Book picks similar to
Vale Valhalla by Joy Chambers
historical-fiction
historical-novel
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Return of the Outlaw
C.M. Curtis - 2009
He heard a small sound and spun around. Directly in front of him loomed a dark figure and for the tiniest instant he looked into a pair of eyes--and in those eyes he saw hell. Then, the razor-sharp steel of Lopez' knife sent him there." They killed his friends, stole his ranch, and took from him the woman he loves. They branded him an outlaw, accusing him of the very crimes they committed. But they're about to learn that taking everything away from him has turned this Civil War veteran into the most dangerous kind of man there is: The kind that has nothing left to lose. Jeff Havens has a fast gun and a long memory--and he's back. RETURN OF THE OUTLAW has sold thousands of copies worldwide, making it a #1 Bestseller, and readers have compared Curtis to the great western authors of old like Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, Ernest Haycox, and Luke Short.
Winter Rage
John Legg - 2016
Leander Melton thought could lead his pack of greenhorn would-be trappers into the mountains. And deep in Blackfoot territory, Squire must teach the youths to face the ways of survival, the rage of the Blackfeet, the cunning of a traitor — and what it means to be a mountain man.
An Unlamented Death
William Savage - 2015
Adam Bascom trips over a body in Gressington churchyard, he never imagines it will change the whole direction of his life. As a recently-qualified physician trying to establish a practice in a small market town in north Norfolk, Adam should be devoting all his energy to his business. But it soon becomes clear that the authorities are intent on making sure the death is accepted as an accident and refuse any deeper investigation. Adam’s curiosity and sense of justice cannot accept this. He knows there are many unanswered questions about the death, but he has no standing that would allow him to become involved formally. Instead, he uses friends, old and new, unexpected contacts and even his own mother to help him get to the truth. Set against the turbulence of late-Georgian England, a country on the brink of war with Revolutionary France, the book reveals a land where spies keep constant watch on everyone the government deems ‘undesirable’, religion is polarised between the established church and a mass of dissenting sects, and the perennial ‘Irish question’ has at last spilled over into outright terrorism. Bad weather, poor harvests and enclosure have driven many people in the countryside into abject poverty. Only the smugglers along the coast offer regular and highly-paid ‘work’ helping to unload contraband. Yet here too, the Revenue’s Riding Officers, backed up by troops of dragoons, are waging an increasingly successful campaign to stamp out the major gangs. Adam must thread his way through all of this, encountering many new demands along the way, from a family torn apart by religious bigotry, and a teenage thief turned informer, to a secret section of The Alien Office, a government department dedicated to keeping a close eye on anyone likely to prove a threat to the realm. As he becomes more and more essential to the government’s efforts to combat internal dissension and prepare for war, Adam finds he must draw on all his medical and personal skills to bring the case to a successful conclusion.
The Bermuda Privateer
William Westbrook - 2017
Fast paced and covering an area new to me; I was enthralled by the author's encyclopedic knowledge of the Caribbean. There are battles and conspiracies galore, with engaging characters and thrilling actions." Nicholas Fallon is captain of the schooner Sea Dog, a privateer that is fast, beautiful and deadly. Unbound by Royal Navy tradition, Fallon enjoys total independence in where he goes, how he fights, and whom he takes as crew. A woman—Beauty McFarland—is his second-in-command. It's 1796, and Sea Dog's owner, Ezra Somers, employs Fallon to protect his Caribbean salt trade from French privateers and pirates. Wicked Jak Clayton is especially ruthless. When the two meet just off the Bahamas, even Fallon's cunning can't overcome their mismatch in firepower and desertion by a cowardly ally. Later, in Bermuda, Fallon is enlisted by the Royal Navy to intercept a Spanish flotilla carrying gold and silver to France. But a massive hurricane halts the British attack on the Spanish transports, driving several ships, including Fallon's, onto the Florida shore. Held by Spanish soldiers, Fallon and the surviving crew escape by turning enemies into friends. Once free, only one mission remains. Wicked Jak Clayton must die! The Bermuda Privateer is an action-filled sea story with layered storylines and a modern storyteller's voice.
