Celia Garth


Book Description

This New York Times bestseller set during the American Revolution is “an exciting tale of love and war in the tradition of Gone with the Wind” (Chicago Tribune). A bustling port city, Charleston, South Carolina, is the crossroads of the American Revolution, supplies and weapons for the rebel army being unloaded there and then smuggled north. Recently engaged to the heir to a magnificent plantation, Celia Garth watches all of this thrilling activity from the window of the dressmaker’s shop where she works. When the unthinkable occurs and the British capture and occupy Charleston, bringing fiery retribution to the surrounding countryside, Celia sees her world destroyed. The rebel cause seems lost until the Swamp Fox, American General Francis Marion, takes the fight to the British—and one of his daring young soldiers recruits Celia to spy on the rebels’ behalf. Out of the ashes of Charleston and the Carolina countryside will rise a new nation—and a love that will change Celia Garth forever.




Jubilee Trail


Book Description

A willful New York debutante travels the rugged Great Plains for a future in the flourishing American West in this New York Times bestseller. Charting the trail across the Great Plains from New York City to the Mexican territory of California, a headstrong couple embarks on a new life in this classic work of historical fiction as unforgiving, moving, and unpredictable as the frontier. A recent finishing school graduate, eighteen-year-old Garnet Cameron is desperate for direction. Too driven for the restrictive manners of the upper class, Garnet is naturally drawn to Oliver Hale, a frontier trader. Unlike the men Garnet is accustomed to, Oliver treats her as his equal and respects her independence. His tales of adventure on the plains thrill her. And his proposal of marriage is accepted. Garnet eagerly grabs hold of the promise and prospect of an exciting future, only to discover how ill-prepared she is for the punishing landscape of the Jubilee Trail and the even harsher realities of human nature. Adapted into a feature film, Jubilee Trail is a classic novel of a woman in the West, beloved not only for the rebelliousness and resilience of its heroine, but for its authenticity, grand sweep, unsparing intimacy, and honest portrayal of the survivors and victims—as well as the victors and villains—of a defiant American wilderness.




Calico Palace


Book Description

The New York Times bestseller that brings to life the passionate, adventurous men and women who transformed San Francisco during the California Gold Rush. Kendra comes to San Francisco, a sleepy town of nine hundred people, because her stepfather, an army colonel, is charged with overseeing its defenses during the Mexican War. Marny arrives from Honolulu to set up a gambling hall. Neither expects to be swept up in one of history’s greatest adventures, which begins when tiny flakes of gold are discovered in the California hills. As both young women follow their dreams into the mining camps and back to a rapidly growing San Francisco, they encounter ambitious settlers, sailors, miners, ranchers, and mysterious drifters, men who will offer them love or friendship or will break their hearts. Yet Kendra and Marny’s lives stay centered on the Calico Palace, the little gambling operation in a tent in Shiny Gulch that becomes the most opulent gambling house in California. Thrilling and rich in authentic historical detail, Calico Palace is first-rate historical fiction that informs and entertains.




Tomorrow Is Forever


Book Description

A wife and mother grapples with love and loss in World War II–era Hollywood in a New York Times–bestselling author’s emotional tour de force. For two decades, Elizabeth Herlong has been a devoted wife, supporting her husband as he built an empire in Hollywood’s budding motion picture industry. But far from the bright glamour of her current life, World War II rages in Europe, forcing Elizabeth to remember her past, awakening feelings and longings she thought she would never experience again. Most of all, she fears for her eldest son, who will turn eighteen in less than a year and have to enlist in the army. Then one night, Elizabeth’s husband introduces her to a German screenwriter he’s been working with. Erich Kessler is a disabled veteran of World War I attempting to make a new life for himself. Something in his face stirs Elizabeth’s heart—setting her on a journey of discovery about the meaning of true love and the things that war cannot destroy. Made into a film starring Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, and Natalie Wood, this is a novel of a woman haunted by the shadows of war both past and present, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Jubilee Trail, Deep Summer, and other acclaimed novels.




This Side of Glory


Book Description

"The Civil War had changed the South, breaking down many of the old social barriers. But when Eleanor Upjohn and Kester Larne fell in love, they found the South hadn't changed enough ... To the Larnes, still living in gracious if seedy elegance, Eleanor was common, the descendant of white trash. And to the Upjohns, Kester was a spoiled playboy whose airs of gentility were simply a mask for laziness"--Back cover




More Book Lust


Book Description

Whether you’re searching for the perfect read for yourself or for a friend, More Book Lust offer eclectic recommendations unlike those in any other reading guide available. In this followup to the bestselling Book Lust, popular librarian, Nancy Pearl, offers a fresh collection of 1,000 reading recommendations in more than 120 thematic, intelligent and wholly entertaining reading lists. For the friend wanting to leave her job: "Living Your Dream" offers good armchair dreaming books about people who have left stodgy jobs to do what they love. Are you a budding chef? "Fiction For Foodies" includes books that sneak in a recipe or two along with a tantalizing plot. For the James Bond wannabe: "Crime is a Globetrotter" features crime novels set in various locations around the world such as Tibet, Sweden, and Sicily. In the book’s introduction, Pearl jokes, “If we were at a twelve-step meeting together, I would have to stand up and say, ‘Hi, I’m Nancy P., and I’m a readaholic.” Booklist magazine plays off this obsession while echoing a sentiment of Nancy Pearl’s fans everywhere: “A self-confessed ‘readaholic,’ Pearl lets us benefit from her addiction. May she never seek recovery.” Indeed.







Golden Dreams


Book Description

An account of the California Gold Rush, discussing the people and events involved and the effect of that gold discovery upon the future of California and the nation.




LimeLight


Book Description

Claudette Fioré used to turn heads and break hearts. She relished the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle because she had what it takes: money, youth, fame, and above all, beauty. But age has withered that beauty, and a crooked accountant has taken her wealth, leaving the proud widow penniless and alone. Armed with stubbornness and sarcasm, Claudette returns to her shabby little hometown and her estranged sister. Slowly, she makes friends. She begins to see her old life in a new light. For the first time, Claudette Fioré questions her own values and finds herself wondering if it's too late to change.




Plantation Trilogy


Book Description

A saga of Louisiana by an author who “belongs among those Southern novelists who are trying to interpret the South and its past in critical terms” (The New York Times). Published in the late 1930s by New York Times–bestselling author Gwen Bristow, the Plantation Trilogy is an epic series of novels that bring to life the history of Louisiana—from its settlement in the late eighteenth century to the realities of slavery and poverty to the post–World War I era—via the intertwined lives of the members of three families: the Sheramys, the Larnes, and the Upjohns. Deep Summer is the story of Puritan pioneer Judith Sheramy and adventurer Philip Larne, who marry and strive to build an empire in the Louisiana wilderness during the American Revolution. The Handsome Road tells the story of plantation mistress Ann Sheramy Larne and poor seamstress Corrie May Upjohn, who forge an unlikely bond of friendship as they struggle to survive the cataclysms of the Civil War and Reconstruction. This Side of Glory presents the story of Eleanor Upjohn, a modern young woman in the early twentieth century who marries charming Kester Larne and struggles to save the debt-ridden plantation that her husband’s ancestors founded more than one hundred years ago.