While a historian stands firmly planted in the present and looks back into the past, a historical novelist has a more immediate task: to set readers in the midst of bygone events and lead them forward, allowing them to live and feel the wonderment, fear, hope, triumph, and pain as if they were there.Learning historical stories is easy, creating stories based in history is not.In Once Upon a Time It Was Now best-selling author James Alexander Thom (Follow the River,...

Paddy Quinn, the boy who ate rattlesnakes, and lost a hand to a cannon blast during the Mexican War, returns as a famous Civil War correspondent and battlefield sketch artist in James Alexander Thom's new novel, Fire in the Water. The central action in this novel is the tragic explosion and burning of the paddlewheel steamboat SULTANA near Memphis in the last days of the Civil War, killing some 1,800 homebound Yankee survivors of the hellish Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp in Georgia. B...

They were proud and doomed, Irish rogue cannoneers under a green silk banner, fighting against their former comrades-in-arms to defend Catholic Mexico against the invading U.S. Army.Their choices were to win, die in battle, or hang as deserters. To the Mexicans they were heroic saviors, but they were seen as despicable traitors by the West Point officers who faced their grapeshot and cannonballs on every major battlefield Matamoros to Mexico City.Survivors of the Irish batt...

Document Computing: Technologies for Managing Electronic Document Collections discusses the important aspects of document computing and recommends technologies and techniques for document management, with an emphasis on the processes that are appropriate when computers are used to create, access, and publish documents. This book includes descriptions of the nature of documents, their components and structure, and how they can be represented; examines how documents are use...

The Slocum family of Northeastern Pennsylvania are the best of the white settlers, peace-loving Quakers who believe that the Indians hold the Light of God inside. It is from this good-hearted family that Frances is abducted during the Revolutionary war.As the child's terror subsides, she is slowly drawn into the sacred work and beliefs of her adoptive mother and of all the women of these Eastern tribes. Frances becomes Maconakwa, the Little Bear Woman of the Miami Indians. Then, lo...

“Splendid . . . Thom tells the story with humor and eloquence, and a thumping good tale it is, too.”—The Washington PostIn one generation, the Clark family of Virginia fought for our nation's independence, and explored, conquered, and settled the continent from sea to shining sea. This powerfully written book recreates the warm life of the family, the dangers of the battlefield, the grueling journeys across an untamed wilderness, and the soul-stirring Lewi...

Follow Father Tim and Cynthia on their journey to research his Kavanagh ancestry in the Irish countryside in this novel in the beloved Mitford series from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jan Karon.Vacation—the very word has been foreign to Episcopal priest Tim Kavanagh. Now retired from tending his flock in the village of Mitford, he is making good on a promise to show his wife, Cynthia, the charming land of his Irish ancestors. But after arr...

In Gone for Soldiers, Jeff Shaara carries us back 15 years before the momentous conflict he has so brilliantly chronicled, to a time when the Civil War's most familiar names are fighting for another cause, junior officers marching under the same flag in an unfamiliar land, experiencing combat for the first time in the Mexican-American War.In March 1847, 8,000 soldiers landed on the beaches of Vera Cruz, led by the army's commanding general, Winfield Scott-...

Software development today is embracing functional programming (FP), whether it's for writing concurrent programs or for managing Big Data. Where does that leave Java developers? This concise book offers a pragmatic, approachable introduction to FP for Java developers or anyone who uses an object-oriented language.Dean Wampler, Java expert and author of Programming Scala (O'Reilly), shows you how to apply FP principles such as immutability, avoidance of side-effects, and h...

From the author of The Convict's Bounty Bride comes a new Australian historical about a free settler and the wife he chooses from a workhouse...For Irish convict Colleen Malone, being framed, transported to Australia and forced into prostitution seemed like the worst that life could throw at her. Then she fell pregnant to a client and was sent back to prison by her cruel owner. Now, her only hope of a decent life for her and her baby is to find someone to marry.Wid...

The sudden drumming of hooves mingling with the crackle of revolvers' shots, accompanied by a ringing shout of 'Yeeah! Texas Light!' Following them, smoke and flames might rise from a Quartermasters' Corps depot; a supply train would be found, its wagons wrecked, their loads carried off and teams driven away; a cursing Artillery officer could find the guns in his battery spiked and his magazine exploded.That was how the men who rode under the Stars and Bars flag of the Confederate S...

Powerful, low-cost database development tools make it possible for virtually anybody to create their own database—and this hands-on guide makes it fun and easyDatabases permeate every nook and cranny of our highly connected, information-intensive world, from ATMs to personal finance, online shopping, and networked information management. Databases have become so integral to the business environment that, nowadays, it's next to impossible to stay competitive without...