This incredible portrait of Erik--the Phantom--recreates his entire life, from his survival as a child in a carnival freak show to his creative genius behind the Paris Opera House--and its labyrinthine world below--to his discovery of love.

    In this wise, beguiling, beautiful novel set in the era of the Civil War, an award-winning playwright and author paints a haunting portrait of a woman named Always, born a slave, and four generations of her African-American family.

    A young boy and his father visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

    The potatoes are black and rotten, and the people have nothing to eat. Eily, Michael and Peggy are alone in their cottage. Their parents went out in search of work and food, but never returned. Now the children must fend for themselves. Desperate to avoid being sent to the workhouse, they set out on a journey to find their great-aunts. On their journey, they encounter the devastation caused by famine people scrabbling for food, abandoned children, soup kitchens, beggars, disease, wild dogs, death. Led by twelve-year-old Eily, the children use all their strength and ingenuity to survive and find their way to Castletaggart.

    In this, his second work of fiction about Vietnam, O'Brien's unique artistic vision is again clearly demonstrated. Neither a novel nor a short story collection, it is an arc of fictional episodes, taking place in the childhoods of its characters, in the jungles of Vietnam and back home in America two decades later.

    Born in 1778, Robert Emmet, the youngest son of the State Physician of Ireland, has grown up in the heart of a prosperous and loving family, one of the most respected in Dublin city. From his parents he acquired a deep love of Ireland and a commitment to justice. From his brother Thomas he acquired an understanding of the divisions and inequalities of his country. In the historic year of 1798 Robert’s life changed from its charted course to one of rebellion. A brilliant student at Trinity, he casts aside all hopes of a scientific career, all the privileges of his class, to join the United Irishmen – a society dedicated to the union of Protestant and Catholic. But the men in Dublin Castle determined on the continuance of English rule, force him to flee to France. But even as his boat sails away from his beloved homeland, he looks back and knows he will return – to the cause of his country’s liberty, and to the beautiful girl he has fallen in love with, Sarah Curran, the daughter of Ireland’s most talented lawyer. He returns – and meets Anne Devlin, a passionate and brave Catholic country girl, who becomes his most devoted companion. Set against the background of the beauty of Ireland, the dark clouds of its past, as well as the humour and dreams of its people, this is a passionate and powerful true story of three young people, Robert Emmet, Anne Devlin, and Sarah Curran, drawn together in love, in hope, and tragedy.

    That day comes suddenly when his grandfather dies leaving him the floundering business. With the help of Becky Salmon, an enterprising young woman, Charlie sets out to make a name for himself as "The Honest Trader". But the brutal onset of World War I takes Charlie far from home and into the path of a dangerous enemy whose legacy of evil follows Charlie and his family for generations.Encompassing three continents and spanning over sixty years, As the Crow Flies brings to life a magnificent tale of one man's rise from rags to riches set against the backdrop of a changing century.

    Father Peregrine is appointed Abbot of St Alcuin's Benedictine abbey. An arrogant, impatient man, a hawk trying hard to be a dove - his name in religion is "Columba" - he is respected, but not loved. A sudden, shocking act of violence changes everything. As the story unfolds, this community of monks, serious about their calling but as flawed and human as we are, come to love their ascetic but now vulnerable leader. They lived six centuries ago, yet their struggles are our own. Finding our niche; coping with failure; living with impossible people; and discovering that we are the impossible ones.

    The reader is swept into the whirlpool of pageantry, passion, splendor, chaos and earth-shattering upheaval that was ancient Rome. Here is the story of Marius, wealthy but lowborn, and Sulla, aristocratic but penniless and debauched -- extraordinary men of vision whose ruthless ambition will lay the foundations of the most awesome and enduring empire known to humankind.A towering saga of great events and mortal frailties, it is peopled with a vast, and vivid cast of unforgettable men and women -- soldiers and senators, mistresses and wives, kings and commoners -- combined in a richly embroidered human tapestry to bring a remarkable era to bold and breathtaking life.

