Dutch Colony

In a landmark work of history, Russell Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today.

For over a century, the New Hope Island vanishing has tantalized the world. How did 150 people disappear from a lonely Hebridean island, leaving no trace and no clues? Media magnate Alexander McIntyre decides to solve the mystery, and gathers a team of experts to mount an expedition to the island. He hopes running the story as a rolling exclusive will revive the fortunes of his flagship news-stand title. He hopes to find conclusive answers to questions that have teased a curious world for decades. And he wants his own secret theory triumphantly vindicated.

It is the summer of 1979. An English painter travels to a small island off the west coast of Ireland. Mr. Lloyd takes the last leg by curragh, though boats with engines are available and he doesn't much like the sea. He wants the authentic experience, to be changed. He doesn't know that a Frenchman follows close behind. Masson has visited the island for many years, studying their language, and is fiercely protective of their isolation. But the people who live on this rock have their own views on what is being recorded, what is being taken, and what ought to be given in return.

On the morning of November 4, 2019, a caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities-fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the LDS Church and settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late nineteenth century.

In 1866, 12 men and women and one small child were forced aboard a leaky schooner and cast away to a natural prison on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Two weeks later, a dozen others were exiled, and then 40 more, and then 100 more. Tracked by bounty hunters and torn screaming from their families, the luckless were loaded into shipboard cattle stalls and abandoned in a lawless place where brutality held sway. Many did not have leprosy, and most of those who did were not contagious.

Don't think that because it is such a small country with only about 17 million people, it should be neglected. The Netherlands has a long history, with a high influence on our cultures, trading routes, the stock market, business, and art. The Dutch were all over the world. They "owned" and colonized a big portion of what was then the known world. They were among the first settlers, had the biggest haven, and biggest fleet for some time. The Dutch East-Indian Trading Company, or VOC, is probably the biggest or at least one of the biggest companies that has ever existed.

When Maude Chambliss first arrives at Retreat, the seasonal home of her husband's aristocratic family, she is a 19-year-old bride fresh from South Carolina's Low Country. Among the patrician men and women who reside in the summer colony on the coast of Maine, her gypsy-like beauty and impulsive behavior immediately brand her an outsider. She, as well as everyone else, is certain she will never fit in. And of course, she doesn't, at first.

It’s 1663 in the tiny, hardscrabble Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, now present-day Manhattan. Orphan children are going missing, and among those looking into the mysterious state of affairs are a 22-year-old trader, Blandine von Couvering, herself an orphan, and a British spy named Edward Drummond. Both the search for the killer and Edward and Blandine’s newfound romance are endangered, however, when Blandine is accused of being a witch and Edward is sentenced to hang for espionage.

Harmsworth. A remote, mist-shrouded island in the Russian Arctic. Archaeology Professor Callum Ross makes the discovery of a lifetime: a prehistoric ice mummy preserved for thousands of years by the sub-zero temperatures. Only, they didn't die of natural causes....

Island One is a celestial utopia, and David Adams is its most perfect creation - a man with a brain as advanced as any computer and a body free of human frailties. But David is a prisoner - a captive of the colony that created him - destined to spend the days of his life in an island-sized cylinder that circles a doomed and desperate home planet. Thousands of miles below him, a world trembles; its people cringe in terror and despair in anticipation of an impending apocalypse. And fate has cast one extraordinary human in the role of savior.

Mr Lloyd has decided to travel to the island by boat without engine - the authentic experience. Unbeknownst to him, Mr Masson will also soon be arriving for the summer. Both will strive to encapsulate the truth of this place - one in his paintings, the other with his faithful rendition of its speech, the language he hopes to preserve. But the people who live here on this rock - three miles wide and half-a-mile long - have their own views on what is being recorded, what is being taken and what is given in return.

Thyra, a Redtail Gryphoness, once lived happily in the state of Georgia with her human husband, Johnathen, despite being harassed by an anti-gryphon organization called The Gathering. Now that the hate-filled organization has crumbled to pieces, Thyra and Johnathen are free to live their life in peace. Unfortunately, the wake of destruction caused by The Gathering has cost them their home, their belongings, and has lasting effects on the community around them.

A deadly supercolony of ants with razor-sharp claws that pierce skin like paper and stinging venom that liquefies its prey is killing in Manhattan. The desperate mayor turns to the greatest ant expert in the world, Paul O’Keefe. Paul calls on his ex-wife Kendra Hart, a spirited entomologist. When the ants launch an all-out attack, Paul and Kendra hit the dangerous, panic-stricken streets of New York, searching for a coveted queen. It’s a race to unlock the secrets of an indestructible new species, before the president nukes Manhattan.

It’s 2015, and Anne Hatley is leaving her North Carolina home for a Long Island research lab called the Colony. Anne, who was born with a genetic mutation that left her only one leg, will be donating stem cells for gene research in exchange for a new leg. But after meeting others with deficiencies, including carriers of the “suicide gene” and “obesity gene,” Anne questions how much genetics really determine a person’s life.

Hiding deep in the Sleer battle ring, Simon Brooks and Sara Rosenski are learning the ways of the Sleer and to trust each other. Each day brings a new discovery and more danger, while Ray Fairchild, COP of Hornet Squadron languishes on Earth, suspected of treason for abandoning them on the alien structure. Forced to choose between his career and his crew, Fairchild enables a rescue mission back to the Sleer structure while a maniacal Sleer commander moves to stop them. But Sleer reinforcements arrive and Earth’s defense is in disarray...and where are Brooks and Rosenski?

In the far reaches of space, at a time when Earth is but a vague memory, the survivors of a crashed colony ship must find a way to live on a harsh planet they are ill-equipped to handle. Hidden on this world are other intelligences whose goals and ambitions put them at odds with the 200 rag-tag humans. Kyrah Oaks, a young woman with extraordinary talents, must help her people figure out a way to work with their new and hostile surroundings if any of them are to survive....