Travelling to the American West five times during the 1830s, Catlin was the first white man to depict Plains Indians in their native territory. The author spent eight years traveling among the Indians of the Northwest and the prairies, noting their customs and recording his observations with pen and brush. Catlin published his observation in a multi-volume set of books on the Indian tribes he witnessed. In "My Life Among the Indians" the parts of Catlin's volumes on the North American Indians which will be of most interest to the public have been condensed and brought together in chronological order. It is a splendid book to read and to own, being made up from two large volumes of letters written by George Catlin, the well-known painter of Indian subjects. There are sixteen illustrations from the artist's original drawings. Mr. Catlin traveled extensively in the Indian country, making a fine collection of Indian specimens which he afterwards exhibited in this country and in foreign lands. Many of these specimens, together with his paintings, which were so true to life among the Indians, are still preserved in Washington. It was Catlin who, in 1832, made the suggestion that the government should set aside a great National Park in the Yellowstone region. "Mr. Catlin's scheme, as it then took shape in his mind, and was carried out without deviation, was the formation of an Indian gallery, for which he would use his skill as a painter in securing portraits among the different tribes he would personally visit; in reproducing pictorially their customs, hunt games, and manner of living; in collecting their robes, headdresses, pipes, weapons, musical instruments, and articles of daily life; and in studying their social life, government, and religious views, that he might arrive at their own view of their relation to the world in which they lived. This world he also wished to investigate geographically and topographically. In brief, he wished to see the Indian in his native state, and, if possible, to discover his past. His future he knew. The Indian would disappear before advancing civilization. "Mr. Catlin's personal equipment for his task was a lithe, alert frame, about five feet eight inches tall, made sturdy and enduring by the outdoor life of his boyhood, a knowledge of woodcraft, a trained eye with the rifle, fine horsemanship, simple habits, a mechanical, even an inventive mind, and great steadfastness of purpose." CONTENTS Sketch Of Catlin's Life I. The Missouri River In The Thirties II. A Studio Among The Guns III. Indian Aristocrats: The Crows And Blackfeet IV. Painting An Indian Dandy V. Canoeing With Bogard And Batiste VI. Mandans: The People Of The Pheasants VII. Social Life Among The Mandans VIII. The Artist Becomes A Medicine-man IX. A Mandan Feast X. The Mandan Women XI. Mandan Dances And Games XII. O-kee-pa: A Religious Ceremony XIII. Dances Of The O-kee-pa XIV. The Making Of Braves XV. Mandan Legend Of The Deluge XVI. Corn Dance Of The Minatarees XVII. The Attack On The Canoe XVIII. The Death Of Little Bear: A Sioux Tragedy XIX. The Dances And Music Of The Sioux XX. A Dog Feast XXI. The Buffalo Chase XXII. A Prairie Fire XXIII. Songs And Dances Of The Iowas XXIV. Painting Black Hawk And His Warriors XXV. With The Army At Fort Gibson XXVI. Lassoing Wild Horses XXVII. Visiting The Camanches XXVIII. The Stolen Boy XXIX.

    . . Cambridge on the morning of a day in April, the year of Our Lord 1569.And Christopher Radcliff, Doctor of Civil Laws at Pembroke Hall and recruiter of clever young men to the service of the Earl of Leicester, is amongst a crowd of excited townsfolk and university scholars gathered on a field to watch a game of foot ball. It is to be played between the apprentices of the town and pupils of the colleges and it is hoped it will reconcile differences between town and gown. Bets are placed, wagers made. On the field long-standing animosities surface and violence breaks out but not before the college team is victorious, thanks to the skill of a Pembroke Hall man, John Groom.Later that day, Radcliff is summoned to the senior tutor’s rooms. It transpires that John Groom has been locked up on a serious charge of assault – he’d nearly caused a cobbler’s apprentice to drown. If found guilty, Groom would be expelled from college and face imprisonment. But Christopher smells a rat. He believes the charge to be the fabrication of someone with a serious grudge against the young man, and yet it does seem as if Groom is hiding something. Enlisting the help of his friend Edward Allington and his wife Katherine, Dr Radcliff knows the truth lies somewhere within the infamous den that is Slegge’s gaming house…

    In Heliopolis secrets abound and passions ignite as chaos rises.From the  New York Times  bestselling author of the Tiger’s Curse series and Reawakened comes a novella full of celestial marvel, passion, betrayal, and evil that will grow to reign over humanity forever.Before Lily and Amon met, before the cosmos was in chaos and needed three brave brothers to fight off evil, there were four siblings who helped rule the earth.   Each sibling had a special gift. Osiris, the god of agriculture, helped mortals to grow and thrive in their natural environment. Isis, the goddess of creation, fostered health and wellness. Nephthys, the seer, was able to keep the balance between all living beings and the universe. But Seth, the youngest sibling, was left without any special powers. The Waters of Chaos, which granted each god’s talent, were running dry, and Seth was paying the price.   As time passed, however, Seth’s determination and willfulness resulted in a very special gift, one that should have granted him the ability to enact wondrous change. But Seth’s competitive childhood gave him a heart so cold and vacant that instead, his gift brought about great evil.   Seth was now the god of unmaking, the creator of disorder and destruction. And he was ready to seek his revenge, dominating all who got in his way.

