Books » Genre Fiction

When Gil Castle loses his wife, he retreats to his familys sprawling homestead out west, a forsaken part of the country where drug lords have more power than police. Here Castle begins to rebuild his life, even as he uncovers some dark truths about his fearsome grandfather. When a Mexican illegal shows up at the ranch, terrified after a b

Napoleon, twenty years dead, rises like a phoenix over the politics of France and the destinies of three lovers.Against the historical backdrop of the French expedition in 1840 to retrieve Napoleon's body from Saint Helena, two men and a woman find themselves engulfed in long-dormant and dangerous political passions. Philippe de Rohan-Chabot, an aristocratic young diplomat, is charged with bringing the body from the island prison where Napoleon died to a glorious tomb at Les Invalides in Paris. Chabot's rival is the aging diplomat and author Henri Beyle, known to posterity as Stendhal. The enigmatic and impulsive Amelia Curial must free herself from the shadow of her mother's scandalous loves and untimely death, and from the life of stale convention that her family urges upon her. The dead emperor is a token in a political game to appease the enemies of the monarchy, but that gamble imperils the king's rule and a new revolution looms. Meanwhile, the interplay of the three central characters traces a delicate pattern of romance, longing, misunderstanding, and the obstacles to the pursuit of happiness.

A big-hearted story of a Depression-era small town turned upside down by a worldly teacher.Narrator Gladys Cailiff is eleven years old in 1938 when a new, well-traveled young schoolteacher turns a small Georgia town upside down. Miss Grace Spivey believes in field trips, Arabian costumes, and reading aloud from her ten-volume set of The Thousand Nights and a Night. The real trouble begins when she decides to revive the annual town festival as an exotic Baghdad bazaar. Miss Spivey transforms the lives of everyone around her: Gladys's older brother Force (with his movie-star looks), her pregnant sister May (a gifted storyteller herself), and especially the Cailiffs' African American neighbor, young Theo Boykin, whose creative genius becomes the key to a colorful, hidden history of the South. Populated by unforgettable charactersincluding three impressive camelsThe Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia rides a magic carpet from a segregated schoolroom in Georgia to the banks of the Tigris (and back again) in an entrancing feat of storytelling.

"An important novel, rich in compassion for its anguished characters."The New York Times Book Review This memorable, heartbreaking story opens in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution. Yonas kneels in his mothers prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been

"If you want to know about the joy of a woman working on an Arizona cow ranch, read John Duncklee's Genevieve of Tombstone. If you like people and want to know why God loves whores, ready Genevieve of Tombstone. It is a simple, uncomplicated jewel of a book in plain talk." - J. P. S. Brown, Author of Jim KaneTombstone in the 1880's was the toughest town in the West, and it took a special kind of grit just to survive there. Ask the Earps or the Clantons. But among the gunslingers and lawmen, among the ranchers and rustlers, there was Genevieve, a woman with the spirit, toughness - and heart - the town demanded. Whether she was working in a fancy house or running her own cattle ranch, Genevieve would not only survive, she would triumph. She was a woman who would never surrender, never give in - and one that no reader will ever forget

There was hardly a meaner soul than the one who sold St. Clair's troops everything from shovels to horse flesh. Caleb Downer was as tough as rawhide, but he cared for his son, Ethan, and taught him everything he knew about being a wilderness man. Those lessons are put to the test when young Caleb, and Erin Green, a clever female camp follower, find themselves in the midst of a Shawnee assault on St. Clair's army. Can they survive the largest defeat in the history of the American Army

An elegantly crafted, utterly enchanting debut novel set in a mystical, exotic world, in which a gifted young girl charms a sultan and changes the course of an empire's history Late in the summer of 1877, a flock of purple-and-white hoopoes suddenly appears over the town of Constanta on the Black Sea, and Eleonora Cohen is ushered into the world by a mysterious pair of Tartar midwives who arrive just minutes before her birth. "They had read the signs, they said: a sea of horses, a conference of birds, the North Star in alignment with the moon. It was a prophecy that their last king had given on his deathwatch." But joy is mixed with tragedy, for Eleonora's mother dies soon after the birth. Raised by her doting father, Yakob, a carpet merchant, and her stern, resentful stepmother, Ruxandra, Eleonora spends her early years daydreaming and doing houseworkuntil the moment she teaches herself to read, and her father recognizes that she is an extraordinarily gifted child, a prodigy. When Yakob sets off by boat for Stamboul on business, eight-year-old Eleonora, unable to bear the separation, stows away in one of his trunks. On the shores of the Bosporus, in the house of her father's business partner, Moncef Bey, a new life awaits. Books, backgammon, beautiful dresses and shoes, markets swarming with color and lifethe imperial capital overflows with elegance, and mystery. For in the narrow streets of Stamboula city at the crossroads of the worldintrigue and gossip are currency, and people are not always what they seem. Eleonora's tutor, an American minister and educator, may be a spy. The kindly though elusive Moncef Bey has a past history of secret societies and political maneuvering. And what is to be made of the eccentric, charming Sultan Abdulhamid II himself, beleaguered by friend and foe alike as his unwieldy, multiethnic empire crumbles The Oracle of Stamboul is a marvelously evocative, magical historical novel that will transport readers to another time and placeromantic, exotic, yet remarkably similar to our own.

While the major fighting of the Revolutionary War moves to the South in the summer of 1779, a British force of fewer than a thousand Scottish infantry, backed by three sloops-of-war, sails to the fogbound coast of New England. In response, Massachusetts sends a fleet of more than forty vessels and some one thousand infantrymen to captivate, kill or destroy the foreign invaders. But ineptitude and irresolution lead to a mortifying defeatand have stunning repercussions for two men on opposite sides: an untested young Scottish lieutenant named John Moore and a Boston silversmith and patriot named Paul Revere. Inimitably told in Cornwells thrilling narrative style, The Fort is the extraordinary novel of this fascinating clash between a superpower and a nation in the making.

The Caribbean, 1665. A remote colony of the English Crown, the island of Jamaica holds out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, its capital, is a cutthroat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses. In this steamy climate there's a living to be made, a living that can end swiftly by diseaseor by dagger. For Captain Charles Hunter, gold in Spanish hands is gold for the taking, and the law of the land rests with those ruthless enough to make it. Pirate Latitudes is Michael Crichton at his best: a rollicking adventure tale pulsing with relentless action, crackling atmosphere, and heart-pounding suspense.

By virtue of her profession as a midwife, Tabitha Eckles is the keeper of many secrets: the names of fathers of illegitimate children, the level of love and harmony within many a marriage, and now the identity of a man who may have caused his wife's death. Dominick Cherrett is a man with his own secret to keep: namely, what he, a British nobleman, is doing on American soil working as a bondsman in the home of Mayor Kendall, a Southern gentleman with his eye on a higher office.By chance one morning before the dawn has broken, Tabitha and Dominick cross paths on a misty beachhead, leading them on a twisted path through kidnappings, death threats, public disgrace, and . . love Can Tabitha trust Dominick What might he be hiding And can either of them find true love in a world that seems set against themWith stirring writing that puts readers directly into the story, Lady in the Mist expertly explores themes of identity, misperception, and love's discovery.