Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/13/2012
ISBN-13: 9781250014689
ISBN-10: 1250014689

Captured while returning from the Crusades, Richard the Lionheart languishes in prison while his brother John attempts to seize England's throne. But Robin Hood, Richard's stalwart supporter, is determined to acquire his king's ransom by whatever means necessary -- including, naturally, robbery. Purists beware: narrated by Robin's loyal follower Alan Dale, King's Man presents a portrait of the outlaw of Sherwood Forest as a ruthless yet charismatic gang leader and his "merry men" as a group of violent thugs. However, if you enjoyed Adam Thorpe's Hodd, another inventive, iconoclastic take on the Robin Hood legend, then you won't want to miss this 3rd book in the series, which begins with Outlaw and continues with Holy Warrior.

First Chapter  

Publisher: Unbridled Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/02/2012
ISBN-13: 9781609530846
ISBN-10: 1609530845

Born in a Minnesota logging camp in the winter of 1896 and orphaned days later when his mother succumbs to fever, Odd Eide is adopted by Hosea Grimm, the camp's enterprising apothecary, whose sidelines run to bootlegging and prostitution. As Odd grows up, he becomes a boat builder and falls in love with Grimm's daughter Rebekah, whom he wishes to marry in order to save them both from her father's malign influence. Escaping by hand-built skiff across Lake Superior, Odd and Rebekah attempt a fresh start in Duluth. This emotionally intense, character-driven novel boasts a strong sense of place as it explores the complexity of family ties.

Publisher: Tor
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/16/2012
ISBN-13: 9780765326959
ISBN-10: 0765326957

This conclusion to the People of the Longhouse tetralogy focuses on Dekanwinda the Peacemaker -- formerly the warrior known as Odion -- as he works with Mohawk orator Hiawento to convince the Onondaga (People of the Hills) to join the Iroquois Confederacy and live under its Great Law. Alas, Onondaga leader Atotarho would rather wage war than embrace peace, setting the scene for violent and devastating conflict. If you're new to this descriptive, richly detailed series, set in North America in the 1400s, you'll want to start at the beginning with People of the Longhouse, followed by The Dawn Country and The Broken Land.

First Chapter  

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/30/2012
ISBN-13: 9780547691138
ISBN-10: 0547691130

In 1905, following their nation's invasion by the Japanese, more than 1,000 Korean men and women from all walks of life undertake a perilous shipboard journey to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in search of freedom and opportunity, only to become indentured servants to the wealthy haciendados (landowners) of the region. Replacing an indigenous workforce decimated by slavery and disease, the Korean immigrants, whose dreams of prosperity are shattered by the brutal heat of the henequen fields, now struggle simply to survive. But in the midst of hardship and toil, penniless orphan Jangsoe (who renames himself "Kim Ijeong") falls in love with Yi Yeonsu, a young woman from an aristocratic family. Can their love survive class differences, long separation, and the Mexican revolution?

First Chapter  

Publisher: Henry Holt
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/13/2012
ISBN-13: 9780805096705
ISBN-10: 0805096701

Like Angela Davis-Gardner's Butterfly's Child, author David Rain's The Heat of the Sun is a literary sequel to Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly that imagines the fate of Benjamin Pinkerton, the illegitimate son of naval officer B.F. Pinkerton and his Japanese concubine Cio-Cio-San. Following his mother's suicide, young Ben (nicknamed "Trouble") is raised by his American father, now a senator. Thanks to the efforts of Trouble's boarding school chum, Woodley Sharpless, who later -- despite or perhaps because of his unrequited love for his boyhood friend -- becomes Trouble's biographer, we witness the young man's movements between Japan and the U.S. Recreating life in the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and World War II, this melancholy, lyrical novel comes full circle with deployment of the atomic bomb in Trouble's birthplace of Nagasaki.

First Chapter  

Publisher: Henry Holt
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/25/2011
ISBN-13: 9780805094572
ISBN-10: 0805094571

At the start of historian Stella Tillyard's panoramic novel of the Peninsular War (1807-1814), bluestocking Harriet Guest, equally fond of science and Shakespeare, marries Captain James Raven, a dashing soldier who shortly thereafter decamps to Spain to fight under the Duke of Wellington's command. With the men abroad, the women left behind -- including Harriet and Kitty, Lady Wellington -- face numerous challenges and temptations on the home front as they explore their newfound independence. Encompassing both battlefield heroics and domestic life, this "sophisticated, unusual portrait of Regency society" (Library Journal) will captivate fans of Georgette Heyer and Bernard Cornwell alike.

First Chapter  

Publisher: Bloomsbury Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/11/2011
ISBN-13: 9781608191642
ISBN-10: 1608191648

In ancient Greece, Athens was known for its intellectual and cultural achievements, Sparta for its military prowess, and Thebes for its agriculture. That changed in 371 B.C.E., when Theban general Epaminondas defeated the Spartan army in the battle of Leuktra and freed some 100,000 helots ("seized ones," or Spartan slaves). Unfolding from the perspective of farmer-turned-warrior Mêlon, this debut novel by classicist Victor Davis Hanson, author of the nonfiction A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, should please fans of Steven Pressfield's action-packed, battle-focused novels of the ancient world, such as The Gates of Fire.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/17/2009
ISBN-13: 9781416595557
ISBN-10: 1416595554

Between her privileged upbringing in St. Petersburg and her doting bourgeois Jewish family, schoolgirl Sashenka Zeitlin is ripe for teenage rebellion. In 1916, this means taking up the revolutionary politics of her Bolshevik uncle -- which leads to her arrest by the secret police, which strengthens her resolve to become a double agent and hasten the fall of the Tsar. But, decades later, neither her youthful exploits on behalf of the Party nor her marriage to a rising star of the NKVD can protect her from Stalin's purges when she begins an affair with an anti-Communist writer. Historian Montefiore (author of Young Stalin) artfully evokes life in Soviet Russia, with its complex politics, social upheaval, and psychological intrigue.

First Chapter  

Publisher: Overlook Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 09/29/2009
ISBN-13: 9781590202463
ISBN-10: 1590202465

Just 16 when he assassinates Emperor Maximinus Thrax during a coup in Aquileia, "barbarian" soldier Marcus Clodius Bastilla rises quickly through the ranks of the Imperial Army, earning Roman citizenship, membership in the equestrian order, and the title of Dux Ripae, Commander of the Riverbanks. Now, as the Persian Sassanids threaten the eastern territories of the Empire, Ballista receives orders to travel to the frontier outpost of Arete, in Syria, where he and his men must invade and capture the city. Oxford historian Harry Sidebottom brings the 3rd century Roman Empire to life in this 1st installment of an action-packed, richly detailed series, which continues with King of Kings.

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