Deeply moving and illuminating, Trouble the Water reveals the little-known real-life story of Robert Smalls. Born enslaved before the Civil War, Smalls witnesses great privilege and immense suffering alongside his owner's daughter and the dangerous son of a firebrand secessionist. When he's only twelve, he's put to work in Charleston, where he loads ships and learns to pilot a cotton steamer. When the war erupts and his cotton steamer becomes a confederate warship, Robert attempts a harrowing escape to freedom for himself and the people he loves.
Winner Fiction: Multicultural 2021 Best Book Awards
Finalist Fiction: Historical 2021 Best Book Awards
Pennsylvania, 1971: Graham Davidson is a young man with survivor’s guilt after the death of three siblings.
Estranged from his father and seeking a direction in his life, Graham learns about vision quests from a Crow Indian. He secures seasonal employment in Yellowstone National Park and embarks on a spiritual journey.
Wyoming Territory, 1871: Under a full moon at a sacred thermal area, Graham finds himself in Yellowstone a century earlier - one year before it was established as a national park. He joins the Hayden Expedition which was commissioned to explore the region.
Although a military escort provides protection for the explorers, the cavalry’s notorious lieutenant threatens Graham. His perilous journey through the future park is marred by a horrific tragedy in a geyser basin, a grizzly bear attack, and an encounter with hostile Blackfeet Indians.
Finalist Fiction: Historical 2021 Best Book Awards
As war overtakes the frontier, Emma’s family farmstead is attacked by Dakota-Sioux warriors; on that same prairie, Oenikika desperately tries to hold on to her calling as a healer and follow the orders of her father, Chief Little Crow. When the war is over and revenge-fueled war trials begin, each young woman is faced with an impossible choice. In a swiftly changing world, both Emma and Oenikika must look deep within and fight for the truth of their convictions—even as horror and injustice unfolds all around them.
Inspired by the true story of the thirty-eight Dakota-Sioux men hanged in Minnesota in 1862—the largest mass execution in US history—Dovetails in Tall Grass is a powerful tale of two young women connected by the fate of one man.
Finalist Fiction: Historical 2021 Best Book Awards
A shameful past. A vow to her dead husband. A sinister plot to destroy all she's come to love.
Spain, 1526. Sister Ernestine is desperate for redemption. Wracked with guilt over having tragically caused her spouse's execution, the newly minted nun arrives at St. Francis Abbey to fulfill a promise to deliver secret documents to the brother of her dead husband. But after discovering she has to wait several months for him to return, she fears being stuck in the middle of a region terrorized by the Inquisition.
Pulled into intrigues of the devout community and its residents, Sister Ernestine discovers a French spy has tracked her down, intent on stealing the plans that would alter the European balance of power. And as her old enemy closes in, she must protect the world-changing information from falling into the wrong hands... and survive the rising threat within the abbey's sacred walls.
Finalist Fiction: Historical 2021 Best Book Awards
“I dreamt of Noah last night. He was going to ask me to marry him …”
A rose-covered grave, seventy-nine letters, and a scribbled note unearth buried emotions and the timeless beauty of first love.
When Caroline Myers discovers a box of letters in her deceased mother’s trunk, she’s captivated by the romance that unfolds between her mother, Emma Rose Walsh, a nineteen-year-old waitress, and Noah Anderson, a handsome young soldier.
Determined to read between the lines, Caroline and her sister, Kate, set out on a search that leads them to the North Carolina foothills and the padlocked gate of the Anderson family cemetery. Will the one who holds the key keep them from unearthing long-buried secrets and fulfilling a request their mother tucked inside the box sixty-four years earlier? Will they find closure—or encounter a surprising revelation that plunges them deeper into the past?
