Book Haul

Here is the haul I have been promising you. These are the books that my parents gave me or let me borrow. I will let you know which ones I have to return.

Nightfall at Nauvoo By: Samuel W. Taylor

In May 1839, Prophet Joseph Smith and his followers–driven out of New York, Ohio, and Missouri–established a Mormon settlement on the fever-ridden swamps of Commerce, Illinois. Three years later, the holy city they called Nauvoo had become the largest city in Illinois–about four times the size of Chicago. Nauvoo had its own militia, it’s own newspaper, and the members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints were the most powerful voting block in the state. By 1846, the boom town had become a ghost town and the Mormons were once again moving West.

NIGHTFALL AT NAUVOO is the story of a frontier town and its colorful, controversial founding fathers.

Colorado By: Rosey Dow

This book is a bind up of four stories.

Put yourself in the shoes of pioneers who forged homes out of the wilderness. Will they put the struggle for survival above love and faith?

Changelings By: Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

With three acclaimed novels–Powers That Be, Power Lines, and Power Play–bestselling authors Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough launched a vibrant new science-fiction saga that told the story of a sentient planet, Petaybee, and the humans who fought to protect it from the rapacious designs of an all-powerful interstellar corporation determined to exploit the icy world’s natural resources. Led by Yana Maddock and Sean Shongili, Petaybee’s protectors prevailed. But now Petaybee is changing in mysterious, unprecedented ways, and the return of off-world scientists threatens the amazing planet and its equally amazing inhabitants with new dangers.

CHANGELINGS

They are Ronan Born for Water Shongili and Murel Monster Slayer Shongili. Twin brother and sister. Children of Yana and Sean. Children of Petaybee. As such, theirs is a destiny deeply intertwined with the sentient planet that is their home. For Ronan and Murel are more than human. Like their father, each can transform into a seal and converse telepathically with the planet’s creatures–such as the friendly otter whose life they save one day from a pack of ravenous wolves.

But the twins’ bravery has unforeseen results when a visiting scientist witnesses their startling metamorphosis and becomes obsessed with their capture. To protect their children, Sean and Yana send them to stay with a powerful family friend on an orbiting space station. But no one realizes that Ronan and Murel hunger to discover the origins of their shape-shifting talent–and that their search for knowledge will place them squarely in the path of peril.

Meanwhile, Petaybee is changing–and much faster than an ordinary planet’s natural evolution. It appears that portions of the sea are heating up and a landmass is suddenly rising from the depths. To investigate the startling occurrence, Sean heads out to the open water in his seal form. But the newly unstable region holds untold mysteries–and the potential for disaster.

Sky Dragons and Dragon’s Fire By: Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey

The Masterharper of Pern, Dragonseye, and The Dolphins of Pern By: Anne McCaffrey

These are part of the Pern series. I will have the synopsis of the first book down below. I also have to return these.

HOW CAN ONE GIRL SAVE AN ENTIRE WORLD?

To the nobles who live in Benden Weyr, Lessa is nothing but a ragged kitchen girl. For most of her life she has survived by serving those who betrayed her father and took over his lands. Now the time has come for Lessa to shed her disguise—and take back her stolen birthright.

But everything changes when she meets a queen dragon. The bond they share will be deep and last forever. It will protect them when, for the first time in centuries, Lessa’s world is threatened by Thread, an evil substance that falls like rain and destroys everything it touches. Dragons and their Riders once protected the planet from Thread, but there are very few of them left these days. Now brave Lessa must risk her life, and the life of her beloved dragon, to save her beautiful world.

