Western Wars

In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.

Jewel ATerafin has never wanted to be a power, but to protect what she built, to protect what she values above all else, she has accepted that power is necessary. But with power comes responsibility. Jewel has forced herself to do what would have once been unthinkable: She has surrendered her den-kin, Carver, to the wilderness, because she must if she is to have any hope of saving the rest of her family, and the city in which they dwell. But she cannot leave him with nothing. Into his hands, she has placed the single, blue leaf that came from the wilderness and the dreaming combined.

News from his family’s ranch finally brings successful frontier lawyer, Creed Cooley, back home to Young County, Texas. But it’s not good news. A young ranch hand has been accused of murder. Creed’s mother is dying. And the decades-long feud with the neighboring Glass Ranch is boiling over. The rival cattleman at the head of it all, Jasper Glass, has hated the Cooleys his whole life. He wants their land – and now he’s going to shed more blood to come out on top. With aid from the Border Boys, a notoriously brutal gang of outlaws, and their shadowy leader, Rainer Flynn, Jasper is ...

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.

Read this for free with your Kindle Unlimited Membership Greece is a colorful country and has always been the target of many tourists looking to have a relaxing time. However, what many people do not seem to know is that Greece also packs a rich history – all lying beneath the beautiful landscapes and beaches. Its history starts thousands of years before the Christian calendar was used – and each moment represents a cultural artifact that enriched more than a single country. Greece went through many wars – big and small. Some were fought because certain conquerors had their eyes on ...

The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. Through his eyes we see all the realities of war: under fire, on patrol, waiting in the trenches, at home on leave, and in hospitals and dressing stations. Although there are vividly described incidents which remain in the mind, there is no sense of adventure here, only the feeling of youth betrayed and a deceptively simple indictment of war—of any war—told for a whole generation of victims.

A boy's own adventure along the length of the Iron Curtain. This book, based on Allan's diary, is a day-by-day summary of his experiences from both sides of the Iron Curtain whilst backpacking with a quixotic friend. The Cold War was a reality of Allan's entire life to 1981. The situation that was set in Europe in the late 1940s and early 50s was still in play; Communist eastern Europe was divided from western Europe. Through both alliances and history, Australia was aligned with the nations of western Europe. In the early 1980s, Allan was working towards graduating as an Australian Army ...

Austin Burke, age 16, does not have an easy life, yet he chooses not to let that bring him down. He has big ambitions. Someday, he is going to become a lawman. Sheriff Dalton keeps treating him like a kid, but Austin doesn’t care. He wants to prove everybody wrong. One day, an outlaw by the name of Lyra Holden rides into town looking for the sheriff. She has some unfinished business – to get back at the sheriff for locking up a man she has been hunting down for a long time. Nobody has the right to touch her prey. It is her job. After realizing Sheriff Dalton is out of town, Lyra goes ...

They Say Harpers Ferry is Haunted. They're Right. Forget the charming shops and scenic trails for a moment. When dusk settles over Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and the fog rolls in from the rivers, the town belongs to its ghosts. And it has more than its share. This collection gathers twenty of the most chilling spectral encounters reported in this legendary haunted town: The infamous John Brown, still pacing, still watching. Armies of the dead marching on Bolivar Heights. A Screaming Lady whose terror echoes near the bridge. Lost children's laughter on Potomac Street. The terrifying ...

Evan Henson, a Union battle-tested veteran of the Civil War, dismounted. He stood six-one and paused. “I am so sorry, Miss McLee. Your ma was one of the finest women the Good Lord ever put on this earth. You say it was Kreb who killed her, huh?” “Sure nuff,” Dory McLee confirmed. Evan exhaled deeply and turned around slowly shaking his head. “You know Alton Kreb. He has the most money of anyone in this territory and he ain’t about ready to go to the hoosegow on his own.” “That’s just too doggone bad,” Dory fired back. “He broke the law and now he’s gotta pay for it....

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.

The story of Napoleon has been written many times. In some versions, he is a military genius, in others a war-obsessed tyrant. Here, historian Adam Zamoyski cuts through the mythology and explains Napoleon against the background of the European Enlightenment and what he was himself seeking to achieve. This most famous of men is also the most hidden of men, and Zamoyski dives deeper than any previous biographer to find him. Beautifully written, Napoleon brilliantly sets the man in his European context.

As a young woman growing up in Africa, 17-year-old Leymah Gbowee was crushed by a savage war when violence reached her native Monrovia, depriving her of the education she yearned for and claiming the lives of relatives and friends. As war continued to ravage Liberia, Gbowee’s bitterness turned to rage-fueled action as she realized that women bear the greatest burden in prolonged conflicts.

After an attempted theft of one of his ranch’s horses, Levi Clay finds himself with blood on his hands and renewed questions about his father’s mysterious death… As he searches for answers in the neighboring town of Masonville, he uncovers a world that’s been warped to serve a brutal gang of outlaws led by one man – Pete Ramsey. Murder. Raids. Corruption. Pete has done it all. But nobody dares to point out the injustices that they have suffered. Speaking up only puts their lives in danger, because… The sheriff and his deputies are on Ramsey’s payroll. As he probes deeper into ...

John Biles wakes in the back of a strange family’s wagon, and his whole life is in ruin. John’s family is riding their way to El Paso to establish a newspaper. His father is a newspaper man, and the rest of the family works in the print shop. Descended upon by a group of Indians who talk like white men, John’s family wagon is besieged, leaving his parents and sister dead. Wounded, John is found by the Jensen family whose wagon is on its way to a massive piece of land they’ve inherited on the outskirts of Whistle Springs. The property inherited has a natural spring from which the ...

1989 heralded a unique prospect for an enduring global peace, as harsh ideological divisions and conflicts began to be resolved. Now, three decades on, that peace has been lost. With war in Ukraine and increasing tensions between China, Russia, and the West, great power politics once again dominates the world stage. But could it have been different? Richard Sakwa shows how the years before the first mass invasion of Ukraine represented a hiatus in conflict rather than a lasting accord—and how, since then, we have been in a 'Second Cold War'.

Mateship and tragedy on the Western Front. This book in the Series, Their World War, is the story of an ‘ear wigger’. Colin Thompson, from Newcastle, New South Wales, had a background in mining. In the early years of World War I he saw his family home empty as his sisters married and his brothers enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. Following the enlistment of his brother-in-law, Robert Hughes, Colin also decided to join-up. His intention was to look after his younger sister’s husband. After eight months of training together in Australia and England, both men were serving in ...

Private Ben Leeman, MM, is typical of so many unknown British Tommies who unhesitatingly answered the call to arms when Britain was in peril. Where Ben’s story differs from most, is that when he enlisted in the 15th (Bantam) Battalion, Notts and Derby Regiment, The Sherwood Foresters, he was just 15 years old. A Century of Silence tells Ben’s story from a happy childhood in Grimsby, through his enlistment and training in 1915, and his desperate fight for survival in the trenches of the Somme and the killing fields of Flanders.

Dubbed by many pundits as “The Most Stupid War in the World,” the Ukraine conflict is one that hardly anyone saw coming back in 2010. However, it is close to a decade old already. In this conflict in the evenly divided Ukraine, brinkmanship by the local players in the country, by the West that wants to drag Ukraine into its orbit, and by Russia that fears losing Ukraine and its security in the process, is the norm. At the same time, the world watches in a seemingly helpless manner as Ukraine gets torn apart at the seams. Most of the governments in the West blame Russia for instigating ...

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.