O Beulah Land, the second volume of The Beulah Quintet—Mary Lee Settle's unforgettable generational saga about the roots of American culture, class, and identity and the meaning of freedom—is a land-hungry story. It follows the odyssey of Johnny Church's descendants as they leave England in search of freedom and land. One of those descendants, Jonathan Lacey, settles in the backcountry of Virginia, where he battles both Native Americans and white frontier bandits and builds the beginning of a flourishing estate named Beulah. The novel closes shortly before the commencement of the Revolutionary War, with Lacey elected to the House of Burgesses and his family line firmly established in what is to become the state of West Virginia.

Renowned choral conductor and educator Andr J. Thomas has crafted a book that the conductor of any choral ensemble-be it church, high school, university, or professional-will want close at hand when preparing to program any concert spiritual. Understanding the Spiritual, the first of the book's two sections, includes an exploration of the beginnings of the spiritual, its role in society and its transition into art music. Issues of interpretation-text, diction, rhythm and tempo-are addressed in the second section, Performing the Spiritual. In addition to interviews with noted conductors Dr. Anton Armstrong and Prof. Judith Willoughby as to matters of performance and selection, the centerpiece of this section is Dr. Thomas's personal reflections on several spiritual arrangements, including his rehearsal techniques (with specific examples and measure-number references to the included scores), as well as an insightful look into his decisions of interpretation.

From the Dakotas to Key West, in "Beulah Land's" 13 stories, lush country settings are juxtaposed against taut urban landscapes as every character speaks out with his or her own unique voice.

During the English Civil War a young man joins Cromwell's Parliamentary Army to escape his humorless father only to find betrayal and tragedy in Ireland. Based on a true incident.