Amid the mayhem of the Civil War, Iris Dunleavy is put on trial by her husband, convicted of madness, and sent to Sanibel Asylum to be restored to a compliant Virginia plantation wife. But her husband is the true criminal; she is no lunatic, only guilty of disagreeing on notions of cruelty and property.
On this remote Florida island, Iris meets a wonderful collection of inmates in various states of sanity, including Ambrose Weller, a Confederate soldier haunted by war, whose dark eyes beckon to her. Can love in such a place be real? Can they escape, and will the war have left any way—any place—for them to make a life together?
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The author of the bestselling Ghost Soldiers returns with the epic chronicle of the real American West. Blood and Thunder brings the history of the American conquest of the West to vivid life through the interactions of the three main forces of the territory—American Indians, Mexicans, and Americans—and through the exploits of the legendary Kit Carson. An illiterate mountain man who mastered seven Indian dialects, Carson had more respect for the tribes than did any other American; yet he was also a cold-blooded killer who willingly followed orders tantamount to massacre. Grand in scope, immediate in detail,
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In 1998, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich became a waitress, a maid, and a low level sales clerk while researching Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Selling close to one million copies, Nickel and Dimed exposed the truth about the demise of a living wage, health insurance, and other presumed rewards for American workers. In Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, she goes undercover once again, this time to explore the grim results of corporate downsizing. Immersed in the world of the white-collar unemployed, she joins the ranks of those who seem to have done everything right—finished college,
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The year is 1968. Like thousands of other American boys, Carl Melcher is drafted and sent to Vietnam. His new company is infected with the same racial tensions plaguing the nation. Despite that, Carl makes friends on both sides of the color line. The war, like a tiger lurking in the bushes, picks off its victims one by one. Naively over-optimistic, Carl believes that karma and good intentions will save him and his friends. Then fate intervenes to teach Carl something of the meaning of life, and death.
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In this mesmerizing first novel by a gifted young writer, the drama of California’s rich immigrant history and the freshness and wonder of childhood combine with darker elements of legend, magic and mystery. Born while the Civil War is raging further east, young Asher Witherow seems marked for an extraordinary future. Anything but typical, he captures the attention of the eerily watchful apprentice minister and schoolteacher, Josiah Lyte, and of young Thomas Motion, a strange boy who can see into the deepest darkness. When Thomas mysteriously vanishes, only Asher knows the truth of what has happened to him, and he must decide whether to keep his knowledge secret or reveal what he believes to be his own unforgivable mistake.
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In 1980, a twenty-three-year-old graduate student named Aaron Lansky set out to rescue the world’s abandoned Yiddish books before it was too late. Twenty-five years and one and a half million books later, he’s still in the midst of a great adventure. Filled with poignant and often laugh-out-loud tales from Lansky’s travels across the country collecting books from older Jewish immigrants, Outwitting History also introduces us to a dazzling array of writers and shows us how an almost-lost culture is the bridge between the old world and the future.
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