The end of a global electrical blackout signals the beginning of the Branning family's ultimate test. Murder and affairs of the heart form the backdrop for a family struggling to keep their faith and heed the lessons they have learned.

***NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER (2012)*** From the award-winning, internationally acclaimed writer (“One of the best novelists alive” —Irving Howe): a Jewish woman marries a gentile laborer in turn-of-the-century Austria, with disastrous results. A high school honor student bound for university and a career as a mathematician, Blanca lives with her parents in a small town in Austria in the early years of the twentieth century. At school one day she meets Adolf, who comes from a family of peasant laborers. Tall and sturdy, plainspoken and uncomplicated, Adolf is unlike anyone Blanca has ever met. And Adolf is awestruck by beautiful, brilliant Blanca–even though she is Jewish. When Blanca is asked by school administrators to tutor Adolf, the inevitable happens: they fall in love. And when Adolf asks her to marry him, Blanca abandons her plans to attend university, converts to Christianity, and leaves her family, her friends, and her old life behind. Almost immediately, things begin to go horribly wrong. Told in a series of flashbacks as Blanca and her son flee from their town with the police in hot pursuit, the tragic story of Blanca’s life with Adolf recalls a time and place that are no more but that powerfully reverberate in collective memory.

A riveting account of America’s second war with England, from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Miracle of Dunkirk. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the great powers of Western Europe treated the United States like a disobedient child. Great Britain blocked American trade, seized its vessels, and impressed its sailors to serve in the Royal Navy. America’s complaints were ignored, and the humiliation continued until James Madison, the country’s fourth president, declared a second war on Great Britain. British forces would descend on the young United States, shattering its armies and burning its capital, but America rallied, and survived the conflict with its sovereignty intact. With stunning detail on land and naval battles, the role Native Americans played in the hostilities, and the larger backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, this is the story of the turning points of this strange conflict, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner” and led to the Era of Good Feelings that all but erased partisan politics in America for almost a decade. It was in 1812 that America found its identity and first assumed its place on the world stage. By the author of A Night to Remember, the classic account of the sinking of the Titanic—which was not only made into a 1958 movie but also led director James Cameron to use Lord as a consultant on his epic 1997 film—as well as acclaimed volumes on Pearl Harbor (Day of Infamy) and the Battle of Midway (Incredible Victory), this is a fascinating look at an oft-forgotten chapter in American history.

Working for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, one sees innumerable technological wonders. But even veteran agents Braun and Books are unprepared for what the electrifying future holds in the third novel in the steampunk adventure series. After being ignominiously shipped out of England following their participation in the Janus affair, Braun and Books are ready to prove their worth as agents. But what starts as a simple mission in the States—intended to keep them out of trouble—suddenly turns into a scandalous and convoluted case that has connections reaching as far as Her Majesty the Queen. Even with the help of two American agents from the Office of the Supernatural and the Metaphysical, Braun and Books have their work cut out for them as their chief suspect in a rash of nautical and aerial disasters is none other than Thomas Edison. Between the fantastic electric machines of Edison, the eccentricities of MoPO consultant Nikola Tesla, and the mysterious machinations of a new threat known only as the Maestro, they may find themselves in far worse danger than they ever have been in before…

Elswyth Thane is best known for her Williamsburg series, seven novels published between 1943 and 1957 that follow several generations of two families from the American Revolution to World War II. Dawn's Early Light is the first novel in the series. In it, Colonial Williamsburg comes alive. Thane centers her novel around four major characters: the Aristrocratic St. John Sprague, who becomes George Washington's aide; Regina Greensleeves, a Virginia beauty spoiled by a season in London; Julian Day, a young schoolmaster who arrives from England on the eve of the war and initially thinks of himself as a Tory; and Tibby Mawes, one of his less fortunate pupils, saddled with an alcoholic father and an indigent mother. But we also see Washington, Jefferson, Lafayette, Greene, Patrick Henry, Francis Marion, and the rest of that brilliant galaxy playing their roles not as historical figures but as men. We see de Kalb's gallant death under a cavalry charge at Camden. We penetrate to the swamp-encircled camp which was Marion's stronghold on the Peedee. We watch the cat-and-mouse game between Cornwallis and Lafayette, which ended in Cornwallis's unlucky stand at Yorktown. Dawn's Early Light is the human story behind our first war for liberty, and of the men and women loving and laughing through it to the dawn of a better world.

Chronicles the story of how Francis Scott Key came to write the United States' national anthem.

After The Fall … America's Great Dream is over. Centuries ago it was devastated by the ultimate war. The effects still linger. Food is scarce, water even scarcer and human compassion nowhere to be found. Even so, society is slowly rebuilding itself. But is it a society whose thirst for success is built on an enormous, barbaric lie. Silver Island … an almost legendary place to most Americans. The citadel where the government is building a new and better nation from the ashes of the war-ravaged land. Everyone envies the few children who are chosen to be sent to Silver Island to help realize that dream. At least, that's what Howie Ryder was told when his little sister became one of the Chosen. And that's what he believed before the soldiers slaughtered his parents. Six years on, Howie has discovered the horrifying truth about Silver Island. And will do anything — anything — to rescue his sister from its grip…