The Lady in the Veil
Leah Fleming - 2015
It must have been sitting on the garage shelf for years among all the other family rejects.'When a woman finds a lost photo album in a garage clearout, she is drawn to the images of her ancestors. But one image in particular stands out: a baby sitting in the lap of its mother, both draped from head to toe in a cotton lace curtain or something, completely enveloped and unrecognizable. Who are they and what has happened to them?In a story that moves between 2012 and 1850, the shocking secrets of one family are gradually revealed …
The Coffin Maker
Christine Sterling - 2018
Living under the overprotective and overbearing nature of her mother, Charlotte Daniels, made it easy to keep her distance from the townsfolk of Silverpines apart from a few close acquaintances. However, when Tess finds a man sleeping in her deceased father’s studio, it sets in motion a series of events that she is not prepared for. The town needs assistance burying the bodies from the aftermath of the double-earthquakes and the new stranger challenges Tess to assist her community. As she steps in to help, she realizes that there are many secrets her mother has been keeping from her, including the mystery of how her father died. Dawson Elliot was in Silverpines for one reason only: to find the man who murdered his wife and unborn child. Helping a small community get back on its feet wasn’t in his plans. But the weather had other ideas, so he decides to put some long-retired carpentry skills to use, building coffins to bury the dead. Working side by side with Tess will he find healing and love again? As Tess uncovers the secrets of her past, what will happen when she finds out the biggest secret of all? What is the secret Dawson is hiding? With every coffin he builds can he heal his heart and possibly open it to love again?
Murder in Caney Fork
Wally Avett - 2014
Taught to shoot in the rough logging camps of the North Carolina swamps, Wes Ross remembers his lessons well. Dodging hostile gunfire with dozens of other young Marines, he storms a remote Pacific island as one of Carlson's Raiders in the first commando-style attack of World War II. He blasts several Japanese snipers from their palm-tree hideouts with buckshot before an enemy bullet sends him home. The Carolina homefront includes a new girlfriend and a new occupation, learning to be a rural lawyer in his uncle's law office, including courtroom intrigue and what goes on behind the scenes. Wes, like his uncles, is a good man, the kind who takes up for the poor and downtrodden, looking out for those who are easy prey for bullies. Frog Cutshaw is the storekeeper in the Caney Fork backwoods, a swaggering ex-moonshiner who is deadly with his ever-present .45 auto pistol. Frog's daylight rape of a married woman and the brutal killing of her husband bring on Bible Belt vigilante justice, an eye for an eye, a life for a life. Wally Avett is a retired newspaperman. He lives in North Carolina.
The Casebook of Inspector Blackstone
Sally Spencer - 2017
Yet to Inspector Sam Blackstone, the case is as puzzling as any he has ever come across. As his investigation proceeds, Blackstone finds himself entering the world of the aristocracy and tramping the dangerous streets of London's Little Russia, where English law and order are not welcome. So begins the illustrious career of the talented inspector, who earns the equal ire and respect of his superiors for his controversial tactics. Absorbing in their detailed depictions of the period, gripping in their ingenious plots, this trilogy of historical whodunnits is the perfect box set for any mystery-lover. Praise for Sally Spencer 'Spencer's finest hour: a tightly plotted puzzler with surprises at every turn' – Kirkus Reviews 'Spencer is an accomplished craftsman who serves up a good puzzle and deftly solves it with intelligence and insight' – Publishers Weekly Sally Spencer worked as a teacher both in England and Iran - where she witnessed the fall of the Shah. She now writes full time.
The Cape Raider
Justin Fox - 2021
But he must unite them into a powerful fighting unit if he has any chance of defeating the dangerous enemy.Can Jack overcome his demons and lead his men to victory?Or will his first battle off the South African coast be his last…?
