In the spring of 1860 on the eve of a civil war that threatened to tear the country apart, two Americans conceived of an audacious plan for linking the nation's two coasts, thereby joining its present with its future. This book traces the development of the Pony Express and follows it from its start in St. Joseph, Missouri 1,500 miles west to Sacramento.

A classic historical western of the eighteenth-century American frontier by the celebrated author of Riders of the Purple Sage. First published in 1906, The Spirit of the Border is a vivid and brutal tale based on true events as chronicled in the journals of Zane Grey's ancestor Col. Ebenezer Zane. It tells the story of Moravian Church missionaries and their efforts to bring peace to the Ohio Valley-efforts that met a tragic end in the destruction...

When Jack Kells kidnaps the beautiful Joan Randle, he takes her to an isolated canyon where his legion are plotting to acquire a gold fortune. The woman becomes an unexpected accomplice to an intricate robbery. Jack Kells is the cold-hearted leader of a group of mountain bandits. Despite his rough exterior, he develops a soft spot for their latest victim-Miss Joan Randle. She was captured by the men and taken to their hideout where she encounters...

The voyageur's highway was the route from Lake Superior along inland waterways to the Minnesota North Country. Countless people—explorers, fur traders, missionaries, map makers, lumberjacks, miners, naturalists—were drawn to the region's woods and lakeshores. Indians, French Canadians,Scandinavians, and Slavs all used the rich resources of the land to follow an old way of life or to find a new one. In a lively, clear style, Grace Lee Nute...

A fascinating new look at the infamous story of the Hatfields and the McCoys and their blood feud that began in 1865 with the murder of Harmon McCoy, a Union soldier, by a Confederate Hatfield relative.

Having fled his family's farm at eighteen with a promise never to return, Guy Pehrsson is drawn back into his past when he receives his grandfather's ominous letter, "Trouble here. Come home when you can." He returns to discover a place both wholly familiar and barely recognizable and is cast into the center of an interracial land dispute with the exigencies of war.
Widely acclaimed when first published in the eighties, the timeless novel Red...

Winner of a Spur Award, presented by the Western Writers of America (WWA), for the Best Western Nonfiction Historical Book.
Renowned historian Annette Atkins presents a fresh understanding of how a complex and modern Minnesota came into being in Creating Minnesota. Each chapter of this innovative state history focuses on a telling detail, a revealing incident, or a meaningful issue that illuminates a larger event, social trends, or politics during...

Two nineteenth-century French priests pioneer through the American Southwest in this stunning classic from a Pulitzer Prize–winning author. Following the Mexican-American War, two French Jesuits leave Sandusky, Ohio, on a mission. Bishop Jean Marie Latour and his friend Father Joseph Vaillant are venturing to New Mexico territory to establish a Roman Catholic diocese. But this is no easy task. When the Jesuits arrive in the unforgiving landscape,...

Traveled by mammoth-hunters and motorcyclists alike, the Minnesota River Valley shows the traces of a unique legacy: where else are you going to find a political party with ideals based on honest conversation and gymnastics? Not all of it is as lovely as the natural scenery it accompanies--Mankato was the site of the largest mass execution in United States history--but it is a heritage that demands contemplation. Discover the valley's most enterprising...

"Not since Sebastian Junger in The Perfect Storm has a writer captured so well the fury of the seas as Curt Brown." -The Maritime ExecutiveThrough masterful research and elegant prose, Curt Brown traces the devastating intersection of nature's fury and corporate greed. It was Thanksgiving week 1905, and the industry bosses wanted one last run before the shipping season ended; the bottom line depended on it. The tragedy that followed led to the...