    Slightly against his better judgement he took them in, fed them cocoa, and put them to sleep in his bed. A few days later he found that - somehow - he had become the unofficial guardian of Horace and Ethel. It was him, the orphanage, or separation for the gutsy little pair who would have to be farmed out to anyone who would take them, and Jim felt a sudden affinity for the two cheeky cockney kids. The first thing he had to do was find fresh lodgings for them all.Miss Rebecca Pilgrim was a woman of strict Victorian principles, eminently respectable, and determined to keep her privacy intact. She had reckoned without her new lodgers - Horace, Ethel and, above all, the irrepressible Jim Cooper. And thus began the humanizing of Miss Pilgrim, who turned out to be younger, prettier, and far gentler than any of them had suspected.

    New lives. New troubles. Throughout County Tipperary the three sisters were known as the Sisters O'Donnell. They all have red hair, but little else in common. Together they move to Liverpool in the 1920s to make a new life for themselves - although each sister intends to go about it in her own sweet way. Gina wants to be a star of the theatre, Mary-Kate wants to find a husband, and Bridget, shy, gentle Bridget, just wants to escape the Troubles.But when they get to Liverpool they realise that fame and fortune are thin on the ground as, indeed, is work. And their money is running out fast... The sisters have a long way to go before they fulfil their dreams - will the bonds of sisterhood be enough to hold them together?

    When Olivia, a forthright young American, comes to live with her very proper British relatives, she falls headlong into love with angry, half-caste Jai. Olivia believes nothing will ever diminish her love for Jai, but can it withstand the terrible revenge he is planning to take on the people who betrayed him? Ryman has done a good job of portraying the closed, rigidly stratified colonial society; against this background her vibrant, passionate main characters compel attention. Occasional lapses into overheated prose are disconcerting but don't impede the story's flow. Suspense, exotic locales, and strong-willed lovers make this novel a treat for romance readers.

    Colorful and compelling, it brings to life a world never before portrayed as it tells the dramatic and stormy tale of Dinah Sassoon's quest for love and justice.

    But on the ship bound for Australia, she meets Dr. Tristan Faulkner, who awakens her heart to desire--and dares her to want more. Surrounded by a primitive aboriginal culture, Hallie fights to carve a future from the exotic wilds.

    and achieves a deeply felt authenticity' NEW YORK TIMES

    Everything looks so different from the life Kirsten knew back in Sweden--the ways people talk and dress seem strange! Getting lost in a big city and parting with her best friend only add to Kirsten’s worry. Will she ever feel at home here? It is only when the Larsons arrive at a tiny farm on the edge of the frontier that Kirsten believes Papa’s promise--America will be a land filled with opportunity for them all.6 book boxed set featuring 1854 Kirsten, An American Girl.

    But when fierce Shawnee attacked the white settlers, the horrified young Kitty was forced to seek refuge within the walls of the fort. There her real life as a founding mother of Kentucky began -- a life in which she would surive tragedy and hearth-wrenching grief and find the all-encompassing passion of great love as the burgeoning territory became a state . . .From the Paperback edition.

    But the accident that felled him has left him with only half a life; his memory and his entire past have vanished. As he tries to hide the truth, Monk returns to work and is assigned to investigate the brutal murder of a Crimean War hero and man about town. Which makes Monk's efforts doubly difficult, since he's forgotten his professional skills along with everything else...

    In THE PLAINS OF PASSAGE Ayla's story continues. Ayla and Jondalar set out on horseback over the grasslands of Ice-Age Europe. They traverse a vast continent, difficult and treacherous, but pristine and breathtakingly beautiful, full of enchantment. Their trek is a search for something that calls them, that special place that can be their home. "A panorama of human culture in its infancy. A powerful story...Auel is a highly imaginative writer. She humanizes prehistory and gives it immediacy." (The Chicago Sun- Times)

    His people, plagued by warfare, were weary not only from the Vikings' brutal raids along the coast, but also from the continuous warring among local chieftains. The Irish had become a downtrodden race.But a real-life hero changed the destiny of Ireland. This is the story of Brian Boru, who as a young man took it upon himself to revolutionize tenth-century Ireland, striving to create a peaceful land where his fellow Irish men and women cold be safe from harm. And succeed he did. Brian, crowned High King, restored peace and fostered prosperity in the country that was his home--and his heart. Brian Boru: Emperor of the Irish is a beautiful and compelling true story of Irish history.

