West Bend Community Memorial Library Adult Booklist

Historical Fiction - Ages of Past

[Prehistoric Times] [Ancient Egypt] [Ancient Greece] [Ancient Rome] [Bible Tales] [Arthurian Tales] [Middle Ages] [French Revolution] [European History] [American Revolution] [War of 1812] [California Gold Rush] [Slavery] [Civil War] [World War I] [World War II] [Pearl Harbor] [Korean War] [Civil Rights Movement (U.S.)] [Vietnam War] [Persian Gulf War] [September 11, 2001]

[Prehistoric Times]

Muse of Art by Piers Anthony - Muse of Art explores the special talents that have inspired and motivated us since the earliest days of our existence: curiosity and creativity, seduction and survival, destruction and healing. We view some of the most explosive eras in human history through the eyes of three remarkable women: Avalanche, the alluring beauty skilled in the arts of love and desire; Melee, the headstrong young noblewoman who learns to mold men to her will; and Talena, the wise and lovely weaver of tales who embodies Eve, the primordial mother of the human race. Through them we take part in the occult mysteries of Egypt, the savage wars of the Olmecs, the violent clashes between the Romans and Celts, the court intrigues of ancient Cambodia, the savagery of Attila the Hun, the Napoleonic Wars, and the siege of Stalingrad in the darkest days of World War II. And we look ahead to a harrowing future overshadowed by a devastating plague. Number 4 in the Geodyssey Series

Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel - When her parents are killed by an earthquake, 5-year-old Ayla wanders through the forest completely alone. Cold, hungry, and badly injured by a cave lion, the little girl is as good as gone until she is discovered by a group who call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. This clan, left homeless by the same disaster, have little interest in the helpless girl who comes from the tribe they refer to as the "Others." Only their medicine woman sees in Ayla a fellow human, worthy of care. She painstakingly nurses her back to health--a decision that will forever alter the physical and emotional structure of the clan. Although this story takes place roughly 35,000 years ago, its cast of characters could easily slide into any modern tale. The members of the Neanderthal clan, ruled by traditions and taboos, find themselves challenged by this outsider, who represents the physically modern Cro-Magnons. And as Ayla begins to grow and mature, her natural tendencies emerge, putting her in the middle of a brutal and dangerous power struggle. The first in Jean Auel's series titled, Earth's Children.

Dawn Land by Joseph Bruchac - A compelling first novel by nationally known Native American storyteller Joseph Bruchac. An action-packed adventure story spun in authentic native oral tradition, Dawn Land unfolds about ten thousand years ago, in the area now known as New England. A shadow is crossing over the land, and the village's finest son must meet the threat.

Song of the Axe by John R. Dann - Near the end of the ice age, the warrior Agon and the huntress Eena fall in love and lead their tribe against invaders led by the evil shaman, Ka. With his tribe destroyed, and Eena kidnapped by Ka, Agon beats the odds and rescues her. Migrating to a new land with their new family, the pair become targets of the vengeful children of Ka.

People of the Silence by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear - By A.D. 1150 the Anasazi had created an empire in the Southwest that would never again be equaled in North America. Master astronomers, traders, and architects, they built extraordinary roads linking thousands of square miles. Their Great Houses stood five stories tall and contained hundreds of rooms. Yet at the height of their civilization, cataclysm struck; the Anasazi began to destroy themselves from the inside out.... On his deathbed the Great Sun Chief discovers that, fifteen summers before, his wife bore a child to another man, and to protect it from his wrath, she hid the infant girl in a village far to the north. The Great Sun does not know who the young woman is, or what she looks like, but he wants her dead. When her village is attacked, Cornsilk flees for her life and runs into Poor Singer, a curious youth seeking to touch the soul of the Katchinas. Together, Poor Singer and Cornsilk undertake the perilous task of staying alive long enough to discover her true identity. It won't be easy. A desperate killer is stalking them - and he is willing to destroy the entire Anasazi world to get to her. First North Americans Series

Mother Earth Father Sky by Sue Harrison - Harrison has gone back 9000 years in time to tell the story of Chagak, a young woman who struggles to survive when her family and village are slaughtered by the warlike Short Ones. Her only ally is a crippled recluse who offers her shelter on his island. But what can either of them do when Chagak is demanded in marriage by one of the men who killed her family?

Let the Drum Speak by Linda Lay Shuler - This sequel to She Who Remembers and The Voice of the Eagle follows Antelope, the new "She Who Remembers"; her mate, Chomoc; and their daughter, Skyfeather, as they leave their native Southwest to travel to what is now Oklahoma. Like her mother, Kwani, Antelope faces many dangers in her adventures among strangers. Abandoned by her wandering husband, she is gradually assimilated into the life of the Hasinai, even becoming the beloved mate of their leader, the Great Sun. However, she is torn between her love for him and the need to return to her own clan to warn them of the terrible forthcoming events she has seen in a vision.

White Mare's Daughter by Judith Tarr - For her latest novel, Tarr (Queen of Swords, LJ 2/1/97) has created a prehistoric world peopled by fierce nomadic horsemen and peaceful Goddess-worshipping hunter-gatherers. Sarama and her twin brother, Agni, are members of a patriarchal tribe who inhabit the harsh steppes. Following the call of the Horse Goddess, Sarama leaves the steppes in search of a fabled land of plenty where women are the rulers. She meets Danu, son of one of the female leaders, and discovers that war and violence are unknown in his world. Can her civilization and his ever peacefully coexist?

[Ancient Egypt]

The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George - The world-renowned author of The Autobiography of Henry VIII and Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles turns from Renaissance Britain to ancient Egypt and the story of Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. Told in the first person - from the young queen's earliest memories of her father's tenuous rule to her own reign over one of the most glittering kingdoms in the world - this is a mesmerizing saga of ambition and power. But it is also a tale of passion that begins when the twenty-one-year-old Cleopatra, desperate to return from exile, seeks out the one man who can help her, the Roman general Julius Caesar - and does not end until, having survived the assassination of Caesar and the defeat of the second man she loves, Marc Antony, she plots her own death rather than allow herself to be paraded in triumph through the streets of Rome.

Kleopatra by Karen Essex - High drama and ancient history combine in this spellbinding novel of the early life of Egypt's infamous queen, at once a beautiful seductress, brilliant politician, and the most powerful ruler of her time.

Pharaoh by Karen Essex - The glittering epic of "Kleopatra" continues as Egypt's queen is reinstated to the throne and now shares her bed with Caesar. But in order for their infant son to be officially recognized as Caesar's rightful heir, she must journey with the child to Rome. There she forms an intimate bond with Antony, Caesar's second-in-command.

When We Were Gods by Colin Falconer - Falconer's swift-moving historical novel adds new twists and modern dialogue to an oft-told tragic tale. Fifty-one years before the birth of Jesus Christ, in the fertile Nile valley, 18-year-old Cleopatra ascends to the throne of Egypt upon the death of her father, Ptolemy XII. Inheriting a palace that more closely resembles a snake pit than a home, crowded with family and advisers, Cleopatra must come to terms with the heavy burden of royalty and its inevitable loneliness. Her only trusted friend is Mardian, the giant eunuch who has been her tutor since childhood. From an Egypt desperately attempting to retain its hold on ancient religions and traditions in a rapidly changing world, to the hypocritical halls of the Roman Republic, the young queen weaves her web of seduction, ensnaring not only the cold, driven Julius Caesar but also a playful Marcus Antonius. Falconer's Cleopatra is vulnerable, intelligent and liberated, defined by her wit as much as by her beauty. This fresh take on one of history's leading ladies is smoothly written, slickly couching ancient history in the contemporary rhetoric of female empowerment.

Valley of the Kings by Cecelia Holland - It was a time of religious and political upheaval--the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten's religious reforms had been defeated by the power of the Priests of Amun, and the young Boy King, Tutankhamun, had been placed on the throne. There was famine in the land, and ongoing deadly intrigue in the Court as different factions maneuvered to gain control of Egypt. It ended in the mysterious death of the young king, and his hasty, secret burial. Nearly thirty-five hundred years later, in the 1920s, a young British archeologist named Howard Carter becomes obsessed with finding Tutankhamun's tomb. But he must struggle with more than the secretive nature of the ancient Egyptians--his work cannot go on without the approval of the modern Egyptian bureaucracy or without continued financial support from the British peer who is looking for treasure more than knowledge.

The Shadow Women by Angela Elwell Hunt - Under the shadow of ancient Egypt, a baby boy is born to a peasant woman. His young sister leaves him in a basket in a river, hiding in the rushes to watch over him until a princess comes to claim the child as her own. She names him Moses, and he grows to become a man whose life is characterized by violence and terror, but equally by faith, and whose sacrifice ultimately leads to the redemption and liberation of his people from slavery. Told from the perspective of the women who loved him, from his mother and sister, who saved him by giving him up, to the Egyptian princess who adopted him, to the shepherd's daughter he married, this epic novel of passion and intrigue offers a fresh perspective on the man who received the 10 Commandments, parted the Red Sea, and led God's people out of Egypt: Moses, one of the most enigmatic figures in Biblical history.

Warlock by Wilbur Smith - One of the world's most acclaimed adventure writers returns to the world of ancient Egypt with the stunning sequel to the bestselling "River God". After the death of his beloved Queen Lostris, Taita retreats into the deserts to transform himself into a warlock. He discovers the divine purpose of his bereavement when he is called upon to save the dynasty of Lostris from the clouds of evil.

King And Goddess by Judith Tarr - Egypt's "most notorious" female king, Maatkare Hatshepsut, is the captivating subject of Tarr's latest novel of ancient Egypt. The story opens as Senenmut, a homely, arrogant young scribe, arrives at the royal palace in Thebes as a gift to the "girlchild" Queen Hatshepsut--the Great Royal Wife of King Thutmose II, who is her half-brother. Hatshepsut and the war-hungry king are living gods. The royal marriage has yet to be consummated, however, because the queen considers the king "a sweaty, panting lout without the least grain of delicacy." Recognizing her duty to produce an heir, she orders Isis, a beautiful maidservant, to prepare the king for her by teaching him the art of lovemaking. When Hatshepsut at last gives birth to a girl instead of the desired boy, the queen refuses to care for her, appointing Senenmut as her daughter's tutor and guardian. The birth of a stillborn son leaves the queen infertile. Her hatred toward the king crystallizes after Isis, now his calculating concubine, gives birth to an heir, Thutmose III. When the king suddenly dies, further intrigue unfolds, leading to Hatshepsut, now queen regent, seizing her chance to gain the throne. Tarr evokes Hatshepsut's ruthlessness as well as her vulnerability, and provides vivid portraits of Senenmut, Thutmose III and other real historical figures. Hatshepsut's courtship of the Egyptians, her peaceful reign and Thutmose III's ultimate revenge against her add up to a dramatic tale.

[Ancient Greece]

The Sand-Reckoner by Gillian Bradshaw - The young scholar Archimedes has just had the best three years of his life at Ptolemy's Museum at Alexandria. To be able to talk and think all day, every day, sharing ideas and information with the world's greatest minds, is heaven to Archimedes. But heaven must be forsaken when he learns that his father is ailing, and his home city of Syracuse is at war with the Romans. Reluctant but resigned, Archimedes takes himself home to find a job building catapults as a royal engineer. Though Syracuse is no Alexandria, Archimedes also finds that life at home isn't as boring or confining as he originally thought. He finds fame and loss, love and war, wealth and betrayal-none of which affects him nearly as much as the divine beauty of mathematics.

The Ten Thousand by Michael Curtis Ford - In the spring of 400 B.C., ten thousand battered Greek soldiers stagger out of the frozen mountains of Armenia into a small Hellenic trading post on the eastern Black Sea. Their stunning tale of survival is the source of this epic debut in the tradition of "Gates of Fire".

The Courtesan's Daughter by Priscilla Galloway - Phano is almost 15, the traditional age for a woman to marry in ancient Athens. She is in love with Theo, who is 30 -- the traditional age for a man to marry. But marriage may not be an option for her. Her stepmother's enemy, Phrynion, claims that Phano is not really a free woman but a slave who belongs to him, and he is ready to sell her if he can get his hands on her. Phano, her father, and her stepmother must use every resource they have to try to restore her reputation and keep her safe. Even if they can keep Phrynion away, Phano may never be able to marry Theo, whose prominent family would expect a wealthy bride who would bring a good-sized dowry with her. Meanwhile, Athens faces the threat of war from Philip of Macedon. Once she turns 15, Phano must find her place as an adult in the turbulent society of ancient Greece.

Sappho's Leap by Erica Jong - Fearless, exuberant, and passionate, Sappho is Erica Jong's most unforgettable heroine. Sappho's Leap is a journey back 2,600 years to inhabit the mind of the greatest Greek love poet the world has ever known. At the age of fourteen, Sappho is seduced by the beautiful poet Alcaeus, plots with him to overthrow the dictator of their island, and is caught and married off to a repellent older man in hopes that matrimony will keep her out of trouble. Instead, it starts her off on a series of amorous adventures with both men and women, taking her from Delphi to Egypt, and even to the Land of the Amazons and the shadowy realm of Hades.

Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield - On a memorial stone placed at the ancient battlefield of Thermopylae are the words, "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie." Those simple words end and encapsulate this brilliant and brutal epic tale. Beginning at the training fields of Sparta, Pressfield ushers the reader through the climactic Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.E, fought by the combined armies of Sparta, Athens, and their allies against the invading soldiers of Persia. Narrated by the sole survivor of the battle at the "Hot Gates," in which 300 Spartans, hundreds of their allies, and tens of thousands of Persians died, this work portrays the men and women of ancient Sparta in intimate, dynamic detail.

Tides of War by Steven Pressfield - The internationally bestselling author of "Gates of Fire" returns with a stunning novel of the Peloponnesian War and Alcibiades, the man whose heroics and passions fueled the epic struggle. Narrated by the conqueror's trusted bodyguard and hired assassin in a mesmerizing death-row confession, "Tides of War" is historical fiction at its finest--a full-bodied, flesh-and-blood retelling of one of history's pivotal conflicts.

The Last of the Amazons by Steven Pressfield - In approximately 1250 B.C.E., Theseus, King of Athens, embarks upon a journey to the Amazonian homeland in what is now southern Russia. There he meets and falls in love with Antiope, the Amazon queen, who accompanies him home to Athens. Some accounts indicate that Antiope was forced to leave her people, but in Pressfield's rendition she elected to follow Theseus. Enraged, the Amazons journey to Athens, where they lay siege to the city in an effort to regain their queen and their honor. The aftermath of this war finds the Amazon women diminished in number from over 150,000 to just a couple thousand in the span of 20 years. Pressfield's splendid tale of valor, honor, and comradeship memorializes those women whose lives and deeds have faded into the mists of legend.

The Gryphon's Skull by H.N. Turteltaub - Sea-faring merchants Menedemos and Sostratos, the bickering cousins of Over the Wine-Dark Sea, Turteltaub's previous historical novel set in ancient Greece, are back again with an adventure taking them across the Aegean from the free city of Rhodes to glittering Athens. On their way to the city with a cargo of precious goods, they pick up the skull of an unusual bird. The scholarly Sostratos believes it is that of a gryphon, and thus proof of the existence of the mythical beast. The more down-to-earth Menedemos has little interest in the skull's scientific value, but hopes the philosophical schools in Athens will compete to purchase it. On the relatively short journey, they are plagued by pirates and the clashing forces of Egyptian Ptolemaios and Greek Antigonas, as well as the latter's troublesome nephew Ptolemaios.

Gates of Hell by P.C. Doherty - It is 334 B.C. Alexander and his troops have crossed into Asia and shattered the Persian army at the battle of the Granicus. Marching south he has conquered all in his path, including the great city of Ephesus. But he knows, and his enemies know, that the great prize is the city of Halicarnassus, strategically important and with fortifications to make any attacker despair. Alexander, by now famous as the "Great Besieger of Cities" must take Halicarnassus. The city has a link with his own past and his difficult relationship with his father; he needs to prove something to himself. The city's commanders, Alexander's old enemy Memnon of Rhodes, the Persian Orontobates, and the Greek renegade, Ephialtes, plot to ensure that Alexander will meet his nemesis at their gates. Fortifications are redoubled and a trap is prepared. This time, surely, they will bring down the "Macedonian Wolf" and bring his dreams of conquest to nothing. Alexander's court is set up close to the city, and his physician and boyhood friend Telamon is there. Even as Alexander brings up his troops for one of the most dramatic confrontations in the ancient world, a series of brutal killings begins, proving that the Persians have infiltrated the court. While his lord prepares for the fight of his life, Telamon enters a maelstrom of murder and intrigue. He must go through "The Gates of Hell" to find the traitors and protect Alexander - but all the while the evercunning Alexander keeps his counsel and pursues his own plans to foil his enemies.

[Ancient Rome]

Emperor: The Death of Kings by Conn Iggulden - Iggulden's first novel, Emperor: The Gates of Rome, dealt with the lives of Julius Caesar and Brutus as boys and then as young men. This new book, the second in a four-part cycle detailing the intertwined lives of these two men, begins with Caesar's capture by pirates and concludes with the suppression of Spartacus' slave rebellion. The story traces the rise of Caesar and Brutus from their lowly status as junior officers to positions of command and power in a Rome that was hard and cruel. It also shows the beginnings of Brutus' jealousy as the friends become rivals. Iggulden admits to tweaking the facts, which means this novel is more an adventure about a man named Caesar than true historical fiction. Still, it is broadly accurate as well as often exciting and fascinating.

Emperor: The Gates of Rome by Conn Iggulden - English writer Iggulden's first novel is the story of two young boys-Gaius and Marcus, raised as brothers though one is illegitimate-as they grow to adulthood in Rome two millennia ago. At that time, the republic was beginning to fall apart, a collapse that would result in the civil wars that brought the emperors to power. It was a time of turmoil, chaos, revolutions, casual violence, and savage brutality, and Iggulden's descriptions of the culture and environment are vivid. Although covering a period unknown to most lay readers, Emperor is a surprisingly fast and often exciting read.

Gods and Legions by Michael Curtis Ford - A close relative of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity openly, but himself a pagan, Julian the Apostate was a man of many contradictions. The story opens with Julian as a young, sheltered philosophy student and pacifist in Athens. Not long into his education, however, he must take up arms and save the Roman Empire from corrupt leaders and hostile neighbors. He does so ingeniously, becoming the first emperor since Julius Caesar to conquer the tribes of Gaul. Though Ford's descriptions of warfare in the fourth century C.E. are dramatically gruesome, the moments of humor and personal valor make this a truly compelling story-one not just of gods and legions but of men. Julian lived as simply as an aesthetic in the heart of one of the most decadent cities history has ever known. Although he never set foot in Rome, he dedicated his life to the expansion of the Roman Empire.

