This unique anthology collects personal stories and leadership lessons from six highly-ranked officers across all branches of service.In Breaching the Summit, six senior enlisted advisors to the joint chiefs of staff share their stories, experiences, and lessons learned from a lifetime of military service. In their own words, each tells how they got their start, how mentors encouraged them along the way, and how they eventually became the highest-ranking e...

Abigail Livingston is tired of the uncertainty—are her suitors really interested in her or her father's fortune? The only way to know for sure is to pretend to be someone else. But her plan derails the moment she boards the train to Durango, Colorado.Matthew Bellamy is on a mission. His business and financial future depends upon his ability to keep a certain wealthy debutante out of trouble. But when he loses track of her on the way to her holiday in Colorado, he realizes he's the ...

Roxanne Sheffield has always been the dutiful daughter, but when her father surprises her with the news he's planning to wed her to the son of his business partner, she decides it's time to take matters into her own hands. Can her plan work without giving away her secret?Alexander Harp is about to have everything he's ever wanted until the train arrives in town. His money is missing, his wife is nowhere to be found, and his little girl is on the arm of a stranger. What's a man to d...

It had been the perfect plan. No detail is left to chance. So, what went wrong?Marianne Sheffield is a practical woman who approaches every problem with a solid plan of action. So, when her identical twin sister needed help getting out of an arranged marriage, Mari took control. Confident she would have no problem outsmarting the ambitious Mr. Banks, she postponed the unwanted wedding until Christmas hoping to wreak havoc on the man's life and force him to beg off and save her pare...

According to popular theory the first inhabitants of north America arrived during the last Ice Age. Between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago people are believed to have crossed from Asia to North America on a natural land bridge, where the Aleutian Island chain now exists.These people migrated south, hunting mastadons and mammoths, giant ground sloths, camels and long-horned bisons. They ate the meat and used the hide for clothing and shelter. Their weapons consisted of rocks and obsidi...

Mountain men and fur traders were the first to travel the route that would one day become the Oregon Trail. In their wake came missionaries who wrote letters and reports describing the far side of the continent and praising the mild climate, healthful conditions and the deep, fertile soil.Historians recognize 1843 as the official beginning of the Oregon Trail.That spring a group of a thousand land-hungry pioneers with 120 wagons and 5,000 head of cattle departed from Elm Grove,...

Friendships and reputations are on the line, and heartbreak is inevitable.Regina Beckett is no damsel in distress and she certainly isn't looking for a husband. For the last few years, she's stayed just ahead of her parent's matrimonial expectations. But now, an unwanted proposal threatens her freedom, so she decides to make a marriage proposal of her own.John Kingston has always been a ladies' man and one of Durango's most eligible bachelors. He has no plans to shackle him...

Logging in North America began with the arrival of European colonists in the 1600s. In a few short decades there were water-powered sawmills scattered up and down the eastern seaboard with the main concentration in northern New England. The lumber was used to build ships, furniture, kegs and barrels, buggies and wagons. As the loggers cleared areas in the forest, others arrived to farm the ground.It took 200 years for the timber to be logged from the eastern seaboard. The logge...

One of the great things about the West is that our history lies so close to the surface. It was our grand parents and parents who were the pioneers.The first wagon train west arrived late in the fall of 1843. It is estimated one-half million emigrants traveled this great wagon trail, until the advent of the automobile ended the era in the early 1900s. Today stretches of the Oregon Trail are still visible as ruts -ruts carved into the earth, worn by time and masked by wildflowers, s...

Great-grandfather has witnessed so much change in his life. When he was a boy the horse and buggy was the mode of transportation. He has lived to see aviation progress from a few barnstorming pilots hop-scotching across the country to jet aircraft thundering across the sky. And he was sitting there that day, in front of the television, when men walked on the moon. All the years and hard work have taken their toll but when he is seated in his favorite rocking chair, great-grandchildren sc...

When she offers to help plan her older sister’s wedding, Dinky Redfern knows that she’ll have to pack up everything and move to Idaho temporarily. Luckily, this isn’t a big deal, because a) Dinky is able to fit her entire life—including her pet hedgehog—into her beat-up sedan, and b) her sister lives at a beautiful tourist-destination ranch. No hardship at all… until Dinky meets her handsome co-planner, the groom’s Best Man.Jace Cunningham is everything that artistic Dinky isn’t: s...

Sir Francis Drake, the daring English pirate, was the first European to sail the stormy North Pacific. ln 1579, after having raided the Spanish settlements of South America, he sought to escape up the coast through an inland waterway that would return his ship, the Golden Hind, to the Atlantic Ocean.In his wake came other explorers. They soon concluded a Northwest Passage did not exist and turned their attention to exloiting the natural resources of the region. Trade was initiated ...