    The precious few days she spends with her new husband are quickly forgotten once she starts work as a balloon operator, trained for the heavy work in order to release more men to fight. There she makes friends with shy Emily Bevan, who has left her parents' hill farm in Wales for the first time; down-to-earth Biddy Bachelor, fresh from the horrors of the Liverpool bombing, and spirited Jo Stewart, the rebel among them, whose disregard for authority looks set to land them all in trouble. The girls stay friends through good times and bad, through romantic encounters and, ultimately, tragedy.

    Bound together by a lone ancestor, the lives of the Native Americans from the core of these stories - tales full of cures, poison, family healing rituals, and a kind of humor that allows the inhabitants of Grand Avenue to see their own foibles with a saving grace. A teenage girl falls in love with a crippled horse marked for slaughter . . . an aging healer summons his strength for one final song . . . a father seeks a bond with his illegitimate son . . . a mother searches for the power to care for her cancer-stricken daughter's spirit. Here is a tapestry of lives rendered with the color, wisdom, and quest for meaning of the traditional tale-telling in which they are rooted. Vibrant with the emotions and realities of a changing world, these stories are all equally stunning and from the heart.

    S. Geological Survey," according to USA Today. His "greatest gift," says the Washington Post, is "his talent for creating lively, living characters." One of his most vivid and memorable characters is Marie Blythe.At the dawn of the twentieth century, a young girl with a felicitous name immigrates to Vermont from French Canada. She grows up confronting the grim realities of life with an indomitable spirit--nursing victims of a tuberculosis epidemic, enduring a miscarriage alone in the wilderness, and coping with the uncertainties of love. In Marie Blythe, Mosher has created a strong-minded, passionate, and truly memorable heroine.

    It is said that even the Czarina Anastasia Romanova had received one in her trousseau. The workers come from the three neighboring villages on the border of Romania and Ukraine. Nourished, dressed and educated, they are the envy of all at a time when a famine programmed by Stalin sweeps the countryside and cannibalism rages from city to town to farm. But what is the secret of this factory and why does the Grazyn family protect its employees so scrupulously?The Bone Mother revives the great figures of Slavic mythology on the eve of the Second World War, from rusalka and Baba Yaga--The Bone Mother herself--to the golem. The existence of mortals is intimately linked to that of witches and vampires, in a universe where strigois rub shoulders with mermaids, ghosts and seers...and all are in peril from the Nichni Politsiyi, the Night Police, which wish to eradicate them.

    He's sixteen years old and has had the most fleeting of relationships with the man. The rare moments they've shared haunt and trouble Frank, but he answers the call, a son's duty to a father. He finds Eldon decimated after years of drinking, dying of liver failure in a small town flophouse. Eldon asks his son to take him into the mountains, so he may be buried in the traditional Ojibway manner.     What ensues is a journey through the rugged and beautiful backcountry, and a journey into the past, as the two men push forward to Eldon's end. From a poverty-stricken childhood, to the Korean War, and later the derelict houses of mill towns, Eldon relates both the desolate moments of his life and a time of redemption and love and in doing so offers Frank a history he has never known, the father he has never had, and a connection to himself he never expected.    A novel about love, friendship, courage, and the idea that the land has within it powers of healing, Medicine Walk reveals the ultimate goodness of its characters and offers a deeply moving and redemptive conclusion. Wagamese's writing soars and his insight and compassion are matched by his gift of communicating these to the reader.

    In reality, mythology is more screwed up than a schizophrenic shaman doing hits of unidentified. Wait, it all makes sense now. In Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes, Cory O’Brien, creator of Myths RETOLD!, sets the stories straight. These are rude, crude, totally sacred texts told the way they were meant to be told: loudly, and with lots of four-letter words. Skeptical? Here are just a few gems to consider: � Zeus once stuffed an unborn fetus inside his thigh to save its life after he exploded its mother by being too good in bed. � The entire Egyptian universe was saved because Sekhmet just got too hammered to keep murdering everyone. � The Hindu universe is run by a married couple who only stop murdering in order to throw sweet dance parties…on the corpses of their enemies. � The Norse goddess Freyja once consented to a four-dwarf gangbang in exchange for one shiny necklace. And there’s more dysfunctional goodness where that came from.

