American Century

A Western novel set in the mountain desert of Carmichael during the early 20th century. In the rugged landscape of Carmichael, a fictional town scarred by violence and honor, Michael Marshall’s battle for identity is just beginning. Trapped between his uncle Quentin’s rigid expectations and the bloodied legacy of masculinity, Michael's world descends into chaos when an encounter with local roughneck Cliff Simon leads to a deadly act of self-defense. As he grapples with his own nature and the consequences of his actions, Michael embarks on a flight for survival and self-discovery that ...

This book deals with American history since 1880—a period when the United States was transformed from a relatively small, remote, and isolated outpost to the planet’s richest, most powerful, and most influential nation. It is also, not coincidentally, a period that produced some of the world’s most unforgettable characters—and some of its best stories. History is not fixed, not two-dimensional, not black-and-white; it is always open to interpretation, always subject to speculation, always riddled with mystery. Only one thing is certain about history: All of it was essential to ...

Two hundred years ago, slavery had the Southern United States firmly in its evil grip. Around four million African Americans languished in the most appalling of living conditions, their lives controlled by people who saw them as objects. They were starved, whipped, and put to work despite being pregnant, sick, or so young that they could barely walk.

In 1984, the landscape historian Mac Griswold was rowing along a Long Island creek when she came upon a stately yellow house and a garden guarded by looming boxwoods. She instantly knew that boxwoods that large - 12 feet tall, 15 feet wide - had to be hundreds of years old. So, as it happened, was the house: Sylvester Manor had been held in the same family for 11 generations. Formerly encompassing all of Shelter Island, a pearl of 8,000 acres caught between the North and South Forks of Long Island, the manor had dwindled to 243 acres.

No one present at the Battle of Cape Lopez off the coast of West Africa in 1722 could have known that they were on the edge of history. This obscure yet fierce naval battle would have a monumental impact on British colonies and the future of slavery in America.

Cindy Bonner knows that the most powerful love stories are those told straight from the heart of the lover. In Looking After Lily, the lover is a young Texas outlaw, trying to reform. Haywood Beatty and his brother Marion have survived the famous Christmas 1883 shootout between the Beatty Gang and the McDade vigilantes. Both Beattys are jailed in Bastrop where Lily, Marion’s very pregnant young wife, waits for the outcome of their trials. Haywood gets sprung, but Marion is sentenced to two years hard labor. And before Haywood leaves the jail, Marion exacts his promise to take care of Lily...

LOVE, AMBITION & SCANDAL COLLIDE AT THE 1893 CHICAGO WORLD'S FAIR Dora Chambers may be the newest Lady Manager at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, but it isn't quite the plum position she expected. Instead of afternoon teas and fancy dinner parties, she finds herself on the dusty Midway Plaisance, tasked with overseeing the Egyptian dancers whose shimmies and scant costumes are stirring up a scandal. Fueled by the Fair's progressive spirit and heady enthusiasm, Dora rises above her disappointment and embraces a determination to fulfill her duty and aid her husband's social ambition. But as ...

She’s a debutante with broken dreams…He’s a preacher with an unsavory past…Both want to bury their secrets… Charles Bailey’s life has done a complete turnaround. He may still be a logging crew foreman, and he may still have a past that would make a godly man weep, but he’s also a man with a changed heart and a mission to serve as pastor to a small logging community. If only walking the narrow path weren’t so difficult. The last thing he needs is the temptation of the vulnerable—and beautiful—new cook’s assistant. It’s clear she needs a friend, but anything more than ...

Because Plath drew so heavily on her own life in both her poetry and her fiction, the outlines of her life are familiar to listeners. Like most writers, Plath changed the facts of her life in her writing. In her determination to be both wife and mother, on the one hand, and teacher and writer on the other, Plath tried simultaneously to fulfill and to fight the conventions that bound women in the 1950s. In this biography, the first to draw on unpublished journals and letters recently made available, Wagner-Martin examines the ironies, contradictions, and achievements of Plath's life.

In Let Me Be Frank with You, Ford returns with four deftly linked stories narrated by the iconic Bascombe. Now 68, and again ensconced in the well-defended New Jersey suburb of Haddam, Bascombe has thrived - seemingly if not utterly - in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy's devastation. With a flawless comedic sensibility and unblinking intelligence, these stories range over the full complement of American subjects: aging, race, loss, faith, marriage, redemption, the real-estate crash - the tumult of the world we live in.

