Book picks similar to
The Obstacle Course by J.F. Freedman


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Wild Times


Brian Garfield - 1978
    The nation knows him as a sharpshooter, buffalo hunter, moving pictures pioneer, and one-time proprietor of the greatest Wild West show the nation has ever seen. Some of the stories are true, some exaggerated, and some rank among the wildest of tall tales. But for a man who has lived like Colonel Cardiff, the facts trump the myth. In the spring of 1868, Denver is the richest, wildest city west of the Mississippi. When an overweight Easterner named Dr. Bogardus rolls into town to announce a shooting contest with a $1,000 prize, ears prick up. Young Hugh wins the shoot with an ancient muzzle-loading rifle, knocking glass balls out of the air and missing only four out of one hundred targets. He is famous at nineteen, and the Colonel’s wild life is just getting started.

The Half You Don't Know


Peter Cameron - 1997
    Focusing on characters both young and old, gay and straight, single and married, he discovers the dramas that are obscured by life's daily struggles. These beautifully crafted stories depict the surface of the world we all know, but go on to reveal the mysteries lurking beneath life's deceptively placid surface - the half we don't know.

Betrayed


Brendan DuBois - 2003
    He considered his brother dead, but thirty years later a knock on the door heralded the arrival of his long-lost brother and the beginning of a terrifying journey of revenge.

In the Company of Eagles


Ernest K. Gann - 1966
    Setting: The Western Front, 1916-1917.A young French aviator swears vengeance on the German ace who killed his best friend and kills without mercy.

The Richard Hannay Collection: The Thirty Nine Steps, Greenmantle and Mr Standfast


John Buchan - 1919
    Buchan’s resourceful, German-speaking spy is partly based on Edmund Ironside, from Edinburgh, an espionage operative during the Second Boer War. The Richard Hannay Collection – The 39 Steps, Greenmantle and Mr Standfast presents the first and best three Richard Hannay adventures: The Thirty Nine StepsHannay arrives in London on the eve of World War I, where he meets an American agent seeking help in stopping a political assassination. Before long, Hannay finds himself in possession of a little black book that holds the key to the conspiracy — and on the run from both the police and members of a mysterious organization that will stop at nothing to keep their secrets hidden.Greenmantle Hannay is called in to investigate rumors of an uprising in the Muslim world, and undertakes a perilous journey through enemy territory to meet his friend Sandy in Constantinople. Once there, he and his friends must thwart the Germans' plans to use religion to help them win the war, climaxing at the battle of Erzurum.Mr StandfastRecalled from duty on the Western Front by spymaster Sir Walter Bullivant, Hannay goes undercover as a pacifist, working to outwit a dangerous German spy and his agents. Guided by his contact—and love interest—Mary Lamington, Hannay tracks his enemy from London to Glasgow to the Scottish Highlands, eventually confronting him in a dramatic climax above the battlefields of Europe. The title refers to a character in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, to which there are many other references in the novel; Hannay uses a copy of Pilgrim's Progress to decipher coded messages from his contacts, and letters from his friend Peter Pienaar.This digital edition of The Richard Hannay Collection – The 39 Steps, Greenmantle and Mr Standfast includes an image gallery.

Memoirs of a Dance-Hall Romeo


Jack Higgins - 1989
    He longed to sell his first novel, leave his teaching post at a dangerous slum school--and explore the mysteries of women. A lusty novel of a man in love with life's infinite possibilities.

The Fall Line


Mark T. Sullivan - 1994
    On the run from both the cartel and the FBI, Jack finds temporary refuge in the quiet of Utah’s mountains. With a new identity and surgically-altered face, he may have narrowly escaped his old life. But can he run from his own destructive nature? Bored in the anonymous safety of his new reality, Jack quickly finds himself drawn to Inez Didier, a mysterious French director documenting the high-stakes lives of the world’s most daring skiers. As Inez pulls Jack further into her work, he struggles to keep his thrill-addicted temperament in check. But when the darkest secrets of his thorny past begin to surface, Jack’s life may once again wind up in freefall… “Not many investigative reporters have the sensitivity and poetry that are exhibited in this exciting story of dare-devil skiing.”—The New York Times Book Review

Iron Sniper (Caje Cole Book 2)


David Healey - 2018
    When German sniper Dieter Rohde’s older brother is unjustly shot for desertion by the SS, he will stop at nothing to win the Iron Cross medal and redeem his family’s name by targeting as many Allied troops as possible. Rohde’s deadly efforts bring him into direct confrontation with American sniper Caje Cole. Rohde may be driven by ambition, but he hasn’t encountered an adversary like Cole, the so-called hillbilly sniper who is as hard as the mountains he calls home and as wily as a backwoods fox. As the final pitched battle for France takes place around them at the Falaise Pocket, these two snipers declare war on each other.

The Outsider


Howard Fast - 1984
    Rabbi to the fourteen Jewish families in his small community, Hartman, along with his town, spends the years after the war facing the major political and social upheaval of the time. From McCarthyism and nuclear spies, to civil rights and Vietnam, Hartman, along with his best friend, a Congregational minister, helps lead the town through the chaotic changes sweeping the nation. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author's estate.