    Other great kings and paladins are lost in the dim shadows oflong-past centuries, but Arthur still reigns in Camelot and his knightsstill ride forth to seek the Grail. "No little thing shall be The gentle music of the bygone years, Long past to us with all their hopes and fears."So wrote the poet William Morris in _The Earthly Paradise_. And surelyit is no small debt of gratitude we owe the troubadours and chroniclersand poets who through many centuries have sung of Arthur and hischampions, each adding to the song the gifts of his own imagination, sobuilding from simple folk-tales one of the most magnificent and movingstories in all literature.This debt perhaps we owe in greatest measure to three men; to Chrétiende Troies, a Frenchman, who in the twelfth century put many of the oldArthurian legends into verse; to Sir Thomas Malory, who first wrote outmost of the stories in English prose, and whose book, the _MorteDarthur_, was printed by William Caxton, the first English printer, in1485; and to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who in his series of poems entitledthe _Idylls of the King_ retold the legends in new and beautiful guisein the nineteenth century.The history of Arthur is so shrouded in the mists of early England thatit is difficult to tell exactly who and what he was. There probably wasan actual Arthur, who lived in the island of Britain in the sixthcentury, but probably he was not a king nor even a prince. It seems mostlikely that he was a chieftain who led his countrymen to victory againstthe invading English about the year 500. So proud were his countrymen ofhis victories that they began to invent imaginary stories of his prowessto add to the fame of their hero, just as among all peoples legends soonspring up about the name of a great leader. As each man told the featsof Arthur he contributed those details that appealed most to his ownfancy and each was apt to think of the hero as a man of his own time,dressing and speaking and living as his own kings and princes did, withthe result that when we come to the twelfth century we find Geoffrey ofMonmouth, in his _History of the Kings of Britain_, describing Arthurno longer as a half-barbarous Briton, wearing rude armor, his arms andlegs bare, but instead as a most Christian king, the flower of mediævalchivalry, decked out in all the gorgeous trappings of a knight of theCrusades.As the story of Arthur grew it attracted to itself popular legends ofall kinds. Its roots were in Britain and the chief threads in its fabricremained British-Celtic. The next most important threads were those thatwere added by the Celtic chroniclers of Ireland. Then stories that werenot Celtic at all were woven into the legend, some from Germanicsources, which the Saxons or the descendants of the Franks may havecontributed, and others that came from the Orient, which may have beenbrought back from the East by men returning from the Crusades. And if itwas the Celts who gave us the most of the material for the stories ofArthur it was the French poets who first wrote out the stories and gavethem enduring form.It was the Frenchman, Chrétien de Troies, who lived at the courts ofChampagne and of Flanders, who put the old legends into verse for thepleasure of the noble lords and ladies that were his patrons. Hecomposed six Arthurian poems. The first, which was written about 1160 orearlier, related the story of Tristram. The next was called _Érec etÉnide_, and told some of the adventures that were later used by Tennysonin his _Geraint and Enid_. The third was _Cligès_, a poem that haslittle to do with the stories of Arthur and his knights as we havethem. Next came the _Conte de la Charrette_, or _Le Chevalier de laCharrette_, which set forth the love of Lancelot and Guinevere. Thenfollowed _Yvain_, or _Le Chevalier au Lion_, and finally came_Perceval_, or _Le Conte du Graal_, which gives the first account of theHoly Grail.

    They are gold miners and counterfeiters, attorneys and slaves. They cross other borders too: those of race, law, sex, and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress.With rich historical detail, the celebrated author of Room takes us from puritan Massachusetts to revolutionary New Jersey, antebellum Louisiana to the Toronto highway, lighting up four centuries of wanderings that have profound echoes in the present. Astray offers us a surprising and moving history for restless times."The Hunt" was short-listed for the 2012 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.

    M. Montgomery, (1874-1942) was a Canadian author, best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables (1908). In 1893, following the completion of her grade school education in Cavendish, she attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown. Completing a two year program in one year, she obtained her teaching certificate. In 1895 and 1896 she studied literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After working as a teacher in various island schools, in 1898 Montgomery moved back to Cavendish. For a short time in 1901 and 1902 she worked in Halifax for the newspapers Chronicle and Echo. She returned to live with and care for her grandmother in 1902. Montgomery was inspired to write her first books during this time on Prince Edward Island. Her works include: The Story Girl (1911), Chronicles of Avonlea (1912), The Golden Road (1913), Anne of the Island (1915), Anne's House of Dreams (1917), Rainbow Valley (1919), Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920) and Rilla of Ingleside (1921).

    Ambrose, a dual biography of two great nineteenth century warriors, General Custer and Crazy Horse, culminating in the Battle of Little Bighorn.

    But her innocent hopes were shattered when Silver Feather's parents were ruthlessly murdered and he was forced to flee Dettro Manor to save his own life, taking with him the young girl's heart....More than ten years have passed since that fateful day, and Diana is now a woman living alone in a harsh world. Impoverished and desperate, she disguises herself as a man so she can work as a stagecoach driver. Diana doesn't think she can get much lower—until she receives the orders to go back to her childhood home and pick up several trunks filled with unknown cargo. And her luck keeps getting worse. She's ambushed on the road by an Indian and taken captive.An Indian who looks strangely familar... Silver Feather.

    She wanted this old Victorian for herself. The rumors the house was haunted didn’t bother Jennifer, who is a skeptic by nature. But her skepticism turns to intrigue when she finds a letter dated 1909 in the attic tucked into the folds of a wedding dress. The letter mentions a murder, but no name of the victim and is signed with only initials. Jennifer's challenge is to track down the identity of the victim, as well as the killer. However, her research brings forth two spirits, one of which is evil.