Based on actual events, this gripping tale unfolds as young Trace Savage follows a trail of blood and plunder across the rugged frontier of the late 1860’s in dogged pursuit of the brutal band of border bandits who murdered his parents. One by one, he overtakes and faces the killers, branding the corpses he leaves behind with the mark of the serpent.

Savage becomes partners with Stalkin’ Sam Irons, an aging mountain man, and together they travel the rugged backbone of the Rockies. When Sam is killed in a pitched battle with warring Blackfeet, Trace continues to Idaho Territory.

An exciting horse race, a life and death struggle with a marauding grizzly and a tender love affair move this fast-paced adventure toward an exciting, powerful climax, pitting Trace Savage against the leader of the murderous raiders.

This title was previously released in print as Mark of the Serpent.

Chasing Pancho Villa is a story of mystery, romance and adventure.

In the fall of 1917, Harrison James arrives in New Mexico to investigate the mysterious death of his brother. There he meets the beautiful Maria Washington, notorious gunrunner and revolutionary. Their romance sizzles while his list of suspects grows.

James is soon engulfed in subterfuge and drawn into a seamy underworld of gunrunning and sedition. To unravel the mystery of his brother’s death, he must outshoot bandits and outwit the Army.

Traveling deep into Mexico to arm the popular revolutionary and folk hero Pancho Villa, When James and Washington are betrayed by enemy agents, they must fight their way back to the Rio Grande where,armed with new information on his brother’s death, James risks all to unmask his killer.

The lives and schemes of frontier politicians, Northern Pacific Railroad executives, bonanza farmers, and homesteaders converge in the story of Frances Houghton Bingham, who marries the son of a Red River Valley bonanza farmer in order to remain near her new husband’s sister. Emotionally complex, willful and resourceful, Frances is seduced by the myths of opportunity driving the settlement of Dakota Territory, and dares to dream of a new world in which to realize her unconventional desires. Providing a counterpoint to the dramatic risks taken by Frances is the generous voice of Kirsten Knudson, the daughter of Norwegian homesteaders. As Kirsten grows from a voluble girl to a formidable woman, her observations (equal parts absurdity and insight) reveal the heart of the novel.

Spanning decades and the globe, the remarkable odysseys of Aaron, Michael, and Rebecca were as compelling as the journey of their renowned mother, Leah. From the courageous struggle of the Hungarian revolution, to the dramatic strife of the civil rights movement in Mississippi…from Israel’s heroic fight for freedom, to the eve of the Six-Day War…Leah’s children confronted their own convictions and desires in an ever-changing world fraught with danger, idealism, and betrayal. Their uncompromising search for love and fulfillment carried them into dangerous emotional territory—where only the strength, courage, and imagination inherited from their mother could lead them to their own triumphant destinies.

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award of 1979, this classic novel of love and war is now available in ebook format for the first time!

Violence shattered her golden world, and Leah’s journey began…

It swept her from the burning villages of old Russia to the tenements of New York, from the glittering showrooms of Paris to the settlements of war-torn Israel. It brought her marriage to a man who yearned for her sweet, denied love – and passion for a man who yearned only for danger. It gave her a son born of shame, and a daughter born to destiny. It tested her love in the shadow of the Depression and the hell of the Nazi fury…

And then Leah’s journey brought her home.

Everyone’s favorite mountain man returns!

The year is 1843. On his way to Fall Rendezvous, Mount meets up with his old friend Patch, along with Sunshine, Patch’s traveling companion. What starts out as an expedition for fun, soon turns to an epic struggle for survival amid the dramatic and exciting Western wilds. The biggest escapade for Mount lies ahead in Oregon City, as his past adventures catch up with him in the form of the woman he loves…and is determined to make his own.

Filled with humor, grit and the sights and sounds of the 1800s, this is a slice of historical fiction readers won’t want to miss!