Tense and emotional... ...extremely candid poetry. Why does poetry ask probing questions, evoke deep emotions, and elude monolithic explanations? This book is a time capsule of a young man searching for solutions while offering none. These poems represent a maturing mind attempting to understand life and one person's place in it. Poems are photographs of literature where the observer can extract more words from it with each viewing. A must-read for adolescents and young adults! Get it now.

The gun, like the axe and the plow, was an essential tool in the exploration and settlement of the trans-Mississippi West. It provided food for the cooking pot as well as protection against two- or four-legged marauders. Of course the employment of the gun, whether for good or evil, depended upon the user. The men and women who lived the 19th-century western experience sometimes described in detail the role firearms played in their lives.

In 1708, the governor of South Carolina responded to a request from London to describe the population of the colony. This response included an often-overlooked segment of the population: Native Americans, who made up one-fourth of all enslaved people in the colony. Yet it was not long before these descriptions of enslaved Native people all but disappeared from the archive. In Enslaved Native Americans and the Making of Colonial South Carolina, D. Andrew Johnson argues that Native people were crucial to the development of South Carolina's economy and culture.

A Grand American Stage: A Comprehensive History of Opera in the United States Opera in America has always been more than music—it is a reflection of the nation’s evolving cultural, social, and artistic identity. A Grand American Stage is the most comprehensive exploration of opera’s journey in the United States, from its earliest days in makeshift theaters to the grandeur of the Metropolitan Opera and the rise of regional companies that bring this art form to every corner of the country. Renowned music historian Richard Fleischman takes readers on an immersive journey through more ...

Dark secrets. Unforeseen entanglements. Lives hanging in the balance. Washington Territory, 1858. Jeremy Bennett disappointed everyone when he refused his father’s invitation to join the family business. Deeply affected by the horror of his sisters’ kidnappings, he vows to help other victims, as a San Francisco private investigator. But when he and his partner take on a sinister slave trade, Jeremy makes mortal enemies of vicious men. Robert Bennett thought fortune had finally shined on him. After unexpectedly reuniting with the love of his life while visiting his native England, he ...

You may never visit the Gettysburg battlefield, but understanding historic lessons from Battle Tested! will have a profound influence on not only your leadership abilities, but also your life, organizations, and career.

A USO singer, a sailor and a whirlwind WWII romance Suzy arrived in New York City in January 1944 with starry-eyed hopes and dreams for stardom. That all changed when she locked glances from her USO stage with a charming red-haired sailor with sapphire eyes. From then on her world turned topsy-turvy and back with an enchanting, all-consuming wartime romance to beat the band. With WWII raging, the fifteen-month whirlwind journey pushes and pulls her from boundless romantic glee and excitement to the farthest depths of utter loneliness and tear-jerking sadness. Can heart-warming true love ...

An exposed family secret changed her life forever and blindsided his Marine heart. From the day Hannah was abandoned as a newborn, her adoptive parents have kept the truth of her origin from her and her siblings. But when that secret is exposed, a threat arises which forces her to leave the only family she’s ever known and the adoptive brother she adores. She must start her life anew in Charleston. U.S. Marine Lieutenant Adam White, harbors a secret—more confidential than patrolling the Caribbean for French corsairs, more threatening than the fight against Barbary pirates in the ...

Gregory Weeks's Embracing Autonomy departs from other general treatments of Latin American-US relations not by putting US policy aside but by bringing in the Latin American and global contexts more closely and thus avoiding the incomplete picture provided by a narrow focus solely on the policies of the United States. The core of autonomy for Latin America from the United States is seen in new, deeper, and more numerous relationships that do not include the United States.

One woman’s past. One man’s silence. A frontier town on the edge of change. 1876, Montana Territory. When Boston heiress Clara Whitmore steps off the stagecoach into the dust-choked town of Willow Creek, she carries more than just a carpetbag—she carries a secret that could ruin her. Fleeing an unwanted engagement and a society that tried to silence her, she adopts a false name and becomes the town’s new schoolteacher, determined to survive on her own terms. But the West doesn’t offer peace—it offers tests. Caleb McGraw, a quiet former Union scout and hardened rancher, knows the...