    An orphan taken in by the chief druid of the Carnutes in Gaul, Ainvar possessed talents that would lead him to master the druid mysteries of thought, healing, magic, and battle— talents that would make him a soul friend to the Prince Vercingetorix . . . though the two youths were as different as fire and ice.Yet Ainvar’s destiny lay with Vercingetorix, the sun-bright warrior-king. Together they traveled through bitter winters and starlit summers in Gaul, rallying the splintered Celtic tribes against the encroaching might of Julius Caesar and the soulless legions of Rome. . . .From the Paperback edition.

    Their mother had perished in the desert, and they had heard that their father was dead some years before. With the help of the wagon master, fifteen-year-old Corrie Belle Hollister is the only one left to bring her two brothers and two sisters into a raucous mining camp during the California Gold Rush to find their Uncle Nick.Her mother's dying words to Corrie: "A woman's got to be strong. She's got to be able to make her way alone if she has to." When the little troop arrives in Miracle Springs and discovers that Uncle Nick has skipped town and the sheriff is after him, the "land of promise" turns into one of fear and unknown danger. Shouts of "gold" and "new strike" fade away as Corrie stands in the middle of a strange town with everyone turning them away.Could they make it on their own? She'd have to try!

    The son of Ramses II and a revered physician, his wisdom is respected throughout Egypt. But Khaemwaset harbours a strong and secret desire—to find the mysterious Scroll of Thoth and receive the power to raise the dead. When Khaemwaset hears of the discovery of a hidden tomb on the plain of Saqqara, he is quick to break its seal and take its secrets—secrets that he soon learns he should never have disturbed.Richly detailed with the exotic realities of Ancient Egypt, Scroll of Saqqara is a compelling tale of power, lust, and obsession.

    The life of Julia Pallister in 17th century England (1641-1670 with Prologue set in 1723) includes her grandmother's ties with Queen Elizabeth, her father's fighting for Charles II in England's bloody civil war and her first love in famous architect-to-be Christopher Wren.

    He was called White Buffalo, and he would be the greatest medicine man the People had ever known.  The spirit of the ancient gods beat in him like a savage drum--a mystical power as old as the land, as primeval as primitive man himself.  But even as he fought to lead his people out of the darkness of the Stone Age, his world trembled on the brink of a great and terrible transformation.  It would be a century swept by the inevitable winds of change; a time when ignorant, evil men like the warrior Gray Wolf of the Head-Splitters would seek bloody vengeance, and when once man would fight against all odds to save his tribe and his heritage from brutal destruction.

    His Plainsmen series brims with colorful characters, fierce battles and compelling historical lore.The Civil War was over, and a great westward march began. Settlers and soldiers poured out of the East along the Bozeman Trail, cutting deep into sacred Sioux hunting grounds. For Red Cloud and his warriors, there would be no choice but to fight for their ancestral rights.Seen through the eyes of gruff Sergeant Seamus Donegan, here is the historically accurate tale of a tragic opening to the war between two great civilization: the Fetterman Massacre of 1866.

    But among the throng, some strange customers indeed begin to puzzle Brother Cadfael, and as events unfold it becomes clear that the murder is a much less remote affair than it first seemed.An Excellent Mystery: In 1141 England is still torn by the civil strife caused by the struggle for the throne between King Stephen and the Empress Maud. Among the victims of the carnage is the Abbey of Hyde Meade, totally destroyed; its brothers scattered far and wide. But as the brothers of the cloister attempt to rebuild their lives, old wounds are reopened, pain relived and harsh deeds committed. Only Brother Cadfael can ultimately distinguish between victim, innocent - and guilty party.The Raven in the Foregate: Christmas, 1141. Abbot Radulfus returns from London, bringing with him a priest for the vacant living of Holy Cross (known as the Foregate) - a man of presence, scholarship and discipline, but neither humility nor the common touch. When he is found drowned in the mill-pond, suspicion is cast in many directions... and only the dedicated perseverance of Brother Cadfael can unravel the threads that lead to the murderer.