Mount, our favorite mountain man, is back for a third installment of action and adventure! It’s 1844 and Mount has returned to his secluded cabin nestled in the Rocky Mountains, bringing with him his new bride, Sandra, and stepson, Andy. The new family is happy beyond words, and just starting to build a wonderful future. Suddenly their lives are shattered, and that happy future in jeopardy, when Sandra is kidnapped by a ruthless band of outlaws, led by the notorious assassin, Li Zhang. The resulting adventure is packed full of excitement, danger and surprises, and of course, plenty of Mount’s special brand of humor.

Author Arlen Blumhagen is once again at the top of his game, and book three of the Mount trilogy, Mount: The Adventures Continue, is definitely a must read.

 

Arlen Blumhagen captures the feel of the western wilderness of the late 1800’s in this story of one man’s adventures across the American wilderness.

Mount leads a simple life, using his skills to survive in his cabin on the side of a mountain. When circumstances require him to make a trip into St. Louis, Mount thinks it will be a quick visit to The Big City and then home. What he isn’t prepared for is the request of Andrew Worthington to lead his family through the wilderness and up through the Oregon Trail. What ensues is a series of adventures from attacks by Indians and snakes to blizzards and several near-fatal disasters. All Mount wants to do is get home to his life, but can he keep his band of travelers alive long enough to make it?

Combining adventure with a liberal dose of comedy, MOUNT crosses genres from historical fiction to western to humor to take the reader through one of the most memorable times in American history.

On the Wings of Angels (Book 3 of the Beyond the Blue Horizon Series), continues the saga of Otto Kerchner, the airplane-obsessed Wisconsin farm boy who becomes a hero of World War II in On Wings of the Morning (Book 1). He continued to lead his family, friends, and community into new ventures—and sometimes danger—in On the Wings of Eagles (Book 2).

The latest in the series picks up in 1954 with an unlikely mix of elements: a minor league baseball team, mobsters from Minneapolis, a Soviet jet, family discord, sudden death, an aviation camp, a kidnapping, and a marauding bear. Meanwhile, the Kerchners, their friends, and their community cope with a changing world.

Readers of the earlier novels have praised the easy style and realistic touches in the books which help recreate the ambiance and feel of those remembered years, including the simple pleasures of picnics, birthday parties, and pick-up baseball games. The characters are at once unique and identifiable, and their hopes, fears, and struggles still resonate today. This book is a must read among must reads for just about everyone.

On the Wings of Eagles features the warmth and rich characterization readers of all ages enjoyed in the first book, and is sure to become a new favorite among the many fans of Otto, his friends, family, and their little town of Pioneer Lake. This second installment in the Beyond the Blue Horizon series will inspire and engage readers from Young Adult on up.

Young Otto Kerchner dreams of escaping his father’s Wisconsin dairy farm and becoming a flier like his hero Charles Lindbergh. When a small airport is built on an adjoining property, Otto trades odd jobs for flight lessons and becomes a pilot at 16. When World War II breaks out, he enlists in the Army Air Corps and finds himself a year later high over Germany at the controls of a B-17. Otto and his crew fly 23 missions untouched, but then his world shatters, and he must draw on reserves of faith and courage he never imagined.

On Wings of the Morning brings to life the ordinary men and women of the Greatest Generation who, stirred by fate and fortune, accomplished extraordinary things. Faithful in its depiction of events and evocative across a spectrum of emotions, this gentle but incisive tale will engage, inform and move readers of all ages.

Will Ballard fought for the South, but he’s not ready to go home when he walks away from Appomattox. Old wounds still fester and only time will heal them.

He joins a wagon train heading West, and finds a ready-made family. When events drive him away, he becomes a cowpuncher, just in time to fight land grabbers and a rancher who figures his land is more important than men’s lives. Before he can make up his mind to go home, he’s got himself a job building a railroad. All goes well until the carpetbaggers set their sights on it, and once more he’s adrift.