The Last King by Michael Curtis Ford - To the Romans, the greatest enemy the Republic ever faced was not the Goths or Huns, nor even Hannibal, but rather a ferocious and brilliant king on the distant Black Sea: Mithridates Eupator VI of Pontus, known to history as Mithridates the Great. At age eleven, Mithridates inherited a small mountain kingdom of wild tribesmen, which his wicked mother governed in his place. Sweeping to power at age twenty-one, he proved to be a military genius and quickly consolidated various fiefdoms under his command. Since Rome also had expansionist designs in this region, bloody conflict was inevitable.
Over forty years, Rome sent its greatest generals to contain Mithridates and gained tenuous control over his empire only after suffering a series of devastating defeats at the hands of this cunning and ruthless king. Each time Rome declared victory, Mithridates considered it merely a strategic retreat, and soon came roaring back with a more powerful army than before. Bursting with heroic battle scenes and eloquent storytelling, Michael Curtis Ford has crafted a riveting novel of the ancient world and resurrected one of history's greatest warriors.

Pompeii by Robert Harris - "Pompeii" recreates in spellbinding detail one of the most famous natural disasters of all time. And by focusing, on the characters of an engineer and a scientist, it offers an, entirely original Perspective on the Roman world.

The October Horse by Colleen McCullough - With her extraordinary knowledge of Roman history, McCullough brings Caesar to life as nobody has ever done before and surrounds him with an enormous, vivid cast of historical characters.
--Check out other books by Colleen McCullough (First Man in Rome, Fortune's Favorites, Caesar's Women, & Caesar: Let the Dice Fly)

A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening by Mario de Carvalho - The Moors have invaded the Iberian peninsula, raiding and pillaging Roman towns, but the people of Tarcisis turn a blind eye to the danger. Made complacent by the prosperity of the Pax Romana, they focus instead on the sadistic Games and on the persecution of members of a new religious sect living within the city walls - the Christians. Striving always to adhere to the principles of his hero Marcus Aurelius, Lucius musters all of his moral courage and sheer strength of will to protect the city. His devotion to civic duty undergoes a crucial test, however, when the charismatic and beautiful leader of the new sect, Iunia Cantaber, is brought before his court. Mario de Carvalho depicts the timeless story of a good man stuggling to maintain sense and order in his public and private lives and to uphold justice as he understands it.

As Sure As the Dawn by Francine Rivers - Atretes, a German barbarian who has won his freedom in the Roman arena, finds his life changed forever by an encounter with a young Christian woman. Atretes vows to move heaven and earth to find his son--the baby he thought was dead, and take him back to Germany. Only one thing stands in his way: Rizpah, the Christian widow who has cared for the child since his birth.

[Bible Tales]

Gods and Kings by Lynn Austin - Gods and Kings is the story of King Hezekiah, heir to the throne of King David. When his evil father plots to sacrifice him, Hezekiah's mother, Abijah, searches frantically for a way to save him. But only two men can help her, and neither of them seems trustworthy. In a time and place engulfed by violence, treachery, and infidelity to Yahweh, Abijah and her son must discover the one true Source of strength if they are to save themselves and their country.

Queenmaker: A Novel of King David's Queen by India Edghill - For more than 40 years, Michal lived and reigned in David's court. Speaking as a sister, a wife, a mother, a lover, a woman both scorned and worshipped, and above all, as a friend to David's other women, Queen Michal reveals her hopes and pains, as the fire of God burns and war, passion, murder, and prophecy fill the Promised Land.

Wisdom's Daughter: a novel of Solomon and Sheba by India Edghill - This is the tale of Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba, who rules the spice lands and bows before the will of the Goddess. This is the tale of Solomon, the King of Israel and Judea, who built the golden temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem. Once he prayed that he might rule wisely. This is the tale of Solomon's wives, of his concubines ... and of his daughter Baalit, more beloved than any son. Here are their voices, their mysteries, and their deepest secrets. Here they sing their songs and weave their tapestries. As the queen's search for a true heir to her throne takes her to the court of the wisest man in the world, both she and the king learn how to value truth, love, and duty...and the king's daughter learns that not all the world is ruled by men.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant - Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood - the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers - Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah - the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that are to sustain her through a damaged youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate, immediate connection.

Quarantine by Jim Crace - A re-imagining of the forty days Christ spent in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. Judea, about two thousand years ago: There were five of them - not in a group, but strung out along the road where earlier that morning the caravan of uncles had passed by. Three men, a woman, and, too far behind for anyone to guess its gender, a fifth. And this fifth was barefoot, and without a staff. No water-skin, or bag of clothes. No food. A slow, painstaking figure, made thin and watery by the rising, mirage heat, as if someone had thrown a stone into the pool of air through which it walked and ripples had diluted it.

Daughter of Jerusalem by Thom Lemmons - Mary Magdalene, one who was lost then found, reaches in compassion toward other wandering sheep of the house of Israel. Through Mary's eyes, we will see the birth of the infant church and also the changes taking place within Mary's heart.

Sarah: Women of Genesis by Orson Scott Card - From bestselling author Orson Scott Card comes a vivid and imaginative portrayal of the biblical Sarah, Abraham's loyal wife and Isaac's loving mother. Forced finally to share her husband after a lifetime of devotion, rebuked by the Lord for her unbelief, and grappling with fears that her beloved Isaac will be displaced by Hagar's Ishmael, Sarah is nonetheless a triumphant figure. Covering the events recorded in Genesis up to the birth of Isaac and Sarah's confrontation with Hagar, this first of a series of novels on biblical women is an epic tale of loyalty and resilience before God and before Abraham. Other women in Card's Women of Genesis series: Rebekah & Rachel and Leah.

Two from Galilee by Marjorie Holmes - This is the story of two real people whose lives were touched by God: two people chosen by God to provide an earthly home for His Son. Here are Mary and Joseph-a teenage girl and a young carpenter-alone, frightened, in love, faced with family conflict, a hostile world and an awesome responsibility. It is a story for young and old alike; for everyone who finds the Christmas tale a source of timeless beauty and wonder, a compassionate, emotional novel of divine love.

Jabez by Thom Lemmons - Thousands of years after he prayed it, Jabez's prayer for God's blessing has helped change the lives of millions of people. Now one of today's most accomplished writers of biblical fiction rips through the veil of silence surrounding the life of this well-known prayer warrior, revealing him as a real person -- and a real man of faith. Set in one of the Bible's most tumultuous times -- southern Judah during the days of the judges -- the bestselling novel Jabez explores the lives of two compelling people, inviting readers into the paradox of blessing versus struggle and involving them in a search for a fulfilling life and a satisfying destiny.

Stone Tables by Orson Scott Card - Noted author Orson Scott Card explores what it might have been like to be Moses, and provides an account of the lives of Moses's brother, Aaron, his sister Miriam, the two women that he called mother, and the woman he married.

Tamar by Ann Chamberlin - Like Mary Renault's novels, this enthralling tale depicts the tumultuous life of an unforgettable woman of the Bible as she fights for her right to worship her own Goddess and love the man of her choice.

Lineage of Grace Series by Francine Rivers - The first four in a projected five-book series entitled Lineage of Grace, about Biblical women. Unveiled is about Tamar, the wife of Er, Judah's firstborn. Unashamed is about Rahab, the prostitute that helped Joshua. Unshaken features the story of Ruth, and Unspoken chronicles the story of Bathsheba and David. Unafraid.

[Arthurian Tales]

Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley - The legends of King Arthur come to life in the extraordinary stories of the women in his life--including his half-sister Morgaine, a high-priestess of the religion of the Mother Goddess, and his beautiful wife Gwynhefar, torn between her duty and her love for Lancelot. Look for first books in the Avalon series by Marion Zimmer Bradley. (Ancestors of Avalon, The Forest House, Lady of Avalon, Priestess of Avalon)

The Enchantresses by Vera Chapman - Three sisters, Morgause, Morgan, and Vivian, grow up under the tutelage of the druid Merlin, becoming powerful sorceresses in their own right and shaping the destiny of Britain with their desires and intrigues. Chapmans version of the Arthurian cycle focuses on the childhood, youth, and adulthood of the three women whose magic helps create and destroy a legendary hero.

The Broken Sword by Molly Cochran - Beatrice, who is blind, has found the Holy Grail. When she touches it, her vision is restored - and she gains strange, mystical powers. Drawn to the young king by the Grail's magic, Beatrice becomes Arthur's companion as he returns from the Middle East to the United States. What should be a simple trip is instead fraught with peril. Even in the technological age, there are those who use magic - and not always for good. An evil sorcerer covets the Holy Grail and the power it conveys, and he'll do anything to get it. Meanwhile, the Knights of the Round Table are confused by the modern world. Chivalry as they knew it seems to be dead, and no one knows how to fight a good duel anymore. Led by Hal, who was once Galahad, the knights learn to ride motorcycles instead of horses and how to drink beer instead of mead. But they never forget their true mission - to protect and serve the High King. When Excalibur is shattered by an evil magician, Arthur seems defenseless, and the dream of the Round Table seems once again doomed. But the Round Table is a dream that never truly dies, and though still a teenager, Arthur is truly the High King, with all the power that title implies. Camelot will rise again.

The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell - Cornwell's Arthur is fierce, dedicated and complex, a man with many problems, most of his own making. His impulsive decisions sometimes have tragic ramifications, as when he lustfully takes Guinevere instead of the intended Ceinwyn, alienating his friends and allies and inspiring a bloody battle. The secondary characters are equally unexpected, and are ribboned with the magic and superstition of the times. Merlin impresses as a remarkable personage, a crafty schemer fond of deceit and disguise. Lancelot is portrayed as a warrior-pretender, a dishonest charmer with dark plans of his own; by contrast, Galahad seems the noble soldier of purpose and dedication. Guinevere, meanwhile, no gentle creature waiting patiently in the moonlight, has designs and plots of her own. The story of these characters and others is narrated forcefully and with dry wit by Derfel Cadarn, one of Arthur's warriors, who later becomes a monk. Cornwell knows his history--the battle scenes are particularly fine--but not once does it get in the way of people of flesh and blood meeting on a darkened field of combat. Other titles in the Warlord Chronicles trilogy by Bernard Cornwell, Enemy of God & Excalibur.

Guardian of the Balance by Irene Radford - Merlin's daughter, Wren, is sworn to preserve the natural balance of the world--and although her rightful place should have been in Avalon, she is instead forced to confront an overwhelming evil which may well destroy her entire civilization. Merlin's Descendents vol. 1.

Guenevere: Queen of the Summer Country by Rosalind Miles - British novelist Miles takes her readers to the oft-traveled realms of King Arthur and his noble knights. This story, however, is told from the point of view of Guenevere, a queen in her own right and one well versed in the old ways of goddess worship and the right of the queen to choose her own consort. When Guenevere's succession to the throne of Camelot is threatened by her cousin, she chooses the young, impetuous, unacknowledged son of Uther Pendragon. Together, they reign in Camelot in spite of machinations by an ambitious and insane Merlin and the murderously jealous Morgan le Fay. Miles is at her best in her descriptions of everyday life--customs, food, dress, and religion (both pagan rites and early Christianity). This is an entertaining tale that tells an old story from a new perspective. The Guenevere novels continue with The Knight of the Sacred Lake and The Child of the Holy Grail.

Sorcerer by Jack Whyte - As the forces of Peter Ironhair threaten the land of Camulod, Merlyn Britannicus realizes that the time has come for his ward, Arthur Pendragon, to claim the skystone sword Excalibur and take his rightful place as High King of Britain. The latest volume of Whyte's epic retelling of the Arthurian cycle marks the end of Arthur's childhood training and the beginning of the legend that surrounds his career. Whyte firmly grounds his tale in historical detail, personal drama, and political intrigue, combining realism and wonder in a fortuitous blend. Camulod Chronicles

[Middle Ages 400-1400]

The Plague Tales by Ann Benson - What happens when the bubonic plague, long absent from the modern world, is let loose into twenty-first-century society? The Plague Tales weaves together two parallel stories in this work of fiction. Fourteenth-century physician Alejandro Canches, caught performing an autopsy in Spain, flees across Europe at the time of the Black Death to escape execution for his heretical deed. When he arrives in the papal city of Avignon, he is conscripted against his will to serve as a plague doctor in the court of England's Edward III. Unfolding in a dramatic counterpoint is the story of American medical archaeologist Janie Crowe, in England at the turn of the twenty-first century to recover from the tragic loss of her family. She digs up a medieval artifact as part of her research and unwittingly releases a deadly plague bacteria on an unprepared world. In a future where antibiotics are useless and a past where death is an ever-present fear, these two unwilling heroes from two different centuries are linked by history and defined by circumstance.

The Wolf Hunt by Gillain Bradshaw - British classics scholar and historical novelist Bradshaw here tries her hand at medieval romance. Marie Penthiovre, a young and spirited noblewoman, is kidnapped from a convent in Normandy by enemies of her father. Escaping into the wild forest of Brocaliande, she is rescued by the renowned knight Tiarnn of Talensac. He escorts her to the duke of Brittany, who encourages her to marry one of his knights. Marie's romantic dreams of wedding Tiarnn are dashed when he marries someone else, but when he disappears soon after his wedding, Marie determines to discover the truth and preserve Tiarnn's reputation as an honorable warrior.

The Champion by Elizabeth Chadwick - An award-winning historical novelist delivers an epic tale of medieval plots and royal intrigues, in the story of a skilled young knight, the woman he betrays, and their chance meeting years later. Well known for her medieval fiction, look for more books by Elizabeth Chadwick.

Deus Lo Volt! by Evan S. Connell - Recounted by a French nobleman at the end of the 1200s, this novel of the Crusades is rich history, populated with larger-than-life figures like Richard the Lion-Hearted and the Saracen palanquin Saladin; the action moves through grand set pieces such as the siege of Acre, the disastrous Children's Crusade, and the Westerners' sack of Constantinople. There are more rogues than heroes in this tale of the doomed attempt to take and keep the Holy Land, a venture that failed through human weakness as much as the logistics of supply and communication.

Heretic by Bernard Cornwell - Cornwell's latest entry in the "Grail Quest" series (The Archer's Tale; Vagabond) opens in 1347, as Thomas, a talented archer, arrives in France in time to fight alongside the Earl of Northampton. With the Hundred Years War still raging, Thomas hopes that the earl will allow him to command Will Skeat's archers, but instead he wants Thomas to pursue the Holy Grail, directing him and the archers to Thomas's ancestral home of Astarac in Gascony, where the grail is now believed to be hidden. In Gascony, Thomas meets the beautiful heretic Genevieve, who, like Thomas, was tortured by church inquisitors. He saves her from death at the stake, boldly thwarting church ruling and thereby damaging his command, his friendships, and his search for the grail. Outcast and on the run, Thomas is once again challenged by his cousin and bitter enemy, Guy Vexille.

The Good Men by Charmaine Craig - An exquisitely written, haunting novel of ideas based on the 14th century testimony of a young woman who was tried for heresy during the Inquisition in France.

Baudolino by Umberto Eco - In another grand mythical epic, Eco transports readers to the medieval Italy of The Name of the Rose (though almost two centuries earlier), where Frederick Barbarossa seeks to establish himself as the Holy Roman emperor. The story begins in 1204, as the Byzantium capital of Constantinople is sacked and Baudolino, the adoptive son of Frederick, recounts his life to Byzantine historian Niketas, whom he has just saved from the barbaric Latins. Unfolding amid religious conspiracy theories and mysticism, the narrative, which builds slowly, follows the life of Baudolino, an Italian peasant boy who fabricates stories he realizes people want to believe in. While studying in Paris, Baudolino meets several friends from all over the world, who together divulge their intimate dreams and share their desire to discover distant places. Two decades later, Baudolino calls together his friends to embark on what will be a lifelong journey to find Prester John, the Christian priest of the East, whose fabled reputation Baudolino has helped create. Eco seems to loosen the reins when the friends set out across unknown territories, where they grope through an eternally dark forest; traverse a river of stones and boulders; and encounter such mythical creatures as the sled-footed skiapods, dog-headed cynocephali and the Hypatia, beautiful sirens with the legs of goats. While the pilgrims are aware, to a certain extent, of Baudolino's truth-stretching, they all come to believe in their search, as does Baudolino himself.

The Crusader by Michael Alexander Eisner - Brother Lucas is a Cistercian monk with ambition. Born a bastard to a monastery servant, he has managed in his short life to claw his way up the religious hierarchy to the post of prior. Although his mercenary soul could use a little work, his future as an abbot, perhaps even a bishop, seems well within reach. Then Brother Lucas is summoned to the side of an old friend back from the Crusades. Francisco de Montcada, heir to one of Spain's wealthiest families, has returned from the Holy Land supposedly possessed by demons and tells tales of horrendous atrocities committed in the name of faith. First novelist Eisner uses the story-within-a-story device to great effect here, as Brother Lucas transcribes Francisco's confessions, thereby shifting the scene from Spain to the 1271 fall of the great fortress of Krak des Chevaliers. Francisco's stories of battle and imprisonment are the strongest part of this novel and also the best researched.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett - A radical departure from Follett's novels of international suspense and intrigue, this chronicles the vicissitudes of a prior, his master builder, and their community as they struggle to build a cathedral and protect themselves during the tumultuous 12th century, when the empress Maud and Stephen are fighting for the crown of England after the death of Henry I.

In a Dark Wood Wandering by Hella S. Haasse - This novel exemplifies historical fiction at its best; the author's meticulous research and polished style bring the medieval world into vibrant focus. Set during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), the narrative creates believable human beings from the great roll of historical figures. Here are the mad Charles VI, the brilliant Louis d'Orleans, Joan of Arc, Henry V, and, most importantly, Charles d'Orleans, whose loyalty to France brought him decades of captivity in England. A natural poet and scholar, his birth and rank thrust him into the center of intrigue and strife, and through his observant eyes readers enter fully into his colorful, dangerous times.

The Book of Eleanor by Pamela Kaufman - Narrator Eleanor recalls her life and her family in fascinating detail, with stories of everyone from her grandfather, the first troubadour, to her many children a who's who of the heads of Europe. Among the characters are Eleanor's two husbands, Louis VII and Henry II; Thomas Becket; the nasty Bernard of Clairvaux; and the cunning but somehow lovable Abbot Suger of Saint Denis. There is a Crusade, and there are battles. There is also a romance, which, in the true spirit of courtly love, involves neither of Eleanor's husbands. Above all, though, there is Eleanor, with a wit and spirit so fierce that she is able to stand beside and even above the most powerful men in the Western world during a time when women are considered by the Church to be a biological afterthought. As in her previous medieval novels (Banners of Gold, Shield of Three Lions), Kaufman renders the details with perfection the sounds, sights, and (often unpleasant) smells.

The Heaven Tree Trilogy by Edith Pargeter - Beloved author Ellis Peters, creator of Benedictine sleuth Brother Cadfael, penned this superb trilogy under her real name nearly 30 years ago. (The Scarlet Seed is being published here for the first time.) The story spans roughly the first third of the 13th century. Pargeter weaves her tale into the politics of medieval England and Wales, and her knowledge of the period is most impressive. The trilogy tells the story of Harry Talvace, nobly born, who has the soul and hands of an artist and mason. The subsequent two books follow the fortunes of another Harry Talvace, son of the first Harry. Pargeter's characters and her settings are vividly etched into the reader's mind. Writing feelingly about the creative genius of the artist and the complex bonds of loyalty that linked medieval men and women, Pargeter illumines a world distant in time and in outlook but makes that world immediate and unforgettable.