    More than a third of Saint-Germain's long, long life was spent in the shadow of the Pyramids, in service to the temples of Egypt--but the tale of those years has never been told before.In Out of the House of Life, readers of Yarbro's series can at last discover how a bloodthirsty demon, captured and enslaved by the high priests of the temple of Imhotep, was transformed into priest and physician and then, finally, into an immortal being of great power and greater wisdom.

    At the centre of events is the beautiful and dangerous Constance, who casts a spell - which may be a curse - on all the sons of the family.

    As innocent as she is lovely, Judith of Ravenstow becomes the bride of roguish, handsome Guyon, Lord of Ledworth, in a union arranged to protect their lands from the clutches of Judith's ruthless uncle.It is far from a match made in heaven. Judith cannot forget her father's brutality toward her mother and is terrified of marriage. Handsome and sophisticated, Guy finds himself wed to a mere child.But as the furor of the Welsh border wars casts their lives to the winds of destiny, Judith surrenders to her deepest desire—and Guy owes his life to the courageous and willful young woman he has wed.

    Richard Bryant arrives in India as a humble clerk with the John Company. But he is driven by an ambition and military enthusiasm that sees him rise beyond his status. He has barely been in Bombay a year when a disastrous love affair with Barbara Smythe forces him to flee the city. He enters the Indian jungle. It is the start of a new life as an outlaw, relying on his wits and his pistols to survive. In the escapades and dangers which lie ahead, Richard becomes an adventurer on a grand scale. He commands French regiments at the court of the feared Begum Sombre, making enemies of every nationality and, in time, carving his own kingdom out of the jungle. Feared by princes, marauders and fellow mercenaries alike, Richard finds a place for himself in the world. But there are terrible scores to be settled, even at the risk of throwing all of his glory away...

    Once you read this, you'll love Jeremiah and appreciate the ministry he did to Israel. Thank you Thom Lemmons.

    Hardcover with dustjackets. ASIN listed on Amazon page

    

    Surviving the brutal massacre of her tribe, she sets out across the icy waters off America's northwest coast on an astonishing odyssey that will reveal to Chagak powerful secrets of the earth and sky... and the mysteries of love and loss.

    Her stories describe her life on the home front during World War Two. Molly doesn't like many of the changes the war has brought, and she especially misses her father, who is away caring for wounded soldiers. But Molly learns the importance of getting along and pulling together -- just as her country has to do to win the war The perfect way to learn about Molly is with a complete set of her six books in an attractive slipcase.

    Captain Robert Thurston commands the cruiser HMS Marathon, one of the escort vessels on this Malta run. Thurston is a career officer with a record of conspicuous gallantry under fire, from Jutland to the North Atlantic convoys. But he is also a man under stress - in the last three years he has seen one ship go to the bottom, leaving pitifully few survivors; he has seen his closest friends and shipmates killed and maimed; he has carried the impossibly heavy burden of responsibility for his men's welfare in the bloody destruction of war at sea. And soon another cause for concern is added to his worries - Marathon is crippled by enemy action and forced to limp towards Alexandria, a constant target for attack by sea and air, vulnerable to the weather and to the enemy alike. Men and machines are stretched to their limit - but the most deadly threat to Thurston's own life and career is yet to be faced.

    In 1950s Chicago, twelve-year-old Richie, whose mother is a heroin addict, sets out to find his bootlegger, ex-con father -- a search that leads him into the boxing ring and uncovers the secret of his parents' past.

    Was it suicide or murder? The Pope wanted to prove Henry VI was worthy of beatification, while the King, Edward IV, claimed he had died witless and incapable. But the closer Luke came to the truth, the more his life fell into danger.

    The author won the Young Writer's Award in 1972 for her book "The Waiting Game".

