Ed Sala

Burke tells the story of three young men, best friends from New Iberia, Louisiana who, despite their own misgivings about "The Cause," enlist in the Confederate Army and set off to war.

When Robey Childs's mother has a premonition about her husband, a soldier fighting in the Civil War, she does the unthinkable: she sends her only child to find his father on the battlefield and bring him home. At fourteen, wearing the coat his mother sewed to ensure his safety-blue on one side, gray on the other- Robey thinks he's off on a great adventure. But not far from home, his horse falters and he realizes the enormity of his task. It takes...

"Gleaming, spellbinding fiction . . . Terrifying and abruptly beautiful, the new novel gleams with a masculine intensity; it is hard to read and hard to put down."—The Cleveland Plain Dealer The year is 1916. The enemy, Pancho Villa, is elusive. Terrain is unforgiving. Through the mountains and across the long dry stretches of Mexico, Napoleon Childs, an aging cavalryman, leads an expedition of inexperienced horse soldiers on seemingly fruitless...

Includes diary entries, personal letters, and archival photographs to describe the experiences of boys, sixteen years old or younger, who fought in the Civil War.

It was more than a century ago that Mark Twain left the notoriously violent Finn, Huckleberry Finn's father, dead, surrounded by such oddities as a wooden leg and women's undergarments. But just exactly how did Finn end up in that room? Clinch takes us on a journey through the mysterious life of an unusual man. Along the way, he introduces us to characters like the Judge--Finn's own frightening father--as well as Finn's sickly brother Will, the hermit...

Ron Hansen has won an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters for his rich writing and poetic style. Atticus begins in the vein of a contemporary western. As it unfolds, it includes an intriguing murder mystery and a dramatic parable of the prodigal son. For years, prosperous Colorado rancher Atticus Cody has tried to understand his rootless son, Scott, who is now living a marginal life in Mexico. When he learns...

Before he won stunning acclaim as one of today's most gifted southern writers, Larry Brown was a firefighter with the Oxford, Mississippi Fire Department. On Fire, his powerful and unflinching account of this experience, catapults listeners into the daily trauma all firefighters face-from the blistering heat of burning homes to the crunch of broken glass at crash scenes. As a gritty autobiography of a firefighter and as a lyrical exploration of one...

Monty Roberts has traveled the world working with difficult horses. He has trained Queen Elizabeth's yearlings, jittery stallions on movie sets, and million-dollar race horses. In each case, he controls the animal without using force or inflicting pain. Monty's father, a traditional horse trainer, had taught his son to dominate a horse in order to "break" it. But when he was 13, Monty made a discovery that changed his life. As he watched a mare tame...

The author recalls his carefree life in a small midwestern town at the close of World War I, and his adventures with his pet raccoon, Rascal.