The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story By: Elliott West

This volume in Oxford’s acclaimed Pivotal Moments series offers an unforgettable portrait of the Nez Perce War of 1877, the last great Indian conflict in American history. It was, as Elliott West shows, a tale of courage and ingenuity, of desperate struggle and shattered hope, of short-sighted government action and a doomed flight to freedom. To tell the story, West begins with the early history of the Nez Perce and their years of friendly relations with white settlers. In an initial treaty, the Nez Perce were promised a large part of their ancestral homeland, but the discovery of gold led to a stampede of settlement within the Nez Perce land. Numerous injustices at the hands of the US government combined with the settlers’ invasion to provoke this most accommodating of tribes to war. West offers a riveting account of what came next: the harrowing flight of 800 Nez Perce, including many women, children and elderly, across 1500 miles of mountainous and difficult terrain. He gives a full reckoning of the campaigns and battles–and the unexpected turns, brilliant stratagems, and grand heroism that occurred along the way. And he brings to life the complex characters from both sides of the conflict, including cavalrymen, officers, politicians, and–at the center of it all–the Nez Perce themselves (the Nimiipuu, “true people”).

The Hidden Hitler: An Intimate Portrait By: Lothar Machtan

Not sure if I will read this after just reading the synopsis.

Adolf Hitler. No other figure in contemporary history is associated with such far-reaching historical impact and such monstrous crimes. His name alone is emblematic of world war and Holocaust. If only because of the barbarity for which he is responsible, Adolf Hitler has become an anxiety neurosis, a vision of horror. And that is why he remains even now as he was to many of his contemporaries: an incomprehensible mystery. In the half century since his death, he has been the subject of over 120,000 publications, and yet the historian John Lukacs, who has tried to impose some sort of order on the chaotic jumble, comes to the significant conclusion that “We are far from done with Hitler.”What Hitler did in history has been amply documented in the monumental work of historians and biographers such Alan Bullock, Joachim Fest, Hans Mommsen and Ian Kershaw. Who Hitler was, however, as a person, what anchored him emotionally, has either eluded or been of little interest to writers who often burden themselves with the search for the origin of his evil as the explanation for his life and its consequences. Drawing from a wealth of archival sources, much of which has been long overlooked by historians, The Hidden Hitler focuses on Hitler the man. Lothar Machtan’s controversial thesis is that Adolf Hitler was homosexual, and that one cannot begin to understand him, his entry into politics, and the early Nazi movement without a clear understanding of this aspect of his identity. The Hidden Hitler documents the homosexual milieu in which the young Hitler lived and thrived from his early years in Vienna, through the beginnings of his political career in Munich, and during his years as the F¸hrer. Machtan documents a succession of homosexual and homosexually inclined men among Hitler’s most intimate friends and supporters, including August Kubizek, Rudolf H‰usler, Reinhold Hanisch, Ernst Schmidt, Ernst Rˆhm, Dietrich Eckart, Rudolf Hess, Emil Maurice, “Putzi” Hanfstaengl and Kurt Ludecke. Of these, Eckart and Rˆhm were pivotal to his entry into politics. Machtan also unearths surprising new documents that attest to Hitler’s homosexuality in those early years. Of particular importance is the “Mend Protocol,” portions of which appear for the first time in this book. While it is doubtful that Hitler was sexually active in any way (gay or straight) after 1933, his homosexual past, nevertheless, was his Achilles’ heel. It threatened him politically and left him open to blackmail by his most intimate associates. The assasination of Ernst Rˆhm, along with roughly 150 other men over a four day period in 1934, served as a chilling message to all with knowledge, or access to knowledge, about the F¸hrer’s past life.Recent books on the Nazi movement have argued that the Third Reich was a fundamentally sordid regime. Machtan provides powerful new evidence in support of this view. This side of Hitler and his “Munich clique,” as Goebbels put it, has never been so vividly evoked. As an intimate portrait of Hitler and as a surprising portrait of the homoerotic nature of the early Nazi movement, The Hidden Hitler is a major and certainly controversial contribution to the biographical literature. Anyone who has read any previous biographer of Adolf Hitler will read The Hidden Hitler and wonder, “how could they have missed entirely the homosexuality of Hitler and his entourage?”

Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg By: John M. Archer

The heavily wooded slopes of Culp’s Hill do not easily lend themselves to visions of long, gallant lines of charging infantry as do other areas on the battlefield at Gettysburg. But the regimental monuments and traces of breastworks that line the slopes of Culp’s Hill bear silent testament to the hellish conflict: no other spot at Gettysburg would see such a sustained period of brutal combat as when North and South vied for this ground. The reader is invited to tour this seldom explored segment of the battle using maps, photos, and first-hand accounts to help understand the unique character of the struggle for Culp’s Hill and the men who fought for its slopes.