The Jester by James Patterson - The title character is, when introduced in 1096, an unassuming innkeeper in a French village oppressed by the local nobleman. To earn his freedom, Hugh de Luc joins the Crusades for a torturous, bloody march toward Jerusalem that occupies the book's first third and ends with him escaping the madness around him by deserting back to France, in possession of some minor treasures-or so he thinks. Back home, he finds that his beloved wife has been taken captive by the odious nobleman, and his infant son slain. Seeking his wife and revenge, Hugh adopts the guise of a jester in order to enter to the nobleman's castle, where he begins to fall in love with a young noblewoman, and she with him. In time, Hugh finds his wife, only to experience tragedy, and learns that the nobleman is searching for him, as he is believed to have carried back from the Crusades the greatest holy relic of all. Returning to his village, which has been destroyed during the nobleman's hunt for him, Hugh persuades his townspeople, then surrounding towns, to rise up in revolt against the corrupt nobleman and his henchmen.

Time and Chance by Sharon Kay Penman - The events of this second novel in a planned trilogy (after When Christ and His Saints Slept) center on the years 1156-71, when England was ruled by Henry II. His queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, an uncommon woman for her era, is as strong-willed and intelligent as her husband. For many years, they share a passionate marriage, which produces several children two of whom, Richard and John, go on to become powerful monarchs in their own right. Conflict arises when Henry names Thomas Becket, his close friend and adviser, to the exalted position of Archbishop of Canterbury. The clash of these two titans over Church and State sets the stage for Becket's murder. Check out her medival mysteries also; Sharon Kay Penman.

A Booke of Days by Stephen J. Rivele - A Booke of Days is the captivating story of a young French nobleman, Roger, Duke of Lunel, who leaves his home in Provence in the 11th century to join the forces that will attempt to recapture Jerusalem from its Turkish occupiers. Forced to leave his new wife by the sacred commitment of an armed pilgrimage, he is plagued by guilt over a secret sin from his past and his own religious doubt that arises during his mission. The holy crusade on which Roger embarks soon degenerates into a savage campaign dogged by betrayal, deceit and greed. Yet this was the greatest adventure of its time, where a hundred thousand medieval men who had previously never traveled much beyond their own villages undertook a journey halfway across the known world for the promise of salvation. Most would never see their homelands again. And for Roger, this greatest of all spiritual undertakings is an intensely human quest: a war of new and old ideas, a collision of cultures, an awakening prompted as much by slaughter as sanctity, a battle of the flesh as well as the spirit.

Maid Marian by Elsa Watson - Watson's debut novel offers a tale of Sherwood Forest from Maid Marian's point of view. Lady Marian Fitzwater is 17 years old, orphaned, and newly widowed as the novel opens. Her tenuous situation worsens as Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine cheats Marian of her dowry in order to maintain the political support of Marian's mother-in-law, Lady Pernelle. When Eleanor further commands Marian to marry her brother-in-law, none other than Robin Hood rescues Marian from this loveless marriage. Marian takes refuge in Sherwood Forest with peasants, learning the Saxon language, farming, and other pursuits of common folk. With Robin she sets about to find some justice and make a future. Watson paints a fascinating picture of life during the reign of Richard I, making this an admirable addition to the historical fiction genre.

Shadow of God: A Novel of War and Faith by Anthony A. Goodman - Goodman's first novel is an engaging and well-written fictional account of the Ottoman Turks' 145-day siege of the Greek island of Rhodes. For two centuries, the Knights of St. John have sailed the Mediterranean, preying on Ottoman ships. When the knights under the command of Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle Adam occupy Rhodes in 1522, the new sultan, 25-year-old Suleiman the Magnificent, demands the surrender of the island. As much a story of the determination of those leaders, their talented commanders, and the diverse cultures they represent, this book is also a record of the battles waged, the horrible suffering, the complexities of loyalties and betrayals, and the tenuous position of Jews caught in the cultural crossfire.

[Prehistoric Times] [Ancient Egypt] [Ancient Greece] [Ancient Rome] [Bible Tales] [Arthurian Tales] [Middle Ages] [French Revolution] [European History] [American Revolution] [War of 1812] [California Gold Rush] [Slavery] [Civil War] [World War I] [World War II] [Pearl Harbor] [Korean War] [Civil Ri ghts Movement (U.S.)] [Vietnam War] [Persian Gulf War] [September 11, 2001]

[French Revolution 1789-1799]

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is one of Dickens’ two historical novels, the other being Barnaby Rudge, the two cities in question are Paris and London at the time of the French Revolution. The heroic nobleman, Charles Darnay, renounces his status in opposition to his uncle, the Marquis de St Evremonde, and the evils of oppression he represents. Meanwhile, Dr Manette, the physician has also become aware of the Marquis’ ill-practice through a young peasant and his sister who have been hideously treated. After Darnay leaves France, he falls in love with Manette’s daughter, Lucie, and they are married. The story continues after Darnay’s happiness with Lucie as he returns to France during the Terror to save a servant. Darnay is arrested and condemned to death. The final section of the novel is concerned with the question of whether he will survive or be punished for his noble act of rescue, and whether or not the Englishman Carton who resembles Darnay will be able to save his life. It is a story of great sacrifices being made for the sake of principle. The novel is notable for its vivid representation of France during this troubled time and was modeled on Carlyle’s The French Revolution.

The Beekeeper's Pupil by Sara George - With the French Revolution as its backdrop, George's latest historical novel quickly engages the reader, both as a treatise on the scientific method and as a perceptive exploration of the life of a blind man. In 1785, Francois Huber, a blind gentleman living outside Geneva, hires a young man, Francois Burnens, as his manservant. That position quickly expands as Huber's interest in the lives of bees becomes more scientific in nature. He relies heavily on Burnens' vision as they carry out precise observations on such questions as the fecundation of the queen, who leads a swarm, and whether female worker bees can lay eggs. Their work leads to the publication of New Observations on Bees, which becomes the foremost monograph on the subject. George delicately intersperses scientific experiments with personal anecdotes, elucidating how Huber deals with his blindness, and how Burnens comes to realize that he needs to leave his position and find his own niche in life.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo - In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean -- unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert -- Victor Hugo achieved the rare imaginative resonance that allows a work of art to transcend its genre. "Les Miserables" is at once a thriller that contains one of the most compelling chase scenes in literature (a pursuit through the sewers of Paris), an epic portrayal of the 19th-century French citizenry, and a vital drama of the redemption of one human being.

The Sugar Pavilion by Rosalind Laker - Independent, resourceful, and beautiful, Sophie Delcourt is another of Laker's spirited heroines. Sophie flees revolutionary France with her aristocratic employer's young son, Antoine, and settles in Brighton, made newly fashionable by the Prince of Wales. Her goal is to become a confectioner, but no job is beneath her. She begins by waiting tables and becoming a cook at a large Brighton restaurant and later works at Prinny's Marine Pavilion as a linen maid until her confectionery business succeeds. She is torn between her quiet affection for Rory Morgan, the brave excise officer who patrols the coast at Brighton for smugglers, and her attraction to the dashing, mysterious Tom Foxhill, who knows too much about smuggling for Sophie's peace of mind.

The Gods are Thirsty by Tanith Lee - It is the eve of the French Revolution. The aristos are drinking life to the dregs, indulging in every conceivable sensual vice as if there were no tomorrow, while the citizens, miserable in their poverty, seethe with envy and hatred in a sorcerous Paris, beautiful in the center, rotting into mighty slums around the edges. In this sweeping novel, Tanith Lee depicts the savage spirit of Year I, following the life of journalist, pamphleteer and patriot Camille Desmoulins through these turbulent days. A fascinating and complex creature of the mind who maneuvered through all levels of Paris society, Desmoulins was the journalist and voice of the Revolution. Silenced by the guillotine during the Terror in the prime of his youth, Desmoulins, with his circle of friends, is the heart and soul of this gripping novel.

City of Darkness, City of Light by Marge Piercy - Depicting the experiences of three brave women, Piercy explores the human reality of the French Revolution, bringing to life the immense role women played in bringing down the monarchy. Claire Lacombe escapes the grinding poverty of her youth by becoming an actress in a traveling troupe. Beautiful and filled with the determination that can be forged by enduring hardship, she becomes an inspiring symbol as she dares to participate in pivotal events. Manon Philipon, a jeweler's daughter, idolizes Rousseau and the life of the mind. Marrying an austere government bureaucrat, she learns that she has an innate grasp of politics. Pauline Leon, the owner of a chocolate shop, is galvanized when she witnesses the executions of poor people rioting for bread. Their three stories are deftly braided with the lives of three men--the incorruptible Robespierre, the opportunistic Danton and Nicolas Caritat, an academician trying to walk the high wire between old and new. Men may be necessary to drive the plot, but women are its engine. It is women who take to the streets looking for "justice, bread and freedom," and who win concessions on issues like divorce and inheritance rights.

Love and Terror by Alan Jolis - When Marie Antoinette escapes from prison on the eve of her trial, Joseph Fouche, Robespierre's dreaded police commission, substitutes his lover Nenette, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the queen. Jolis's fast-paced narrative charts Fouche's relentless search for the real queen in time to save his beloved.

A Shred of Honour by Tom Connery - In 1793, when Lt. George Markham takes up a low-ranking commission in the English army, the French Revolution is only four years old and Napoleon is still a French artillery officer. On board the ship carrying Markham's regiment to the siege of Toulon, the officer's reputation is much discussed. Markham is an Irish bastard (son of an English general), "probably a Papist, certainly a rake," and labeled a coward because of a mysterious court martial 12 years earlier. Though no one trusts him to command even his ground troops after he is implicated in the death of another officer, Markham finds himself in charge of a "mixed bag of Lobsters and Bullocks"--marines and army--defending Toulon from the onslaught of French troops. Once on the ground, the plot complications are worthy of Baroness Orczy or either Dumas. Is that silent boy the Dauphin? Are those anti-Terror bourgeois really Directorate spies? Has Markham seen a glimpse of incest? There is plenty of swashbuckling action and gory detail, and events include amorous dalliances, British snobbery and conflicting loyalties leading to diverse betrayals. A loving history of the English rifle "Brown Bess" and cameo appearances by Sir Sydney Smith, Horatio Nelson and Napoleon himself flesh out the military plot, which culminates in a daring last-minute escape from the victorious French.

A Dish Taken Cold by Anne Perry - In this chilling tale from Anne Perry, the Edgar Award-winner crosses the English Channel to France. Days before the French Revolution, Celie's baby dies mysteriously in the care of a friend. Now, as Celie comes to grips with the death of her child, she also learns the true meaning of revenge.

Kydd by Julian Stockwin - This is the debut novel in a thrilling new series of the seafaring adventures of Thomas Paine Kydd, a young man pressed into service who comes of age in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. To read the next novels... try: Artemis and Seaflower.

Cassandra, Lost by Joanna C. Scott - Scott weaves a spellbinding tale based loosely on the true story of one woman's incredible odyssey from a prosperous Maryland farm to the devastation of Revolution-era Paris and back again. When her father forbids her from marrying a charming French emigre, Cassandra Owings elopes with Benedict van Pradelles and sails for France. Her head is filled with romantic notions, so she is shocked by the privations she encounters in war-torn France. Since Cassandra's husband hails from an aristocratic family with ties to King Louis and Marie Antoinette, they are in constant fear for their safety. Joining forces with a young Jean Lafitte to smuggle other aristos out of the country, they must eventually flee themselves. Settling in Spanish New Orleans, Cassandra and Benedict build a prosperous life for themselves until their idyllic existence is shattered by the reappearance of Lafitte. Cassandra must choose between the devoted husband she loves and the dashing pirate she desires. Brimming with romance, intrigue, and adventure, this spirited love story is firmly grounded in historical detail.

The Bookseller's Daughter by Pam Rosenthal - In the shadow of the French Revolution, two lovers embark on a seductive and erotic journey that plunges them into the heart of the aristocracy's most vindictive, carnal games, where white-hot desire is exceeded only by deception, betrayal--and murder.

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel - The turmoil of the French Revolution provides the setting for Mantel's American debut, an encompassing historical novel. The principal protagonists--Robespierre, Desmoulins, and Danton--are portrayed in depth as real people, from their troubled childhoods through their downfalls. Interspersed with their stories are the lesser dramas being enacted in this turbulent era, including the loves, rivalries, successes, and despair of the many participants.

Vindication by Frances Sherwood - The story of Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneer feminist and author of the radical classic A Vindication of the Rights of Women, is an impassioned, beautifully written portrait of a remarkable 18th-century woman with 20th-century sensibilities--historical fiction at its most gripping and convincing.

[European History]

The Virgin Queen's Daughter by Ella March Chase - Tudor intrigue inspires yet another historical romance in this story of a willful girl who discovers she is the Virgin Queen's illegitimate daughter. Five-year-old Elinor (Nell) de Lacey is the apple of her scholarly father's eye, and while the two are visiting the Tower of London, Nell makes a childish attempt to rescue Princess Elizabeth. By the time Nell turns 16, Elizabeth is queen, Nell's father is dead and Nell, over her mother's objections, heads to court. In short order, she's exposed to the court's conspiring and cajoling, seducing and betraying, plotting and protecting. A symbol of that world, Lady Jane Grey, haunts Nell as she uncovers the truth about her birth while trying to resist the charms of Sir Gabriel Wyatt. When Nell arouses Elizabeth's suspicions and possibly her wrath, Baroness de Lacey, once a lady-in-waiting herself, returns to court to prove the power of a mother's love. While Chase is no Philippa Gregory, her novel should still be manna for fans of Tudor romance infused with interludes of torture and head-rolling between the dance lessons and marriage rumors.

Passion by Jude Morgan - On a rainy October evening in 1795, a desperate young woman hurls herself off London's Putney Bridge only to be pulled from the cold, dark Thames by two passing boatmen. Little do they know they have just saved Mary Wollstonecraft, authoress, educator, and future wife of the celebrated radical thinker William Godwin. Thus begins this tale of impossibly tangled lives, disastrous intrigues, and tragic ends of the great Romantic poets—Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats—as told by the women in their lives. Mary Shelley, Caroline Lamb, Augusta Leigh, and Fanny Brawne, in spite of their vast differences in station and temperament, recount similar tales of all-consuming involvement with men who lived as passionately and vividly as the poetry they wrote.

Sleep, Pale Sister by Joanne Harris - Sleep, Pale Sister is a story set in nineteenth-century London. When puritanical artist Henry Chester sees delicate child beauty Effie, he makes her his favorite model and, before long, his bride. But Henry, volatile and repressed, is in love with an ideal. Passive, docile, and asexual, the woman he projects onto Effie is far from the woman she really is. And when Effie begins to discover the murderous depths of Henry's hypocrisy, her latent passion will rise to the surface.

Glass Virgin by Catherine Cookson - Only-child Annabella Lagrange only occasionally wondered why her parents never took her beyond the gates of their magnificent country estate. When she was ten, she decided that when she grew up she would marry her handsome cousin Stephen and never be lonely again. But when she was 18, Annabella learned the circumstances of her birth, and her entire world crashed around her.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks - A young woman comes of age during an extraordinary year of love and death as she and her community are tested by one of the greatest catastrophes ever to befall England. This gripping historical novel is based on the true story of Eyam, the "Plague Village", in the rugged mountain spine of England in 1666.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier - Chevalier transports readers to a bygone time and place in this richly imagined portrait of the young woman who inspired one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings. "Girl with a Pearl Earring" is the story of 16-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius, even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald - In eighteenth-century Germany, the impetuous student of philosophy who will later gain fame as the Romantic poet Novalis seeks his father's permission to wed his true philosophy -- a plain, simple child named Sophie. The attachment shocks his family and friends. This brilliant young man, betrothed to a twelve-year-old dullard! How can it be? A literary sensation and a bestseller in England and the United States, The Blue Flower was one of eleven books- and the only paperback- chosen as an Editor's Choice by the New York Times Book Review. The 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award Winner in Fiction.

Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge - The magnificent new novel by the acclaimed author of "The Birthday Boys" and "Every Man for Himself" goes back to the mid-19th century to accompany the travels of a group of Liverpool characters to the Crimea, bringing the horrors of a significant battle shockingly to life.

The Phoenix: A Novel about the Hindenburg by Henning Boetius - Boetius, the author of several novels and literary mysteries--and himself the son of the only living survivor of the Hindenburg's crew--has combined a love story, an exploration of the science of the dirigible, and a frightening re-creation of one of the most memorable events in recent history.

Jack Maggs by Peter Carey - The time, the 1830s. Jack Maggs, a foundling trained in the fine arts of thievery, cruelly betrayed and deported to Australia, has now reversed his fortunes - and seeks to fulfill his well-concealed, innermost desire. Returning "home" under threat of execution, he inveigles his way into a household in Great Queen Street, where he's quickly embroiled in various emotional entanglements - and where he falls under the hypnotic scrutiny of Tobias Oates, a celebrated young writer fascinated by the process of mesmerism and obsessed with the criminal mind. From this volatile milieu emerges a handful of vividly drawn characters in the dangerous pursuit of love, whether romantic or familial - each of them with secrets, and secret longings, that could spell certain ruin. And as their various schemes converge, the captivating figure at the center is Jack Maggs himself, at once frightening, mystifying, and utterly compelling.

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier - January 1901. Queen Victoria is one day dead; two families visit their respective family graves to mourn, and two girls meet, become friends, and bring their relatives together in unexpected ways.

Gallows Thief by Bernard Cornwell - Disgraced by his father's suicide and impoverished by the debts that drove him to it, Capt. Rider Sandman, late of His Majesty's 52nd Regiment of Foot, has been forced to sell his commission to support his mother and sister. Desperate to earn a living but with no skills besides soldiering and cricket, he has come to London in search of a job. When the Home Secretary offers him temporary employment investigating a sensational murder, he accepts it as easy money. All he has to do is elicit a confession from the young artist accused of raping and murdering the Countess of Avebury during her portrait sitting. But when Sandman visits him in Newgate, the artist defends his innocence so vehemently that Sandman begins to have his doubts. Unwillingly, he is drawn into an investigation that not only risks his life but introduces him to the darkest secrets of several aristocratic families.

A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle - In 1901, most Dublin babies died from consumption before they learned to spell their names, but Henry Smart was born to burn more brightly than the Milky Way. Here Doyle has created a mythic breed of boy whom Paddy Clarke would idolize--a super-trooper-orphan who carries his father's wooden leg as a weapon in the Irish Citizens and Irish Republican armies. His supporting roles in the Easter Rising of 1916 and the War of Independence are swashbuckling and cinematic--he suggests the children's rights clause in the Proclamation of Independence and runs guns for Michael Collins. When the Irish Civil War breaks out, however, he realizes that he isn't writing history as much as it is erasing his future.

At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill - In the tradition of Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" comes an astonishingly ambitious and resonant novel that transports readers to Dublin in the year preceding the Easter uprising--a pivotal time in Irish history and in the lives of two very young men from different backgrounds.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory - Rich in the details and color of the times, this novel weaves historical fact and the irresistible elements of sex, scandal, and thwarted love into a powerful, compulsively engaging novel about the two Boleyn sisters and their relationship with Henry VIII.

