American Century

In 1559 Spain finds herself in possession of an immense uncharted land they call the East Indies. Spanish conquistadors, eager to find their fortune and a place in history, explore the new wilderness, unaware they are spreading European disease among the natives they call Indios. Spain soon realizes she must colonize this new land to stave off the treats of other countries and so begins the historic journey of Don Tristan de Luna. Son of an old noble Spanish family, he is to lead the largest and most ambitious expedition Spain has ever launched and establish a settlement on Ochuse Bay, now ...

In October 1863, Ian Steele, having taken on the identity of Captain Samuel Forbes, is fighting the Pashtun on the north-west frontier in India. Half a world away, the real Samuel Forbes is a lieutenant in the third New York Volunteers and is facing the Confederates at the Battle of Mission Ridge in Tennessee. Neither is aware their lives will change beyond recognition in the year to come. In London, Ella, the love of Ian's life, is unhappily married to Count Nikolai Kasatkin.

There is absolutely no evidence that Abner Doubleday invented the American game of baseball. Early American settlers played a game they brought with them from England, a game called rounders, a form of cricket. Eventually, the formal rules were altered to embrace a simple and faster game in America referred to as Town Ball. The game we now know as baseball evolved from this adaptation and quickly was accepted as a new sport among urban area residents.

Darrin Clark is an impoverished young man, madly in love with his long-time friend Janie. He is desperate for a job and any way to win Janie’s affections. Then, a Hollywood studio promises to make him a movie star - if he will submit to a face-modifying procedure they are developing. Darrin’s love overcomes his fear, and he allows the movie studio to alter his face. Soon, his dreams come true. Yet, changing faces doesn’t seem enough, and the studio wants him to sacrifice more of his identity than just his appearance.

When a lonely cowpoke goes to see a play, he has no idea how his life will change, but from the moment George lays eyes on Polly Esther, he knows he’s lost. Can taking a job with a traveling show give George the home he has always longed for? He’s already lost his heart to the beautiful young woman with the sunshine hair. Will he lose everything else as well? Polly has her doubts about her father hiring a cowboy to help the manage their traveling show, but she’s learned over the years that her parents don’t make decisions lightly. Still, the handsome George Olson is a distraction. ...

James Baldwin reading from Another Country and Giovanni's Room; WIlliam Styron reading from Lie Down in Darkness; James Jones reading from From Here to Eternity; and Philip Roth reading from Letting Go.

She has no place to go with her sister. He’s a widower looking for help. Marla Atwell's life is turned upside down after her parents' death in an accident. With her mother's high expectations for a husband, Marla is left unprepared and unmarried. With no money or home, her only responsibility is to care for her younger sister. Desperate for survival, Marla turns to the idea of becoming a mail-order bride. Jack Green, a widower, is not looking for love again, but his café is struggling after a sickness caused by food at his establishment. His customers are no longer loyal. With the ...

The history of the United States is, to a large extent, a history of armed conflict. The nation was first forged in war, a tough fight for independence against one of the world’s largest empires, and that fight would resume less than a generation later with the War of 1812. Then, there were constant low-level conflicts with Native Americans as the nation expanded westwards, and occasionally the country engaged in full-scale war against the Sioux, Comanche, and Apache.

What if the American experiment is twofold, encompassing both democracy and tyranny? That is the question at the core of this book, which traces some of ways that Americans across the nineteenth century understood the perversions tyranny introduced into both their polity and society.

Whoever said the streets were paved with gold must have been dreaming. San Francisco in the gold rush era was an intoxicating mixture of the wealthy and the desperate. How would Sarah fit in? Determined to prove that she can make it on her own, Sarah poses as a married woman and boards a schooner bound for San Francisco. Restless and eager to travel, Jamie agrees to set up a branch of his family’s merchant bank in San Francisco. Each has something to prove but will their desire to succeed derail a blossoming romance?

Murder is easy. Getting away with it is a whole different matter. Prominent Long Beach businessman Wilmer Judd is dead, gruesomely killed by his own employee, Sonny Cai. The case looks cut and dried, but Dapper Luoo isn’t convinced. From a brand new car that’s missing to the burnt-out remains of a corpse, too many things just don’t add up. Dapper thinks there’s some kind of cover-up, and heads out to find the truth. But in the gritty, complex streets of 1950s Los Angeles, one needs to look over their shoulder lest they end up dead too.