    A fictionalized biography of the legendary hero of the Old West, who as a fur trapper in 1823, survived an attack by a grizzly bear.

    Unforgettable people locked in the passions of love--and war.Clayton: The handsome Northerner who is bound by love and honor to fight for a cause that he does not believe in.Lettie: The lovely heiress who will pay any price, endure any shame, to hold onto the South she loves.Cotton: Born poor, he has never owned a slave, yet fights beside the aristocrats who scorn him--and finds the woman of his dreams.Fanny: The beautiful young slave who loves a white man more than the promise of freedom.Rufus: The young man who loves Fanny and whose devotion to his white owner will be sorely tried.Patrick: The man who hates his own slavery, and will do everything he can to destroy the South.Angela: The stunning Cherokee princess who is shunned by both the North and the South, and by the man whose love she craves.Their lives are irrevocably entwined by a war they neither wanted nor understood, by love that dared to cross the barriers of class and race, and by a way of life that disappeared with...The Last Plantation

    But she was murdered by the greed of white men, and the Graycloud family, who cared for her daughter, began dying mysteriously. Letters sent to Washington, D.C. begging for help went unanswered, until at last a Native American government official, Stace Red Hawk, traveled west to investigate. What he found has been documented by history: rampant fraud, intimidation, and murder. But he also found something truly extraordinary--his deepest self and abiding love for his people, and their brave past.

    As the Cazalet households prepare for their summer pilgrimage to the family estate in Sussex, readers meet Edward, in love with but by no means faithful to his wife Villy; Hugh, wounded in the Great War; Rupert, who worships his lovely child-bride Zoe; and Rachel, the spinster sister.

    Yet his intuitive powers enable him to predict the birth of a true son of Horus to Ramoses. Nebunefer, however, knows that the child will become more than Pharaoh. He will become Moses, the Lawgiver.So Moses Was Born brings a familiar story to life in a new and profound way, illustrating the ways that the inner government of life operates and influences human civilization. The next step forward on the spiritual path often represents something far different than what we expected.

    The newcomers are a proud and bloody-minded people whose kings once changed themselves into wolves. The Norse have advanced as implacably as a glacier from Iceland to the wastes of Greenland and from there to the place they call Vinland the Good. The natives are a bronze-skinned race who have not yet discovered iron and still see themselves as part of nature. As William T. Vollmann tells the converging stories of these two peoples and of the Norsewomen Freydis and Gudrid, whose venomous rivalry brings frost into paradise he creates a tour-de-force of speculative history, a vivid amalgam of Icelandic saga, Inuit creation myth, and contemporary travel writing that yields a new an utterly original vision of our continent and its past.--back cover

    Becoming part of a strange family, the courageous Maggie faces difficult choices of life on the frontier. Vividly portrays the danger and excitement of early America.--Los Angeles Times Book Review.

    She gave up a vast inheritance and a privileged lifestyle to marry the poor Akiva, trading the crown of luxury for the crown of Torah. In these spell-binding pages, the story of Rachel, wife of the renowned Rabbi Akiva, is brought to life, based on the masterwork of Jewish history, Dorot Harishonim. A vibrant, appealing, and glowing novel, the reader is drawn in to an era long gone but whose spectacular holiness still touches us today. Read about the woman about whom Rabbi Akiva unequivocally declared, "Your Torah and my Torah is hers."

    Russian fur traders are claiming the rich Alaskan wilderness for imperial Russia, and forcing the proud Native Americans into slavery.Beautiful Ashana, torn from her young husband to be the mistress and servant of the captain of the invaders, turns for help to the ancient spirits who have always guided her people. In the magical spirit world of the raven, in the memory of the husband she believes to be dead, in the force of her unremitting rage. Ashana finds the wisdom and power to challenge her cruel destiny.