On the move again, he hires on with a freighter and finds a temporary home on the seat of a wagon. Hard work and friendship finish his healing, and it’s finally time for him to go home. Trouble is, those men in their fancy black suits are still grabbing land in the South and West. It’s more than Will can take, and he’s not shy about saying so.

Eventually he fights his way back to Four Corners, only to discover the same land grabbers and carpetbaggers at work, and a pretty girl who thinks highly of him. There’s only one thing for Will to do: hold onto his home, keep the land, marry the girl. And it ain’t gonna be easy.

Eighteen-year-old Virginia leaves her childhood Idaho farm with her sister Nellie, and they head to California to support the fighting forces of the United States. Nothing about their promising new life, working as war plane riveters, turns out as planned. Neither girl intended to fall in love, but who can really plan for love? Virginia fights heart wrenching battles when she has to choose between her fun-loving sailor and her down-to-earth marine. Nellie s sailor is charming; he s her true love, but his involvement in the secret service turns her life upside down.

Innocence was blown out of the trenches during WWII. It didn’t matter if it was the trenches of war, or the trenches of love. It was a time to find out what you were made of; a time to learn who you were. Bravery and valor were braided between flesh and soul.

Some people call them the greatest generation. Maybe they were simply the generation of greatness. It was everything for God, Country, and Family or nothing at all. True love fell easily, and it stayed where it landed because they were always faithful Semper Fidelis.

Maggie was ready to embrace life and enjoy attending vocational college when the war came to her village in the Netherlands and changed everything. In a series of interconnected stories Maggie struggles with fear, shortages, the resistance, the dangers of falling in love and who to trust. Nothing is as it had been and, as the holder of the fountain pen learns from her comfortable office in the present day, fear and uncertainty are ever-present companions.
As the narrator fills and refills the inherited fountain pen from the 1940s, the pen takes on a life of its own as it relates the details of the events that shaped Maggie’s life, and strengthens the bond between Maggie and her future daughter.
A novella.

Welcome to South Mississippi in post World War II. In spite of the war, it is still a wholesome time when most citizens try to do right by their neighbors.

Jack and Billy Joe are two boys who have little money. For entertainment, they use the forest, swamps, streams and rivers to their best advantage. Adventure seems to be just behind every bush.

When these boys were not involved in adventures, their other friends of the time were, and they passed the tales along unabridged (or so they say). These stories have been bandied about in South Mississippi since their inception, and each telling has minutely altered the previous teller’s story.

Tall tales or true stories? Adventure and excitement, or a look into the past? Ultimately, this book is about the boys and their interaction with others of their age and the adults of the time, in a collection of stories to be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

Men with dreams of gold flocked to the strikes in Idaho Territory in the early 1860s. Some were lucky, but only a few people managed to hang onto their fortunes. The Plummer Gang jumped claims, robbed miners, and murdered anyone who got in their way. Until Pokerface Bob Bainbridge showed up, seeking the man who’d ruined his sister–and out for personal revenge.

From the saloons of Oro Fino to the tent cites of the Boise Basin, Bob follows the iniquitous gang, determined to bring law and order to the Territory and to save the woman he has grown to love from a fate far worse than death — at the hands of Plummer himself. Only incredible courage and steely determination will win the day.

The Bitterroot Trail was originally published in 1935, both in the United States and in England. It is a classic Western novel, but it is also an exciting romance and one heck of a remarkable historical novel.

Step into your virtual time machine and set the controls for 1961. Then sit back, put your feet up, and relax as you join nine-year-old Karen Schmidt in her attempts to navigate Crab Hollow Road amidst the overwhelming male majority who beleaguer her at every opportunity. Does Karen have the fortitude to weather toadnappings, midnight escapades, false impersonation, and more? Along the way, relive the people, products, music, sports, and headlines of the early 1960s.

Carolina Costandini is a first generation Italian-American living in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania—just outside of Pittsburgh—in the mid-1920s. As the only daughter in the family, she finds herself in a traditional role of cook and maid—a role she longs to escape. Her brothers attend school and work, but her own education ended at fifth grade.