The Winter Queen by Jane Stevenson - Set in Holland in the 17th century, "The Winter Queen" is a sweeping portrait of the tumultuous history and politics of the era as well as an immensely moving account of a strange and magical love affair. At its center are two royal exiles: Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, and her clandestine lover, an African prince of shamanic gifts, sold into slavery and freed after years of bondage.

Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue - Inspired by a teenage girl who murdered her mistress in 1763 because she "longed for fine clothes", "Slammerkin" is the bestselling classic story of a lower-class Roxana, a female Tom Jones.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber - At the Heart of this panoramic, multidimensional narrative is the compelling struggle of a young woman to lift her body and soul out of the gutter. Michel Faber leads us back to 1870s London, where Sugar, a nineteen-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, yearns for escape into a better life. Her ascent through the strata of Victorian society offers us intimacy with a host of lovable, maddening, unforgettable characters.They begin with William Rackham, an egotistical perfume magnate whose ambition is fueled by his lust for Sugar, and whose patronage of her brings her into proximity to his extended family and milieu: his unhinged, child-like wife, Agnes; his mysteriously hidden-away daughter, Sophie; and his pious brother Henry, foiled in his devotional calling by a persistently less-than-chaste love for the Widow Fox, whose efforts on behalf of The Rescue Society lead Henry into ever-more disturbing confrontations with flesh. All this is overseen by assorted preening socialites, drunken journalists, untrustworthy servants, vile guttersnipes, and whores of all stripes and persuasions.Twenty years in its conception, research, and writing, The Crimson Petal and the White is a singular literary achievement -- a gripping, intoxicating, deeply satisfying Victorian novel written with an immediacy, compassion, and insight that give it a timeless and universal appeal.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - From the author of the "New York Times" Notable Book "Tipping the Velvet" comes a spellbinding, twisting tale of a great swindle, of fortunes and hearts won and lost, set in Victorian London among a family of thieves.

A conspiracy of Paper by David Liss - A Jew in 18th-century London who roams the underworld, shaking out debtors for the city's gentry, hunts for the murderer of his estranged father. Since first-timer Liss is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University whose dissertation will show how 18th-century fiction shaped and was shaped by issues of personal finance, he should know whereof he speaks.

The Unburied by Charles Palliser - In The Unburied, his compelling new historical thriller, Charles Palliser, author of the best-selling novel The Quincunx, masterfully resurrects the world of Victorian England. Dr. Courtine, an unworldly academic, is invited to spend the days before Christmas with an old friend from his youth. Twenty years have passed since Courtine and Austin last met, but the invitation, to Austin's house in the Cathedral Close of Thurchester, is welcome, for reasons other than the renewal of an old acquaintance. Courtine hopes that the visit will allow him to pursue his research into an unresolved mystery, using the labyrinthine Cathedral library. If he can track down an elusive eleventh-century manuscript, the existence of which only he believes in, he hopes to dispose of a potentially deadly rival.But as Courtine prepares to settle into his research, Austin tells him the story of the town ghost, a story of duplicity and murder two centuries old. The mystery captures Courtine's donnish imagination, as perhaps it is intended to do. Doubly distracted, Courtine becomes unwittingly enmeshed in the sequence of terrible events that follow his arrival, and becomes a witness to a murder that seems never to have been committed.

The Angel and the Sword by Cecilia Holland - In a tale based on a traditional French legend of the Dark Ages, the story of Roderick the Beardless, Holland wields her incomparable talent to bring ninth-century Paris to vivid life. For the one known as Roderick is in truth a maiden princess who has taken up the sword to avenge the death of her mother and reclaim her own rightful crown.

Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland - "Pearls were a favorite item of Vermeer," observes Cornelius Engelbrecht, the secretive and obsessive professor whose conviction that he owns an authentic Vermeer launches Vreeland's lovely first novel. The painting, we soon discover, was taken from its proper (Jewish) owner by Engelbrecht's father, a German soldier during World War II--a fact that Engelbrecht struggles mightily to suppress. The one colleague to whom he shows the painting guesses the truth and derisively recommends that he burn it--"one good burning deserves another"--but we don't learn the fate of the painting. Instead, Vreeland constructs a series of vignettes, not necessarily chronological, that takes us from the rooftops of Amsterdam Jews forced to kill the pigeons they are no longer allowed to keep, to a Dutch merchant whose possession of the painting briefly complicates his marriage, to the boudoir of a French counsel's bored wife and the second story of a farmhouse in flooded Holland, and finally to the home of Vermeer himself, where art does battle with domestic necessity.

[American Revolution 1775-1783]

The Hornet's Nest by Jimmy Carter - In his ambitious and deeply rewarding novel, Jimmy Carter brings to life the Revolutionary War as it was fought in the Deep South; it is a saga that will change the way we think about the conflict. He reminds us that much of the fight for independence took place in that region and that it was a struggle of both great and small battles and of terrible brutality, with neighbor turned against neighbor, the Indians' support sought by both sides, and no quarter asked or given. The Hornet's Nest follows a cast of characters and their loved ones on both sides of this violent conflict -- including some who are based on the author's ancestors.At the heart of the story is Ethan Pratt, who in 1766 moves with his wife, Epsey, from Philadelphia to North Carolina and then to Georgia in 1771, in the company of Quakers. On their homesteads in Georgia, Ethan and his wife form a friendship with neighbors Kindred Morris and his wife, Mavis. Through Kindred and his young Indian friend Newota, Ethan learns about the frontier and the Native American tribes who are being continually pressed farther inland by settlers. As the eight-year war develops, Ethan and Kindred find themselves in life-and-death combat with opposing forces.

Redcoat by Bernard Cornwell - The British occupation of Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War brings together two unlikely comrades, redcoat Sam Gilpin and rebel Jonathon Becket. The story of these two young men evocatively illustrates the divided loyalties that characterized this war. Though both men love the same woman, the true heroine of the novel is Becket's patriot sister, Martha Crowl. She commands the attention of the reader with every appearance. The grim and gory reality of war is skillfully played out against the gaiety of Loyalist society.

Seven Days in June by Howard Fast - In June 1775, a British army of 3000 men is bottled up in Boston by several thousand Colonial militia. The British leaders seem more concerned with sex than suppressing rebellion, and the Colonial leaders wrangle with one another while their men drift home to harvest summer grass. The erection of a redoubt atop Breed's Hill changes everything. The British are forced to attack, and by underestimating their foe they suffer terrible losses. The Colonial defenders, outnumbered, without adequate munitions, and with the bulk of their army lacking resolve, are driven off Charlestown neck. But in defeat they have achieved a moral victory and have made inevitable a full-scale war between the American Colonies and England. Other books by Howard Fast have also educated readers about the American Revolution: April Morning and The Crossing.

Dreams of Glory by Thomas Fleming - As the British scheme to kidnap George Washington and bring the Revolutionary War to an end in one bold stroke, a tide of espionage beckons two very different men into its currents. Both are destined to follow the same path which leads them to the bewitching embrace of the mysterious Flora Kuyper and the devious grasp of the British spy-master Walter Beckford.

Martha Peake by Patrick McGrath - From the desolate wharves of Hogarth's London to the wild stretches of the New World, master storyteller McGrath maps out a vast saga of revolt and renewal--the story of one sublime heroine, but also of the birth of America.

Brave Enemies by Robert Morgan - Only sixteen years old, Josie Summers murders her abusive stepfather and, wearing his clothes to disguise herself as a man, flees the family farm. Almost immediately lost in the snowy woods, she accepts a young Methodist preacher's invitation to assist in his itinerant ministry. When Joseph's true identity is revealed, the Reverend John Trethman is racked with guilt at having shared his home with a young woman and then falling in love with her. His solution is to marry Josie, performing as both minister and bridegroom. Not long after their wedding, John is kidnapped by British soldiers and forced to minister to their wounded and bury their dead. Josie again disguises herself as a man and joins the North Carolina militia to avoid being taken for a spy. On January 17, 1781, in a wooded pasture called the Cowpens, Josie is gravely wounded in the patriots' victorious battle and despairs of ever seeing John again.

By Force of Arms by James L. Nelson - Blending a seasoned mariner's expertise, a historian's attention to period detail, and a natural storyteller's gift for creating a cast of vivid characters, James L. Nelson brings to dazzling life a never-before-seen side of America's war for independence. Here is the conflict from the seaman's view, full of the sights, sounds, and sensations of the ocean - and of the thunder of cannons as the new world's freedom fighters vie for liberty. Well before Revere rode, seagoing American merchants were striking the first blows for independence. Drawn by the passion of the almighty dollar, none struck more deftly that Isaac Biddlecomb, captain of the Judea, whose smuggling activities made a mockery of His Majesty's Royal Navy. Pursued by the H.M.S. Rose, he sacrificed the ship he loved to the depths, and the fortune he stood to gain, rather than surrender - a bold affront that marked him for pursuit by the enraged forces of King George. Disguised as a merchant seaman, Biddlecomb is reunited with Ezra Rumstick, a comrade and fierce rebel advocate, in the very thick of the brewing revolution. On a brig bound for Jamaica, now serving as a lowly mate, fate tests his mettle when the captured Biddlecomb faces a life of hellish servitude under the mad captain and sadistic crew of the H.M.S. Icarus... First in the dramatic series, The Revolution at Sea Saga.

Rise to Rebellion by Jeff Shaara - More than a powerful portrait of the people and purpose of the American Revolution, "Rise to Rebellion" is a fictionalized account of history's most pivotal events: The Boston Tea Party, the battle of Concord, and of Bunker Hill. The author of the bestselling "Gods and Generals" and "The Last Full Measure" reveals with new immediacy how philosophers became fighters and how a scattered group of colonies became the United States of America.

The Glorious Cause by Jeff Shaara - Shaara here concludes his epic series on the American Revolution that began with Rise to Rebellion. As with his previous historical novels (he's adamant that they are just that and not histories), this one is told from the perspectives of various historical players. George Washington is prominent, as are Benjamin Franklin, the under-appreciated Nathanial Greene, and, intriguingly, Britain's Lord Cornwallis. Some decry the author's creation of internal and external dialog, but the Founding Fathers were human beings who had doubts and who did not always give speeches or make pronouncements.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Murder by Karen Swee - Occupation by British troops in 1777 has disrupted life in New Brunswick, NJ, where tavern mistress Abigail Lawrence holds her own by renting to and feeding the redcoats. After a wealthy businessman is murdered in her inn during the night, however, at least one British officer shows too much interest and spurs Abigail to start snooping. Several anomalies arise, not the least of which are a disappeared "wife," a lost Arabian horse, and a mysterious traveling provisioner.

Two Crowns for America by Katherine Kurtz - Blending historical detail and supernatural fantasy, as in her Deryni series and Lammas Night, Kurtz depicts a believable alternate American Revolution driven by the occult machinations of an age-old Master as well as destiny and Masonic solidarity. Kurtz, however, rightly emphasizes the more human characters, likable and three-dimensional in their political and personal struggles as she fleshes out historical figures from George Washington and Benjamin Franklin to the exiled Jacobites who want Prince Charles (Bonnie Prince Charlie of the Stuart dynasty) to assume a throne in America. The Wallace family--Jacobite Andrew; his son Simon; Simon's wife, Arabella; and Arabella's brother, Justin Carmichael--provide viewpoints for most of the important action.

Citizen Washington by William Martin - Appearing on the bicentennial of Washington's death, Martin's brisk, engaging and far from worshipful portrayal of the childless father of this country is told from multiple points of view by those who knew him. The first president, war hero and political icon has hardly died when Hesperus Draper, an old nemesis of Washington's and the publisher of a political scandal sheet called Alexandria Gazette, is tipped off that Washington was not all that he appeared to be. Martha is seen burning his letters shortly after his death in an apparent attempt to hide some dark secret. Draper asks his nephew, Christopher, who narrates introductory passages in the first person, to investigate, taking him and the reader on a far-reaching trip through Washington's past. The characters who record their impressions of the late founding father range from Martha, his wife, to Jacob, his slave; his physician, Dr. James Craike; a loyal aide de camp; and such other historical figures as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Overall, the narratives are lively, rendered in the colloquialisms of the era. Washington emerges as less than perfect, a man whose private peccadilloes and initial setbacks in pursuing a career became secondary to his emerging talents as a leader and statesman. Eschewing opportunities to render his subject's life in a sensational manner, Martin exercises considerable restraint in sticking closely to the historical details and social constructs of the time. Yet he enlivens the novel with ribald humor meanwhile humanizing Washington and delivering an entertaining slice of history.

Washington and Caesar by Christian Cameron - This historical novel dramatizes the American Revolution from the dual viewpoints of George Washington and Caesar, Washington's "dogs boy" slave who escapes Mount Vernon to become a soldier in the Loyal Ethiopians, a unit of runaway slaves who fought alongside the British in exchange for manumission. Cameron hits on the oft-ignored and embarrassing fact that America's fight for freedom from the British never prevented even the most fervent patriot from owning slaves.

Love and Honor by Randall Wallace - America is pitted against the European powers—only it's not the age of electronic eavesdropping and weapons of mass destruction but the year 1774, with razor-sharp sabers and good old-fashioned ear-to-the-door spycraft reigning supreme. Benjamin Franklin sends Kieran Selkirk, a young, courageous Virginia-born soldier, to Russia in the hopes of persuading Catherine the Great to spurn British requests for soldiers to help suppress the American colonies' rebellion. With the aid of disgraced Russian nobleman Gorlov, Selkirk blazes a triumphant path through the snowy Russian landscape, garnering acclaim for his military prowess and bold tongue. In true big-screen fashion, he bravely battles wolves in the harsh countryside on a breathless sleigh dash, fights Cossacks, learns of British intrigue, encounters beautiful women from almost every European nation and spreads good wherever he goes.

[War of 1812]

Fire Along the Sky by Sara Donati - Donati continues the saga of the valiant Bonner family, last seen in 2002's Lake in the Clouds, in this sprawling, slow-to-start epic starring four formidable women. It's 1812, and Elizabeth Bonner—teacher, crusader and second wife of hunter/trapper/farmer Nathaniel—is still living in a mountain cabin above the village of Paradise in upper New York State. With her is her restless, independent daughter, Lily, whose plans to study art in England were dashed by the beginnings of the war. Nearby in Montreal is the newly widowed Scotswoman Lady Jennet, who has come to the new world to find the man she should have married, Nathaniel's son Luke. And arriving presently is Hannah, Nathaniel's half-Mohawk daughter by his first wife; after 10 years as a healer with her mother's people, Hannah comes home to recover from a terrible personal tragedy. This saga sees Lily through one disastrous romance and then a second, tempestuous but ultimately successful one, and Lady Jennet—a charming storyteller and Tarot reader—through the American invasion of French Canada, where another Bonner son is wounded and imprisoned. Hannah embarks on a search for peace and, along with Jennet, aids the prisoners held in Canada's Nut Island stockade.

1812 by David Nevin - Ten bestselling authors have contributed blurbs to Nevin's second novel among them fellow historical novelists Gary Jennings, James Michener and John Jakes. Nevin incorporates traits of all three in his re-creation of the War of 1812: Jennings's intense detailing, Michener's sweep and Jakes's passion for America all surface here at times, though what results is less a glorious work of historical art than an insistently intriguing animated tableau. As war begins between Britain and the U.S., culminating in the writing of the "Star Spangled Banner" and the burning of Washington, D.C., Nevin, helping himself with particularly vigorous battle scenes, conveys a kind of grandeur. This is, in essence, a patriotic pageant, but it's one crammed with color and captivating characters.

The Flying Squadron by Richard Woodman - In a final effort to heal the rift between London and Washington, Drinkwater is sent to Chesapeake Bay, where he discovers a shocking plan by which the U.S. could defeat the Royal Navy. Amid personal crises, Drinkwater risks his reputation and commission, before finally confronting the unmitigated horror of an interminable war.

The Solitary Envoy by T. Davis Bunn - Book 1 of Heirs of Acadia, continuing the story told in the bestselling Janette Oke and T. Davis Bunn "Song of Acadia" series. History comes to life in a captivating story of a young American women in the Court of St. James.

The Fallon Pride by Robert Jordan - The narrative here bursts with information about the sea and the state of political affairs at the dawn of the 19th century. Madison, Burr, Monroe, Jefferson and even Davy Crockett are all thrown into this complex tale of Captain Robert Fallon--merchant, patriot and lover par excellence. Fallon is the sworn enemy of two evil and powerful men, Justin Fourrier and a pirate named Murad Reis, who try, with little luck, to hunt Fallon down as he sails around the world. This is old-fashioned entertainment--that is, typical of the genre in the early 1980s--in which good and evil are as clear as the water is blue and subtlety is an unknown entity.

The Fortune of War by Patrick O'Brian - Jack Aubrey is appointed to command the fastest and best-armed frigate in the Royal Navy. He and Stephen Maturin sail back to England--just as the War of 1812 breaks out. Look for the continuation, The Far Side of the World.

Bright Captivity by Eugenia Price - Legions of fans will undoubtedly welcome another warm historical saga from Price . In this first volume of a projected trilogy, she chronicles a passionate (yet decorous) romance, basing her characters on real persons. Anne Couper is celebrating her 18th birthday when the British capture St. Simon's Island, Ga., during the War of 1812. She and a group of her houseguests are held in a far from onerous captivity, and Anne and handsome Lt. John Fraser of the Royal Marines fall in love. Their courtship and marriage create numerous conflicts. Should John accept Anne's father's generous offer of a plantation on St. Simon's Island? Can he, the consummate soldier, regain his commission after the war and rejoin his regiment? The young couple is given counsel and love from a host of agreeable family members and friends, including Anne's distant cousin, a Scottish lord, and his friend author Walter Scott.

[California Gold Rush]

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende - Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaiso, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquin Andieta, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of northern California. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen prey to feverish dreams of wealth. Joaquin takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him. So begins Isabel Allende's enchanting new novel, Daughter of Fortune. As we follow her spirited heroine on a perilous journey north in the hold of a ship to the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco and northern California, we enter a world whose newly arrived inhabitants are driven mad by gold fever. A society of single men and prostitutes among whom Eliza moves--with the help of her good friend and savior, the Chinese doctor Tao Chi'en--California opens the door to a new life of freedom and independence for the young Chilean. Her search for the elusive Joaquin gradually turns into another kind of journey that transforms her over time, and what began as a search for love ends up as the conquest of personal freedom. By the time she finally hears news of him, Eliza must decide who her true love really is.

The California Trail by Ralph Compton - The fifth book in the exciting Trail Drivers series--a sweeping, historically accurate epic set against the backdrop of the great cattle drives of the Old West. Gil and Van Austin have been raising longhorn in Texas with only one problem--no buyers. But when gold is discovered in California, they prepare for a perilous drive.

Daughter of Joy by JoAnn Levy - A young Chinese woman who achieved wealth and fame in gold rush San Francisco, Ah Toy was the first Asian woman in America to "go to law", to employ the American judicial system to redress injustice. To her real-life adversary, Norman As-sing, chief of the Chinese in California, Ah Toy's flaunted independence is an affront. To Ah Toy, the merchant's assumed power and position is ridiculous. Their clash is inevitable and the stakes are high: power for him or independence for her. Their conflict is played out amid incomparably dramatic events: San Francisco's several disastrous fires, California's statehood celebration, a cholera epidemic, Vigilance Committee hangings, the rise of the tongs, a Chinese war in Weaverville.

