Spanish Bit Ranch is the insular domain of Senator Jackson McCanles; a kingdom carved from the Texas soil in the 1880's and containing thousands of acres of “steers and wire, mesa and windmills and horses, cap rock and barren trail and pleasant river shallows.” A way of life ruled by the Code of the Plains and carefully constructed to withstand the relentless path of progress and interfering outsiders.But, despite their efforts, the Senator and Mrs. McCanles and their four sons are...

Three marines, one seaman, and a raider scout are thrown together on their last patrol and, bound by hardship and tragedy, become the Group; a brotherhood that is their only home and sets the standard by which they live. When they return to Los Angeles in 1943, they are dedicated to staying united as they abandon death, doubt, and terror and endeavor to embrace life, hope, and assurance.However, the men find themselves and their families irreparably changed as the challenges of civ...

Caspar Damion Splane, pitchman extraordinaire, had a voice so compelling that no one could pass within earshot without looking to see what kind of man was talking. He could sell anything. At a time when nylon stockings were impossible to find and very expensive, Caspar popped open his sample case, hawked silk rejects as the real McCoy, and sold them all in one afternoon. His power over people became an obsession, a tool for control and power, a compensation for years of loneliness and suff...

Greatness can―and often does―arise out of undistinguished and ignoble beginnings. This collection of biographical vignettes of celebrated Americans of a bygone era tells the stories of twenty-one individuals―a baseball player, hotel owner, producer, band leader, umpire, jockey, actress, as well as enterprising promoters and entrepreneurs―who began as nobodies but achieved the impossible. Engaging, illuminating, educational, historical, unforgettable. It is the our good fortune that the con...

All four were against him, and four were all it took. A bogus hunting trip on a sweet windy range of a Texas ranch was used to get the gang together and, as they sat around the campfire, the jaws of the trip snapped shut. Fifty-two year old Jed Basco, president of Basco and Western, was fired. The reason? Trumped up charges and phony losses according to Jed, or, according to the board's quorum, the boss was a contemptible old coot and the under-forty crowd wanted him out. Jed Basco doesn't...

World War II is about to end and the conquerors are coming home. For Mark Gregory, a war correspondent who has just arrived in San Francisco, the end of the war means that he is about to be reunited with his wife and son. Apprehensive about the reunion, he also finds that San Francisco has been turned upside down and is mired in its own problems rooted in suspicion, hostility, fear and terrorization.Mark's story, the stories of soldiers and civilians, the conflicts and passions of ...

New Mexico cattle baron, Temple Caddy Jefford, hog-rich and gut-mean, doesn't think that either of his two sons has what it takes to manage the spread after he's gone. In lieu of a son's partnership, he offers the job to his flinty, shrewd, and passionate daughter, Vance who accepts the challenge and excels. As the bond between father and daughter grows, she becomes the beloved patriarch's indispensable assistant and astutely masters all she can about her father's business tactics―perhaps ...

An aged and penniless man shakes a fist in the faces of the dynastic, arrogant lords of the great Railroad Bank of San Francisco and demands an accounting of his rights. Andy O'Toole holds a worn and yellowed passbook to an account opened by his father the year he was born and a contract in the flyleaf clearly states that he has a right to the profits of the bank—profits that he has been unable to claim. An unknown young attorney on the prowl takes on the case hoping to right the injustice...

A whopping tale about a California ranching family (1923 to 1940) who are already rich but become crazy rich when one of the sons discovers oil―giving them a money printing machine they can use any way they like―which they proceed to do and then some. The oil business and endless stockholders meetings, horse racing, show business, movie stars, art, politics, oh yes, sex―that about covers it.Sometimes hitting it just right, but mostly going on too long and meandering too far, Busch ...

Mr. Big, the leader of a powerful and dangerous new movement in Germany, is a seductive orator with a godlike remoteness intent on luring Bertha Carrington to his lair using a handsome young captain as bait. Bertha―tall, blond, Junoesque―is a teacher from America who is visiting Germany as the chaperon of a rich young woman and, flattered to be chosen over her beautiful companion, begins an affair with the captain and soon finds herself the captive of the demonical prophet.Written ...

In politics, the rise to the top can also correspond to the erosion of one's moral core. Ask Aline Cleary Belshaw ― her father was an honest and popular senator and she grew up immersed in the excitement of political life, believing in the unshakable fiber of the political process. So when she marries a grass-roots lawyer with political ambitions, she is happy to support him in every way. Until, of course, she discovers that his integrity is disappearing along with every toehold.Cl...

With action moving from the fast-track of Silicon Valley to a Moroccan prison cell, from secret war games in the California desert to sexual espionage in the nation's capital, this story tells of a young man brought up in the weapons business–and disgusted with it – who is suddenly forced to adjust to a world he never made. Jason Streck, once a hostage of another kind, inherits his father's defense-procurement empire and is swiftly drawn onto turf staked out for profit by international mer...