The Man who Broke into Auschwitz By: Denis Avey with Rob Broomby

I need to return this book

The almost unbelievable story of Denis Avey, now 92, began in 1944 when he was captured and sent to a POW work camp. He was put to work every day in a German factory, where he labored alongside Jewish prisoners from a nearby camp called Auschwitz. The stories they told him were horrifying. Eventually Avey’s curiosity, kind-heartedness, derring-do, and perhaps foolhardiness drove him to suggest–and remarkably manage–switching places with two of the Jewish prisoners in order to spend a couple of harrowing days and nights inside. Miraculously, he lived to tell about it.

Surely deserving of its place alongside the great World War II stories, this is an incredible tale of generosity, courage, and, for one Jewish prisoner whom Denis was able to help, survival. Amazingly, breathtakingly, it is told here for the first time.

Year one and Of Blood and Bone By: Nora Roberts

I mentioned these books in my Pioneer book haul post.

It began on New Year’s Eve.

The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed–and more than half of the world’s population was decimated.

Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magic rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river–or in the ones you know and love the most.

As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City. At the same time, other travelers are heading west too, into a new frontier. Chuck, a tech genius trying to hack his way through a world gone offline. Arlys, a journalist who has lost her audience but uses pen and paper to record the truth. Fred, her young colleague, possessed of burgeoning abilities and an optimism that seems out of place in this bleak landscape. And Rachel and Jonah, a resourceful doctor and a paramedic who fend off despair with their determination to keep a young mother and three infants in their care alive.

In a world of survivors where every stranger encountered could be either a savage or a savior, none of them knows exactly where they are heading, or why. But a purpose awaits them that will shape their lives and the lives of all those who remain.

The end has come. The beginning comes next.

Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the fight for America’s First Frontier By: Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

The explosive true saga of the legendary figure Daniel Boone and the bloody struggle for America’s frontier by two bestselling authors at the height of their writing power–Bob Drury and Tom Clavin.

It is the mid-eighteenth century, and in the 13 colonies founded by Great Britain, anxious colonists desperate to conquer and settle North America’s “First Frontier” beyond the Appalachian Mountains commence a series of bloody battles. These violent conflicts are waged against the Native American tribes whose lands they covet, the French, and finally against the mother country itself in an American Revolution destined to reverberate around the world.

This is the setting of Blood and Treasure, and the guide to this epic narrative is America’s first and arguably greatest pathfinder, Daniel Boone—not the coonskin cap-wearing caricature of popular culture but the flesh-and-blood frontiersman and Revolutionary War hero whose explorations into the forested frontier beyond the great mountains would become the stuff of legend. Now, thanks to painstaking research by two award-winning authors, the story of the brutal birth of the United States is told through the eyes of both the ordinary and larger-than-life men and women, white and red, who witnessed it.

This fast-paced and fiery narrative, fueled by contemporary diaries and journals, newspaper reports, and eyewitness accounts, is a stirring chronicle of the conflict over America’s “First Frontier” that places the reader at the center of this remarkable epoch and its gripping tales of courage and sacrifice.

The Blended Quilt By: Wanda E. Brunstetter

Will pursuing Sadie’s dreams mean leaving a romance behind?
 
Sadie Kuhns has a lot happening in her life. She is creating a unique quilt by blending a traditional Amish pattern with a Hawaiian pattern as a tribute to her time spent in the islands, and she is working on a self-published book. But her relationship with Wyman Kauffman has stagnated after six months of courtship. He can’t seem to commit to a profession that would secure a future, and he is jealous of the time Sadie gives to her own pursuits. Is there really any reason to drag this courtship out? Only time will tell in this new novel from New York Times bestselling author Wanda E. Brunstetter, writing with her daughter-in-law Jean Brunstetter

An American Betrayal By: Daniel Blake Smith

The fierce battle over identity and patriotism within Cherokee culture that took place in the years surrounding the Trail of Tears

Though the tragedy of the Trail of Tears is widely recognized today, the pervasive effects of the tribe’s uprooting have never been examined in detail. Despite the Cherokees’ efforts to assimilate with the dominant white culture—running their own newspaper, ratifying a constitution based on that of the United States—they were never able to integrate fully with white men in the New World.

