Succubus, English soldiers in combat are rattled by a lethal creature that appears at night, and Lord John is called to investigate. In Lord John and the Haunted Soldier, Lord John is thrust into a baffling case that forces him to confront the prospect that a traitor is among the ranks of His Majesty’s armed forces.   LORD JOHN AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BLADE     It’s been seventeen years since Lord John’s father was found dead, accusations of his role as a Jacobite agent staining the family’s name. Now, Lord John’s brother has mysteriously received a page of their father’s lost diary, convincing John that someone knows the Greys’ secrets. So he turns to the only man he can trust: the Scottish Jacobite Jamie Fraser. But when Jamie yields the missing piece of an astounding puzzle, Lord John must decide whether his family’s honor is worth his life.   THE SCOTTISH PRISONER  London, 1760. Paroled prisoner Jamie Fraser has sworn off politics, fighting, and war. Until Lord John Grey shows up with documents that expose a damning case of corruption against a British officer. But they also hint at a more insidious danger. Soon Lord John and Jamie are companions on the road to Ireland, a country whose dark castles hold dreadful secrets, and whose bogs hide the bones of the dead.

Testimony of Two Men


Taylor Caldwell - 1968
    But they could never forgive the truths he told about them.From this compelling story of a doctor at war with the world he has been taught to heal, Taylor Caldwell has fashioned a novel of an unforgettable, angry idealist -- a novel in which the drama of new medical frontiers becomes part of a sweeping chronicle of love, death, desire, and redemption.

True Grit


Charles Portis - 1968
    But even though this gutsy 14-year-old is seeking vengeance, she is smart enough to figure out she can't go alone after a desperado who's holed up in Indian territory. With some fast-talking, she convinces mean, one-eyed US Marshal "Rooster" Cogburn into going after the despicable outlaw with her.

The Pride and the Anguish


Douglas Reeman - 1968
    Porcupine. To Trewin, still shocked from wounds received during the evacuation of Crete, the gunboat and her five elderly consorts seem to symbolise the ignorance and blind optimism he finds in Singapore. And the captain of the Porcupine is as unwilling as the rest to take heed of Trewin's alarm, for to him the gunboat represents his last chance.The following month, the Japanese invade Malaya. In three months Singapore, the impregnable fortress, knows the humiliation of surrender. Through the misery and despair of this bloody campaign Trewin and his captain are forced to draw on each other's beliefs and weaknesses, and together they weld the little gunboat into a symbol of bravery and pride.

The Raj Quartet (1): The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion


Paul Scott - 1968
    Tolstoyan in scope and  Proustian in detail  but completely individual in effect, it records the encounter between East and West through the experiences of a dozen people caught up in the upheavals of the Second World War and the growing campaign for Indian independence from Britain. The first novel, The Jewel in the Crown, describes the doomed love between an English girl and an Indian boy, Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. This affair touches the lives of other characters in three subsequent volumes, most of them unknown to Hari and Daphne but involved in the larger social and political conflicts which destroy the lovers. In The Day of the Scorpion, Ronald Merrick, a sadistic policeman who arrested and prosecuted Hari, insinuates himself into an aristocratic British family as World War II escalates. On occasions unsparing in its study of personal dramas and racial differences, the Raj Quartet is at all times profoundly humane, not least in the author’s capacity to identify with a huge range of characters. It is also illuminated by delicate social comedy and wonderful evocations of the Indian scene, all narrated in luminous prose. The other two novels in the Raj Quartet, The Towers of Silence and A Division of the Spoils, are also available from Everyman’s Library. With a new introduction by Hilary Spurling(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Come Spring


Ben Ames Williams - 1968
    It was the way in which towns were founded from the Atlantic seaboard west to the great plains, by stripping off the forest and putting the land to work. The people in this book were not individually as important as George Washington; the town they founded was not as important as New York. But people like them made this country, and towns like ths one were and are the soil in which this country s roots are grounded.ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Ben Ames Williams was born in 1889 in Macon, Mississippi. A graduate of Dartmouth, he became a reporter for the BOSTON AMERICAN, and published short stories in some of the nation s leading magazines. Williams wrote many historical novels before his death in 1953. He carefully researched each book. For COME SPRING, he read the records and diaries of the early settlers; he followed their trails and canoed the same rivers to the sites of their early dwellings. Another important resource was John Langdon Sibley s HISTORY OF UNION written in 1851. Sibley had known those founding families and was able to include accurate details in his history. Ben Ames Williams lived for a time in Union and his famiy still has a residence in the area.

Of Love and Dust


Ernest J. Gaines - 1968
    There he encounters conflict with the overseer, Sidney Bonbon, and a tale of revenge, lust and power plays out between Marcus, Bonbon, Bonbon's mistress Pauline, and Bonbon's wife Louise.

