For 292 days, the war's final drama was played out over the fate of this once gracious Southern town, the last bulwark of the Confederacy. The book covers the 11-month siege of Petersburg.

    Ironically, while the great military exploits of General Stonewall Jackson are studied in military schools the world over and his iron will and stern self-discipline have become legendary, little is said about his remarkable marriage. The real Thomas J. Jackson was a humble Christian and loving husband and father. The tender and instructive letters he wrote to his wife Anna are a model of godly leadership and covenantal faithfulness. From their courtship to their final days together, trace the true story of this remarkable couple through the letters of General Jackson to his bride."

    Like William Clarke Quantrill and "Bloody Bill" Anderson, Samuel Hildebrand was a proud Missouri bushwhacker. In this long out of print book, Hildebrand describes raids and executions his band of men carried out. He remained at the end of the war and unreconstructed rebel and fervent racist. Like many of his southern brethren who fought, he never owned slaves but kept a captured black man with him after the war. This self-serving but fascinating account is a valuable addition to the canon of Civil War literature. In it, Hildebrand claims that others have tried to tell his story but have gotten it wrong, so he has a notarized statement by prominent men included as verification of authenticity. Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever. For the first time ever, this long-out-of-print book is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE or download a sample.

    At the height of the Cold War, he fell for the enemy: Irina, a Soviet naval officer. The streets of Moscow are a world of subterfuge, but they must keep their secret from the KGB.When war erupts in the South Atlantic, Tom is forced to abandon Irina. With the Soviets on his tail, he leads his dive team into the most dangerous place on Earth: a shipwreck with live nuclear weapons. The task is illegal and deniable, but failure is not an option; millions of lives are at stake.With the British submarine HMS Sultan and the Soviet submarine Arkhangelsk facing each other down like gunfighters, Tom’s confronted with a harsh realisation: Irina’s on the other side, playing for the opposition. How can he choose? Will saving Irina lead to the failure of his mission? Can he lead his team to success against the odds?If you like the sound of ‘Jason Bourne meets The Hunt for Red October’, join Tom now in the most dangerous place on Earth.

    To counter this problem, Thomas J. Cutler has compiled a history of our naval heritage in the form of A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy. The work is unique in two important ways. First, it is written thematically rather than chronologically. This allows recent history to be blended with more distant (but important) events in ways that will reinforce the timelessness as well as the timeliness of the U.S. Navy, thereby having a greater appeal to today's sailor. There are a number of themes being used--the most obvious are manifested in chapters with the themes of honor, courage, and commitment, but others serve as useful vehicles as well; for example, there is a chapter called What's in a Name? that briefly discusses how ships have been/are named and then uses the many ships that have carried the name Enterprise as the theme for presenting significant portions of the Navy's history.The other unique characteristic of this history is that it focuses wherever possible on the roles of ALL sailors rather than just the officers. That is not to say that Jones and Decatur are not there, but that the emphasis is along the lines of the crew of the Bon Homme Richard fought on into the night... rather than Jones fought... Also, there are plenty of individual sailor heroes who can stand alongside the Perrys and the Farraguts (Boatswain's Mate First Class Williams who won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam, Dorie Miller of Pearl Harbor fame, Gunner's Mate Third Class Paul Henry Carr at the battle off Samar, etc.). Some emphasis upon what it was like to be a sailor (working and living conditions) at different times is included as well.

    From his legendary bayonet charge down the slopes of Little Round Top hill during the Battle of Gettysburg, to the startling calling of Union troops to salute as the defeated Confederate Army surrendered to him at Appomattox, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain redefined the scale of greatness in this country. Wounded six times in battle, twice assumed to be a fatality, the volunteer officer from Maine continued to lead gallantly until the final shot was fired during the Civil War. Valor's Measure tells the death-defying tale of this Medal of Honor hero and captures his spirit as no autobiography can.

     "An exquisite series launch. A tight and often violent tale of intrigue. Spy fiction fans will revel in this dark, witty story." Publishers Weekly Ex-British spy John Smith is nearly broke, has bad teeth, is lousy in bed, and drinks too much. But he's no fool. He's a man who knows his own limitations and works within them. He blackmailed his way out of the secret service years ago and is barely making a living as a London private eye when his ex-wife comes calling and asks him to follow her philandering husband. But that sleazy, all-too-common job leads to some uncommon trouble...and Smith is thrown like a chunk of raw meat into a lion's den of international espionage, betrayal, and killing. His only hope of surviving is to outwit his clever and brutal adversaries at their own deadly game. "Very astutely plotted, with many surprising twists and a sharp bite" The New York Times "There's nothing ordinary about this adventure. It's big league intrigue." Kirkus Reviews "A deadly, cold, serious drama of counter-espionage." Atlanta Constitution "A witty spy story in the anti-James Bond tradition." The Cedar Falls Courier This novel was originally published under the title private I and was adapted into a feature film The Spy Killer starring Robert Horton, Jill St. John and Sebastian Cabot.

    The Union victory at Vicksburg was hailed with as much celebration in the North as the Gettysburg victory and Ballard makes a convincing case that it was equally important to the ultimate resolution of the conflict.

    The first major history ever written on the first battle of the Civil War, this narrative describes the chaotic fighting by courageous amateurs that nearly resulted in Confederate independence.