Finalist Fiction: Historical 2021 Best Book Awards
It’s 1909, and Teddy Roosevelt is not only hunting in Africa, he’s being hunted. The safari is a time of discovery, both personal and political. While leading two hundred and sixty-four men on foot through the savannas, jungles, and semi-deserts of East and Central Africa, Roosevelt encounters Sudanese slave traders, Belgian colonial atrocities, and German preparations for war. He reconnects with a childhood sweetheart, Maggie, now a globe-trotting newspaper reporter sent by William Randolph Hearst to chronicle safari adventures and uncover the former president’s future political plans. But J. P. Morgan, the most powerful private citizen of his era, wants Roosevelt out of politics permanently. Afraid that the trust-busting president’s return to power will be disastrous for American business, he plants a killer on the safari staff to arrange a fatal accident. Can Roosevelt’s vision for the future of America, Europe and Africa survive the machinations of his implacable enemy and one the world’s wealthiest men?
Finalist Fiction: Historical 2021 Best Book Awards
A marriage of convenience leads to a life of passion and purpose. A shared vision transforms the American landscape forever.
New York, 1858: Mary, a young widow with three children, agrees to marry her brother-in-law Frederick Law Olmsted, who is acting on his late brother's deathbed plea to "not let Mary suffer." But she craves more than a marriage of convenience and sets out to win her husband's love. Beginning with Central Park in New York City, Mary joins Fred on his quest to create a 'beating green heart' in the center of every urban space.
Over the next 40 years, Fred is inspired to create dozens of city parks, private estates and public spaces with Mary at his side. Based upon real people and true events, this is the story of Mary's journey and personal growth and the challenges inherent in loving a brilliant and ambitious man.
Rusty barbed wire and distant AM radio—Montana hid my secrets for fifty years.
Then a young reporter arrived in a beat-up Impala. Her assignment, WWII Homecoming Memories, had uncovered a puzzling lead about several dead men last seen with a red-headed nurse. I could have lied, but she reminded me of myself at that age so I rolled a cigarette and told her all of it.
She spilled coffee on my table.
Her research started in New York. In choosing soldiers to profile, she included her hometown and discovered her great uncle, reported MIA in 1944, bought a train ticket to Browning, Montana, three months after they buried his empty casket. Impossible, yet on two consecutive pages, she counted 14 tickets to Browning—a village on the Blackfeet Reservation. The National Archives showed that 13 of those men shared the same distinct status: Missing in Action.
When your dreams finally seem to be coming true, it’s hard to trust them.
It’s been four years since seventeen-year-old Ruth set eyes on her fiance. After surviving near-starvation, revolution and a long trip across the stormy ocean, she can’t help but wonder: Will Abraham still love her? Or has America changed him?
Nowhere’s as full of change as 1909 New York. From moving pictures to daring clothes to the ultra-modern Triangle Shirtwaist Factory where she gets a job, everything exhilarates Ruth. When the New World even seems to rejuvenate her bond with Abraham, she is filled with hope for their prospects and the future of their war-torn families.
But when she makes friends and joins the labor movement—fighting for rights of the mostly female workers against the powerful factory owners—something happens she never expected. She realizes she might be the one America is changing. And she just might be leaving Abraham behind.
The Girl in the Triangle is an immigration story that will appeal to fans of Brooklyn by Colm Toibin and The Queen of the Big Time by Adriana Trigiani. It questions what it means to be an American, and what is the true meaning of strength.
"If a dragonfly lands on you, it means change is coming. You better watch your dreams, Nini."
Living in China when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Nini and her family don't realize that their world is about to collapse. Nini and her best friend Chiyoko are on their way home from school when they are stopped by Japanese soldiers and forced to step aside for a car with a mysterious passenger. Uncertain of what is happening, they create a secret hiding place to leave messages for each other.
Nini's family is soon forced into hiding to protect her American mother from being arrested and sent to an internment camp. When the family situation becomes desperate amid circumstances of hunger, disease, and quarantine, Nini is the only one who can make the dangerous journey across the war-torn city to save her family and find her best friend.
Not since Empire of the Sun has a book captured the drama of Westerners trapped in China during World War II.
The laws of survival always trump the rules of etiquette.
