Showing results by author "B. B. Thomas" in All Categories

Tontine is a form of gambling - part lottery, part insurance. It begins with the Day the Battle of Waterloo was fought and ends at the closing of the 19th century.

Fed up after 30 years of teaching, Deena has no idea she’s just traded in lesson plans for lethal weapons and report cards for ballistics reports. It’s been fifty years since her uncle disappeared without a trace, but when science and luck collide, a rookie sheriff’s deputy breathes new life into this cold case. And when Deena’s elderly grandmother asks for her help, how can she say no? After all, she’s just quit her teaching job and is looking for a new challenge.

This classic collection of essays, edited by Booker T. Washington and with contributions from many of post-Civil War America's other prominent African-American thinkers, sought to redefine the role of Black persons in the new Jim Crow era and beat back white supremacy through racial uplift. Seven essays include Charles Chesnutt's "The Disfranchisement of the Negro", W. E. B. DuBois "The Talented Tenth", and Wilford Horace Smith's "The Negro and the Law" .

Thomas B. Allen’s expertise in military history and strategy is combined with Roger MacBride Allen’s knowledge of technology to reveal a lesser-known yet fascinating side of the 16th president of the United States. Their authoritative narrative reveals Lincoln as our nation’s first hands-on commander in chief, whose appreciation for the power of technology plays a critical role in the North’s Civil War victory over the less-developed South.

Paige Murphy loves her new life in Italy, where she can sip wine, eat pasta, and while the days away working on her romance novel. But all that changes when her beloved aunt falls ill, and she must fly back home to Texas - a place she thought she’d left behind. In a blink, she finds herself with a failing beachside bookstore, jealous cousins out to get her, and pesky suitors who won’t leave her alone. As if that wasn’t enough, buried treasure and hidden secrets could prove to be deadly!

A collection of the greatest poetry from the Romantic period, the battlefield and the Victorian era, read by some of the 20th century’s most renowned actors. Themes of war, love, nature, sexuality and much more are played out in these timeless readings of poetry from the 19th and 20th century.

Former Orlando detective Michael Garrity doesn't have a good track record when it comes to women. With two ex-wives and a teenage daughter he rarely sees, the most significant relationship in his life right now is with the tumor in his head. Terminal cancer is no joke, but Mike is determined to make the best of it. He's even named the tumor Bob. With Bob literally on his mind at all times, Mike needs a distraction. And he gets one when the most popular member of a platinum-selling boy band goes missing.

The latest release in the Christian Epic series is an exciting novel that takes place shortly after Christ's death and resurrection. Basil is called to design the case which will hold the silver cup that Christ and His disciples drank from at the Last Supper, and plans to sculpt their likenesses upon it. As he seeks out these followers of Christ, he encounters grave danger.

The Indian story of Custer’s last battle has never been told, except in a few fragmentary interviews that have been distorted into extravagant fiction. There were no white men survivors of that most thrilling of American frontier tragedies, so the veteran hostile red warriors have exclusive possession of the key to the mystery as to how it happened.

The Three Edwards, third in Thomas B. Costain's survey of Britain under the Plantagenets, covers the years between 1272 and 1377 when three Edwards ruled England. Edward I brought England out of the Middle Ages. Edward II had a tragic reign but gave his country Edward III, who ruled gloriously, if violently.

Thomas B. Costain's four-volume history of the Plantagenets begins with The Conquering Family and the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, closing with the reign of John in 1216. The troubled period after the Norman Conquest, when the foundations of government were hammered out between monarch and people, comes to life through Costain's storytelling skill and historical imagination.

Walter of Gurnie, bastard son of an English peer, is forced to flee from Oxford for his part in the university riots of 1273. Inspired by Friar Bacon, he determines to travel to China. With his friend Tristam, he fights his way to the heart of the fabulous Mongol Empire and returns famous, to find that he must choose between the first love he thought lost and the exotic flower that he found in the East.

Regarded as the standard biography of World War II naval hero Adm. Raymond A. Spruance. Spruance, victor of the battles of Midway and the Philippine Sea and commander of the Fifth Fleet in the invasions of the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Marianas, and Okinawa, is one of the towering figures in American naval history. Yet his reserved, cerebral personality did not make "good copy" for correspondents, and until the publication of The Quiet Warrior he remained an elusive figure.

The American Revolution was not simply a battle between independence-minded colonists and the oppressive British. As Thomas B. Allen reminds us, it was also a savage and often deeply personal civil war, in which conflicting visions of America pitted neighbor against neighbor and Patriot against Tory on the battlefield, the village green, and even in church.

Every Friday, Secretary Thomas Modly wrote a personal message to the entire department, regardless of rank. Those messages were called SECNAV Vectors. Each Vector was intended to clearly communicate his priorities and to establish a rapport with all levels of the organization. The subject of each Vector was inspired by ongoing events that occurred in real time. As these events unfolded, the secretary’s unyielding emphasis on being prepared for the unpredictable was proven to be prescient as the navy found itself, unintentionally, in the center of the Covid-19 crisis.

This is the fascinating story of the French regime in Canada. Few periods in the history of North America can equal it for romance and color, drama and suspense, great human courage and far-seeing aspiration. Costain, who writes history in the terms of the people who lived it, wrote of this book: "Almost from the first I found myself caught in the spell of these courageous, colorful, cruel days..."

A Christmas party for the upper crust of the small Texas town of Maycroft turns tragic when the hostess ends up dead. Everyone assumes her death is an accident - everyone except her daughter, Estelle. She turns to Deena to help solve the mystery. A jealous friend and a mysterious heir are just two of the likely suspects. As a school teacher turned newspaper reporter, Deena must get crafty to dig out the truth before anyone else gets hurt, including her own brother.

Deena Sharpe knows nothing about investigating a cold-blooded murder, but when her sweet aunt asks her to find out who killed her son, that’s exactly what Deena agrees to do. Only hitch, he died 50 years earlier, although his body was just discovered in a sheriff’s forgotten evidence closet. To make matters worse, a big-city conspiracy nut is determined to cash in on her family’s misfortune and implicate Deena’s dead cousin in the crime of the century.

Rob and Emma have made a fresh start, moving away from London and back to her hometown. With their baby daughter Sophie, their family is complete. Until one night, Rob arrives home from a late shift to find baby Sophie crying and on her own. Frantically, he searches the house and surroundings, but Emma has disappeared without a trace. Rob is distraught. Emma couldn’t abandon their child - could she? As rumours spread around the village, Rob uncovers secrets about Emma’s past life that shake his foundations about the woman he thought he married.

The late insurrection in Southampton has greatly excited the public mind, and led to a thousand idle, exaggerated, and mischievous reports. It is the first instance in our history of an open rebellion of the slaves, and attended with such atrocious circumstances of cruelty and destruction, as could not fail to leave a deep impression, not only upon the minds of the community where this fearful tragedy was wrought but throughout every portion of our country, in which this population is to be found.