The Italian neighborhood that she lives in is full of characters with complicated lives inevitably intersecting.

Sara is a middle age woman, a dear friend of the family, who is persecuted by an abusive husband, Luca Vassari.

Angelo Marchetti is the town barber and a widower with a mentally challenged daughter and an aging mother. A good and decent man, he finds himself forced to do battle with evil and risk imprisonment in a justice system that sees Italians as second-class citizens.

The Mano Nero (the local mafia) has a strong hold on the town, threatening its citizens, but it also finds itself at war with the emerging power of the Ku Klux Klan.
Nicoletta Pantuzzo is another neighbor to the Costandini family—a widow shunned by the women of the town because she is a prostitute.

Zia Izzy is Carolina’s aunt who has the Italian gift of being a “witch,” which she hopes to pass on to Carolina. It is a temptation that Carolina entertains at the disapproval of her mother, Lena.

As Carolina struggles to navigate the rough waters of discovering her identity, she is befriended by Sr. Norbert, who acts as a confidant and guide. But ultimately, it is up to Carolina to make a decision that will impact the rest of her life.

Set in Pittsburgh in the early 1900s, The Leap Year Boy is the story of a working class family and an extraordinary boy named Alex Miller, born in the family’s home on February 29, 1908. What makes Alex so remarkable is that even though he’s full-term at birth, he weighs just two pounds one ounce, and is nine inches long.

Despite his size, Alex is perfectly healthy. However, his body grows at one-fourth the rate of a normal child—so that after one year, he’s the size of a three-month-old—but his mind grows much quicker. Eventually, so do certain parts of his body and his ability to do various and unusual things with them. As Alex’s special abilities become apparent, those around him see him as both a miracle child and a freak of nature—a freak to exploit.

How Alex saves himself from the designs of others—his religious fanatic grandmother, who sees him as the new Messiah; his money-grubbing immigrant doctor, who wants to put him on display; his unstable nanny, who believes Alex is her lost child; and his father and father’s mistress, who are eager to tap Alex’s commercial potential—is at the heart of the novel. Ultimately, a family that has been fractured by ambition and circumstance rediscovers loyalty and love, thanks to Alex’s courage.

Ethan is a Doughboy wounded in the battle for Belleau Wood. Davy is a reviled British conscientious objector serving in a military hospital. Two young men drawn to each other in the midst of the horrors of the Great War. Neither has a family, for the soldier’s has all died and the CO’s has cast him off in disgust for refusing to take up arms.

The bond of love that grows between Ethan and Davy takes them to Ethan’s beautiful Appalachian hills, where they build a home and make a life. It is there they find that their love is strong enough to conquer everything, even time and death.

A new short story from our Candlelight literary romance line, from the author of the bestsellers Song on the Sand, The Lawyer, The Ghost and The Cursed Chair, Burma Girland Mr. Newby’s Revenge.

When she reaches the orderly house of her Dutch-Indonesian grandmothers, Marget learns quickly that if she only pays attention to them, then she can go unnoticed herself.
And that is exactly what she needs just now.
Marget is pregnant and alone. With her dancing career over and her mother absent, as always, Marget must decide for herself whether it is wise to continue the raveling line of her extended family.
Mylène Dressler’s powerful debut novel, The Medusa Tree, is the story of a family of displaced women, not all related by blood, who manage despite distance and conflict to provide one another sanctuary.
In the tradition of Amy Tan and Gloria Naylor, Dressler brings us a bold and heartfelt debut, rich in culture and character.
“The Medusa Tree is one of the best books I’ve read this year. Dressler’s characters are unforgettable and her style fuses grace with power. I look forward to reading more of her.” –Cynthia Shearer, author of The Wonder Book of the Air

Lucius Pontius Pilate was a Roman on the rise, an ambitious nobleman serving with ruthless efficiency as a confidential agent of the Emperor Tiberius Caesar. A respected member of the Roman Senate, Pilate harbored a cruel streak that Tiberius used to strike fear into the Empire’s enemies. Pilate was on his way to the peak of Roman society when a disastrous encounter with the loathsome Gaius Caligula, Tiberius’ heir, ended with him being disgraced and sent into exile as Prefect to the armpit of the Roman Empire: the province of Judea.

