In February 1861, the twelve-year-old son of Arizona rancher John Ward was kidnapped by Apaches. Ward followed their trail and reported the incident to patrols at Fort Buchanan, blaming a band of Chiricahuas led by the infamous warrior Cochise. Though Ward had no proof that Cochise had kidnapped his son, Lt. George Bascom organized a patrol and met with the Apache leader, who, not suspecting anything was amiss, had brought along his wife, his brother, and two sons. Despite Cochise's assert...

From Omaha Beach on D-Day and the French Resistance to the tragedy of Huertgen Forest and the Liberation of Paris, this is the story of Ernest Hemingway's adventures in journalism during World War II.In the spring of 1944, Hemingway traveled to London and then to France to cover World War II for Colliers Magazine.Obviously he was a little late in arriving. Why did he go? He had resisted this kind of journalism for much of the early period of the war, but wh...

The eve of World War II. A Hollywood producer’s murdered wife. Her husband’s guilty memory of a shipboard romance. A stolen painting signed “Picasso.” French gangsters. A beautiful courtesan. A shoot-out in a brasserie. All these and more confront Private Detective Riley Fitzhugh as he travels from Hollywood to the Riviera, Paris, and London in search of his client’s vanished dream girl and some answers. Is the painting a genuine Picasso or just a clever forgery? Who is responsible for the...

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to most as Mark Twain, was a quintessential American writer who spent much of his life traveling the world. He encountered colorful characters, cultures, and a variety of adventures along the way, and Mark Twain on Travel is a timeless collection of his writings on the subject. Excerpts included are from classics such as: The Innocents Abroad; A Tramp Abroad; Life on the Mississippi; Roughing It; and F...

Private-investigator-to-the-stars Riley Fitzhugh finds himself caught up in the case of a missing Hollywood beauty—and a stolen Monet—in a 1930s hard-boiled caper as deadly as it is delightful.Hollywood, 1934. Prohibition is finally over, but there is still plenty of crime for an ambitious young private eye to investigate. Though he has a slightly checkered past, Riley Fitzhugh is well connected in the film industry and is hired by a major producer—whose lovely girlfriend has disap...

Hollywood in the Thirties: Nazi saboteurs, gangsters running gambling ships, British spies and diplomats, FBI agents, starlets looking for the big break, cheap hustlers on the fringes of the law, local cops – some are friends and some are adversaries, but all are involved somehow with Riley Fitzhugh, a private eye who’s wondering whether the death of an English aristocrat really was an accident.

"One of the best acid tests of an introductory book...is that the text allow the reader to learn an important skill independent of the illustrations. This book contains the best, the most interesting, and the most effective introduction to fly casting I h

Hollywood, 1934. Prohibition is finally over, but there is still plenty of crime for an ambitious young private eye to investigate. Though he has a slightly checkered past, Riley Fitzhugh is well connected in the film industry and is hired by a major producer—whose lovely girlfriend has disappeared. He also is hired to recover a stolen Monet, a crime that results in two murders initially, with more to come. Along the way, Riley investigates the gambling ships anchored off LA, gets involved...

Evoking the spirit—and danger—of the early American West, this is the story of the Battle of Beecher Island, pitting an outnumbered United States Army patrol against six hundred Native warriors, where heroism on both sides of the conflict captures the vital themes at play on the American frontier.In September 1868, the undermanned United States Army was struggling to address attacks by Cheyenne and Sioux warriors against the Kansas settlements, the stagecoach route...

In the summer of 1874, Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer led an expedition of some 1000 troops and more than one hundred wagons into the Black Hills of South Dakota. This fascinating work of narrative history tells the little-known story of this exploratory mission and reveals how it set the stage for the climactic Battle of the Little Bighorn two years later.What is the significance of this obscure foray into the Black Hills? The short answer, as the author explains, is that Cu...

Hollywood in the Thirties: Nazi saboteurs, gangsters running gambling ships, British spies and diplomats, FBI agents, starlets looking for the big break, cheap hustlers on the fringes of the law, local cops—some are friends and some are adversaries, but all are involved somehow with Riley Fitzhugh, a private eye who’s wondering whether the death of an English aristocrat really was an accident.

Riley Fitzhugh, former Hollywood private detective turned US Navy lieutenant, is recruited by the OSS for temporary duty as a naval spy in Morocco during the planning for Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa. Riley’s assignment is to kidnap a French river pilot and extract him from Casablanca.Along the way, Riley meets an old flame from his days in Hollywood. She’s an English aristocrat who may or may not be a German agent or an Allied double. Together with an emplo...