Historical Fiction Action

World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization, the Illuminati. Desperate to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra.

Frank Morgan has one son he knows of - and Kid Morgan has become famous in his own right. But in Montana, Frank comes face-to-face with a young man with a deadly swagger and a stunning claim: that he's Frank's son, too. And he's here to gun his old man down. For Frank, the first thing to do is find out if Brady Morgan is truly his own flesh and blood. That means tracking down a woman he once loved, and then untangling her lies, lust and a scheme to steal prime Montana ranch land.

Corban flees his homeland searching for peace, but he soon discovers that there is no haven in the west as the agents of Rhin and roaming bands of giants hound his every step. Veradis leaves the battleground and rushes to his King's side. But he has witnessed both combat and betrayal and his duty weighs heavily upon him. Maquin seeks only revenge, but pirate slavers and the brutal world of pit-fighting stand in his way. Nathair becomes embroiled in the wars of the west as Queen Rhin marches against King Owain. The need to find the cauldron of the giants drives him on.

They struck in a pack, in the dead of night. They had crept in like thieves, like the cowards they were...but it wasn't robbery they had in mind. It was something much darker. Smoke Jensen was buying cattle 100 miles away from his Colorado ranch when he got the news. Drawing two horses from the remuda, he saddled up, rode off...and didn't stop until he reached his wife's side. She had been shot three times, and lay close to death. Smoke Jensen knew the outlaws had come to kill him. He wouldn't give them a second chance. He was going after them. And he wasn't taking any prisoners.

When Duff MacCallister journeys to Texas to deliver 100 head of angus cattle, he finds a land on fire. Unruly, lawless teams of fence cutters, branded Blue Devils by the locals, are rampaging across grazing land and cutting fences in the name of an eastern land company. The ranchers are fighting back, and Duff joins the fray. But the fight leads to Austin, and into an even deadlier mission.

After the death of her father - Pa Salt, an elusive billionaire who adopted his six daughters from around the globe - Tiggy D’Aplièse, trusting her instincts, moves to the remote wilds of Scotland. There she takes a job doing what she loves: caring for animals on the vast and isolated Kinnaird estate, employed by the enigmatic and troubled Laird, Charlie Kinnaird. Her decision alters her future irrevocably when Chilly, an ancient gypsy who has lived for years on the estate, tells her that she possesses a sixth sense, passed down from her ancestors....

This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the road of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.

They tried to tell him that his father had killed himself, but Kearney McRaven knew better. No matter what life had dealt him, his father would go down fighting. And as he delved deeper into the mystery, he learned that just before his father died, the elder McRaven had experienced a remarkable run of luck: he’d won nearly ten thousand dollars and the deed to a cattle ranch.

In a town like Chugwater, Wyoming, you know who your friends are, who your enemies are, and who your kill-crazy maniacs are. For Duff MacCallister, the last category belongs to Johnny Taylor and his gang. Duff has wrestled with this polecat before, and knows that his bite is worse than his smell. But when Taylor's gang tries to rob a bank - and Duff manages to shoot one and arrest Taylor's brother - the outraged outlaw raises a stink straight out of hell. First, he begins to randomly slaughter innocent townsfolk one by one.

Yuma Prison is a fetid hellhole filled with the dregs of humanity — killers, thieves, and backstabbers who'd kill over a scrap of meat. Now it's home to Frank Morgan, who's posing as an inmate. A ruthless outlaw named Cicero McCoy has buried a fortune in stolen bank money in a harsh, desolate little piece of hell known as Ambush Valley. To get Cicero to lead him to the loot, Frank has become Cicero's new best friend behind bars — and co-plotter of a daring breakout. Until the time comes for Frank Morgan to make a fatal choice — and for one of them to die....

Long before there was a mountain man called Preacher, a young adventurer set off with a team of fur traders from St. Louis for the time of his life. On a wild frontier, he sought a fortune. Instead, he found blood, betrayal and the beginning of a legend. Armed only with a knife, surrounded by a fierce Blackfoot war party, the young man was forced to kill a warrior chief in an act of audacious courage. But when a savage grizzly bear attack left him half-dead, he could no longer protect himself.

Restless cowpoke Perley Gates wanted nothing more than to track down the grandfather who abandoned his family years ago. What he found was the crazy old sidewinder barely hanging on after a Sioux massacre. The old man's dying wish was to make things right for deserting his kin - by giving his strong-willed grandson Perley clues to the whereabouts of a buried fortune in gold. Finding his grandfather's legacy will set up his family for life. But it won't be easy.

He left the West at the age of seventeen, leaving behind a rootless past and a bloody trail of violence. In the East he became one of the wealthiest financiers in America—and one of the most feared and hated. Now, suffering from incurable cancer, he has come back to New Mexico to die alone. But when an all-out range war erupts, Flint chooses to help Nancy Kerrigan, a local rancher. A cold-eyed speculator is setting up the land swindle of a lifetime, and Buckdun, a notorious assassin, is there to back his play.

In Agatha H and the Siege of Mechanicsburg, Agatha Heterodyne, the last of the Heterodyne family, has returned to her family's hereditary town with the might of the Wulfenbach Empire hot on her heels. The only thing holding off an outright attack is Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, the heir to the Empire, who has joined Agatha and her friends inside the great artificially intelligent fortress of Castle Heterodyne. Now they must race to repair the mechanisms that once allowed the Castle to defend Mechanicsburg, before the rest of Europa shows up to take revenge....

Raithe, the God Killer, may have started the rebellion by killing a Fhrey, but long-standing enmities dividing the Rhunes make it all but impossible to unite against the common foe. And even if the clans can join forces, how will they defeat an enemy whose magical prowess renders them indistinguishable from gods?

If anyone knows the road to purgatory, it's Red Ryan. As a stagecoach guard, he's faced holdups, ambushes, and all-out attacks from every kill-crazy outlaw, Indian, and prairie rat. But even he's a bit reluctant to take on his next job: riding shotgun with his driver Buttons Muldoon on a stage bound from Fort Concho, Texas, to Fort Bliss.

Sir William Strongstaff is dead, and the defender of England and its kings is no longer there to battle the French. His chosen knight, Sir Michael of Weedon, is removed as the new king’s bodyguard, and he is sent to France, where the king’s uncles are trying to finish the job begun by King Henry V. From the outset, Sir Michael and his men are beset by treachery and intrigue. The line between ally and enemy appears to be almost invisible. The struggle is not only for England’s crown, but also the French one!

On the American frontier, every gun tells a story. A boy in Texas waits for a Christmas present he chose from a Montgomery Ward catalog. The present, a brand new, lever action Winchester 1886 and a box of its big .50-caliber slugs, never makes it there. Instead, the rifle is caught up in a train robbery and starts a long and violent journey of its own - from the hands of a notorious, kill-crazy outlaw to an Apache renegade to a hardscrabble rancher and beyond.

Young nobleman d’Artagnan has arrived in Paris intent on joining the guardians of King Louis XIII. He befriends the regiment’s most formidable musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, and together they unite in their commitment to uphold justice. Soon, a royal indiscretion thrusts them into an audacious escapade of courtly intrigue, thwarted romance, and daring rescue. But it’s the Machiavellian schemes of a powerful enemy and the wicked seductions of an ingenious female spy that will be their greatest challenges.

The Dacian kingdom and Rome are at peace, but no one thinks that it will last. Sent to command an isolated fort beyond the Danube, centurion Flavius Ferox can sense that war is coming but also knows that enemies may be closer to home. Many of the Brigantes under his command are former rebels and convicts, as likely to kill him as obey an order. And then there is Hadrian, the emperor's cousin, and a man with plans of his own.