Every age has its iconic blonde bombshell. In the 1880s, it’s Baby Doe, America’s original gold digger. At a time when genteel ladies could politely starve to death, Baby Doe seeks her fortune the best way she knows how—marrying a rich man. She joins the rush to the Colorado silver bonanza and meets millionaire mine owner Horace Tabor. Baby Doe enjoys the high life as his paramour, but Tabor’s wife and his business manager plot to get rid of the new girl. Baby Doe, however, has schemes of her own to upend Horace’s old relationships and become the one and only Mrs. Tabor.
But fate sweeps in and avalanches Baby Doe’s dreams. What price will she pay for becoming The Mrs. Tabor?
Based on a true story, The Mrs. Tabor seduces with a scandalous tale of love and fortunes found and lost.
Sara’s husband was a disappointment in life, but she had to admit he was a handsome corpse.
Climb aboard an 1856 Dallas-bound wagon train and join a plucky female protagonist for the journey of a lifetime in Laurie Moore-Moore’s richly entertaining new book, Gone to Dallas,The Storekeeper 1856-1861. Far from your average historical novel or western, Gone to Dallas is a compelling tale of migration, betrayal, death and dreams—peppered with real people, places, and events. With a cast of interesting characters and more bumps and hazards than a wagon trail, Gone to Dallas tells the unforgettable story of a formidable frontier woman in the context of true Texas history.
"Magnificent. An enthralling and heartbreaking journey." -Bill Dedman, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times #1 bestselling author of Empty Mansions
Lady Be Good transports us to the glittering, sumptuous era of 1920s New York to follow the life of aspiring actress Dorothy Hale as she comes of age. Breaking societal rules imposed on women, "Peck's Bad Girl of Pittsburgh Society" leaves behind her privileged world for the bright lights of Broadway to chase her dream. From convent school debutante runaway to Ziegfeld showgirl to Hollywood star, Hale transforms herself into one of the most adored figures in the highest echelons of society. Yet behind the public façade the darling of the press contends with heart-rending loss, gossip and betrayal, and a tempestuous friendship with Luce.
Surrounded by her fabulous circle of friends-Gertrude Stein, Fred Astaire, Cole Porter, James Roosevelt, Elsa Maxwell, and other iconic figures-Dorothy finds her way to the other side of heartbreak and prepares for a White House wedding. Then, suddenly, at age thirty-three, at the height of happiness and peak of her fame, she falls to her death. Her life story is revised and written into history by the tabloids and the famed and fêted-leading to this novel's stunning conclusion.
Winifred de la Coeur was not a traditional beauty, but she was one of a kind.
Winifred is a feisty, independent-minded heiress who bridles against the strict rules and conventions of Victorian London society. When she gets caught up in the chaos of a bungled bank robbery, she is thrust unwillingly into an encounter with Court Furor, a reluctant getaway driver and prizefighter.
Winifred and Court are two misfits in their own circumscribed worlds-the fashionable beau monde with its rigorously upheld rules, and the gritty demimonde, where survival often means life-or-death choices.
Despite their conflicting backgrounds, they fall desperately in love while acknowledging the impossibility of remaining together. Returning to their own worlds, they try to make peace with their lives until a moment of unrestrained honesty and defiance threatens to topple the deceptions they have carefully constructed to protect each other.
A story of the overlapping entanglements of Victorian London's social classes, the strength of family bonds and true friendship, and the power of love to heal a broken spirit.
An unforgettable story hides in the shadows of America’s national pastime... It’s 1963, and civil unrest simmers in America’s streets. Baseball Hall of Fame Historian Frank Aldridge receives a letter from a woman claiming that Ray Cavanaugh, a talented but forgotten left-handed pitcher, may be her father. Fascinated by her story, Frank sets out to discover the truth. What he finds and uncovers is a lost legacy of forbidden love, fragile dreams, and despicable racism... In the 1930s and ‘40s, Ray Cavanaugh was known as Rock ’n Fire’, an ace pitcher with a stubborn streak a mile wide. After suffering an injury in a game against Negro League All Stars, Ray meets Aulette... a black woman. Together they defy society’s racist taboos and embark on a passionate affair, knowing it could have disastrous consequences for them both. Inspired by his personal need to know the truth, Frank is driven to find the elusive Cavanaugh, who has not been heard from in more than a decade. And as the years go by, Frank fights his own problems as he presses on to uncover the love story buried beneath decades of hatred and oppression. Told against the sprawling canvas of our country’s turbulent past, Rock ’n Fire is a mesmerizing look at the hope of love in the dark side of America’s favorite sport.