Sierra by Richard S. Wheeler - Ulysses McQueen leaves his wife on the family farm in Iowa to seek his fortune in the California gold rush just as Steven Jarvis is mustered out of the army in booming Monterey. After a grueling cross-country trek, McQueen sets about grubbing in the dust near Sutter's Mill, while Jarvis turns to the mercantile trade. McQueen pines for his wife but postpones writing her until his fortune is assured, while Jarvis becomes a workaholic after he is denied the love of his life. Their paths cross in the frenzy of gold fever as the destitute McQueen proposes farming on Jarvis's land to provide fresh produce for the starving miners.

Against All Odds by Barbara Riefe - Lucy Scott Mitchum wasn't sure how she felt about California. But that's where she was going. Ever since they'd left the security of their life back east...ever since they'd packed all their belongings, taken their little family, and started on the long trail west, Lucy and her husband, Noah, had talked of nothing but their future... California was paradise, and unlimited opportunity, and untold riches. Noah was going to the goldfields and he would strike it rich - nothing less than a fortune would do. But before the promise of California, there would be endless miles of prairie and mountain, swollen rivers and Indians, disease and madness. Lucy and her little family would have to survive a two-thousand-mile ordeal before they got there. It would be harder than she could ever imagine....And it was going to be war. War against the elements, against hostile natives, and against the will of the land itself. A war to be fought every minute of every day, against herself and her fears.

Railroad Schemes by Cecelia Holland - Lily Viner's father was a hard man, a claim-jumper and petty highwayman working out of Virginia City, Nevada Territory, but he was all the family she had. So when a stagecoach robbery goes bad, and he is killed in the shootout, she is left completely alone. But it is Lily's good fortune that the robbery was planned by the strange Irish outlaw known as King Callahan, who sees in her the sister he left behind and who refuses to leave her to the mercy of the citizens of Virginia City. King Callahan is a criminal, but he's a man with a mission as well. He hates the railroads, he hates the men who build them, and he believes that if the Southern Pacific succeeds in building a line across the desert into Los Angeles, it will be the end of the gracious Spanish colonial city that he has made his home. He intends to do everything in his power to stop the railroad.

Women of the Gold Rush by Frances Fuller Victor - The reintroduction of a forgotten classic, essential for drawing a complete picture of the West and its true pioneers. Fiction of the western frontier has long been seen as a man's realm, dominated by such names as Bret Harte, Zane Gray, and Mark Twain. Yet women authors were also writing popular and eloquent prose, providing an alternate -- and illuminating -- view of life in gold rush California. Collected in "Women of the Gold Rush" are the stories of Frances Fuller Victor, a popular and highly praised writer in her day. With exceptional insight, Victor depicts the lives and experiences of pioneer women who -- sweeping stereotypes aside -- are strong, intelligent, often angry, and always capable. Women who followed their husbands' whims to the West Coast, traveling by covered wagon or ship, women who became young widows on the trail or who found the isolation of the remote mining cabin unendurable, women who learned to survive in a new and changing society -- all are painted in images as fresh and relevant today as they were then. "Women of the Gold Rush" is the outstanding continuation in our series of reprints of worthy and talented women writers of the west, which includes No Rooms of Their Own: Women Writers of Early California, 1849-1869 and The Shirley Letters: From the California Mines, 1850-1952.

Gold Rush Prodigal by Brock Thoene - David Bollin seizes the promise of a glamorous future only to lose it all in the California gold fields. Saga of the Sierras.

[Slavery]

All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell - As has been the case throughout much of its history, Haiti in the 1790s was racked by violence--the result of an intricate and sometimes brutal system of racial and social classification exacerbated by the upheavals of the French Revolution. Thus, Haiti provides an ideal setting for Bell to explore his interest in the motivations that all too often propel us to give vent to our baser instincts. The story centers on the bloody beginnings of the rebellion from which Toussaint L'Ouverture, a seemingly docile slave, eventually emerged as the self-proclaimed governor general of the island. Bell has crafted a somewhat complex and violent tale--it opens with a woman being crucified for killing her baby so he would not have to live the life of a slave. Not for the faint-hearted, this work offers a fascinating glimpse into a little-known episode of hemispheric history.

The Middle Passage by Charles Richard Johnson - This out-of-the-ordinary adventure yarn describes the harrowing experiences of one Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave who wanders to New Orleans from rural Illinois in 1830. He becomes entangled with Isadora, a prim, devout schoolmarm with her eyes set on marriage. To escape this fate, Calhoun ships out on a leaky vessel that turns out to be an illegal slave ship under the direction of deformed, perverted Captain Falcon. The horrors of the voyage are chronicled in grotesque detail in Calhoun's journal, and his outlook on life undergoes a radical alteration as a result of the trip.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines - Fictional biography of a Black slave, who lived for 100 years after the Civil War.

The Known World by Edward P. Jones - Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor - William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation - as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow, Caldonia, succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart at their plantation: slaves take to escaping under the cover of night, and families who had once found love beneath the weight of slavery begin to betray one another. Beyond the Townsend estate, the known world also unravels: low-paid white patrollers stand watch as slave "speculators" sell free black people into slavery, and rumors of slave rebellions set white families against slaves who have served them for years.

Property by Valerie Martin - From the acclaimed author of "Mary Reilly" comes a groundbreaking novel set in the antebellum South during a slave rebellion, told by Manon Gaudet, a female slave owner who speaks about her past, her present, and her longings in an uncensored, pitch-perfect voice from the heart of moral darkness.

Beloved by Toni Morrison - Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the decade. Tells the story of an escaped slave haunted by the memory of her murdered daughter.

Amistad by David Pesci - In August 1839, Singbe-Pleh, a Mende tribesman, led his fellow African captives aboard the Spanish ship Amistad in a successful revolt. The Africans took over the ship but could not sail it back to Africa. They were captured and put on trial in Connecticut, initiating a chain of events that strained diplomatic relationships between the United States and Spain and intensified the bitter debate over the issue of slavery. The case was politically charged, with pro-slavery President Van Buren's administration wanting to give the Africans to Spain, abolitionists rallying for their freedom, and former President John Quincy Adams eventually defending them before the Supreme Court.

Tell Me a Tale by James McEachin - Years after the Civil War, Moses, a 17-year-old former slave, journeys back to the isolated North Carolina town where he had been born to arrogant white plantation owner Archie McBride and his young slave mistress. Posing as a pro-slavery journalist, Moses enters a general store where he buttonholes four old codgers who pine for "the good old days of servitude.'' Though these unreconstructed racists don't recognize their visitor, they once had committed arson and murder that had shattered the young man's childhood. As Moses indirectly confronts them with tales of the buried past (tales in which he is the unnamed protagonist), a powerful drama of one man's search for identity, justice and vengeance unfolds.

Where I'm Bound by Allen Ballard - Inspired by the true story of a black cavalry regiment in Mississippi this dramatic debut novel tells the adventures of an escaped slave who becomes a hero in the Northern Army and of his efforts to find and free his family during the last days of the Civil War.

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - One of the bestselling books of all time, the heart-wrenching story of Eliza Harris and Uncle Tom, published in 1852, exposed the horrors of slavery and helped bring about the Civil War.

Jacob's Ladder by Donald McCaig - Duncan Gatewood, seventeen and heir to Gatewood Plantation, falls in love with Maggie, a mulatto slave, who conceives a son, Jacob. Maggie and Jacob are sold south, and Duncan is packed off by his irate father to the Virginia Military Institute. Another Gatewood slave, Jesse - whose love for Maggie is unrequited - escapes to find her and is sheltered by a young white couple who are sentenced to prison for this crime. Jesse finds his freedom and enlists in Mr. Lincoln's army; in time he will confront his former masters.

[Civil War 1861-1865]

The March by E.L. Doctorow - In the last years of the Civil War, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman marched 60,000 Union troops through Georgia and the Carolinas, cutting a 60-mile wide swath of pillage and destruction. That event comes back in this magisterial novel.

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier - Based on local history and family stories passed down by the author's great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded soldier Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war and back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. Inman's odyssey through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada's struggle to revive her father's farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman and Ada confront the vastly transformed world they've been delivered.

Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks - A triumph of the imagination and a masterpiece of modern storytelling, Cloudsplitter is narrated by the enigmatic Owen Brown, last surviving son of America's most famous and still controversial political terrorist and martyr, John Brown. Deeply researched, brilliantlyplotted, and peopled with a cast of unforgettable characters both historical and wholly invented, Cloudsplitter is dazzling in its re-creation of the political and social landscape of our history during the years before the Civil War, when slavery was tearing the country apart.But within this broader scope, Russell Banks has given us a riveting, suspenseful, heartbreaking narrative filled with intimate scenes of domestic life, of violence and action in battle, of romance and familial life and death that make the reader feel in astonishing ways what it is like to be alive in that time.

The Year of Jubilo by Howard Bahr - Written with scrupulous respect for historical accuracy, "The Year of Jubilo" is the story of Civil War soldier Gawain Harper, who returns to his home in Cumberland, Mississippi, only to find that a showdown awaits him that once again pits South against North, and dignity against defeat.

Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane - Henry Fleming had no idea how horrible war really was. Attacks come from all sides, bullets fly, bombs crash. Men everywhere are wounded, bleeding, and dying. Now, Henry's fighting for his life and he's scared. He must make a decision, perhaps the most difficult decision he will ever make in his life: save himself-run from the enemy and desert his friends-or fight, be brave, and risk his life. If he stays to fight, he may die with his regiment. If he runs, he'll have to live with knowing he was a coward. Can Henry find the strength within himself to earn his red badge of courage?

Play for a Kingdom by Thomas Dyja - As this first novel opens, the 20 remaining men of Company L, 14th Brooklyn regiment, have only 18 days remaining in their three-year enlistments. As they are pulling out, they discover a field, unscathed by war, on which they begin to play baseball. Suddenly, a group of Confederate soldiers emerges from the surrounding woods, holding rifles but declaring a truce. And so the Union and Confederate soldiers who have met before and who will meet again on Civil War battlefields begin a series of baseball games. Dyja effectively juxtaposes the horror and chaos of war with the familiar routine of the game. He explores the theme of war and games as natural activities of man, as battles of pride and place, and as testing grounds of moral and physical honor.

Talons of Eagles by William Johnstone - Raised by the Shawnee, Jamie MacCallister fought his way to manhood from the Alamo to Colorado to the gold of California. Now, the U.S. is divided--North versus South. With his own sons fighting on opposite sides, Jamie leads his Confederate marauders into battle. But when the guns of war fall silent, he must face another enemy who has vowed to bring him death.

Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor - Acclaimed as the greatest novel ever written about the War Between the States, this searing Pulitzer Prize-winning book captures all the glory and shame of America's most tragic conflict in the vivid, crowded world of Andersonville, and the people who lived outside its barricades. Based on the author's extensive research and nearly twenty-five years in the making, MacKinlay Kantor's bestselling masterwork tells the heartbreaking story of the notorious Georgia prison where 50,000 Northern soldiers suffered - and 14,000 died - and of the people whose lives were changed by the grim camp where the best and the worst of the Civil War came together. Here is the savagery of the camp commandant, the deep compassion of a nearby planter and his gentle daughter, the merging of valor and viciousness within the stockade itself, and the day-to-day fight for survival among the cowards, cutthroats, innocents, and idealists thrown together by the brutal struggle between North and South. A moving portrait of the bravery of people faced with hopeless tragedy, this is the inspiring American classic of an unforgettable period in American history.

The Shiloh Sisters by Michael Kilian - On the eve of the bloody battle of Shiloh, the beautiful wife of an important federal congressman turns up at General Ulysses Grant's headquarters. She demands a pass through the lines to visit her twin sister in Confederate-held Corinth, Mississippi, who she says is in grave danger. Not wanting to displease the wife of such a powerful politician, Grant reluctantly relents. But he comes to regret it when, after the battle, the sisters are found murdered in a clearing in the woods - both shot in the heart, embalmed, and placed in the same coffin. Perplexed, Grant calls upon U.S. Secret Service agent Harrison Raines, a southerner working for the Union army, to go into Corinth to find out what happened to these poor women and why.

At the Edge of Honor by Robert N. Macomber - The year is 1863. The Civil War is leaving its bloody trail across the nation as Peter Wake, born and bred in the North, joins the U.S. Navy and arrives in Florida for duty with the East Gulf Blockading Squadron. Assigned to the Rosalie, a tiny, armed sloop, Captain Wake commands a group of seasoned seamen on a series of voyages to seek and arrest Confederate blockade-runners and sympathizers, first in Florida's coastal waters, then in a dirty and corrupt Havana, and finally near the remote out-islands of the Bahamas. Wake learns he must make the ugly decisions of war even in a beautiful, tropical paradise--decisions that take him up to the edge of honor.

Chickahominy Fever by Ann McMillan - In June 1862, Union forces have Richmond under siege. Brigadier General Henry Wise brings a letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis that details the weak spot in the city's defenses. The letter is thought to have been destroyed, but it is stolen - taken by a servant who has trained all her life for such a chance. Unaware of this new danger, the city carries on tending to the wounded from the battle of Seven Pines and the thousands of new casualties from the battles of the Seven Days. Confederate nurse Narcissa Powers is trying to help a woman locate the body of her soldier son, while free black herbalist Judah Daniel is searching for the mother of a black infant found abandoned at St. John's Church. In the chaos that has besieged Richmond, the fates of these two prove difficult to discover. As the stolen letter makes its way to the heart of Richmond's Unionist network, Narcissa and Judah Daniel find their individual quests converging in an underground, high-stakes political operation that could change the course of the war. The fates of both sides, Union and Confederate, rest on the letter. But lofty political goals are on a collision course with human hopes and fears. The bonds of family and friendship strain until they break apart in one night of violence, betrayal, and murder.

Chancellorsville by James M. Reasoner - “Fraught with passion, tension, and tenderness, this enthralling family saga will appeal to fans of epic, well-researched historical fiction.”—Booklist In this fourth volume of the ten-volume Civil War Battle Series, the action spans the area from Pennsylvania and Virginia to Georgia, Mississippi, and Illinois. The seven members of the Brannon clan of Culpeper County, Virginia, experience a wide range of the many hardships of war. Look for the other books in this Civil War Battle Series.

Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara - Here is Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, a hopelessly by-the-book military instructor and devout Christian. His fierce exterior hides a compassionate soul that few - students and soldiers alike - will ever see, and he becomes the greatest commander of the Civil War. We follow Winfield Scott Hancock, a Captain of Quartermasters who is assigned command of a brigade of infantry, quickly establishing himself as one of the finest leaders in the Union army. Then there is Joshua Chamberlain, who gives up his promising academic career to volunteer for service in the new army, only to become one of the most heroic soldiers in American history. And here too is a brilliant portrait of the complex, aristocratic Robert E. Lee, who is faced with the agonizing decision of resigning from a distinguished thirty-year army career in order to defend his home, never believing until too late that a civil war would ever truly come to pass. As the war gathers momentum, Stonewall Jackson wins his reputation by a series of stinging victories over ineptly led Union forces. Lee, finally given command of the Confederate forces, recognizes that this strange, devout, and dangerous man is his greatest weapon. For a time, it truly seems as if God is on their side and that Lee will lead his army to final victory against overwhelming odds. Nowhere is this plainer than at the Battle of Fredericksburg, where, for the first time, all four men meet on the same field and experience the exhilaration and raw horror of battle from four very different points of view. But it is in the next great fight, the Battle of Chancellorsville, that Lee's brilliant strategy, and Jackson's supreme achievement, are overshadowed when Jackson is mortally wounded by his own men. This loss is the true turning point of the war. Lee now realizes that against the ever growing numbers of Union forces, he can only win by a direct threat to Washington. So the battle-hardened armies of the Confederacy begin their fateful invasion of the North, toward an obscure crossroads in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg. Gods and Generals is the heartbreaking saga of the years preceding The Killer Angels, written by Jeff Shaara's father, Michael. Jeff Shaara then proceeded to write The Last Full Measure as a sequel to The Killer Angels.

Alice's Tulips by Sandra Dallas - The significance of a planting of yellow tulips in an Iowa garden becomes evident at the end of this beguiling novel of the Civil War home front. Immature, overconfident, congenial, and flirtatious, newly wed 18-year-old Alice is left with her stern, repressive mother-in-law on a small farmstead when her husband Charlie "goes for a soldier." The book is comprised of the letters Alice writes to her sister over a period of three years to relieve her frustrations and to offer advice on fashion, love, and society. Alice is an outstanding quilter and each chapter is prefaced with a paragraph of information on quilting details. The letters take readers through wartime difficulties of isolation, food shortages, cruel gossip, loss of reputation, and the complexities of a small, closed community. Through the occasional letter from Charlie as he enters into Army life on the Union side, readers see the rigors of camp life, horrors of battle, and imprisonment in the notorious Andersonville prison camp. Alice's growth, brought about by these circumstances, is natural and understandable, as is the slowly emerging bond of affection between the young woman and her formidable mother-in-law. This unfolding maturity of insights lends realism to the light concerns of fashion, sociability, and other trivialities that engage interest in the opening pages.

The Sands of Pride by William R. Trotter - Opening on New Year's Eve 1860, almost six months before North Carolina's grudging decision to secede from the Union on May 20, 1861, this sprawling account revolves around the bustling seaport of Wilmington, which serves as the lifeline of the Confederacy. The future North Carolina governor, Zebulon Vance; the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis; the architect of Fort Fisher, Col. William Lamb; Lafayette Baker, deputy director of the fledgling Secret Service; Gen. Robert E. Lee; Gen. Ambrose Burnside; and the naval commander William Barker Cushing are some of the real-life historic figures that are artfully integrated with an extensive dramatis personae of flamboyant and idiosyncratic fictional characters including Belle O'Neal, a sensuous rebel spy; Cyrus Bone, a Confederate deserter; and Largo Landau, the daughter of a Wilmington merchant who becomes a patron of the poor. This masterful epic offers insight into the perfidious political agendas and personal greed underlying the bumbling and horrors suffered by both sides during the war. Also look for The Fires of Pride.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Michell - A monumental classic considered by many to be not only the greatest love story ever written, but also the greatest Civil War saga.

Stonewall's Gold by Robert Mrazek - The discovery of a long-guarded secret sends young Jamie Lockhart on the adventure of his life. Ultimately, the limits of his courage and endurance are tested during the final desperate months of the Civil War.

The Wolf Pit by Marly Youmans - "The Wolf Pit" offers a gripping portrait of two young Virginians forever altered by violence and civil war: Robin, a Confederate soldier, enduring life at the Elmira prison camp, and Agate, the daughter of a hired-out slave, who struggles to survive loss and degradation and to pit knowledge and truth against evil.

Candle in the Darkness by Lynn Austin - The daughter of a wealthy slave-holding family, Caroline Fletcher is raised in a culture that believes slavery is God-ordained. But awakening to the cruelty it encompasses, Caroline's eyes are opened to the men and women who have cared tirelessly for her. Her journey of maturity and faith will draw her into the abolitionist movement, where she is confronted with the risks and sacrifices her beliefs entail.

