The wealthy plantation owners enjoyed an opulent life during this golden age of prosperity. The Vine family owned one of these vast plantations. Hundreds of acres of lush cotton plants covered their property and was home to over three hundred slaves. When Evan Vine's father dies suddenly he is summoned home from France to manage Vine Manor: a task that he does not relish. It is only when he meets Mary Elizabeth Cates that his life changes forever. She returns his love and accepts his proposal of marriage. As a wedding gift he presents her with a magnificent summer home called Magnolia. Mary Elizabeth begins the legacy of women who inhabit Magnolia. In this novel written in a unique style, you will meet and explore the lives of Mary Elizabeth Vine, her daughter; Hallie Vine Simmons, and granddaughters; Mary and Lydia. You will meet the prostitutes who come to Magnolia to seek refuge and the black slave women who have endured the wrath of their masters. Their compelling story will endear itself to you in the detailed profile of the women. Witness the early years when life is good, only to change at a moment's notice by an outbreak of cholera or a slave uprising. There are the middle years when the civil war tears apart the south leaving tragedy and desolation in its path. Finally. the restoration when everyone attempts to find a new life.a new life at Magnolia.

    Her celebrity has spread to the East Coast and California, traveling down the new-laid railroads and along the telegraph wire. But breathless tales of Calamity Jane bear little resemblance to the truth. As she senses death coming closer, the legendary hellcat longs to set the record straight—to reveal her life story at last, unclouded by legend, every sin and failing laid bare. Only then can she hope to rest in peace. In a Deadwood saloon, she finds a writer willing to hear her out, and recount the truth to a public hungry for more tales of Calamity Jane… So begins Libbie Hawker’s expansive biographical novel, an intimate portrait of one of the best-known yet least-understood women of the American frontier. The international bestselling author of The Ragged Edge of Night takes the reader on a heart-rending journey through a landscape lost to time, as seen through the eyes of one outcast woman. Calamity is a haunting meditation on hardship, unrequited love, and the stark, affecting beauty of the American West. Editorial note: In pursuit of a narrative voice faithful to the central character, this text employs deliberate misuse of grammar and occasional misspellings. These are the author’s intentional stylistic choices and should not be interpreted as a lack of editing. Readers are encouraged to use the “Look Inside” feature before purchasing.

    It brings to vibrant life the true story of Eliza Gilbert, the daughter of an obscure Ensign in the British Army and his cold Irish wife. When she grew up, Eliza changed her name to Lola Montez. She was a dancer, a courtesan, a bigamist, the mistress of a king and the nineteenth-century’s most notorious adventuress. Blazing like a female firecracker across the stages and courts of Europe and beyond, she was, for a while, second only to Queen Victoria in fame.

    Hoping to reunite with her brother, a soldier, she trades her life sentence for exile to the fledgling French colony of Louisiana. The price of her transport, however, is a forced marriage to a fellow convict.New Orleans is nothing like Julianne expects. The settlement is steeped in mud and mosquitoes, and there is no news of her brother, Benjamin. When tragedy strikes, she turns to military officer Marc-Paul Girard for help, but does he know more about her brother than he will admit?With her dreams shattered, Julianne must find her way in this dangerous land, where only grace—and love—can overcome the stigma of the king's mark upon her shoulder.

    He sets out with two horses, a wagonful of belongings, his five children, a 15-year-old orphan wife, and a few land warrants for his future homestead. When Daniel suddenly trades a horse for a young slave, Onesimus, it sets in motion a struggle in his conscience that will taint his life forever, and sets in motion a chain of events that lead to two murders and the family's strange relationship with a runaway slave named Bett.Stripped down and as hard-edged as the realities of pioneer life, Spalding's writing is nothing short of stunning, as it instantly envelops the reader in the world and time of the novel, and follows the lives of unforgettable characters. Inspired by stories of the author's own ancestors, The Purchase is a resonant, powerful and timeless novel.

     It was a time for America and her heroes: men like Michael and Andrew O'Connor, rival brothers fresh out of Annapolis, men who left all they knew and loved to seek glory in a world at war. Mike beneath the ocean aboard the USS Tigerfish. Andrew in the air as a fighter pilot ace. Theirs was a baptism by fire, yet they rose to confront a brutal enemy across the sea — and to chase the explosive dreams that could ultimately destroy them. From Harry Homewood, bestselling author of Final Harbor, Silent Sea, and Torpedo! , comes the epic novel of a family at war. A novel of family, duty, pride — and of two brothers, competitors in both love and war, whose inner struggles provided them with the courage that could mean the difference between life and death. Harry Homewood was a qualified submariner before he was seventeen years old, having lied to the Navy about his age, and serving in a little "S"-boat in the old Asiatic Fleet. After Pearl Harbor he reenlisted and made eleven war patrols in the Southwest Pacific. He later became Chicago Bureau Chief for Newsweek, chief editorial writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, and for eleven years had his own weekly news program syndicated to thirty-two PBS television stations.