    I also wanted to deal with something I've kept at arm's length--Muslim extremism. Add to this Somali pirates, self-loathing Western agents, and a disastrous stop-over in Rome before heading on to Nairobi, and you have...well, you have the makings for some explosions.I hope you enjoy it. If you do, then of course don't resist the impulse to run out and purchase my back catalog, but I'd also suggest picking up a copy of Agents of Treachery--it's an excellent collection for any fan of spy fiction. For fans of the genre, I'd call it required reading.

    During a time of political disruption and rising anti-nuclear sentiment, MI5 discovers that an extremist fringe group, Action Against Austerity, appears to have links to an established political party while planning sabotage using something or someone called Deep Blue.  Banned from investigating British political parties, the head of MI5 seeks advice from Charles Thoroughgood, his opposite number in MI6.   Agreeing to help unofficially with the case, Charles must delve deep into his own past, to an unresolved Cold War case linked to his private life.  Using the past as key to the present, he soon finds himself in a race against time to prevent a plot which is politically nuclear …   Authoritative and packed with in-depth knowledge, Deep Blue is a gripping new spy thriller from a master of the genre.‘Judd infuses his writing with insider knowledge’ New Statesman

    The stunning Northern victory thrust Union commander Ulysses S. Grant into the national spotlight, claimed the life of Confederate commander Albert S. Johnston, and forever buried the notion that the Civil War would be a short conflict. The conflagration at Shiloh had its roots in the strong Union advance during the winter of 1861-1862 that resulted in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee. The offensive collapsed General Albert S. Johnston advanced line in Kentucky and forced him to withdraw all the way to northern Mississippi. Anxious to attack the enemy, Johnston began concentrating Southern forces at Corinth, a major railroad center just below the Tennessee border. His bold plan called for his Army of the Mississippi to march north and destroy General Grant's Army of the Tennessee before it could link up with another Union army on the way to join him. On the morning of April 6, Johnston boasted to his subordinates, "Tonight we will water our horses in the Tennessee!" They nearly did so. Johnston's sweeping attack hit the unsuspecting Federal camps at Pittsburg Landing and routed the enemy from position after position as they fell back toward the Tennessee River. Johnston's sudden death in the Peach Orchard, however, coupled with stubborn Federal resistance, widespread confusion, and Grant's dogged determination to hold the field, saved the Union army from destruction. The arrival of General Don C. Buell's reinforcements that night turned the tide of battle. The next day, Grant seized the initiative and attacked the Confederates, driving themfrom the field. Shiloh was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war, with nearly 24,000 men killed, wounded, and missing.Edward Cunningham, a young Ph.D. candidate studying under the legendary T. Harry Williams at Louisiana State University, researched and wrote Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 in 1966. Although it remained unpublished, many Shiloh experts and park rangers consider it to be the best overall examination of the battle ever written. Indeed, Shiloh historiography is just now catching up with Cunningham, who was decades ahead of modern scholarship. Western Civil War historians Gary D. Joiner and Timothy B. Smith have resurrected Cunningham's beautifully written and deeply researched manuscript from its undeserved obscurity. Fully edited and richly annotated with updated citations and observations, original maps, and a complete order of battle and table of losses, Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 will be welcomed by everyone who enjoys battle history at its finest.

    He was the first to discover Australia and the Hawaiian Islands and the first to circumnavigate New Zealand. By the 1700s, England, eager to expand its realm of trade, promoted exploration of all the unclaimed regions of the world. The eighteenth century, the age of reason and enlightenment, required a new kind of explorer: not a rover or a plunderer or a seeker of adventure for its own sake, but a master of navigation and seamanship. Captain James Cook filled the bill. No one ever surpassed Cook's record. From South America to Australia, from the ice islands of the South Pacific to the fogbound Bering Strait, lay thousands of miles of islands, atolls, and ocean that Cook charted.

    This is a factual account, written in the pace of fiction, of hundreds of dramatic losses, heroic rescues, and violent adventures at the stormy meeting place of northern and southern winds and waters -- the Graveyard of the Atlantic off the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

    Lee had a heretofore undiscovered strategy at Gettysburg that, if successful, could have crushed the Union forces and changed the outcome of the war. The Battle of Gettysburg is the pivotal moment when the Union forces repelled perhaps America's greatest commander-the brilliant Robert E. Lee, who had already thrashed a long line of Federal opponents-just as he was poised at the back door of Washington, D.C. It is the moment in which the fortunes of Lee, Lincoln, the Confederacy, and the Union hung precariously in the balance. Conventional wisdom has held to date, almost without exception, that on the third day of the battle, Lee made one profoundly wrong decision. But how do we reconcile Lee the high-risk warrior with Lee the general who launched "Pickett's Charge," employing only a fifth of his total forces, across an open field, up a hill, against the heart of the Union defenses? Most history books have reported that Lee just had one very bad day. But there is much more to the story, which Tom Carhart addresses for the first time. With meticulous detail and startling clarity, Carhart revisits the historic battles Lee taught at West Point and believed were the essential lessons in the art of war-the victories of Napoleon at Austerlitz, Frederick the Great at Leuthen, and Hannibal at Cannae-and reveals what they can tell us about Lee's real strategy. What Carhart finds will thrill all students of history: Lee's plan for an electrifying rear assault by Jeb Stuart that, combined with the frontal assault, could have broken the Union forces in half. Only in the final hours of the battle was the attack reversed through the daring of an unproven young general-George Armstrong Custer. "Lost Triumph" will be one of the most captivating and controversial history books of the season.