Mr. President, what will you do for women's suffrage? It’s 1917, in the midst of World War I, and Rose Scofield knows exactly what she’ll do for women's suffrage. She’ll fight with her very life to make votes for women a reality. A headstrong young woman who yearns to be herself in a time when women weren’t free, Rose comes of age when world wars are new and automobiles, moving pictures, and airplanes are marvels of technology. She falls in love with Adam Bell, a vaudeville actor who travels the country with his brothers gathering laughs and hard knocks, though she denies her ...

An earthquake unnerves Tokyo on March 11, 2011, triggering the Fukushima nuclear disaster - and a tectonic stirring of the collective past. Mr. Yoshie Watanabe, an aging executive at an electronics company and a survivor of the atomic bomb, feels as though he is a fugitive of his own memory. As the seams of his country threaten to come undone yet again, he braces himself to make the biggest decision of his life. Meanwhile, four women narrate their own memories of Watanabe to an enigmatic Argentinian reporter investigating his life.

A spoiled English Lady rebels against the half-Native American half-English sea smuggler forced to be her husband and they discover the thrill of impetuous passion. Smuggled aboard a ship bound for the colonies, the English lady Keely Bartholomew is ill-prepared for life in America, much less the devilish half-breed captain Brock Forrester. This man, the illegitimate son of a Lenni-Lenape man and an English woman, is used to having his own way. When the tall, brawny, mixed-race man caresses her and holds her in his massive arms, looking at her with eyes as black as night, the heiress is ...

Could the drummer boy help those stranded in the worst winter storm of the 18th century? Young Scout is looking for gainful employment at the end of the American Revolution. Called Scout because of his great exploring and tracking skills, the regimental sergeant says he's too young; only good enough to be a drummer 'boy.' Will his fellows accept his help as they try to find their way to friends and family for Christmas during one of the worst winter storms in history? Or will pride be their demise? After all, why should they follow a young Cherokee half-breed? Part of THE FAIRIES SAGA ...

What do you get when you mix divine visions, secret wives, homemade money, and a printing press smashed by order of God’s self-declared mouthpiece? A body on the jailhouse floor and a story too wild for Sunday School. In this blisteringly funny, historically ruthless follow-up to Before the Revelation, Argor Barpha drags you through the final years of Joseph Smith—the American mystic who wasn’t content just starting a church. He wanted a kingdom. Maybe even a crown. From the ruins of Kirtland to the blood-soaked cornfields of Missouri, from the swamp city of Nauvoo to the Carthage ...

This book does not pretend to be a corporate history and certainly not the author's personal autobiography. Rather its purpose is to convey a close-up, ground-level look at a once very prosperous American railroad's mid-twentieth century struggle for survival - from the prospective of a rookie operating officer. For those of us fortunate enough to serve the "Delay, Linger and Wait" there remains a nostalgic affection for this well-run eastern railroad icon.

The year is 1912. Nineteen-year-old Maisie Porter watches from the deck of the SS Oceanic as England fades from view. Her destination is Buccaneer Bay in Australia's far northwest. Her fate: marriage to distant cousin Maitland Sinclair, a man she has never met.

Nothing drowns out the sound of drowning.... The survivors of Titanic arrive in New York City on a rainy April morning, but being back on dry land doesn't end the terror, and for some of the passengers, the nightmares are just beginning. Having escaped her haunting past in Southampton, Meg Westmoreland knows she should be excited to start her new life in New York City as millionaire Charlie Ashton's fiancée. However, Titanic has scarred both of them, and part of her wants to escape into the night, to start her new life all over again. Meg knows she must find the strength to help Charlie ...

From Cover to Cover and Sea to Shining Sea: The Authors who gave America its Voice Instant American Literature delves into our rich literary heritage. Filled with quirky facts and lively illustrations, this spirited survey visits the war-torn trenches with Stephen Crane, creeps through the nightmarish realm of Edgar Allan Poe, and ponders Walden Pond with henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you don’t know who (or what!) Natty Bumppo is or which legendary torne made famous the words “Simplicity! Simplicity! Simplicity! Then this book is for you. In this vastly informative ...