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  Rabies - A tale of disease from...

  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

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  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was born in Valencia, Spain on 29th January 1867.  
   
  At university, he studied law and graduated in 1888 but never felt the urgency to practice - he was more interested in politics, journalism, literature and women.   
   
  Politically he was a militant Republican partisan and, in his youth, founded a newspaper, El Pueblo (The People). The newspaper was taken to court many times and he made many enemies. In one incident he was shot and almost killed. In 1896, Ibáñez was arrested and sentenced to a few months in prison. 
   
  Despite this colourful background he found time to write novels. His first published work was ‘La Araña Negra’ (The Black Spider) in 1892, a work that he later repudiated although at the time it was a useful vehicle for him to express his anti-clerical views. 
   
  In 1894, he published ‘Arroz y Tartana’ (Airs and Graces), about a late 19th Century widow in Valencia trying to keep up appearances in order to marry her daughters well.   
   
  Ibáñez’s next sequence of books studied rural life in the farmlands of Valencia and failed to gain much of an audience.   
   
  His writing now took on a new direction with its now familiar sensational and melodramatic themes in 1908 with ‘Sangre y Arena’ (Blood and Sand), which follows the career of Juan Gallardo from his poor beginnings as a child in Seville, to his rise to becoming a famous matador in Madrid 
   
  However, his greatest success was ‘Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) in 1916, which tells a tangled tale of the French and German sons-in-law of an Argentinian land-owner who find themselves fighting on opposite sides in the First World War.  It was a literary and commercial sensation and became the best-selling book of 1919.  It also propelled Rudolph Valentino to stardom in the 1921 film. 
   
  Ironically his fame in the English-speaking world has come not as a novelist but as the stories behind some of Hollywood’s greatest silent movies. 
   
  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez died in Menton, France on January 28th, 1928, the day before his 61st birthday.

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  Bottomland

  Michelle Hoover

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  At once intimate and sweeping, Bottomland—the anticipated second novel from Michelle Hoover—follows the Hess family in the years after World War I as they attempt to rid themselves of the anti-German sentiment that left a stain on their name. But when the youngest two daughters vanish in the middle of the night, the family must piece together what happened while struggling to maintain their life on the unforgiving Iowa plains. 
  In the weeks after Esther and Myrle’s disappearance, their siblings desperately search for the sisters, combing the stark farmlands, their neighbors’ houses, and the unfamiliar world of far-off Chicago. Have the girls run away to another farm? Have they gone to the city to seek a new life? Or were they abducted? Ostracized, misunderstood, and increasingly isolated in their tightly knit small town in the wake of the war, the Hesses fear the worst. Told in the voices of the family patriarch and his children, this is a haunting literary mystery that spans decades before its resolution. Hoover deftly examines the intrepid ways a person can forge a life of their own despite the dangerous obstacles of prejudice and oppression.

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  Men Women and Boats

  Stephen Crane

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  "Men, Women, and Boats" is a riveting collection by Stephen Crane that delves into the depths of human endurance, courage, and the intricate dance of interpersonal relationships. Through a diverse array of stories, Crane portrays the tumultuous sea of life, where men and women navigate the unpredictable waves of fate, passion, and societal norms. Each tale is a masterstroke of emotion and insight, revealing the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity. This collection is a testament to the tumultuous and redemptive power of the human experience, making it a must-read.

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  To Make a Man

  Peter Brandvold

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  In this fourth book in bestselling author Peter Brandvold's exciting Bloody Joe western series, the stakes are higher than ever before, and the action is hotter than hellfire! 
   
   
   
  Del Norte Town Marshal "Bloody" Joe Mannion and his junior deputy, Henry "Stringbean" McCallister, run down an especially violent as well as beguiling outlaw in the pretty form of Mathilda Calderon. The senorita is just one pretty girl, but she fights like a leg-trapped puma, leaving Mannion with an arm full of buckshot and Stringbean hurting where a man just shouldn't be attacked, gallblastit! 
   
   
   
  Senorita Calderon is wanted not only for aiding and abetting the commission of a federal crime but to testify in a court trial against her boyfriend, the notorious border bandito and revolutionario, Diego Hidalgo, who stole three Gatling guns from the US Army, wiping out a dozen soldiers in the deadly process. Hidalgo and three members of his gang were captured by the Army. The US Marshal for the Southwestern District has sent three deputy US marshals to retrieve the senorita from Del Norte, and to escort her to Tucson. Bloody Joe believes she will not only identify Hidalgo as the leader of the gang who stole the Gatling guns but will also testify as to the guns' whereabouts.

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  Talons of Eagles

  J. A. Johnstone, William W....

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  "Solid, page-turning entertainment featuring a larger-than-life hero in MacCallister" from the greatest Western writer of the twenty-first century (Booklist). 
   
   
    
  Divided they fall . . . 
   
   
    
  Raised by the Shawnee, Jamie Ian MacCallister fought his way to manhood on an odyssey that took him from the Alamo to Colorado to the goldfields of California. Now, the United States is divided against itself—North against South, brother against brother, father against son. With his own sons fighting on opposing sides, MacCallister leads his Confederate Marauders into battle from Georgia to Tennessee, from Bull Run to Shiloh. 
   
   
    
  When the guns of war finally fall silent, a vengeful enemy vows to add another chapter to the bloodstained pages of history . . . by hunting down the soldier named Jamie Ian MacCallister. 
   
   
    
  "[A] rousing, two-fisted saga of the growing American frontier." —Publishers Weekly

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  Land of Joys

  Steve Wiegenstein

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  A bestselling book, an exhibit featuring the Hill-Billies of Heaven Holler, and a brutal murder turn the excitement of 1904 World' s Fair into a nightmare for the people of Daybreak. Country and city collide when Charlotte Turner' s son Adam turns their sleepy Ozarks village of Daybreak into a tourist attraction with his bestselling novel The Hill-Billies of Heaven Holler. But his idea of setting up a hillbilly exhibit at the 1904 World' s Fair has unforeseen consequences in all directions as Charlotte, her granddaughter Petey, and the rest of Daybreak are caught up in the exoticism, greed, and danger that surround the event. Adventure leads to violence at home and at the Fair, and Charlotte must make life-of-death choices to keep Petey safe and preserve her beloved community. 
  Semifinalist, 2023 Society of Midland Authors fiction award.

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