In An American Betrayal, Daniel Blake Smith’s vivid prose brings to life a host of memorable characters: the veteran Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson, who adopted a young Indian boy into his home; Chief John Ross, only one-eighth Cherokee, who commanded the loyalty of most Cherokees because of his relentless effort to remain on their native soil; most dramatically, the dissenters in Cherokee country—especially Elias Boudinot and John Ridge, gifted young men who were educated in a New England academy but whose marriages to local white girls erupted in racial epithets, effigy burnings, and the closing of the school.

Smith, an award-winning historian, offers an eye-opening view of why neither assimilation nor Cherokee independence could succeed in Jacksonian America.

1812 By: David Nevin

The war of 1812 would either make America a global power sweeping all the way to the Pacific–or break it into small pieces bound to mighty England. It was a second revolution of sorts to prove to the British that America had to be taken seriously. The principal actors in this drama were James and Dolley Madison, and Andrew and Rachel Jackson. Their courage and determination would shape America’s destiny.

Lost in Shangri-La By: Mitchell Zuckoff

“A lost world, man-eating tribesmen, lush andimpenetrable jungles, stranded American fliers (one of them a dame withgreat gams, for heaven’s sake), a startling rescue mission. . . . This is atrue story made in heaven for a writer as talented as Mitchell Zuckoff. Whew—what an utterly compelling and deeplysatisfying read!” —Simon Winchester, author of Atlantic
 
Award-winning former Boston Globe reporter Mitchell Zuckoffunleashes the exhilarating, untold story of an extraordinary World War IIrescue mission, where a plane crash in the South Pacific plunged a trio of U.S.military personnel into a land that time forgot. Fans of Hampton Sides’ Ghost Soldiers, Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor, and David Grann’s The Lost Cityof Z will be captivated by Zuckoff’s masterfullyrecounted, all-true story of danger, daring, determination, and discovery injungle-clad New Guinea during the final days of WWII.

Heart of the Frontier By: Brittany Larsen, Jen Geigle Johnson, Jennie Hansen and Carolyn Twede Frank

Venture into the heart of the Wild West in this collection of four romantic novellas by some of your favorite best-selling authors.

“The Gamble” by Brittany Larsen
British aristocrat Thomas Clayborne anticipated a grand adventure in America—but what he imagined is a far cry from the rough-and-tumble reality. When his journey West brings a bold young woman into his life, will he risk everything for true love?
“Celebration for Celia” by Carolyn Frank
Though Celia generally adores Fourth of July festivities, she finds herself weighed down by uncertainties that dim her anticipation of the holiday. Then fate brings into her life a dashing stranger who is determined to give Celia a celebration she’ll never forget.

“Her Frontier Bandit” by Jen Johnson
When Rebecca and her physician father relocate to a frontier town in desperate need of a doctor, Rebecca believes it will be an opportunity to mend her recently broken heart. But she quickly realizes that no matter how far you run, true love always finds a way.
“Sagebrush Sally” by Jennie Hansen
English rose Sally is finding it difficult to bloom in the rugged wasteland of the West. But with two handsome cowboys vying for her affections, it seems that even amid cattle thieves and gunfights, the truest danger lies in losing her heart.

The Warsaw Orphan By: Kelly Rimmer

In the spring of 1942, young Elzbieta Rabinek is aware of the swiftly growing discord just beyond the courtyard of her comfortable Warsaw home. She has no fondness for the Germans who patrol her streets and impose their curfews, but has never given much thought to what goes on behind the walls that contain her Jewish neighbors. She knows all too well about German brutality–and that it’s the reason she must conceal her true identity. But in befriending Sara, a nurse who shares her apartment floor, Elzbieta makes a discovery that propels her into a dangerous world of deception and heroism.

