In the first volume of this saga of George Custer, the infamous general takes a lover among the Indians captured in his long winter campaign against the Cheyenne, risking marriage, reputation, and career for her.

Custer confronts his destiny at Little Big Horn and his legend lives on through his Cheyenne son. Never one to proceed cautiously when an impetuous move could win him glory, Custer marched his famed Seventh Calvary against the Sioux in June 1876. He was thirty-six, already a mythic hero to some, with the possibility of a presidential nomination looming in his future; while to others he was an arrogant and dangerous fool, misguided in his determination to subjugate the Plains tribes. What should have been his greatest triumph became an utterly devastating defeat that would ring through the ages and serve as a turning point in the Indian Wars.

Ayla, the heroine first introduced in The Clan of the Cave Bear, is known and loved by millions of readers. Now, in The Plains of Passage, Ayla’s story continues. Ayla and Jondalar set out on horseback across the windswept grasslands of Ice Age Europe. To the hunter-gatherers of their world--who have never seen tame animals--Ayla and Jondalar appear enigmatic and frightening. The mystery surrounding the woman, who speaks with a strange accent and talks to animals with their own sounds, is heightened by her uncanny control of a large, powerful wolf. The tall, yellow-haired man who rides by her side is also held in awe, not only for the magnificent stallion he commands, but also for his skill as a crafter of stone tools, and for the new weapon he devises, the spear-thrower. In the course of their cross-continental odyssey, Ayla and Jondalar encounter both savage enemies and brave friends. Together they learn that the vast and unknown world can be difficult and treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful and enlightening as well. All the pain and pleasure bring them closer to their ultimate destination, for the orphaned Ayla and the wandering Jondalar must reach that place on earth they can call home. As sweeping and spectacular as the land she creates, Jean M. Auel’s The Plains of Passage is an astonishing novel of discovery, danger, and love, a triumph for one of the world’s most original and popular authors. This eBook includes the full text of the novel plus the following additional content: • An Earth’s Children® series sampler including free chapters from the other books in Jean M. Auel’s bestselling series • A Q&A with the author about the Earth’s Children® series

Few names of the American frontier resonate like that of George Armstrong Custer. His fiery temperament and grand vision led him to triumph in one season and tragedy in another. Now best-selling chronicler Terry C. Johnston beings to life the Custer legacy as never before in a masterful new trilogy . . . . For a youth of the Cheyenne in the years between Little Big horn and Wounded Knee, life was brutal and dangerous. For Yellow Bird, who saw his father, George Custer, die on a blood-soaked field in 1876, survival is especially difficult, for--despite his own white heritage--he must live in the Cheyenne world. And so he grew to manhood, bound to his father by their warrior's spirit, preparing to fight for his home, his wife, and his own son.

Fans of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" will embrace Poe Ballantine's "Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere." Poe Ballantine's "Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel" included in Best American Essays 2013, and for well over twenty years, Poe Ballantine traveled America, taking odd jobs, living in small rooms, trying to make a living as a writer. At age 46, he finally settled with his Mexican immigrant wife in Chadron, Nebraska, where they had a son who was red-flagged as autistic. Poe published four books about his experiences as a wanderer and his observations of America. But one day in 2006, his neighbor, Steven Haataja, a math professor from the local state college disappeared. Ninety five days later, the professor was found bound to a tree, burned to death in the hills behind the campus where he had taught. No one, law enforcement included, understood the circumstances. Poe had never contemplated writing mystery or true crime, but since he knew all the players, the suspects, the sheriff, the police involved, he and his kindergarten son set out to find out what might have happened.

From the mists of Krynn's earliest history came the Barbarians. A young brother and sister escape a pack of predators and strike out on their own, their lives taking parallel courses linked to the destiny of different tribes. But dark powers watch the rise of civilization with cold calculation and deadly intent.

On April 30, 1849, Sarah Bayliss Royce, along with her husband, Josiah, and their daughter, Mary, left her home in Tipton, Iowa, and headed for California in a covered wagon. Along the way, she kept a diary which, nearly thirty years later, served as the basis for a memoir she titled Across the Plains. That book has been freshly transcribed by Jennifer Dawes Adkison from RoyceÕs original handwritten document, and this new edition is faithful to the original, restoring several passages that were omitted from the previous edition. In a new introduction Adkison reveals Across the Plains to be far more than a simple narrative of one pioneer womanÕs journey west. She explains that Royce wrote the book at the request of her son, Josiah Royce, a well-known professor of philosophy at Harvard University with motives of his own. She crafted the narrative that her son wanted: an argument for spiritual faith and fortitude as foundational to CaliforniaÕs history. Yet the narrative itself, in addition to offering a window into a world that has long lacked close documentation, gives us the opportunity to study the ways in which nineteenth-century western women asserted this primacy of faith and crafted their experience into stories with larger cultural and social resonance. Scholars have long used Across the Plains to mold and support an iconic image of the resolute pioneer woman. However, until now no one has considered RoyceÕs own self-conscious creation of this persona. Readers will discover that in many ways, Sarah RoyceÕs careful construction of this cultural portrait deepens our respect for her and our delight in her travels, travails, and triumphs.