    Even the approach of Christmas, 1913, fails to excite the restless Agnes Conway, the twenty-two-year-old manager of her feckless father's adjoining sweet and tobacconist shops.  There are dark secrets in Arthur Conway's past, and these come tragically to light when Agnes's younger sister becomes pregnant by one of the notorious Felton brothers.  And Agnes herself has a secret, which she knows she must keep from her father:  an attachment to Charles Farrier, son of a local landowner, who outrages his own pious family by proposing marriage...But Charles is not the only man who shapes Agnes's future, for his brother Reginald makes no secret of his admiration for her; although she could not have foreseen how significant a part he was to play in her destiny...

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    But hope comes in the form of Rebecca, their youngest daughter. A job in service for the Pagnel family, owners of the carpet factory, means a chance of different life for Rebecca. As she gradually rises to the position of housemaid, she gets a glimpse of a world far removed from that she was born to. When love beckons, she is unsure - following your heart can be dangerous, and for Becky will it be her saving or her downfall?

    Previously published as A Fragment of Time. In England in the 1930s, eighteen-year-old Helen Carstairs braves the prejudice of friends and family to marry Heine, a young German photographer who has fled the growing horror of the Nazis.But the storm clouds are gathering in Europe. When fighting breaks out Heine is interned, their small son is evacuated and Helen is left to face the Blitz alone.And the agony of war threatens to divide a family already tormented by conflicting passions of loyalty, shame, betrayal – and love.

    This is the story of the reign of Kenneth MacAlpin, the 9th-century king who united Scotland and gave it its name.

    Because Altsheler felt a responsibility to his young readers, he was careful to make his books historically accurate. His simple language and interesting plots are welcome at any age. Altsheler writes about the French and Indian War in The Hunters of the Hills. Robert Lennox, Tayoga and their older partner Dave Willet, a guide and hunter are the characters in this first book of the series. The story is set in the forests of Upstate New York. From the foreword "The Hunters of the Hills" is the first volume of a series dealing with the great struggle of France and England and their colonies for dominion in North America, culminating with the fall of Quebec. It is also concerned to a large extent with the Iroquois, the mighty league known in their own language as the Hodenosaunee, for the favor of which both French and English were high bidders. In his treatment of the theme the author has consulted many au thorities, and he is not conscious of any historical error."

    So when two Shoshoni boys offer him a horse, Jimmy sneaks away from his family in Salt Lake City to follow the boys. When Jimmy arrives at the Shoshoni camp, he discovers that he is expected to stay--as a member of the tribe! Inspired by the memoirs of a white man who actually lived with Chief Washakie's tribe as a boy in the mid-1800s, The Legend of Jimmy Spoon is a compelling coming-of-age adventure.

    For an unwed woman and man to live openly together ...’The parish of Wenham is dominated by the grand manor of Pelham’s Oak and its owners, the aristocratic Woodville family. However, the young master of Pelham’s Oak, Sir Guy Woodville, is penniless. In a rare moment of responsibility, he agrees to a marriage of convenience in order to bolster the family fortunes.Guy’s only sister, Eliza, is beautiful but inclined to be a tomboy. For her the marriage brings new pressures. Her childhood home is hers no longer, and the thought of being forced into a similar society marriage is more than the rebellious Eliza can bear. Besides, she is already attracted to the son of a local builder, Ryder Yetman, a rugged veteran of the Zulu wars. The Yetmans, although prosperous, are not considered by the haughty Woodvilles to be their social equals, and the consequence of Eliza’s and Ryder’s passion for each other is irrevocable.The story follows the fluctuating fortunes of the two families: the romances, rivalries and scandals, the financial catastrophes, the moments of joy and the personal tragedies. Set against the decline of the Victorian era, when hitherto rigid social conventions were being swept away, this colourful, evocative novel brings old Dorset and the people of a small parish vividly to life.

    Hans Taaibosch lived the rest of his life in America where he made a deep impression on those who knew him and became the catalyst in a haunting story of dreams and deliverance.