Using Sara’s credentials to smuggle children out of the ghetto brings Elzbieta face-to-face with the reality of the war behind its walls, and to the plight of the Gorka family, who must make the impossible decision to give up their newborn daughter or watch her starve. For Roman Gorka, this final injustice stirs him to rebellion with a zeal not even his newfound love for Elzbieta can suppress. But his recklessness brings unwanted attention to Sara’s cause, unwittingly putting Elzbieta and her family in harm’s way until one violent act threatens to destroy their chance at freedom forever.

From Nazi occupation to the threat of a communist regime, The Warsaw Orphan is the unforgettable story of Elzbieta and Roman’s perilous attempt to reclaim the love and life they once knew. 

Losing a Lost Tribe By: Simon G. Southerton

For the past 175 years, the Latter-day Saint Church has taught that Native Americans and Polynesians are descended from ancient seafaring Israelites. Recent DNA research confirms what anthropologists have been saying for nearly as many years, that Native Americans are originally from Siberia and Polynesians from Southeast Asia. In the current volume, molecular biologist Simon Southerton explains the theology and the science and how the former is being reshaped by the latter.In the Book of Mormon, the Jewish prophet Lehi says the following after arriving by boat in America in 600 BCE:

Wherefore, I, Lehi, have obtained a promise, that inasmuch as those whom the Lord God shall bring out of the land of Jerusalem shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land; and they shall be kept from all other nations, that they may possess this land unto themselves (2 Ne. 1:9).

The Child of Auschwitz By: Lily Graham

I also need to return this book.

It is 1942 and Eva Adami has boarded a train to Auschwitz. Barely able to breathe due to the press of bodies and exhausted from standing up for two days, she can think only of her longed-for reunion with her husband Michal, who was sent there six months earlier.

But when Eva arrives at Auschwitz, there is no sign of Michal and the stark reality of the camp comes crashing down upon her. As she lies heartbroken and shivering on a thin mattress, her head shaved by rough hands, she hears a whisper. Her bunkmate, Sofie, is reaching out her hand…

As the days pass, the two women learn each other’s hopes and dreams – Eva’s is that she will find Michal alive in this terrible place, and Sofie’s is that she will be reunited with her son Tomas, over the border in an orphanage in Austria. Sofie sees the chance to engineer one last meeting between Eva and Michal and knows she must take it even if means befriending the enemy…

But when Eva realises she is pregnant she fears she has endangered both their lives. The women promise to protect each other’s children, should the worst occur. For they are determined to hold on to the last flower of hope in the shadows and degradation: their precious children, who they pray will live to tell their story when they no longer can.

Ghost Soldiers By: Hampton Sides

On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected U.S. troops slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty rugged miles to rescue 513 POWs languishing in a hellish camp, among them the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. A recent prison massacre by Japanese soldiers elsewhere in the Philippines made the stakes impossibly high and left little time to plan the complex operation.

In Ghost Soldiers Hampton Sides vividly re-creates this daring raid, offering a minute-by-minute narration that unfolds alongside intimate portraits of the prisoners and their lives in the camp. Sides shows how the POWs banded together to survive, defying the Japanese authorities even as they endured starvation, tropical diseases, and torture. Harrowing, poignant, and inspiring, Ghost Soldiers is the mesmerizing story of a remarkable mission. It is also a testament to the human spirit, an account of enormous bravery and self-sacrifice amid the most trying conditions.

The Far Pavilions By: M.M. Kaye

I am not sure I will read this one.

A magnificent romantic/historical/adventure novel set in India at the time of mutiny. The Far Pavilions is a story of 19th Century India, when the thin patina of English rule held down dangerously turbulent undercurrents. It is a story about and English man – Ashton Pelham-Martyn – brought up as a Hindu and his passionate, but dangerous love for an Indian princess. It’s a story of divided loyalties, of tender camaraderie, of greedy imperialism and of the clash between east and west. To the burning plains and snow-capped mountains of this great, humming continent, M.M. Kaye brings her quite exceptional gift of immediacy and meticulous historical accuracy, plus her insight into the human heart.

Sorry, this was so long but I wanted to do this in one blog post instead of breaking it up and missing one of the books. Have read any of these books? If so, what did you think of it? Let’s chat in the comments. Until next time, keep reading.