On Secret Service by John Jakes - "The godfather of the historical novel" ("Los Angeles Times") transports readers to a divided America and the last great untold story of the Civil War. From the involvement of the Pinkertons to the creation of the Secret Service to Lincoln's assassination, Jakes focuses on four young people caught up in the chaos of war--a spy, a rebel, an actress and an officer--their lives swept away in a tumult of love, hatred, political intrigue, and constant danger.

The Blue and the Gray Undercover edited by Ed Gorman - When we read about the Civil War, the focus is almost always on the battles. But there was a secret war behind those battles, a war of military intelligence fought by people who spied for either the Union or the Confederacy. Many brave people risked their lives, their homes, even their families, to procure information that could help their side gain some advantage. Troop movements, armaments, casualty reports, and other information was constantly being sought by people working for the two opposing forces. Officers, wives, husbands, daughters, servants, friends, or lovers of the people in power -- anyone might be a spy, secretly working for the enemy. In the service of their country such people performed acts of tremendous heroism, great audacity, and, sometimes, foolhardy riskiness. It all adds up to a fascinating, riveting story of our national heritage.

Glorieta Pass by P.G. Nagle - As the Civil War tears its way across America, four lives are swept up and forever changed: an illiterate Colorado miner who captains a volunteer Union company; a young Texan who becomes a quartermaster in the Confederate Army; a Union lieutenant with a terrible secret; and a young Boston lady in the care of her uncle. Look also for The Guns of Valverde.

Freedom's Altar by Charles F. Price - Judge Madison Curtis has just pronounced the benediction over the grave of his eldest daughter when two grimy women riding double on a mule enter his driveway. "Have ye got misfortune, I wonder?" the elder one calls. "Iffen ye do, I rejoice in hit." The Curtises have misfortune indeed. The Civil War has left them a dead daughter, two dead sons, vengeful neighbors, and a once-grand home now broken down. Just as debilitating is Judge Curtis's guilt over his actions in wartime, when he sacrificed another family to save his own. The most immediate reminder of the judge's past sins is a man he once held in bondage, who has returned to the mountains of western North Carolina after serving with the Union army. In slavery, the Curtises knew him as Black Gamaliel, but he now insists on being known by his proper name Daniel McFee. They achieve an uneasy peace as Daniel proposes a sharecropping arrangement and begins a new life in freedom. But the judge perceives that the opportunity for true racial reconciliation after the war is being squandered. Militating against it is an anithero who would elevate the blacks by crushing the landed whites a demagogue by day and a killer by night. He is Nahum Bellamy the Pilot, and he means to hold Judge Curtis accountable even unto death.

In the Fall by Jeffrey Lent - Spanning three generations, from the end of the Civil War through Prohibition, the story begins with an interracial marriage between a Vermont soldier and a runaway slave girl. Nineteen-year-old Norman Pelham is wounded and dying in the woods of Virginia near the end of the war when 16-year-old Leah finds and saves him. She has fled Sweetboro, N.C., after killing her owner's son--her own half brother--when he tried to rape her. Norman and Leah know better than to allow their initial attraction to flower into love, but they cannot ignore their passion, and they marry on the road to Vermont. In brisk, confident detail, Lent recreates many historical scenes--soldiers returning wearily home, cider-pressing time in Vermont, the ins and outs of bootlegging and whiskey-running in the resort mountains of New Hampshire in the '20s. The male characters--Norman, his son and youngest child, Jamie, and Jamie's son, Foster--provide the narrative thread for the novel; but it is Leah whose story thematically unites the lives of husband, son, and grandson. Twenty-five years after her flight, Leah finds that she cannot continue to put the past behind her and must go back to Sweetboro. What she discovers there, and never reveals to her husband or to either of her grown daughters, is a mystery until her grandson Foster finally makes his own trip south.

To Make Men Free by Richard Croker - It was fought on September 17, 1862, at Sharpsburg, Maryland, and in just twelve hours over 22,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded, making the Battle of Antietam the bloodiest day in American history. From Abraham Lincoln's White House to battles outside Dunker Church, To Make Men Free brings to life this legendary battle and the events surrounding it. Abraham and Mary Lincoln grieve over the loss of their son while Robert E. Lee mourns the death of his daughter. And General Lee must be a commander when his youngest son pleads not to be sent "back in there." Croker paints flesh-and-blood portraits of such larger-than-life figures as George McClellan, John Pope, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, and A. P. Hill. Hill is seen nearly entering into a duel with Stonewall Jackson, and he also has something to prove to his old West Point roommate, the Union commander George McClellan -- who married Hill's first true love. Much of the battle is seen through the eyes of Stonewall Jackson's fun-loving young adjutant, Kyd Douglas, and a little-known reporter named George Smalley, who dabbled briefly in mutiny and in the service of Horace Greeley, scooping the other reporters covering the story.With verve and insight, Croker offers an indelible picture of this single day that dashed Southern hopes for a quick victory, denied the Confederacy crucial support from European allies, afforded the North the first clear indication that its troops had the dogged persistence to win, and ultimately cleared the path for Lincoln's most enduring legacy -- the Emancipation Proclamation.

Angels Watching Over Me by Michael Phillips - Mary Ann "Mayme" Jukes is a young African-American slave girl living in Shenandoah County, in North Carolina, in the 1860s. When marauding outlaw Confederate soldiers kill her family, she escapes to Rosewood, another plantation owned by the white family of Kathleen "Katie" Clairborne. Here, Mayme finds more devastation; 15-year-old Katie is the only person left alive. The girls become friends and together vow to run the plantation and keep the adults' deaths a secret until Katie comes of legal age to own the debt-ridden property.

When this Cruel War is Over by Thomas Fleming - A landmark novel about the untold guerrilla war during America's Civil War. At a time when over half a million have already been killed, a war between Indiana and Kentucky breaks out, pulling families apart and igniting new passions.

Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker - Three Irish immigrant women become trapped together in New York City during the Draft Riots of the Civil War. "Paradise Alley" is a story of the intersection of the Irish- and African-American experiences in the crucible of 19th century New York--a story of race and hatred, love and war, of risk and dauntless courage.

Gettysburg by Newt Gingrich - The year is 1863, and General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia are poised to attack the North and claim the victory that would end the brutal conflict. Launching his men into a vast, sweeping operation, of which the town of Gettysburg is but one small part of the plan, General Lee, acting as he did at Chancellorville, Second Manassas, and Antietam, displays the audacity of old. He knows he has but one more good chance to gain ultimate victory, for after two years of war the relentless power of an industrialized North is wearing the South down. Lee's lieutenants and the men in the ranks, imbued with this renewed spirit of the offensive, embark on the Gettysburg Campaign that many dream "should have been." The soldiers in the line, Yank and Reb, knew as well that this would be the great challenge, the decisive moment that would decide whether a nation would die or be created, and both sides were ready, willing to lay down their lives for their Cause. An action-packed and painstakingly researched masterwork, Gettysburg stands as the first book in a trilogy to tell the story of how history could have unfolded, how a victory for Lee would have changed the destiny of the nation forever.

My Dearest Cecelia: a novel of the southern belle who stole General Sherman's heart by Diane Haeger - From the author of "The Secret Wife of King George IV" comes a fabulous Civil War tale based on the lives of the infamous General Sherman and the woman he loved.

The Glory Cloak by Patricia O'Brien - In a gripping tale of love, loss, liberation and the endurance of women's friendships, heroine Susan Gray opens a window to the lives of women who served as nurses during the Civil War.

[World War I 1914-1918]

To the Last Man by Jeff Shaara - A sweeping, emotional story of the war that devastated a generation, and established America as a world power. Historically accurate to the last detail, the novel opens up the lives and experiences not only of the commanders, but the men who carried the fight to their enemy, from "BlackJack" Pershing to the flying aces to the American Marines and Doughboys who manned the front lines.

The Two-Headed Eagle by John Biggins - The Two-Headed Eagle is the breakout book in Biggins's series: a story of five months of hair-raising adventure on the Italian front in which young Otto Prohaska, the hero of A Sailor of Austria and The Emperor's Coloured Coat, entrusts his life to the nascent, unreliable, and terrifying Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Flying Service. It is the summer of 1916, and Otto, joined by his self-willed aerial chauffeur Sergeant-Pilot Toth, entrusts his life to a succession of flimsy biplanes in the sky above war-torn Alpine battlefields. On the ground, the rickety Habsburg empire has begun its final slide to disaster. And in the air is the unmistakable sense that history, poignant and ironic and always surprising, is erupting all around them.

The Fox's Walk by Annabel Davis-Goff - Alice Moore is eight years old in 1915 when her parents leave her with her autocratic grandmother at Ballydavid, a beautiful old house in the south of Ireland. Often lonely and homesick, living in a rigid, old-fashioned household where more is said than is spoken, Alice is forced to piece together her world from overheard conversations, servants' gossip, and her own quiet observations. Alice comes to love Ireland and to consider Ballydavid her home. She also comes to understand that her family's privilege is maintained at a cost to others and is based on prejudice, exclusion, and injustice to those outside the small closed circle of the Anglo-Irish. Outside the circle, but important in Alice's life are a psychic countess down on her luck, a Catholic boy whom Alice hero-worships, an admired governess, as well as many of their neighbors. In the background always is the Great War. The sons of some of the local farm laborers serve in the English Army, but others, Irish Nationalists, are edging toward revolution. Sir Roger Casement, a revolutionary whose antecedents are not so different from Alice's, is actively working for the cause of Irish independence. In the aftermath of the rising, Casement is convicted of treason and hanged. Horrified by the lengths to which the English government will go to regain control over Ireland and divided in her loyalties and affections, Alice must finally choose between her heritage of privilege, her growing moral and political conscience, and the demands of the future.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks - In 1910, England's Stephen Wraysford, a junior executive in a textile firm, is sent by his company to northern France. There he falls for Isabelle Azaire, a young and beautiful matron who abandons her abusive husband and sticks by Stephen long enough to conceive a child. Six years later, Stephen is back in France, as a British officer fighting in the trenches. Facing death, embittered by isolation, he steels himself against thoughts of love. But despite rampant disease, harrowing tunnel explosions and desperate attacks on highly fortified German positions, he manages to survive, and to meet with Isabelle again. The emotions roiled up by this meeting, however, threaten to ruin him as a soldier.

Sixty Minutes for St. George by Alexander Fullerton - Young Nick Everard leads the raid on Zeebrugge, termed by Churchill "the finest feat of arms of the Great War." Nick Everard is Executive Officer of the destroyer "Mackerel", which has spent the winter months of 1917-18 endlessly patrolling the Straits of Dover to prevent German ships from reaching the Atlantic. Despite his lack of respect for his captain, Everard achieves successes in action. Then he is summoned for top-secret special duty: to command a raid to capture a German trawler's crew and bring them back to Dover. The raid is prefatory to the St. George's Day operation in which, in the space of an hour, the German naval fortifications at Zeebrugge are destroyed. And Everard, at the age of twenty-two, is rewarded with his first destroyer command.

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway - By turns romantic and harshly realistic, Hemingway's story of a tragic romance set against the brutality and confusion of World War I cemented his fame as a stylist and as a writer of extraordinary literary power. A volunteer ambulance driver and a beautiful English nurse fall in love when he is wounded on the Italian front.

Deafening by Frances Itani - At the age of five, Grania - the daughter of hardworking Irish hoteliers in smalltown Ontario - emerges from a bout of scarlet fever profoundly deaf and is suddenly sealed off from the world that was just beginning to open for her. Her guilt-plagued mother cannot accept her daughter's deafness. Grania's saving grace is her grandmother Mamo, who tries to teach Grania to read and speak again. Grania's older sister, Tress, is a beloved ally as well - obliging when Grania begs her to shout words into her ear canals and forging a rope to keep the sisters connected from their separate beds at night when Grania fears the terrible vulnerability that darkness brings. When it becomes clear that she can no longer thrive in the world of the hearing, her family sends her to live at the Ontario School for the Deaf in Belleville, where, protected from the often-unforgiving hearing world outside, she learns sign language and speech. After graduation Grania stays on to work at the school, and it is there that she meets Jim Lloyd, a hearing man. In wonderment the two begin to create a new emotional vocabulary that encompasses both sound and silence. But just two weeks after their wedding, Jim must leave home to serve as a stretcher bearer on the blood-soaked battlefields of Flanders. During this long war of attrition, Jim and Grania's letters back and forth - both real and imagined -attempt to sustain their young love in a world as brutal as it is beautiful.

Fast Eddie by Robert O'Connell - An engagingly offbeat debut novel by an iconoclastic military historian (Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons and Aggression), this is an often irreverent, even ribald, fictional biography of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, the quixotic WWI flying ace and Medal of Honor winner. O'Connell inventively spins off anecdotes and opinions from the real and fictional friends, lovers, passing acquaintances and enemies who encountered the hard-headed, unflappable hero along his 82 adventurous years; not the least of these observations are frequent sarcastic asides from God. Born in 1890, one of seven siblings left penniless when his mother is widowed, Fast Eddie quits school before his 14th birthday and goes to work in a Columbus, Ohio, glass factory. Moving from one job to another, in 1906 he joins a local auto manufacturer and is quickly racing cars. Before turning 21, he's participated in his first Indy 500, and within a few years, Rickenbacker becomes, arguably, the top race driver in the U.S. When he blusters his way to France in 1917 as General Pershing's driver, he has never flown an "aeroplane," but he runs roughshod over all opposition and wangles flight training from the French, thus beginning his legendary career as a celebrated WWI flying ace. Rickenbacker amasses an incredible 26 victories during the six months before the Armistice. Back home, he naively lends his name to a new motor car company, unaware that the undertaking is a front for a clever stock scam.

Across Open Ground by Heather Parkinson - Set on the brink of World War I, "Across Open Ground" finds 17-year-old Walter Pascoe herding sheep and falling in love with a beautiful trapper named Trina Ivy. When Walter is drafted, he is bound by duty to leave the land and his lover to serve his country.

No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry - On a sunny afternoon in late June, Cambridge professor Joseph Reavley is summoned from a student cricket match to learn that his parents have died in an automobile crash. Joseph's brother, Matthew, as officer in the Intelligence Service, reveals that their father had been en route to London to turn over to him a mysterious secret document - allegedly with the power to disgrace England forever and destroy the civilized world. A paper so damning that Joseph and Matthew dared mention it only to their restless younger sister. Now it has vanished. What has happened to this explosive document, if indeed it ever existed? How had it fallen into the hands of their father, a quiet countryman? Not even Matthew, with his Intelligence connections, can answer these questions. And Joseph is soon burdened with a second tragedy: the shocking murder of his most gifted student, handsome Sebastian Allard, loved and admired by everyone. Or so it appeared. Meanwhile, England's seamless peace is cracking - as the distance between the murder of an Austrian archduke by a Serbian anarchist and the death of a brilliant university student by a bullet to the head becomes shorter with each day.

The Golden Cup by Belva Plain - A woman of hidden desires, Hennie De Rivera has none of the wealth enjoyed by her relatives, the Werner banking dynasty. But tall, shy Hennie has grand dreams, especially of daring activist Dan Roth, who invites controversy by fighting for New York's poorest immigrants. Breaking society's rules may have devastating consequences for this passionate woman -- and for her nephew Paul Werner, who weds his debutante fiancee while still yearning for his mother's beautiful maid, Anna Friedman. And amid heartbreaking discoveries and the gathering clouds of World War I, the stirring family saga begun in Evergreen continues with an unforgettable tale of forbidden passions, intimate secrets, and sweeping social change...

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque - The timeless classic of World War I Germany that speaks to generation after generation.

A Test of Wills by Charles Todd - In 1914, Ian Rutledge left a brilliant career at Scotland Yard to fight in the Great War. Now, in 1919, he is back, burdened with a heavy secret: he is still suffering from shell shock. With him almost constantly is the cynical, taunting voice of the young Scots soldier he was forced to have executed on the battlefield for refusing to fight. In a desperate gamble to salvage his sanity, Rutledge takes up his duties at Scotland Yard. But a colleague, jealous of Rutledge's prewar successes, has learned his secret and maneuvers to have him assigned to a case that promises to spell disaster no matter what the outcome. In a Warwickshire village, a popular retired military officer has been murdered, and the chief suspect is, unhappily for the Inspector, a much-decorated war hero and a friend of the Prince of Wales. Rutledge, fighting his malady and the tormentor in his head (who is the personification of his own doubts and guilt), doggedly goes about his investigation. He digs into the lives of the villagers: the victim's ward, a young woman now engaged to the chief suspect; a local artist shunned because of her love for a German prisoner; the reclusive cousins whose cottage adjoins the dead man's estate. But the witness who might be able to tell him the most is a war-ravaged ex-soldier who chills Rutledge with the realization that if he loses control of himself, he could become this man. Also look for Wings of Fire.

The Great War: American Front by Harry Turtledove - In How Few Remain, Harry Turtledove set the stage for his alternate history of World War I. Now, with The Great War: American Front, he carries this epic into the early twentieth century in a re-imagining of the fateful war that hurtled humanity into the modern age. Envision a divided America - one camp led by Theodore Roosevelt, the other by Woodrow Wilson - in the most explosive conflict humankind has seen, where global war is waged with sophisticated weaponry on American soil for the first time in history. When the Great War engulfed Europe in 1914, the United States and the Confederate States of America, bitter enemies for five decades, entered the fray on opposite sides: the United States aligned with the newly strong Germany, while the Confederacy joined forces with their allies, Britain and France. But it soon became clear to both sides that this fight would be different - that war itself would never be the same again. As President Theodore Roosevelt rallied the diverse ethnic groups of the northern states - Irish and Italians, Mormons and Jews - Confederate President Woodrow Wilson struggled to hold together a nation still beset by ignorance, prejudice, and class divisions. And as the war raged on, southern blacks, oppressed for generations, found themselves fatefully drawn toward a climactic confrontation. Look for his other books in the Great War series.

A Son at the Front by Edith Warton - Largely criticized or ignored by a war-weary public when it was originally published in 1922, A Son at the Front is an extraordinarily poignant novel chronicling the effects of WWI on painter John Campton and his only child, George. Because his American parents were visiting France at the time of his birth, George is called to duty in the French army. Campton, his ex-wife, Julia Brant, and her husband, wealthy banker Anderson Brant, immediately butt heads over how to keep George safely at a desk job. Fate intervenes in the person of George himself, who transfers to an infantry regiment-to the horror of Julia and the secret admiration of Brant and Campton. As the war rages on, Campton learns not only the value of his son, but empathy and sensitivity.

The Sable Doughboys by Tom Willard - In The Sable Doughboys, the second edition of the Black Sabre Chronicles, Willard continues that captivating story as he takes us back to World War I and the sons of Sergeant Major Augustus Sharps, the great "buffalo soldier" of the Western Indian wars. Continuing their father's valiant fighting tradition, the two young men withstand vicious racial attacks in order to endure the first Negro officer-training program. Once officers of the 93rd Division in 1917-18, however, Adrian and David Sharps face war on two fronts: They are subjected to racial hatred and violence on the home front as they prepare to face death in the horrors of trench warfare in the battle of the Meuse-Agronne on the Western Front of France. The Sable Doughboys is an engrossing story of uncommon courage and fortitude-unheralded hallmarks of the African-American soldier in America's wars.