Theodore is an introvert. Friends are a bother and being put in social situations is cruel and unusual punishment. Avoidance is the name of the game when it comes to relationships and he's adamant he wouldn't have it any other way. But deep inside he yearns for something...more.
When his vivacious, thrill-seeking sister Alice invites him on another one at her atypical adventures, Theodore finds that his life predicated upon comfort is about to be turned on its head. They venture to an ultra-exclusive speakeasy in Manhattan's West Village, where he happens upon a vintage gramophone that does more than play a simple tune. He cranks the lever and a portal to another world snaps open. Before he can react, Theodore finds himself in a posh hotel, navigating a mysterious and menacing masquerade ball in 20th century London.
"The Five O'clock Follies does for Vietnam what MASH did for Korea."-Lucian Truscott IV, NYT Bestselling Author
It's an irreverent, rollicking mix of comedy, tragedy, duty, and honor in an original concept framed by America's first televised war.
Follow three Army officers thrown together who try their best to find purpose and hilarity, facing everything from jungle terrors to humor in the war zone. It is a powerful story of enduring friendships, filled with issues of morality and the tragedy of war that will cause readers to remember, laugh, and cry at the same time.
Come along for a "first" look at Vietnam in a different light, an unforgettable journey.
In Huet Pointe, ambition is as dangerous as the brackish water that surrounds the sliver of land. But, the women of this antebellum hamlet yearn for more than society insists they be-devout, feminine, and content with living according to cultural norms. So, what's a girl to do? She could employ poison, perhaps a bit of adultery, and drowning in alligator-infested waters is always a choice-whatever it takes to achieve her goal. A novel-in-stories, Bayou Cresting: The Wanting Women of Huet Pointe, tells the stories of ten women brought together by proximity, forever entangled by the actions they take.
The novel provides the country with an outstanding rendition of the relationship between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Gay activist Bayard Rustin. It takes the reader on a journey that begins in January 1956, when Rustin arrives in Montgomery, Alabama to instruct Dr. King and his followers on how best to utilize the concept of non-violence, as an effective tool to fight the evils of segregation. It continues as Rustin draws up the organizational structure for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and continues as Rustin organizes and coordinates the most famous march in this country's history, the 1963 March for Jobs and Justice in Washington, D.C. There never would have been Dr. King's, "I have a dream speech," delivered that day from the Lincoln Memorial if not for Rustin's organizational skills. In this novel, the authors point out that Human Rights is a value that all people are guaranteed in this country, if we can only get beyond the petty prejudices that still exist. They also answer the question would Dr. King have considered the Gay Movement a civil rights issue? That answer is a resounding yes. For the history buff and readers who want to spend time reading a novel that educates, entertains and empowers, this novel is a must read.
How can a newborn left in the Alaskan forest to die not only survive but also become an educated person who influences a Hawaiian queen and a Russian leader? More difficult is her challenge to be accepted by her Tlingit family whom she has never known. For that, she will need the help of British Captain Vancouver and her hunting pet, Falcon . . . and to break away from the love of her life.
SHAGOON is a historical fiction adventure that travels from Alaska to California to Hawaii. Young Ana survives the extreme changes in her life and gains strength as she deals with loss, disease, murder and death; and she learns about the spiritual influences of tribal heritage. As indigenouse people of Alaska begin to interact with strength against the "Cloud Face Tribes," she wonders where she belongs. SHAGOON begins in 1764 with Ana's determined young mother whose intense love for her warrior husband launches a family saga that results in the changing of lives for future generations.