    She and her husband are never to meet again. Reading through the diaries in which she recorded her thoughts, feelings and reactions throughout their marriage, she writes an extended letter to Oscar in which she tries to make sense of their shared past, examines the truths and deceptions of their relationship, and searches desperately for insight into her own motivations and identity.Drawing on the recorded facts of the Wildes' time together and their final years of separate self-imposed exile, Rohase Piercy has recreated the story of their relationship from Constance's viewpoint. This is the memoir Constance Wilde might have written, a moving testimony to a love that was inevitably doomed.

    At midcentury Sylvester Woodson, a Candide-like stable boy in love with his master's octoroon mistress, comes to a fitful awareness of the raging Civil War and the world beyond the plantation. A century later Woodlaw Corelli, a descendant of Sylvester's owner, an artist haunted by a disintegrating marriage and the disintegrating landscape of his childhood, struggles for order in a world of chaos and contradiction.A Story of Deep Delight sweeps through three eras of shattering change that have formed the American South, weaving imagination and history into an irresistibly engrossing tapestry of heartbreak, triumph, love, and betrayal.

    Success in this area leads Sheridan to have Custer subdue the Sioux and Cheyenne of the Northern plains. Custer carries on an extra-marital affair with a young Indian girl. This novel is a prelude to the Battle of Little Big Horn.

    The true story of the young savage from Spanish Fork Canyon who became the greatest horse thief in the history of the American West, the most notorious slave trader on the western half of a continent, the most wanted man in California, and the undisputed ruler over countless bands of Indians and a territory larger than the state of Texas, but his toughest challenge of all was to convince a beautiful Shoshone woman to become his squaw.

    

    Rhoda tells their story through her journal which details the struggles of immigrants trying to establish themselves in the New World and describes the courage and perseverance they possessed to make a life for themselves and their children.

    Noah Marlin is older now, as Byron takes up his tale of Chesapeake watermen and their families in this sequel to his beloved classic.In Done Crabbin' Noah's world has begun to change as life on the river becomes less important than life in the town. He's shocked to discover his fifth-grade teacher, the yellow-haired Miss Bertie, parked in a buggy on a back road with Doc Beller, but keeps his discovery secret when he remembers Doc's profession. ("I could imagine myself going to him for a small filling, and then he would strap me in his chair—it wasn't worth the chance.") He hears William Jennings Bryan speak beneath the leaking canopy of a Chatauqua tent during a raging thunderstorm, and remarks in passing that a young man on the tent crew would be killed a year later when his biplane crashed in France.In the end, they all leave the river. Captain Cable trades his illegal 200-pound duck gun for a carpenter's tools. "Grandpappy" abandons his houseboat, spending his last days in the Marlin family home. Noah's father finds a job in a Baltimore shipyard during the World War I shipbuilding boom and, at last, brings the family to the city to join him. And when Noah himself goes off to prep school, he knows that he and his father have left their old lives for good. They would never follow the water again. They are done crabbin'.

    

    Again related in clear, restrained, understated prose, this is a more mainstream story of a marriage gone bad and a woman's attempt to find a meaningful existence. Helene, orphaned by the Holocaust and conditioned to be stoic, meets Paul in postwar Prague and agrees to marry him despite his philandering. His overt affairs continue throughout a 30-year marriage marked by Helene's passive subjugation to his icy ego and hot temper. Details of their life in war-devastated Eastern Europe and in 1950s America endow the text with evocative power. While Paul builds an academic career at Harvard, Helene lives quietly as a faculty wife, teacher and writer. Paul's decision to leave Helene and their two daughters again tests her skills as a survivor; her life eventually comes full circle in a strange and satisfying way. In choosing to relate the novel with constant changes in points of view, time and setting, Demetz robs her narrative of some coherence. But such is the innate interest of the events she describes that readers will be caught up in an affecting story.

    Smoldering insurgencies in Korea and the Philippines backlight USS Pluto's course between violence, betrayal, and hope. Blending the historical authenticity of Patrick O'Brian with the crackling dialogue of Raymond Chandler, Crossland establishes himself as a unique voice in nautical fiction. ..".for lovers of military adventures and good old-fashioned detective stores...Jade Rooster is a feast." -Chris Knopf, Connecticut Muse, author of Last Refuge and Two Time