The East Indiaman


Ellis K. Meacham - 1968
    From the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, from Calcutta to Canton, the Company ships were famous for their speed and daring. The "Bombay Buccaneers" who sailed them were the stuff of legend.For Percival Merewether, 1806 would be a year to remember. For in January of that year he was promoted from First Lieutenant to become the junior Captain in the Company’s Service and given the command of his first ship - the "Rapid."Armed with ten 9-pounders, the "Rapid" was a match for any pirate ship that crossed its bows, and in it Captain Merewether was to spend as action-packed and eventful a first year as any ambitious young sea-farer could have wished.Merewether had quick wits and daring to match his ambition. And with mutinies, diplomatic intrigues and skirmishes with the French to occupy him, he soon found that he needed both qualities as never before...About the Author: Ellis K. Meacham (1913-1998) was a Commander in the US Naval Reserve serving as a gunnery officer in the Pacific during the Second World War. He was an attorney in Chattanooga from 1937 to 1972, when he became a judge in the Chattanooga Municipal Court. He won the "Friends of American Writers Major Award in Fiction" in 1969 for THE EAST INDIAMAN.

The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia


Esther Hautzig - 1968
    The Rudomin family has been arrested by the Russians. They are "capitalists' enemies of the people." Forced from their home and friends in Vilna, Poland, they are herded into crowded cattle cars. Their destination: the endless steppe of Siberia.For five years, Esther and her family live in exile, weeding potato fields and working in the mines, struggling for enough food and clothing to stay alive. Only the strength of family sustains them and gives them hope for the future.

Masha


Mara Kay - 1968
    Mara Kay has evoked the sheltered world of Smolni with authenticity and has provided colourful glimpses of St Petersburg and the greater world outside.

Until the Sun Falls


Cecelia Holland - 1968
    This novel follows Psin, a Mongol general, through the military campaigns in Russia and Europe, among his own family and in his own heart.

The Vines of Yarrabee


Dorothy Eden - 1968
    But as Eugenia learns more of the ruthlessly ambitious man she has married and the rugged land he has brought her to, the very elegance and delicacy her husband prized in her soon prove liabilities. She is appalled by many aspects of plantation life - the convict slave laborers, the suffocating summer heat, the merciless winters. It is a maid who seems to be the real mistress of Yarrabee.

Imperial Governor: The Great Novel of Boudicca's Revolt


George Shipway - 1968
    Sent to Wales to capture the gold mines, Paulinus faces the fury of Queen Boudicca's tribes, all united against Nero's corrupt officials. It's a tale packed with fascinating detail of life in Roman Britain and in the Legions in particular.

The Ronin: A Novel Based on a Zen Myth


William Dale Jennings - 1968
    It is the tale of Ronin, a masterless 12th-century samurai knight, who slashes his way up from the gutter to a position of wealth, honour, and status.

Shout at the Devil


Wilbur Smith - 1968
    In SHOUT AT THE DEVIL, the New York Times bestselling master storyteller takes us to a brutal paradise engulfed in the fires of civilization's war...A MAN ON HIS OWNThey couldn't be anymore different: an earnest young Englishman named Sebastian Oldsmith and an Irish American adventurer named Flynn O'Flynn who never encounters a rule he doesn't break. Fate brings them together in Zanzibar. A sadistic German turns them into allies, then into warriors.A WOMAN IN LOVEFrom the moment Rosa O'Flynn lays eyes on Sebastian, Rosa finds the man she would love forever—never mind what plans her father has for her. But imperialism is shaking Mozambique, where O'Flynn is the craftiest, fiercest beast in the jungle. And when Rosa and Sebastian lose what is most precious, they join a band of rogues, natives, wanderers, and hunters to start their own war against an enemy who has nothing to fear—and everything to lose...A HUNT FOR THE MOST DANGEROUS PREY OF ALLFrom the sound and sight of a charging bull elephant to ships ablaze on the Indian Ocean, this is a full throttle saga of survival—against nature, man, and the devil himself..."Action is Wilbur Smith's game, and he is a master."—The Washington Post Book World "[Wilbur Smith] puts the reader right there with details that are intimate, inspiring, horrifying…. Fans will be happy to know Smith hasn't lost his touch for the dramatic, exotic adventure story."— The Orlando Sentinel

Black Douglas


Nigel Tranter - 1968
    The death of young Will Douglas's father plunged him into a world where might prevailed and the end justified the means.

The Man in the Box: A Story from Vietnam


Marylois Dunn - 1968
    During the Vietnam War, a Vietnamese boy must free the "Man in the Box," a captured American soldier, and bring him to safety.

The Deep Silence


Douglas Reeman - 1968
    Her trials are cut short and she is ordered to the Far East to reinforce the fleet against a threat from Red China.

The Mukhtar's Children


Sally Watson - 1968
    Immediately following the creation of the State of Israel, the leader of an Arab town finds his people's traditional ideas challenged by the Jews building a kibbutz nearby and by his own children, particularly a rebellious twelve-year-old daughter.

Beyond the Night


Betty Swinford - 1968
    

Judas My Brother


Frank Yerby - 1968
    He was born to wealth, power, worldliness. Yet strangely enough, his features closely resembled a youth who was his total opposite-a poverty-stricken carpenter's son from Galilee. and though Nathan chose the path of physical adventure and sensual excess, his life was intertwined with that of the man called Jesus of Nazareth- until their moment of confrontation and truth in the shadow of the cross... Frank Yerby's most magnificent novel- Judas, My brother "brings alive the great, sprawling, barbaric world of the first century...a rousing novel... a great story-teller".