Somewhere in France by John Rolfe Gardiner - As World War I rages, letters home from Major William Lloyd describe his life as a doctor behind the front lines in France.

Islands of Silence by Martin Booth - Booth offers a dreamy allegory of lost innocence in this novel about a young British archeologist who loses a chance at love when he's forced to serve in WWI. Alec Marquand is an old man, lying dying in a hospital; he barely moves and has not spoken a word in years, but his vivid memories are full of passion, intrigue and confrontation. He begins his career mapping Stone Age "brochs" on a remote Scottish island. There, he encounters a beautiful, otherworldly young woman, part mystical vision, part flesh and blood. Marquand is entranced by her innocence-she seems oddly brazen and unashamed of her nakedness. Though she doesn't speak and he knows nothing about her, they develop a sort of rapport, and she allows him to sketch her. Their unorthodox relationship is interrupted by his stepfather, a former colonel, who offers the young man a commission as the war with Germany approaches. Marquand refuses the commission, and the colonel has him imprisoned for refusing to serve. After doing time, Marquand endures a grueling tour of duty as a military medic. When he returns to the island, he catches only one more glimpse of the woman before she vanishes forever. Booth is a skilled storyteller, especially in the early chapters, when he brings Marquand's ghostly would-be lover to life. Marquand's effort to warm himself decades later with the memory of the unconsummated affair while trying to forget the horrors of war is moving as well.

The Last Day of the War by Judith Claire Mitchelle - This exciting debut novel is the love story of a Jewish girl and an Armenian-American soldier who together enter a maze of underground politics at the conclusion of the First World War.Yael Weiss, an eighteen-year-old from St. Louis, reinvents herself as the twenty-five-year-old Methodist Yale White when she travels to Paris with the YMCA to work in a soldiers' canteen. Dub Hagopian -- the doughboy she has a carried a torch for all the way across the Atlantic -- is at once the patriotic child of immigrants from Rhode Island and, covertly, a member of Erinyes, an organization dedicated to avenging the Armenian massacres of 1915. In her jaunty, engaging style, Mitchell captures the atmosphere of political carnival surrounding the Paris Peace Conference, where Yale, Dub, and their crowd gather, bursting with both the passionate ideals and the devil-may-care energy of youth. When they decamp to a chateau outside Paris, where Erinyes is hatching a radical plan and Armenian war orphans are billeted, Yale and Dub will face the largest decisions of their young lives. A beautiful love story, The Last Day of the War is also a tragicomic farce about the workings of history and a testament to the moral fortitude of men and women swept up in the tide of their extraordinary times.

[World War II 1939-1945]

Truth of the Matter by Robb Dew - As World War II sweeps the children of the prominent Schofield family of Washburn, Ohio, into adulthood, their mother, Agnes, discovers that she is a tourist in her own life. Widowed years before by her husband Warren's mysterious death in an icy morning car crash, Agnes no longer knows how to define herself. She is a wife with no husband, and a mother whose children no longer need her. But the war is ending, and the dispersed members of the clan make their way home: the beautiful Betts, the long-inseparable Dwight and Claytor, and Agnes's youngest child, Howard. Now grown up, they have all returned full of their own lives. Agnes's unspoken feelings of devotion as well as resentment - toward her children, toward her dead husband - create a palpable tension as she struggles to find the truth among the competing histories. Accustoming herself once more to her children's presence proves to be a less easy task than Agnes anticipated. In an era when few women exercise their autonomy, Agnes herself and her children and the friends who have known her all her life are startled to realize that she has become a woman of determined, perhaps selfish, independence. Even in her secret affair with Will Dameron, a man she might once have loved, Agnes discovers it is her self-reliance that she values most.

The Siege by Helen Dunmore - The Siege is Helen Dunmore's masterpiece. Her canvas is monumental -- the Nazis' 1941 winter siege on Leningrad that killed six hundred thousand -- but her focus is heartrendingly intimate. One family, the Levins, fights to stay alive in their small apartment, held together by the unlikely courage and resourcefulness of twenty-two-year-old Anna. Though she dreams of an artist's life, she must instead forage for food in the ever more desperate city and watch her little brother grow cruelly thin. Their father, a blacklisted writer who once advocated a robust life of the mind, withers in spirit and body. At such brutal times everything is tested. And yet Dunmore's inspiring story shows that even then, the triumph of the human heart is that love need not fall away. Amid the turmoil of the siege, the unimaginable happens -- two people enter the Levins' frozen home and bring a kind of romance where before there was only bare survival. A sensitive young doctor becomes Anna's devoted partner, and her father is allowed a transcendent final episode with a mysterious woman from his past.

Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald - This time her setting is 1940 at BBC headquarters in London, where the beleaguered Department of Recorded Programmes attempts to get news and music on the air amid German bombing attacks and internal chaos. War has transformed the BBC's famed London concert hall into a dorm, Red Cross training interrupts programming schedules, mix-ups are rife, and tempers are short. Particularly stressed are the teenage Junior Temporary Assistants, responsible for more than 5000 recordings weekly and struggling with personal problems inflamed by the war. Their should-be mentors, two self-absorbed departmental directors, are preoccupied with their own eccentricities and can scarcely deal with office glitches, much less the tragicomic complications arising when Annie, an intern of 16, falls in love with one of them.

Blood of Victory by Alan Furst - From "the greatest living writer of espionage fiction" comes the story of I.A. Serebin, recruited in Istanbul in 1940 by an agent of the British secret service for a desperate operation to block Hitler's conquest of Europe.

When the Elephants Dance by Tess Uriza Holthe - Inspired, in part, by the experiences of her father, who was a boy in the Philippines during World War II, this debut novel begins during the final week of the Japanese-American battle for the islands. As they hide in a cellar from the Japanese, several Filipino civilians tell magical tales to help pass the time, fuel their courage, and teach important lessons of hope.

The End of the War by David L. Robbins - From the author of the smash bestseller War of the Rats comes a riveting novel about the final stage of WWII: the race to Berlin. In the waning months of the war in Europe, the alliance between Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt trembles with the burdens of war, politics, and personality -- an alliance that will ultimately determine who will rule the latter half of the twentieth century.

The Pilots by James Spencer - James Spencer flew B-24 bombers over New Guinea, Borneo, and the Philippines in 1944 and 1945, and it was only decades later that he began to write about it, combining the literal truth as he remembered it with imagination based on all that he'd seen and heard. The extraordinary result is The Pilots, a novel-in-stories about a group of young men, their comrades and girl-friends, as they evolve in often unpredictable ways: Blake Hurlingame and Steve Larkin, boyhood friends who take different paths into fighters and bombers; Doc, the flight surgeon, battling combat fatigue; Courtenay, the captain whose arrogant bluster masks hidden demons; and Addie, the woman who will leave her mark on them all. These are stories alive with the senses, filled with the smell of hot oil and burnt rubber; the sight of green jungle and backlit clouds like vast sculptured monuments; the feeling of a plane warming up, trembling like a bird eager to be in flight. Several excerpts have already appeared in magazines; now the entire work itself makes a wholly impressive debut.

The Face of a Hero by Louis Falstein - A rediscovered novel of World War II air combat that predates "Catch-22" by a decade. Amidst gallows humor, Falstein presents powerful scenes in which the hero/narrator visits a displaced persons camp and sees for himself the survivors of the Holocaust.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink - After falling ill on the street in the German town where he lives, 15-year-old Michael is helped by a woman named Hanna. When he returns to her apartment to thank her several months later, he begins a passionate love affair with her. In time, she demands that he read aloud to her before they make love, and they essay some of Germany's and the world's great literature together. One day, however, Hanna disappears without saying farewell, and Michael grieves and believes it to be his fault. He finds her again years later when, as a law student, he encounters her as the defendant in a court case.

Hornet Flight by Ken Follett - It is June 1941 and the war is not going well for England. Somehow, the Germans are anticipating the RAFUs flight paths, and shooting down British bombers with impunity. Filled with knife-edge suspense and rich, tantalizing characters, this is Follett writing at the top of his form--unforgettable storytelling from an unforgettable writer.

Jackdaws by Ken Follett - It is days before the Allied invasion of Normandy, and the all-woman operation "Jackdaws" is set to infiltrate Europe's largest telephone exchange and sabotage German communications. Felicity "Flick" Clariet, one of the few British female operatives working in France, heads the team, but her confidence has taken a beating: the previous operation that she directed was a disastrous failure, and her philandering husband has gone missing. Flick's nemesis, the ruthless and sadistic Nazi officer Dieter Franck, occasionally regrets the terrible things he does, but it doesn't stop him from pressing on. Nor does our heroine regret executing traitors, all the while falling in love with American Paul Chancellor.

The Last Heroes by W.E.B Griffin - In mid-1941, fun-loving Richard Canidy and straight-arrow Edwin Bitter are hotshot pilot instructors at the Navy's air station in Pensacola. With minimal prompting, they soon volunteer to serve with the so-called Flying Tigers. Before heading off (on a slow boat) to China, however, these two well-connected friends find time to join the social whirl in Washington, where crafty FDR has detailed Wild Bill Donovan to create an Office of Strategic Services. Shortly after arriving in Southeast Asia, Dick becomes an ace, downing five Japanese planes in a single sortie. The very same day, he's whisked away on orders from the White House. Meantime, the US (now at war against the Axis powers) plans to build an atomic bomb but lacks a secure source of uraninite. Which is where Dick comes in. His prep-school chum Eric Fulmar (the son of an American film actress and a German industrialist) is dodging the draft boards of both nations by hiding out in North Africa. Operating under cover from the US Embassy in Morocco, Dick is to enlist the aid of Fulmar in abducting a French mining engineer with badly needed information on a vital ore cache in the Belgian Congo. To make the mission more challenging, the amateur agents must carry out their assignment on a split-second schedule (to make an offshore rendezvous with a submarine) and get their man away without arousing the suspicions of either the Nazi or Vichy forces controlling the Maghreb coast. Check out the rest of the Men at War series by W.E.B. Griffin

Bad Company by Jack Higgins - In the waning days of World War II, Hitler gave his diary to a young aide for safekeeping. Now it's threatening to resurface, with explosive contents: the details of a meeting between emissaries of Hitler and Roosevelt to reach an armistice and turn their collective efforts against the Soviet Union. The American representative: someone very close to none other than the current president, Jake Cazalet. Powerful enemies of Cazalet will do anything to get their hands on that diary - and it is up to White House operative Blake Johnson and his colleague in British intelligence, Sean Dillon, to make sure they don't.

Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally - Schindler's List is a remarkable work of fiction based on the true story of German industrialist and war profiteer, Oskar Schindler, who, confronted with the horror of the extermination camps, gambled his life and fortune to rescue 1,300 Jews from the gas chambers. Working with the actual testimony of Schindler's Jews, Thomas Keneally artfully depicts the courage and shrewdness of an unlikely savior, a man who is a flawed mixture of hedonism and decency and who, in the presence of unutterable evil, transcends the limits of his own humanity.

Last Citadel by David L. Robbins - Spring 1943. In the west, Germany strengthens its choke hold on France. To the south an Allied invasion looms imminent. But the greatest threat to Hitler's dream of a Thousand Year Reich lies east, where his forces are pitted in a death match with a Russian enemy willing to pay any price to defend the motherland. Hitler rolls the dice, hurling his best SS forces and his fearsome new weapon, the Mark VI Tiger tank, in a last-ditch summer offensive, code-named Citadel. The Red Army around Kursk is a sprawling array of infantry, armor, fighter planes, and bombers. Among them is an intrepid group of women flying antiquated biplanes; they swoop over the Germans in the dark, earning their nickname, "Night Witches." On the ground, private Dimitri Berko gallops his tank, the Red Army's lithe little T-34, like a Cossack steed. In the turret above Dimitri rides his son, Valya, a Communist sergeant who issues his father orders while the war widens the gulf between them. In the skies, Dimitri's daughter, Katya, flies with the Night Witches, until she joins a ferocious band of partisans in the forests around Kursk. Like Russia itself, the Berko family is suffering the fury and devastation of history's most titanic tank battle while fighting to preserve what is sacred - their land, their lives, and each other - as Hitler flings against them his most potent armed force. Inexorable and devastating, a company of Mark VI Tiger tanks is commanded by one extraordinary SS officer, a Spaniard known as la Daga, the Dagger. He'd suffered a terrible wound at the hands of the Russians: now he has returned with a cold fury to exact his revenge. And above it all, one quiet man makes his own plan to bring Citadel crashing down and reshape the fate of the world.

Enigma by Robert Harris - There were two great top secret Allied endeavors during World War II: the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb in New Mexico, and the program at Bletchley Park, a rural town in Britain, where the finest mathematicians and cryptographers attempted to break the Nazis' unbreakable Enigma code. Winning the war depended on the success of both. In Enigma, Robert Harris, the best-selling author of Fatherland, transports us to March 1943 and the desperate race against time that was waged at Bletchley. His hero, Tom Jericho, has been called back, while recuperating from a nervous breakdown, to try to crack Enigma before German U-boats sink hundreds more American convoys bringing supplies and munitions to Europe. If he solves the puzzle, thousands of Allied troops will live. If not, Jericho and his peers face the responsibility for a massacre. When Jericho's ex-girlfriend turns up missing and is suspected of being a Nazi mole, British and U.S. intelligence take frightening steps to plug the possible leak. Everyone is a suspect, including Jericho, who must use his genius - and his heart - to clear both his and his lover's names.

Land Girls by Angela Huth - The year is 1941 and John and Faith Lawrence's farmhands have been called away to serve their country. Desperate for help, the Lawrences take advantage of England's new Land Army plan, which brings young women out of the house and into the fields. But the three "land girls" that John and Faith receive may be more trouble than they bargained for. Prue is a boy-hungry hairdresser from Manchester, abruptly transferred from the world of lipstick and rouge to a life of plowing, sweating, and manure shoveling. Agatha is a brainy Cambridge undergraduate who is eager to share her understanding of Homer (among other things) with Mr. Lawrence's oldest son. And Stella is a dreamy Surrey girl who finds herself devastated by her separation from her lover, Phillip, who is currently fighting in the English Navy. Three young women from different backgrounds find themselves thrown together, sharing an attic bedroom and developing friendships that will last a lifetime. Land Girls is the poignant, intelligent, and often heartbreaking account of their first summer together. With wit, charm, and emotion, Angela Huth has created a novel of delicate passions, richly observed.

After Dunkirk by Milena McGraw - What is the fate of a just man in a just war? At the onset of World War II, Wayne Luthie is the leader of an inexperienced British flight squadron. While his crew adapts to war from a safe distance, Luthie ponders the delights and puzzles of his childhood in India and falls in love with Nim, a WAAF. But soon the war escalates, with great consequence. Tranquil memories are tinged with remembered violence; riddles are revealed as insidious secrets.

The Unlikely Spy by Daniel Silva - This first novel comes from an unlikely source: a newspaper and TV journalist widely known as executive producer of CNN's Washington programs. Unlikely because this novel is the assured, magisterial work of a seasoned spy and suspense writer. There are no cheap gimmicks here, no deus ex machina, just a totally engrossing account of spying at its worst in a time of war at its worst. Based on prodigious research and filled with tellingly accurate detail, Silva's saga pits a beautiful German Mata Hari against a collegial Mr. Chips. Both are unknowingly caught in an intrigue to hoodwink the German forces.

[Pearl Harbor 1941]

December 6 by Martin Cruz Smith - In early December, 1941, Harry Niles runs his nightclub, Happy Paris, in Tokyo's Asakuza district, keeps a mistress, and makes plans to escape from Japan with the British ambassador's wife. His departure is complicated by the Japanese, who consider him a spy and arrest him several times; the British and Americans, who deny him any help; and a Japanese soldier who wants him dead. He manages to elude most of his problems, narrowly escaping only to discover that he is trapped in Japan on December 7.

Pearl harbor by Randall Wallace - This novelization of the film "Pearl Harbor", opening on May 25, 2001, starring Ben Affleck and Cuba Gooding, Jr., tells the story of Army pilots Rafe and his childhood friend, Danny. Rafe, in love with Navy nurse Evelyn, fights in England while Danny and Evelyn go to Pearl Harbor. Hearing Rafe is killed in combat, Danny and Evelyn comfort and fall in love with each other. Then Rafe returns.

[Korean War 1950-1953]

Under Fire by W.E.B. Griffin - This ninth of Griffin's "Corps" novels jumps from World War II to the opening weeks of the Korean War. As usual, the U.S. military and intelligence communities are dreadfully unprepared and uninformed. The wartime OSS has been disbanded, and the new CIA is still trying to find its way. Many characters from the previous "Corps" novels are reprised here, including Marine Capt. Ken McCoy, who suspects a north Korean attack but is forced out of the marines for making such wild assertions; the Pickerings, father and son; and a number of others who are recalled from the comforts of civilian life for a brand-new and totally unexpected war.

Retreat, Hell by W.E.B. Griffin - It is the fall of 1950. The Marines have made a pivotal breakthrough at Inchon, but a roller coaster awaits them. The bit in his teeth, Douglas MacArthur is intent on surging across the 38th parallel toward the Yalu River, where he is certain no Chinese are waiting for him, while Major Ken McCoy, operating undercover, hears a different story entirely, and is just as intent on nailing down the truth before it is too late. Meanwhile, Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, shuttling between two continents, works desperately to mediate the escalating battle between MacArthur and President Harry Truman, while trying to keep his mind from the cold fact that somewhere out there, his own daredevil son, Pick, is lost behind enemy lines - and may be lost forever.

Carley's Song by Patricia Sprinkle - In this exciting sequel to "The Remember Box", a young girl uncovers secrets in her town as she tries to understand grownups and love in a world swept into the confusion of the Korean War.

War Babies by Frederick Busch - Busch's novel "War Babies" is a short, powerful moral tale that sheds light upon the insidious nature of evil and the grip history holds on the lives of the seemingly protected innocent.

The Marines of Autumn by James Brady - The Korean War affected the lives of all Americans, yet little is known beyond "M*A*S*H". This new novel of the Chosin Reservoir Campaign is about Tom Verity, a man brought to Korea to monitor Chinese radio transmissions. Within hours, he is thrust into MacArthur's last daring foray and witnesses firsthand the horrors of war.

The Bridges at Toko Ri by James A. Michener - Young and innocent, they came to a place they had barely heard of, prepared for war. They were American fighter pilots, trained but frightened, facing an an enemy they couldn't understand, and waging a war they had to win....

Taps by Willie Morris - Called upon to play "Taps" at the funeral of a hometown boy killed early in the Korean War, 16-year-old Swayze Barksdale Swayze soon paces his life by these all-too-frequent funerals, where his horn sounds the tragic note of the times.

I am the Clay by Chaim Potok - He focuses on an old man and woman, uprooted and impoverished by war, and the young boy they find as they flee the advancing Chinese. Though the boy is near death, the old woman--suddenly and fiercely maternal--insists on bringing him with them. In short, spare sentences, Potok vividly portrays the horror of war, especially its effect on civilians. To counter the forces battering them, the three have only their limited strength and whatever kindness they can spare for one another.