     Into The Wilderness depicts the life of those who settled in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. The term "long hunters" refers to "Daniel Boone" type men who hunted for settlements and forts, sometimes leaving for months at a time. Florence ("Flo") Matthews is sixteen, and has her world turned upside down when a mysterious long hunter, Clete Barnes, saves her from a bear attack in the middle of the night outside her parents' cabin. Unable to stop thinking about her soft-spoken savior, Flo eventually tells her parents of her wish to marry Clete, but is warned by her mother that long hunters, with their travelling ways, are never truly able to settle down. Flo and Clete persist and are soon married, but true to form, Clete soon feels that he must go on another hunt if he is to keep sane. While he is gone, Flo and their young son are taken captive by Iroquois, and Flo's life is irrevoably changed. Clete eventually finds his wife and son, but whether she will take him back—and whether the Iroquois man whose son she has borne will let her go—remains to be seen.

    Colonel George Armstrong Custer hires her eighteen-year-old son Allen Winslow as an aide for his 1876 campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne. Traveling west against his will, Allen finds himself in the company of Addie Grace Lord, sixteen, sister of one of Custer’s regimental surgeons. The two fall in love, and it is with foreboding that Addie Grace watches Allen and her brother George ride out with Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. Weeks later in Montana, hundreds of miles to the west, the Seventh brings its quarry to bay beside the river called the Little Bighorn.Beautifully written and filled with unforgettable characters, Little Bighorn brings to life the American West and its heartbreaking history, brilliantly portraying the flawed and tormented Custer.

    It seems very remote to Miranda Martin, who thinks of nothing but the future during the Indian summer. Then Andrew, her officer brother, comes home, bringing eccentric, likeable Harry. As the summer fades, the scene is set for tragedy.

    “Berlin has no place in American music,” legendary composer Jerome Kern wrote; “he is American music.” In a career that spanned an astonishing nine decades, Berlin wrote some fifteen hundred tunes, including “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “God Bless America,” and “White Christmas.” From ragtime to the rock era, Berlin’s work has endured in the very fiber of American national identity. Exploring the interplay of Berlin’s life with the life of New York City, noted biographer James Kaplan offers a visceral narrative of Berlin as self-made man and witty, wily, tough Jewish immigrant. This fast-paced, musically opinionated biography uncovers Berlin’s unique brilliance as a composer of music and lyrics. Masterfully written and psychologically penetrating, Kaplan’s book underscores Berlin’s continued relevance in American popular culture.

    An unidentified body hangs upon a hook at Deptford Dock – horribly tortured and branded with a slaver’s mark.Some days later, Captain Harry Corsham – a war hero embarking upon a promising parliamentary career – is visited by the sister of an old friend. Her brother, passionate abolitionist Tad Archer, had been about to expose a secret that he believed could cause irreparable damage to the British slaving industry. He’d said people were trying to kill him, and now he is missing . . .To discover what happened to Tad, Harry is forced to pick up the threads of his friend's investigation, delving into the heart of the conspiracy Tad had unearthed. His investigation will threaten his political prospects, his family’s happiness, and force a reckoning with his past, risking the revelation of secrets that have the power to destroy him.And that is only if he can survive the mortal dangers awaiting him in Deptford...

    The history-defining clash between Scipio Africanus, Hannibal the Great, and Cato the Elder.

    . . [A] SUPERB NOVEL . . . The historical detail . . . is outstanding."--RendezvousAs the ship Charity sails from England across the Atlantic, two vastly different yet equally courageous women make the perilous journey. Strong-willed, upper class Margaret Brent has invested in Lord Baltimore's Maryland plantation because the new colony is her single chance for a home of her own. Anicah is a teenage guttersnipe who lives by her wits and quick tongue. Kidnapped off the streets of Bristol, she is transported to the New World as an indentured servant. But for both women, the future will bring love and rewards they never imagined. . . .A truly American novel of passion, dreams, and courage, MARYS LAND tells the story of two women who build a new life in a verdant country that is strange and threatening, yet gloriously sweet with promise."Meticulously researched . . . [Robson] has an eye for the details of everyday life and an ear for the rich and earthy language of the period.--Library JournalAn Alternate Selection of the Literary Guild(c)and the Doubleday Book Club(c)

    Exploring the dynamic intersection between history-making and story-making, award-winning author and historian Ray Raphael shows how these fictions—conceived in the narrowly nationalistic politics of the nineteenth century—undermine our democratic ideals.

    When orphaned Daiyu leaves her home in the provinces to take shelter with her cousins in the Capital, she is drawn into a world of opulent splendor, presided over by the ruthless, scheming Xifeng and the prim, repressed Baochai. As she learns the secrets behind their glittering façades, she finds herself entangled in a web of intrigue and hidden passions, reaching from the petty gossip of the servants’ quarters all the way to the Imperial Palace. When a political coup overthrows the emperor and plunges the once-mighty family into grinding poverty, each woman must choose between love and duty, friendship and survival. In this dazzling debut, Pauline A. Chen draws the reader deep into the secret, exquisite world of the women’s quarters of an aristocratic household, where the burnish of wealth and refinement mask a harsher truth: marriageable girls are traded like chattel for the family’s advancement, and to choose to love is to risk everything.