Big Al

Noted historian William J. Cooper has forged a reputation as one of today' s foremost Civil War experts. In We Have the War upon Us, Cooper takes a fresh look at the months between Lincoln's election and the attack on Fort Sumter that sparked the war. For years, compromise had kept the North and South from conflict but in these crucial months, the actions of major players on both sides pushed the country to the brink of destruction.

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.

'If life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie?' The Mill on the Floss, first published in 1860, is considered one of George Eliot's most autobiographical works. Having formed a complex bond with her own family, George Eliot, now known to the public as Mary Ann Evans, depicts the loving yet volatile relationship between the Tulliver siblings and their doting father. Spanning over a period of 10 years, The Mill on the Floss follows the coming of age of the beautiful and idealistic Maggie.