In this desert land, where political rebellion and religious fanaticism bloomed like flowers in the spring, Pilate’s life became entwined with that of Jesus of Nazareth, the enigmatic leader of a new religious sect. Bullied into sending Jesus to the cross by the local religious leaders, Pilate is tormented with guilt and nightmares, unable to wash away the blood on his hands. But when the death of Tiberius elevates Caligula to the Imperial throne, Pilate may have no choice but to flee for refuge to the disciples of the Man he crucified. But will they accept him?

PONTIUS PILATE SPEAKS!
For two thousand years the tiny chamber on the island of Capri had been sealed, hiding a scroll that could confirm the single most important claim of the Christian faith—or disprove it once and for all.
Now an earthquake has torn that chamber open, and a team of archeologists led by Italian scholar Isabella Sforza are about to make a discovery that will shake the world of faith—and make them the target of a deadly terrorist attack.
What did Pontius Pilate say about the trial and execution of Jesus of Nazareth?
Make no mistake . . .
THE TESTIMONIUM will leave you breathless!

In this novella by the acclaimed author of The Medusa Tree and The Deadwood Beetle, an elderly Jewish woman tells an Arabic student who has come to interview her for a research project an incredible tale: that she is Anne Frank, the author of The Diary of a Young Girl and the most famous victim of Hitler’s Germany. As the interview progresses, tensions grow between the pair as they listen to each other’s stories, yet struggle to truly hear each other.
A new work of fiction from an author the New York Times has described as “haunting.”

West to Eden is the engrossing and dramatic story of one woman’s struggle to forge a new life in Amsterdam in 1897, as beautiful and sensitive Emma Coen suffers betrayal by both her father and her lover. Determined to control her own destiny, Emma leaves Amsterdam, accepting a position as a companion to the wife of one of the leaders of Jewish society in London. When she hears of financier Jacob Schiff’s plans to promote Jewish settlement in the American West, where Jews will be pioneers rather than refugees, Emma is inspired. She sets sail for Galveston, Texas, home to a small but thriving Jewish community, and there meets Isaac Lewin, the wary and embittered survivor of a Russian pogrom.

In spite of her strong attraction to Isaac, Emma remains aloof, fearing the loss of her hard-won independence. But the tidal wave of 1900, which devastates Galveston Island, leaves both Emma and Isaac shaken and keenly aware that life cannot be lived in safety. Still haunted by their pasts, and conscious of the disparity in their backgrounds, Emma and Isaac are swept away by passion, and they marry, settling in Arizona. In the desert hamlet of Phoenix, newly proclaimed capital of the territory, they open a tent store. Calling on abundant reserves of ambition, courage and entrepreneurial daring, Emma and Isaac work together to transform the tent store into one of the West’s largest and most successful department stores.

Yet neither their material success nor their deep pride in their four talented children is enough to bridge the emotional gap between them, and their relationship grows ever more distant. Both Isaac and Emma seek solace in extramarital affairs, even as they are unwilling to break up their troubled marriage. It is only when Emma finds herself caught up in the enchanted life of San Francisco’s “gilded ghetto” that she at last confronts the reality of her life and marriage.

Set against the backdrop of Arizona’s fight for statehood and the cataclysms of the First World War and the Great Depression, West to Eden chronicles a fascinating, largely unknown part of the Jewish immigrant experience. Drawing on the breadth of imagination and the faithfulness to detail that her readers have come to expect, Gloria Goldreich has created characters of rich complexity…and an unforgettable novel.