Western Wars

In 1870s New Mexico, the territory is at a crossroads. The indigenous population is being driven out—and driven down—by the white settlers migrating west after the Civil War. The center of power isn’t the governor but rather the Santa Fe Ring, a group of wealthy politicians, businessman, and landowners who exercise power through organized crime, theft, graft, and murder. Their main source of income is a mercantile store in Lincoln known as the House.

Almost 10 years ago, 18-year-old Colt McCrae was sent to jail for a crime he didn't commit. When his estranged father is murdered, he is released, and returns to Whiskey Hill, Wyoming. He's not welcome by everyone. Colt means trouble - because he knows who killed his father. Ruthless range baron Frank Drummond wants the land and will bury anyone who dares oppose him. But Colt is no longer a kid with a chip on his shoulder. He's a prison-hardened man with a mind for justice?

On Christmas Eve 1914, a group of German soldiers laid down their arms, lit lanterns, and started to sing Christmas carols. The British troops in nearby trenches responded by singing songs of their own. The next day, men from both sides met in No Man's Land. They shook hands, took photos, and exchanged food and souvenirs. Some even played improvised football games, kicking around empty bully-beef cans and using helmets for goalposts. Both sides also saw the lull in fighting as a chance to bury the bodies of their comrades.

Bryn felt sickened as he felt the ground shake, knowing that one of the two shafts had collapsed. Now, he stood in the pump room and watched the two thrumming pumps as they pulled water out of the deep mines. He knew that one of them would strain when the water became fouled with coal dust and debris from the collapse, and if it was pump number two, it would mean that his father and older brothers were probably dead.

History offers few records of war as vivid, haunting, and evocative as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. As enthralling to twenty-first century audiences as it was to those who first encountered the book in 1928, Remarque’s landmark tells the story of a young German volunteer who, with his comrades, moves from idealism to fatalism witnessing the horrors of mass killing and the intimate deaths of friends or the disfiguring survival of young men languishing in field hospitals.

Elmer Kelton is hailed as the greatest Western author of all time by the Western Writers of America and has earned six Spur Awards during his impressive career. In Badger Boy, Kelton effortlessly sweeps listeners back to the post-Civil War Texas frontier, where ranger Rusty Shannon hopes to settle down as a respectable farmer. But trouble brews when Rusty captures Badger Boy, a white child raised by the Comanches who murdered his parents.

A remarkable story of high hopes and crushing disappointment, the campaign contains moments of sheer horror and nerve-shattering excitement; pathos and comic relief; occasional cowardice and much selfless courage - all culminating in the climax of the First Battle of Ypres. And yet, as Peter Hart shows in this gripping and revisionary look at the war's first year, for too long the British part in the 1914 campaigns has been veiled in layers of self-congratulatory myth.

Louisa Caldecott, a progressive woman and independent business owner in 1880 Kansas, is principled, strong-willed, passionate, and generous to a fault. Satisfied with her comfortable life, she's happy to live in her sister Lily's shadow. Until Lou meets John Rock Davis, Civil War veteran and man with a past. Until everything she loves is put at risk. Until she is forced to take a stand that threatens her safety, her happiness, and her future. Then all hell - but heaven, too - breaks loose, and self-sufficient Lou finally understands the cost of courage and the power of love.

The leafy Avenue de Foch, one of the most exclusive residential streets in Nazi-occupied France, was Paris' hotbed of daring spies, murderous secret police, amoral informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when American physician Sumner Jackson, who lived with his wife and young son, Phillip, at Number 11, found himself drawn into the Liberation network of the French resistance, he knew the stakes were impossibly high.

Levon Cade and his daughters are on the run and living under assumed names in a remote corner of Idaho where Levon has taken on the role of gentlemen rancher. But when someone rustles his girls’ favorite horses, Levon puts aside his gentlemanly ways in exchange for hunting them down. Too bad Lew Dollinger, a man Levon unwisely allowed to live, is—at the same time—tasked with locating the runaway Cades by an international crime cartel.

Published in the 200th anniversary year of the Battle of Waterloo, a witty look at how the French still think they won, by Stephen Clarke, author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French and A Year in the Merde. Two centuries after the Battle of Waterloo, the French are still in denial. If Napoleon lost on 18 June 1815 (and that's a big 'if') then whoever rules the universe got it wrong. As soon as the cannons stopped firing, French historians began rewriting history.

It was supposed to be a cozy winter in their new cabin, but it started with a cantankerous grizzly wreaking havoc on everything. After a trading foray to visit the Salish, everything seemed to get turned upside down. They found themselves in contested territory with a band of young bucks from the Siksika band that sought to gain scalps and captives from their sworn enemies, the Salish. And that wasn’t enough to upset their peaceful plans, but when Gabe found out the Blackfoot had stolen the mares bred by his stallion and were carrying foals that belonged to him, it became personal.

What really happened to the billions of dollars worth of gold seized by Nazi Germany? What role did the Swiss government play and what are the implications of neutrality during wartime? The author addresses these questions, presents the case for and against Switzerland, and applies the lessons learned from World War II to the broader issue of companies - and countries - profiting during wartime.

Novelist and prizewinning historian Winston Groom's gripping history of the four-year battle for Ypres in Belgian Flanders, the pivotal engagement of World War I that would forever change the way the world fought - and thought about - war. This is Groom's account of what would become the most dreaded place on Earth.

In The Dutch Moment, Wim Klooster shows how the Dutch built and eventually lost an Atlantic empire that stretched from the homeland in the United Provinces to the Hudson River and from Brazil and the Caribbean to the African Gold Coast. The fleets and armies that fought for the Dutch in the decades-long war against Spain included numerous foreigners, largely drawn from countries in northwestern Europe. Likewise, many settlers of Dutch colonies were born in other parts of Europe or the New World.

This is a great package of several titles in one book. The topics are all related to the history of the Netherlands.

1461. Through blood and battle Edward has gained England’s throne – king by right and conquest – eighteen years old and unstoppable. Cecily has piloted his rise to power and stands at his shoulder now, first to claim the title King’s Mother. But to win a throne is not to keep it and war is come again. As brother betrays brother, and trusted cousins turn treacherous, other mothers rise up to fight for other sons. Cecily must focus her will to defeat every challenge. Wherever they come from. Whatever the cost. For there can be only one King, and only one King’s Mother.

The exciting series that details the life and adventures of mountain man Nathaniel King returns, as Nate outfights the Indians and renegades roaming the unexplored territory. When trappers start turning up dead, their bodies mutilated, Nate and his friends vow to track down the merciless killers.

William Shakespeare's gripping play showed Caesar's assassination to be an amateur and idealistic affair. The real killing, however, was a carefully planned paramilitary operation, a generals' plot put together by Caesar's disaffected officers and designed with precision. Brutus and Cassius were indeed key players, but they had the help of a third man - Decimus. He was the mole in Caesar's entourage, one of Caesar's leading generals, and a lifelong friend.

First serialized in 1919, the novel takes place during WWI and tellls the story of Kurt Dorn, a wheat farmer in the state of Washington whose father is German and his mother American. Though he has a successful farm, there are groups that would like to prevent wheat from being harvested at all, including a group of Bolsheviks, the Industrial Workers of the World, which is led by a German spy financed not only by Germany but also secretly by a German wheat magnate.