Living in poverty and facing abuses from a nonloving family, a forgotten child fights thoughts of suicide and dark demons in an effort to find a peaceful life.

In two centuries, La Purísima Concepción went from a fledgling frontier mission to a renowned California State Historic Park. Once home to many Spanish soldiers, settlers and hundreds of Chumash Indians, La Purísima held the seat of the California Mission government under Father Mariano Payeras. It withstood catastrophic events, including widespread disease in early years and a great Southern California earthquake in 1812. Emerging from ruins for the last time in 1934, after restoration by...

In this stirring autobiography, Dr. Watson reveals the truth in full: his Scottish ancestry, the middle-class circumstances in which he grew up, a dark legacy, and the familial discord that would leave a lasting mark on him; not to mention the ironic circumstances that shaped his career—first as a doctoral student, then as a war doctor, and finally as a detective's assistant. His memoirs take us to four continents, to the theater stages of Paris and London, across Afghan battlefields, and ...

Dr. Watson is courting, and Sherlock Holmes is toying with the idea of retirement. But he hasn't reckoned with the criminals of this world. A ravenous beast seems to be wreaking havoc on Hampstead Heath, immediately evoking memories of the infamous Hound of the Baskervilles. During excavations in London, the remains of Oliver Cromwell are discovered – and promptly stolen. A steward is murdered while crossing the Channel. It seems impossible to prove the culprit responsible. And to make mat...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST | WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE. A landmark history—the sweeping story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early twentieth century.Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There w...

A journey into the what-ifs that haunt us all, The Stuff That Never Happened is an intricate, heartfelt examination of modern marriage that brims with truths about the nature of romantic love.What if you were married to someone for twenty-eight years but in love with another? What if you were in love with them both?Annabelle McKay knows she shouldn’t have any complaints. She’s been in a stable marriage that’s lasted almost three decades and has pro...

From a Bancroft Prize-winning historian, the gripping tale of a shipwrecked Spaniard who walked across America in the sixteenth century.**“Once you start this book, it's nearly impossible to put it down.” -**Washington PostIn 1527, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong: Delayed by a hurricane and knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, the mission quickly became a des...

Don’t miss this feel-good contemporary romance in the fan-favorite Kowalskis series by New York Times bestselling author Shannon Stacey!Hailey Genest has seen most of her friends marry and have babies, and she’s happy for them, but it was a lot easier before she hit forty. She’s spent her entire life in Whitford, Maine, and if she hasn’t found her Prince Charming by now, she has to accept she’s probably not going to. When ...

The Pulitzer Prize– and Bancroft Prize–winning epic history of the American Southwest from the acclaimed twentieth-century author of Lamy of Santa Fe.Great River was hailed as a literary masterpiece and enduring classic when it first appeared in 1954. It is an epic history of four civilizations—Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American—that people the Southwest through ten centuries. With the skill of a novelist, the veracity of a schol...

Focusing on the two major areas of the Southwest that witnessed the most intensive and sustained colonial encounters, New Mexico and the Pimería Alta compares how different forms of colonialism and indigenous political economies resulted in diverse outcomes for colonists and Native peoples. Taking a holistic approach and studying both colonist and indigenous perspectives through archaeological, ethnohistoric, historic, and landscape data, contributors examine how the processes of ...

New York Times Bestseller: This anthology of Erma Bombeck's most memorable and humorous essays is a tribute to one of America's sharpest wits.When she began writing her regular newspaper column in 1965, Erma Bombeck's goal was to make housewives laugh. Thirty years later, she had published more than four thousand columns, and earned countless laughs—from housewives, presidents, and everyone in between.With grace, good humor, and razor-sharp prose, sh...

The 20th anniversary edition of the study that first revealed De Soto's path across the 16th century American South includes a forward by Robbie EthridgeBetween 1539 and 1542, the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto led a small army on an expedition of almost four thousand miles across Southeastern America. De Soto's path had been one of history's most intriguing mysteries until the publication of Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun. Using a new route recon...