The Angel of Auschwitz: [Extended Version]
S.A. Falconi - 2014
I vow to you and to the leaders that you set for me, absolute allegiance until death. So help me God!”The SS Oath of Loyalty – words that became the very death sentence for millions of Jews and Germans alike. Six decades later, we still ask ourselves why and how did it happen? "The Angel of Auschwitz", a tragic epic of historical fiction, explores these inquiries through the eyes of an unlikely antagonist-turned-protagonist – the Nazi soldier."The Angel of Auschwitz" chronicles the life of Wolfgang Bremmer, an adolescent boy from the hills of Hamburg during the Nazi occupation of Germany. As a Hitler Youth, Wolfgang is captivated by the prowess of the Nazis and thrust into the ideologies of Adolf Hitler. With an adoration for the new Fűhrer and the Third Reich, Wolfgang enlists as a young man in the SS-Death’s Head Division, the gatekeepers of the regime’s most lethal concentration camp, Dachau. It is here he is introduced to Theodor Eicke’s “School of Violence” and becomes one of the most ruthless guards the SS has ever seen. After joining Hitler’s Mobile Killing Units, he participates in the invasion of Poland and the evacuation and extermination of its Jewish inhabitants. Wolfgang is the ideal Nazi warrior: vicious, ruthless, and entirely intolerant.But evil erodes even the hardest of hearts and Wolfgang grows weary in the midst of all the death and destruction. His conscience begins to return and with that a gnawing guilt for what he and his fellow Germans have done and are about to do. But with the fear of punishment for treason, Wolfgang is trapped in the cyclone of violence. That is, until he is promoted as a guard at the Reich’s most sophisticated concentration camp, Auschwitz. In the belly of such a beast as Auschwitz, Wolfgang discovers a secret that will not only save his own life and salvation, but the lives of so many prisoners as well.
Lady Estrid: A Novel of Eleventh Century Denmark
M.J. Porter - 2020
Queen.United by blood and marriage. Divided by seas. Torn apart by ambition. Lady Estrid Sweinsdottir has returned from Kiev, her first husband dead after only a few months of marriage. Her future will be decided by her father, King Swein of Denmark, or will it? A member of the ruling House of Gorm, Estrid might not be eligible to rule, as her older two brothers, but her worth is in more than her ability to marry and provide heirs for a husband, for her loyalty is beyond question. With a family as divided and powerful as hers, stretching from England to Norway to the land of the Svear, she must do all she can to ensure Denmark remains under the control of her father’s descendants, no matter the raging seas and boiling ambition that threatens to imperil all.
One Summer at Deer's Leap
Elizabeth Elgin - 1999
Cassie Johns is a young, lovely writer on the threshold of success after a less-than-silver-spooned girlhood. Driving through the glorious countryside to a fancy-dress party in the Vale of Boland, she gives a lift to a mysteriously attractive young man wearing the uniform of an RAF pilot: ready for the party Cassie assumes. But in the evening there is no sign of the airman.Cassie – hitherto rational, sceptical, a woman of her times – becomes obsessed by Jack Hunter, a pilot whose plane crashed in 1944, but whose long-ago love for a girl at Deer’s Leap makes him unable to rest in peace. Cassie’s love for the dead hero takes her into an unknown war-torn past, where old passion burns and becomes entwined with new.
Fifth Column
Christopher Remy - 2011
A divided America is debating whether or not to go to war. The FBI and police, scrambling to thwart any attacks, round up the plotters. Experts declare that our intelligence capabilities are insufficient and that a new agency must be created. The year is 1941. Fifth Column is the story of Johanna Falck, a German immigrant who joins the new American central intelligence service. As Americans focus on the war in Europe and whether the United States should intervene, the FBI is rounding up scores of German spies. The German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi group of Americans suspected of being saboteurs and subversives, is at the center of the FBI's investigations. Johanna is recruited to infiltrate the Bund and discover what they and the Nazis have planned. Soon she is caught up in a far-reaching conspiracy, one that stretches from the top of the Nazi state to the streets of New York. What she finds shatters her most basic assumption about the Third Reich.
Carols at Woolworths
Elaine Everest - 2017
After weeks of careful planning, the girls are confident that it will be an evening for everyone to forget about the troubles of the war outside.But the war is never far away and when an air raid looms, the girls must usher their guests to safety and find a way to take their Christmas cheer underground . . .Will it be a merry Christmas after all for the girls of Woolworths?