The Lucky Gourd Shop by Joanna Catherine Scott - This moving story about three adopted Korean children's origins is hauntingly powerful, revealing with honesty and empathy the sharpest edges that an unsympathetic world uses to carve our choices.

Dog Company Six by Edward Howard Simmons - A decorated veteran of three wars and author of two nonfiction classics ("The Marines" and "The U.S. Marines: A History"), Simmons has written a novel of the Korean War featuring a Marine reserve captain who is recalled to active duty for a command--and a challenge--he never would have chosen.

[Civil Rights Movement (U.S.)]

A Walk Through Fire by William Cobb - 1961: Disorder and angst brew in Hammond, Alabama -- a town plagued with racial unrest and torn between lifelong loyalties and prejudices. As strife boils to the surface with mass demonstrations, riots, and ultimately bloodshed, Cobb's characters face an unthinkable struggle to find order and commonality among people they've known all their lives. More intimately, A Walk Through Fire is an intricate love story between a man and a woman separated by race and joined by an unquenchable longing to recreate the past, a time when truth was found within.

The Last Hotel for Women by Vicki Covington - her story centers on the events in Birmingham, Ala., in 1961, when CORE activists were attacked by Klansmen with the active connivance of the city's commissioner of public safety, the notorious (real life) Bull Connor. Here Connor is depicted as a longtime friend of hotel-keeper Dinah Fraley, her husband Pete and their two children, sensitive Gracie, 12, and high-school senior Benny. The family hotel was once a bordello run by Dinah's mother, and Connor's love for the beautiful (now dead) madam is still the central event in his life. Covington follows the Fraley family through a time of personal and community crisis and indicates that the hope of racial healing in the South resides in good people like them.

The Children Bob Moses Led by William Heath - During "Freedom Summer" 1964, white college students from the North traveled to Mississippi to help with voter registration, living with black families and taking orders from battle-tested "field secretaries" of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Their story - one of personal conflict, confrontational politics, communal living, interracial sex, and idealism put to the test of violent opposition - changed America forever. The Children Bob Moses Led blends fiction and fact to recreate the year between the "I-have-a-dream-we-shall-overcome" optimism of the March on Washington and the debacle of the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.

Dreamer by Charles Johnson - Political visionary, human rights leader, preacher, scholar, and martyr, Martin Luther King, Jr., remains one of the most fascinating and significant historic figures. In "Dreamer", a brilliantly realized historical novel that re-imagines the last two years of King's life, Charles Johnson pays homage to this man who forever changed the meaning of the word "equality".

And All Our Wounds Forgiven by Julius Lester - When John Calvin Marshall graduated from Harvard in 1956 with a Ph.D. in philosophy, he was prepared for a life of teaching and relative tranquility. But History had another plan for him: in the nascent civil rights movement of the 1960s, he became first a spokesman, then a leader, and finally a shining symbol of the new generation of blacks who were demanding their full rights as citizens. And All Our Wounds Forgiven is the story of John Calvin Marshall's brief, turbulent, charismatic life, which ended, perhaps inevitably, in assassination. The novel is told in four alternating voices: that of John Calvin Marshall's wife, Andrea; of Lisa Adams, the young white woman who as a student at Fisk University first heard Marshall speak and fell under his spell, later becoming his trusted aide and passionate mistress; of Bobby Card, a black civil rights leader operating in the heart of darkness - the Deep South of the 1960s - as Marshall's chief lieutenant in the field; and finally, of Marshall himself. There are, too, leading figures of the time - Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Malcolm X - whose meetings and conversations with Marshall add insights and historical perspective to the unfolding events. Behind these voices the author intones, at various places throughout the text, the litany of those brave souls, both black and white, who not only bore witness to a national evil but gave their lives to help eradicate it. From the lunch-counter sit-ins to the Freedom Rides, from voter registration drives to police brutality, from night-riding Klansmen to behind-the-scenes political maneuvering, Lester re-creates, from the viewpoint of the present day, the daily drama of those fearful, exciting, and violent times. Political and provocative, And All Our Wounds Forgiven is most of all a moving and tender love story about one of this century's most charismatic black leaders and the two women he loved.

Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund - Stella Silver is an idealistic, young white college student brought up by her genteel, mannered aunts. She first witnesses the events of the freedom movement from a safe distance but, along with her friend Cat Cartwright, is soon drawn into the mounting conflagration. Stella's and Cat's lives are forever altered by their new friendships with other committed freedom fighters. A student at a black college, Christine Taylor is inspired to action by the examples of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. She courageously struggles to balance her family responsibilities, education, and work with the passions and dangers of the demonstrations. Her friend Gloria Callahan, a gifted young cellist and descendant of a runaway slave, tries to move beyond her personal shyness and family coziness to enter a wider circle, including blacks and whites, men and women, all involved with the protests. Lionel Parish, teacher, preacher, and peddler of funeral insurance, battles his own demons of lust and self-preservation, while New York activist Jonathan Green gives up a promising career as a pianist to work for racial justice in the South.

Smoke-Filled Rooms by Kris Nelscott - Leaving behind Memphis and the aftermath of Dr. King's murder, Nelscott's complicated hero, Smokey Dalton, has resurfaced a few months later in Chicago as he protects a young boy who knows the assassins' true identities. Check out Kris Nelscott's other books.

When the Finch Rises by Jack Riggs - It is the late 1960s in the small North Carolina mill town of Ellenton. Twelve-year-old Raybert Williams and his best friend Palmer Conroy live in cramped homes in a working-class neighborhood, but they use the vast outdoors as their personal playground. Yet hardships are never far away. Raybert's father disappears for days at a time, only to come home broken and battered. Raybert's mother is a loving woman who battles her own demons while struggling to keep it all together. Palmer's family life offers no better refuge for the adventure-seeking boys." "But Raybert and Palmer have each other. And in that glorious friendship, they are significantly blessed. They dream together of space flight and moonwalks. They construct a bike jump to rival Evel Knievel's - and they'll run it once they work up the courage. Knievel tempted fate and won, taking a leap over twenty buses on faith alone, soaring high and landing safely, even after many crashes and broken bones. Palmer and Raybert have their own plan that, once executed, will take them all the way to the ocean, landing them intact and together on the other side of freedom.

[Vietnam War]

Steel Tiger by Mark Berent - Vietnam, 1967. America's most daring fighter pilots faced their greatest challenge in a desperate war. Now on his second tour, Major Court Bannister is hunted by a new, more determined breed of enemy and haunted by his brother's shocking act of treason. Captain Toby Parker fights a personal battle against alcohol, while flying on the edge of disaster, and Lieutenant Colonel Wolf Lochert wages a cross-border war against all enemies, regardless of the uniform they wear.

Dirty Work by Larry Brown - A powerful, emotion-packed novel about two disabled Vietnam veterans--both Mississippians, one white, the other black--this is not just a book about Vietnam. It is a book about how war lays waste and how love renews.

A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo - In March of 1965, Marine Lieutenant Philip J. Caputo landed at Danang with the first ground combat unit committed to fight in Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home--physically whole, emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism shattered. A decade later, Caputo would write in A Rumor of War, "This is simply a story about war, about the things men do in war and the things war does to them." It was far more than that. It was, as Theodore Solotaroff wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "the troubled conscience of America speaking passionately, truthfully, finally." It was the book that shattered America's deliberate indifference to the fate of the men it sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam, and in the years since it was first published it has become a basic text on that war. But in the literature of war that stretches back to Homer, it has also taken its place as an esteemed classic. As William Broyles--himself a decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam--wrote in Texas Monthly, "Not since Siegfried Sassoon's classic of World War I, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, has there been a war memoir so obviously true, and so disturbingly honest.

The 13th Valley by John Del Vecchio - A work that has served as a literary cornerstone for the Vietnam generation, The 13th Valley follows the strange and terrifying Vietnam combat experiences of James Chelini, a telephone-systems installer who finds himself an infantryman in territory controlled by the North Vietnamese Army. Spiraling deeper and deeper into a world of conflict and darkness, this harrowing account of Chelini's plunge and immersion into jungle warfare traces his evolution from a semipacifist to an all-out warmonger.

The Berets by W.E.B. Griffin - They were the chosen ones--and the ones to be the best. Never before had the United States given so select a group of fighting men such punishing preparation. Now they were heading for their ultimate test of skill and nerve and sacrifice, in a war unlike any they or their country had ever fought before...in a land that most of America still knew nothing about...Vietnam. Look for The Generals.

A Dangerous Friend by Ward Just - A major novel by the author of "Echo House, " set in Indochina in 1965. Sydney Parade, a trained political scientist, runs away to Saigon in an effort to become something larger than himself--and begins--but only begins--to understand something of the complexities of Western survival in the Third World.

The Fire Dream by Franklin Allen Lieb - A sweeping portrait of soldiers at war from an author who fought and witnessed the death of friends in Vietnam. It tells of men from all walks of life, thrown together and put to the ultimate test of combat. Look for the sequel; Valley of the Shadow.

In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason - Sam, 17, is obsessed with the Vietnam War and the effect it has had on her lifelosing a father she never knew and now living with Uncle Emmett, who seems to be suffering from the effects of Agent Orange. In her own forthright way, she tries to sort out why and how Vietnam has altered the lives of the vets of Hopewell, Kentucky.

Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien - Winner of the 1979 National Book Award, Going After Cacciato captures the peculiar blend of horror and hallucinatory comedy that marked this strangest of wars. Reality and fantasy merge in this fictional account of one private's sudden decision to lay down his rifle and begin a quixotic journey from the jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris. Will Cacciato make it all the way? Or will he be yet another casualty of a conflict that seems to have no end? In its memorable evocation of men both fleeing and meeting the demands of battle, Going After Cacciato stands as much more than just a great war novel. Ultimately it's about the forces of fear and heroism that do battle in the hearts of us all.

The Fearless Man by Donald Pfarrer - The mission is Vietnam in microcosm: a quest to find and obliterate a secret enemy weapons cache. Leading this fateful journey is Captain MacHugh Clare, a draftee who has become the consummate soldier. Unconcerned with death, he shifts immediately each morning from unconsciousness to action, "from sound sleep to a crashing heart." His reward at the end of the mission is the possibility of seeing his beloved wife. But for now, he cannot stop fighting long enough to see any other world but war. Beside Mac is his opposite, Chaplain Paul Adrano, who knows only doubt and disillusion. He has come to Vietnam to kill his fear, to find his faith on the field of battle, and he will soon know the forbidden power of violence and the pull of sexual temptation. Meanwhile, in America, Mac's wife, Sarah, fights her own battle - against a feeling of uselessness, a suspicion that she is "not fit for anything the world needs." Struggling with notions of a woman's proper role, Sarah begins to see possibilities beyond merely waiting at home for the man she loves. They all will complete their missions in ways they had never anticipated.

Shadowmakers by Ralph Wetterhahn - This thriller by a distinguished military writer vividly brings to life the search for the truth about Vietnam War POWs, an unresolved national tragedy. Major Will Cadence, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, has doubts about his father's fate, leading him into a high-altitude chase that features thrilling aerobatic maneuvers in the climax of this novel about truth, lies, and consequences.

[Persian Gulf War]

Courage Under Fire by Patrick Sheane Duncan - A powder-keg investigation into the actions of the first woman eligible for the Army's Medal of Honor in combat keynotes Duncan's exciting debut. Lt. Col. Nat Serling has been racked with guilt ever since four members of his tank unit died under friendly fire in the Gulf War. Now Nat is assigned the inquiry into another fatal Gulf War incident--one that led to the death of helicopter pilot Cpt. Karen Emma Walden, who is in line for the Medal of Honor. Serling suspects collusion when Walden's crew chief, medic and machine gunner at first supply the same details of the event. But as the three begin to break, their confessions provide vivid, disturbing images of the physical and psychological brutalities of war. Serling, meanwhile, suffers the demons of depressive drinking as he struggles to rebuild his marriage, career and life by assuaging the remorse arising from his own desert storm.

The Fist of God by Frederick Forsyth - The Gulf War is the setting of Forsyth's brilliantly plotted ``what if'' thriller in which historical facts are turned into gripping fiction. Hero Mike Martin is a British Special Forces agent sent to Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion to assess the situation and build a resistance movement. When the British discover the existence of Saddam Hussein's double agent, Jericho, who had been feeding information to Israel, Martin is smuggled into Baghdad to contact Jericho and learn about Saddam's battle plans. What Martin finds out is that Saddam has a doomsday weapon he is planning to use against the Coalition Allies when they launch Operation Desert Storm, information that propels the book to an explosive climax.

We Pierce by Andrew Huebner - As he did with "American by Blood, " Huebner turns his family's long experience with violence and war into breath-taking literary fiction. In "We Pierce, " Huebner has chosen another subject that's sure to strike a chord with his readers: fighting for what you believe in, no matter the cost.

Scorpion strike by John J. Nance - In the wake of Desert Storm, a defecting Iraqi scientist has revealed Saddam Hussein's horrifying plans for a devastating counterstrike against his enemies...and the world. With no time to spare, American forces must remobilize to locate and neutralize the underground laboratory where a lethal super-virus is ready to be unleashed. But an eleventh-hour disaster thrusts the entire mission into the hands of Air Force comrades-in-arms Colonel Will Westerman and Reserve Colonel-turned-commercial pilot Doug Harris. Flying into the heart of Iraqi power, they must depend on their skills--and each other--as never before, to complete a mission that looks more and more like a suicide run...

The Pearl of Kuwait by Tom Paine - California surfer Cody "Cowboy" Carmichael's life is forever changed when he meets Private Tommy Trang at boot camp. A powerful first novel by an award-winning writer, Paine has created an enthralling, joyful, and original story with the classic ingredients of love and war.

Retribution by R.J. Pineiro - Arab nuclear terrorism on American soil isn't a new premise (Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre used it to bestselling effect in 1980's The Fifth Horseman, featuring Col. Muammar Khadafy as the villain), but Pineiro manages to wring an exciting techno-thriller about it nonetheless. Here the villain is Saddam Hussein, who vows revenge against President Clinton a year after American forces, including Navy Lt. Kevin Dalton--as detailed in the author's Ultimatum--have destroyed the tyrant's budding nuclear arsenal. Using contraband material from Ukraine, Iraqi terrorists plot to nuke three American cities, "retribution" for a nuking of Iraq, secretly by Saddam's own forces but blamed on the U.S. Dalton, now with the CIA, becomes involved stateside in the desperate search for the weapons and terrorists, although much of the novel's latter action focuses not on his quest but on the efforts in Iraq of older CIA hand Donald Bane and young Marine pilot Diane Towers to end Saddam's nuclear threat for good.

Black Storm by David Poyer - From the "USA Today" bestselling author of "China Sea, " comes a heartstopping thriller of a top-secret Marine operation in Iraq. It is the eve of America's invasion, and Saddam Hussein has threatened to attack Tel Aviv if a single tank enters his country. With "Black Storm, " Poyer moves to new territory and offers his most suspenseful book to date.

The Consignment by Grant Sutherland - U.S. Ranger Capt. Ned Rourke was a career soldier through the Gulf War, until he received a serious wound in the Mogadishu debacle. His first civilian job was as an instructor at West Point (which he loathed); the next as sales director for a small, somewhat disreputable arms manufacturer called Haplon. Rourke's wife, Fiona, a geologist who hated his dangerous military life, isn't thrilled by this latest career move, and their son, Brad-a budding geologist-shares her distaste. But Rourke isn't really dealing weapons to developing nations: he and his former army buddy Dimitri are doing deep undercover work for the Defense Intelligence Agency, trying to stop the illegal traffic that caused some of their men in the Gulf to be killed by U.S.-made arms. When an operation called "Hawkeye" starts to go bad and Dimitri is killed, Rourke's double life becomes increasingly perilous. Trapped on a Ukrainian freighter ferrying Haplon arms to the very same war-torn African country where his son has just taken a job, Rourke and a tough female U.S. Customs agent are up to their ears in angst and high-level treachery.

[September 11, 2001]

Double Vision by Pat Barker - A gripping novel about the effects of violence on the journalists and artists who have dedicated themselves to representing it. In the aftermath of September 11, reeling from the effects of reporting from New York City, two British journalists, a writer, Stephen Sharkey, and a photographer, Ben Frobisher, part ways. Stephen, facing the almost simultaneous discovery that his wife is having an affair, returns to England shattered; he divorces and quits his job. Ben returns to his vocation. He follows the war on terror to Afghanistan and is killed. Stephen retreats to a cottage in the country to write a book about violence, and what he sees as the reporting journalist's or photographer's complicity in it; it is a book that will build in large part on Ben's writing and photography. Ben's widow, Kate, a sculptor, lives nearby, and as she and Stephen learn about each other their world speedily shrinks, in pleasing but also disturbing ways; Stephen's maid, with whom he has begun an affair, was once lovers with Kate's new studio assistant, an odd local man named Peter. As these connections become clear, Peter's strange behavior around Stephen and Kate begins to take on threatening implications. The sinister events that take place in this small town, so far from the theaters of war Stephen has retreated from, will force him to act instinctively, violently, and to face his most painful revelations about himself.

Punk's Wing by Ward Carroll - This superb novel of contemporary naval aviation by former fighter pilot Carroll (Punk's War) finds Lieutenant Rick "Punk" Reichert training new pilots. One of his most memorable trainees is Lt. Evelyn Greenwood, who earns the call sign Muddy when she taxis an F-14 Tomcat off a runway. A powerful female senator has made it her mission to see that Muddy becomes one of the few women to complete the training, but the senator and her entourage of aides and journalists only succeed in giving Muddy and Punk a headache. Punk's troubles escalate when his best friend dies during a training accident and his engagement breaks up. Despite these somber goings on, Punk and his trainees keep the narrative lively with their frequent boozing, partying and wisecracking. On September 11th, however, the laughs subside and the action begins when Punk and his cohorts are shipped off to fly against the Taliban. Carroll's fictional account of the aerial attack will set readers' adrenaline and testosterone racing, and his depiction of Muddy's introduction to combat (and her subsequent discovery that she can do it) is a poignant touch. With the public's renewed focus on the men and women serving in the military, this top-flight tale should have widespread appeal.

One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury - On the morning of September 11, 2001, two men meet in a smoky stairwell of the World Trade Center. Only one will leave the building alive--and will unknowingly assume the other man's life.

Beyond Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury - In this sequel to the bestselling One Tuesday Morning, to widow Jamie Bryan it is still September 12, 2001. What will move her from living in the past to living the life God has given her today?

The Usual Rules by Joyce Maynard - Through the eyes of 13-year-old Wendy, readers follow what happens when her mother is killed in September 2001 and her father takes her back with him to California, where she is launched into an utterly unfamiliar life.

Absent Friends by S.J. Rozan - The secrets of a group of childhood friends unravel in this haunting thriller by Edgar Award winner S.J. Rozan. Set in New York in the unforgettable aftermath of September 11, "Absent Friends" brilliantly captures a time and place unlike any other.

Updated November 05, 2008

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