A Kind of Woman


Helen Burko - 2017
    Barder does not return alone: with him is his new wife, Rachel, a beautiful blonde woman whom he met in Warsaw shortly after the war - a Jewish survivor who lost her entire family and remained alone in the world. Jacob fell in love with her and brought her to the states. Now he will defend her in the biggest battle of her life. A Jewish lawyer’s wife is accused of committing Nazi war crimes One evening, in a Broadway theater, Rachel is attacked by a woman who accuses her of being Matilda Krause - a German SS officer who served at the Nazi concentration camps. Rachel’s arrest and police investigation open the way to a sensational trial that will be written in the pages of history. With no one willing to protect a Nazi officer, Barder decides to defend his wife himself. Why would a Jewish survivor speak for a Nazi in the court of law? Barder is called to make an impossible case in the name of his beloved wife, and that of humanity altogether. The jury, the judge, and the readers will be astounded by what he has to say.

Hardcastle


John Yount - 1980
    For eleven cents—all the money in his pocket—he buys a soda bottle’s worth of moonshine. Farther down the road, he takes two turnips and a handful of string beans from a kitchen garden and beds down for the night in a haystack. It is still dark out when he wakes up to a dog licking his forehead and a man pointing a pistol in his face. Despite the awkward introduction, Music and Regus Bone are soon friends. Bone is a guard at Hardcastle Coal Co., whose owner will do anything to keep his employees from unionizing. For the irresistible wage of three dollars a day, Music—outfitted with an ancient, misfiring revolver and a holster made from a feed sack—hires on as a watchman despite his queasy feelings about the job. His attraction to the young widow of a miner killed by a former guard only deepens his discomfort, and when he and Bone catch a pair of union organizers, they make a decision that will change their lives and Switch County forever. Inspired by real events, Hardcastle is a stirring tribute to the power of friendship and family in a time and place in which the price of integrity is more than a man on his own can bear.

American Boy


Larry Watson - 2011
    . .So begins Matthew Garth’s story of the fall of 1962, when the shooting of a young woman on Thanksgiving Day sets off a chain of unsettling events in Willow Falls, Minnesota. Matthew first sees Louisa Lindahl in Dr. Dunbar’s home office, and at the time her bullet wound makes nearly as strong an impression as her unclothed body. Fueled over the following weeks by his feverish longing for this mysterious woman—as well as by a deep desire for the comfort and affluence that appears to surround the Dunbars—Matthew finds himself drawn into a series of confrontations he never expected, the results of which will change his life irrevocably and give lie to his version of the American dream.Immersive, heartbreaking, and richly evocative of time and place, this long-awaited new novel marks the return of a great American storyteller.

Action at Beecher Island


Dee Brown - 1967
    This is the bloody saga of Beecher Island.Historian Dee Brown dramatically recounts the nine-day siege between Plains tribes and Major James William Forsyth’s scouts. Based on historical sources, the novel is told from a variety of viewpoints, including that of Lieutenant Frederick Beecher, still wounded from the Civil War and charged with clearing out American Indian settlements to make way for the Kansas Pacific Railroad. Beecher is joined by General Sheridan and Major Forsyth, as well as the scouts—from seasoned frontiersmen to young boys—employed to take part in the perilous mission. On the other side are the famous American Indian players in the battle: Turkey Leg and Roman Nose. With this complex assortment of characters, Brown vividly recreates the 1868 siege, as well as the competing worldviews of life on the prairies. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Dee Brown including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

Molly


Teresa Crane - 1982
    Fleeing her fanatical republican family, Molly O’Dowd arrives nearly penniless in London at the end of the nineteenth century. Plunged into the world of East End gambling houses and brothels, Molly invests what little money she has in a typing course, her only way out. This investment will lead her on the path to establishing herself as a woman of power and means.From the rough-and-tumble world of the London docks to the luxurious hotels and restaurants of the fashionable West End, Molly captures the temper of the times – the unrest of the labouring classes, the courage of the suffragette movement, the ravages of the First World War. Molly wins and loses in the tempestuous world of the capital but her energy and determination never flag and tides change when she meets a man who could match her in business… and in love. This rags-to-riches historical romance is perfect for fans of Lily Graham, Natalie Meg Evans and Fiona McIntosh.

Armageddon: A Novel of Berlin


Leon Uris - 1964
    Captain Sean O'Sullivan distinguishes himself as a courageous soldier in the closing days of World War II, but what comes next tests his deepest reserves of strength and conviction. Sent to oversee the rebuilding of Berlin, O'Sullivan is exposed to the horrific truths of the Holocaust, a shattered and defeated society, and the new threat of Soviet power as the Iron Curtain begins to shadow the city. When Soviet forces blockade Berlin and the airlift begins, O'Sullivan is faced with profound moral dilemmas in an increasingly complicated world. Armageddon is one of the great fictional portrayals of Europe in the earliest days of the Cold War."Magnificent. The great drama of the Berlin airlift . . ." -The Columbus Dispatch"A vast panorama of people and places . . . dramatic moment after dramatic moment in a throbbing tempo." -New York Herald TribuneLeon Uris (1924-2003) was an author of fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays whose works include numerous best-selling novels. His epic Exodus (1958) has been translated into over fifty languages. Uris's work is notable for its focus on dramatic moments in contemporary history, including World War II and its aftermath, the birth of modern Israel, and the Cold War. Through the massive success of his novels and his skill as a storyteller, Uris has had enormous influence on popular understanding of twentieth-century history.