I was better than Lexington and its small-minded residents. No one bothered to look beyond the mask I wore to protect my heart. Then or now.Sometimes life doesn’t turn out the way we plan. Having kids was the best thing that I ever did. Returning to the one place I’m least welcome might be the most humiliating. The one thing about this town is a reputation follows you. So despite life humbling me, this town won’t forgive easily, and my past bad deeds still haunt me. ConnorRunning from one war to another in the military, I spent years trying to find what was meant for me, to figure out where I belonged. It wasn’t in the city where I grew up or overseas. My soul needed settling and Lexington seemed like a good place to be alone.Then I met her. She owned my attention from the moment I saw her, my heart right after. Through the grapevine, I learned Felicity had a past worth gossiping about. So do I. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to her. I moved here for a fresh start, a second chance to live a peaceful life, but she has me reevaluating that plan. Maybe it’s not peace I need but love that I’ve been missing all along.

    Remarkably few who study it contemplate what came after the armies marched away. Who would care for the tens of thousands of wounded? What happened to the thousands of dead men, horses, and tons of detritus scattered in every direction? How did the civilians cope with their radically changed lives? Gregory Coco's A Strange and Blighted Land. Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle offers a comprehensive account of these and other issues.The late Coco was a park ranger at Gettysburg deeply interested in the battle and what was left in its wake. The Vietnam veteran who wrote well and often about the battle waxes eloquently about the carnage of war, its terrors and pain, its irreplaceable cost in human life and treasure, and the toll it took on the families who lost sons and husbands there.Arranged in a series of topical chapters, A Strange and Blighted Land begins with a tour of the battlefield, mostly through eyewitness accounts, of the death and destruction littering the sprawling landscape. Once the size and scope is exposed to readers, Coco moves on to discuss the dead of Gettysburg, North and South, how their remains were handled, and how and why the Gettysburg National Cemetery was established. The treatment of the wounded, Union and Confederate, was organized chaos. Every house and barn became of hospital or medical station, and the medical and surgical practices of the day were little short of compassionate torture. The author also discusses at length how prisoners were handled and the fate of the thousands of stragglers and deserters left behind once the armies left before concluding with the preservation efforts that culminated in the establishment of the Gettysburg National Military Park in 1895.Coco's prose is gripping, personal, and brutally honest. There is no mistaking where he comes down on the issue: There was nothing pretty or glorious or romantic about a battle--especially once the fighting ended.

    Callum, a seasoned horse thief at fifteen years old, came to America from his native Ireland as an orphan. Ava, her father and brother lost to the war, hides in her crumbling home until Callum determines to rescue her from the bands of hungry soldiers pillaging the land, leaving destruction in their wake. Ava and Callum have only each other in the world and their remarkable horse, Reiver, who carries them through the destruction that is the South. Pursued relentlessly by a murderous slave hunter, tracking dogs, and ruthless ex-partisan rangers, the couple race through a beautiful but ruined land, surviving on food they glean from abandoned farms and the occasional kindness of strangers. In the end, as they intersect with the scorching destruction of Sherman's March, the couple seek a safe haven where they can make a home and begin to rebuild their lives. Dramatic and thrillingly written with an uncanny eye for glimpses of beauty in a ravaged landscape, Fallen Land is a love story at its core, and an unusually assured first novel by award-winning young author Taylor Brown.

    Her grandfather died in a suspicious accident, she nearly lost the ranch to foreclosure, and now mysterious mutilations are killing her cattle. She suspects her supremacist neighbor is behind the crimes, but can’t prove it. When Ghost arrives on her land, offering to get justice, she’s hard-pressed to refuse his help. He’s sexy as sin and a former Army Ranger, his talents as a sniper unequaled. The way he looks at her unmatched. Ghost can’t help himself. He’s never met a more determined woman, her courage and intelligence captivating him. As a Blackfoot, he’s always called Montana home. With Nic here, he’s not going anywhere. Good thing as the attacks escalate. Facing insurmountable odds to save her land, Nic and Ghost form a formidable defense, while also surrendering to passion neither can resist.

    From Simon & Schuster, The Cause of the Civil War is historian Kenneth Stampp's exploration of America's great civil conflict.Was the Civil War inevitable? What really caused it? Drawing on original sources--from Jefferson Davis to Frederick Douglass--and interpretive essays by today's most influential historians, this collection of essays gives a vivid sense of the political, economic, and cultural currents that swept the nation to war.