It is October of 1838 as a volunteer cavalry of Mormons gather in the woods. Ill-prepared for battle, they organize as best they can to face hundreds of mobbers who, with the governor’s support, have besieged the people of DeWitt, Missouri. With supplies running low, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are starving. But there is a bright light amid the darkness of despair: the cavalry’s distinguished leader, Seymour Brunson. As Major Brunson leads his nervous soldier...

Against the backdrop of the harsh and unforgiving American frontier, Abraham Kent seeks to build a life and identity of his ownContinuing the saga of the Kent family, John Jakes turns his masterful eye to the settlement of the untamed American West. Abraham Kent, the son of Philip Kent and Anne Ware, fought valiantly on the frontier, only to return home to Boston and a life he doesn’t want. Determined not to live in his father’s shadow, Abraham and his young bride ...

In the unforgiving West, a lone Pinkerton detective is on the trail of two vicious killers.When the daughter of a famous general is kidnapped, Detective Simms is assigned to bring her home. Forged in the Mexican War, this man of steel knows how to survive, and how to kill.He will need all of his skill and guile to survive this dangerous land, and bring the general's daughter home. And then, it gets personal.

"The work of a young writer with tremendous ambition, a bildungsroman of religion and revolution set during an obscure chapter of American history." — The Washington PostA powerful and impressive debut novel from the winner of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for fiction—first in the Woolsack family saga that continues with Secessia and The New Inheritors.The Blood of Heaven

Georgia's oldest city plays hostess to a bevy of ghostly guests whose stories are wrapped up in its rich southern history.As one of America's most haunted cities, Savannah, Georgia, has a long list of stories of the supernatural, such as the story of the first two people hanged in colonial Savannah for the murder of their abusive master. Or James Stark, a tempestuous planter, and Dr. Philip Minis, who settled their dispute with a duel and still hang around the old ...

Short stories inspired by the history of slavery in America, by the National Book Award–winning author of Middle Passage.Nothing has had as profound an effect on American life as slavery. For blacks and whites alike, the experience has left us with a conflicted and contradictory history. Now, famed novelist Charles Johnson, whose Middle Passage won the National Book Award, presents a dozen tales of the effects and experience of slavery, each based ...

A murder aboard a steamboat forces Abraham Lincoln to make a fateful choice—one on which the future of the nation may hang, if his client doesn’t first—in this gripping follow-up to the “masterfully crafted” These Honored Dead (Alex Grecian)Newly minted trial lawyer Abraham Lincoln is riding the circuit, traveling by carriage with other lawyers and a judge to bring justice to the remote parts of Illinois. Meanwhile, Lincoln’s close friend Joshua Speed stea...

The little-known story of the first witch hunt in New England—nearly half a century before Salem.Connecticut's witch hunt was the first and most ferocious in New England, occurring almost fifty years before the infamous Salem witch trials. Between 1647 and 1697, at least thirty-four men and women from across the state were formally charged with witchcraft. Eleven were hanged.In New Haven, William Meeker was accused of cutting off and burning his pig's ears ...

Winner of Two Spur Awards: Best Traditional Novel & Best First Novel“Pletts’s ambitious debut weaves our history into an intense narrative for today's readers.” —Alan Geoffrion, author of Broken TrailEldon Quint toils as a farmer on the Dakota frontier. The widowed father leaves the faintest impression as he moves through the world, wishing to shield his sons from the violence that shaped his own childhood.His twin brother,...

What would it be like to be stranded on an alien planet, cut off from your own people, unsuited to your new environment, and physically different from everyone else? This is what the young alien Tink Puddah must face when his parents are killed on their first day on Earth in the year 1845, and Tink finds himself stranded in the Adirondack Mountains of North America. A story of courage, determination, hope and survival, "A Small and Remarkable Life" chronicles the journey of two lives heade...

This is a documentary work offering a first-person account of a Union soldier's daily adversity while a prisoner of war from 20 September 1863 to 4 June 1865. In 1891, while a patient at the Leavenworth National Home, Irish immigrant Edward Glennan began to write down his experiences in vivid detail, describing the months of malnutrition, exposure, disease and self-doubt. The first six months Glennan was incarcerated at Libby and Danville prisons in Virginia.On 20 March 1864, Glenn...

A band of Indians attacked Hatfield, Massachusetts, on September 19, 1677, burning, looting, and killing. They carried off seventeen people, mostly women and children. Their destination, on foot, was Canada. Among them were Martha Waite, pregnant, and her three girls, ages two, four, and six. Captives, 1677, the story of this first Indian/Canadian kidnapping, is a stirring novel of courageous survival, love, and rescue. It follows the captives terrible ordeal and the rescue mission of Mart...