Showing results by author "A. Rivers" in All Categories

What happens when doing everything right still isn’t enough to guard your heart? Mattie Sloan has built her life on clean ledgers and clear lines. As the steady hand behind Stonebrook’s livery books, she keeps freight moving, payroll balanced, and tempers from flaring when the stage line falters. Paper doesn’t disappoint. Numbers don’t leave. And as long as she stays useful, she stays safe. Silas Boone has no such luxury. As foreman of the Bar-K hay camp, he carries a crew’s wages, a herd’s winter feed, and a reputation for fairness that’s taken years to earn. He doesn’t ...

When the body of the young and beautiful princess is found in a wine barrel at her fiancé’s winery, the news of Ivana’s murder sends shockwaves throughout the globe. FBI Agent Ava James is sent to Napa Valley, California, to solve the case. Who would kill such a beloved and altruistic princess? And what could possibly be the motive?

Though not as well known as the Cherokee, one of the Five Civilized Tribes was the Chickasaw. With roots that tie them to the Ancient Moundbuilders, the Chickasaw were one of the most established groups in the Southeastern United States, and they were among the first natives encountered by Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto's historic expedition in the mid-16th century.

Mention the 18th century Royal Navy and visions come to mind of swashbuckling sailors swinging from rope to rope while a red-faced captain in an even redder coat and a powdered wig shouts order and pitches fits. Such visions naturally fail to do full justice to a group of men who functioned, with little direction and even less support, on the seas for years at a time. Disney may enjoy portraying them sitting down to sumptuous feasts or cavorting with scantily clad native girls, but the opposite was true.

In 1980, the United States suffered the deadliest and most destructive volcanic eruption in its history when Mount St. Helens literally blew its lid off, the result of seismic activity during the eruption. What made the eruption all the more remarkable was that a fair amount of preparations had gone into anticipating it, after an earthquake in the area a few months earlier alerted federal geologists to the possibility of activity there. In fact, Mount St. Helens had been the cause of the earthquake itself, the result of its own lava flows under the surface.

It all began on Memorial Day, May 31, 1921. Around or after 4:00 p.m. that day, a clerk at Renberg’s clothing store on the first floor of the Drexel Building in Tulsa heard a woman scream. Turning in the direction of the scream, he saw a young black man running from the building. Going to the elevator, the clerk found the white elevator operator, 17-year-old Sarah Page, crying and distraught. The clerk concluded that she had been assaulted by the black man he saw running a few moments earlier and called the police.

Faith isn’t about fitting a mold—it’s about meeting God as you are. If you’ve ever felt like your mind’s pace doesn’t match the quiet devotionals of traditional Bible study, Faith in Focus was made for you. Specifically designed for ADHD minds and neurodivergent thinkers, this 12-week Bible study guide invites you into a grace-filled, distraction-friendly journey with God—on your terms.

Sometimes the key to happiness is unlocking desires you never knew you had. JULIE I thought meeting my old college crush for drinks would be a simple catch-up—with my husband along for moral support. But when I notice the electricity between Adam and William, something awakens in me. The way they look at each other ignites a fantasy to see them together. So when Adam invites us back to his hotel, I do something unexpected: I say yes. Two men discovering each other. WILLIAM I've spent my life hiding desires I never acknowledged. But when Adam kisses me, everything I've buried breaks free. ...

T.E. Lawrence, more popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia, was a seminal figure in the shaping and reshaping of the politics of Arabia in the early 20th century, serving as an expert in Arab affairs in the British military and playing a key role in the Great Arab Revolt of 1916-1918.

After a brief revival following World War I, during which it successfully defeated a Soviet attempt to invade in an effort to carry "international revolution" into Germany and Central Europe, Poland once again fell victim to its neighbors in 1939. Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and Josef Stalin's USSR collaborated in the conquest and then split Poland between them. The Germans instituted oppressive rule in their portion of Poland, executing some 7,000 people on political grounds and imprisoning thousands of others.

When one is looking quickly over the lives of the Presidents of the United States, it is easy to overlook William Henry Harrison. After all, he only served as the Chief Executive for 30 days, and he spent the majority of those in bed, fighting for his life and eventually losing. However, to ignore Harrison because he served such a short time in the White House is just as foolish as ignoring Patrick Henry or Alexander Hamilton because they were never elected to the nation's highest office.

For much of the 20th century, South American governments in large part lived under a system of military junta governments. The mixture of indigenous peoples, foreign settlers and European colonial superpowers produced cultural and social imbalances into which military forces intervened as a stabilizing influence. The proactive personalities of military heads and the rigid structures of such a hierarchy guaranteed the "strong man" commanding officer an abiding presence in the form of executive dictator.

In their long history of suffering, nothing was ever so terrible as what the Irish endured during the Great Potato Famine that struck the country in the 1840s. It produced massive upheaval for several years. While countless numbers of Irish starved, the famine also compelled many to leave. And all the while, the British were exporting enough food from Ireland on a daily basis to prevent the starvation.

From the Trail of Tears to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn, the narrative of American history is incomplete without the inclusion of the Native Americans that lived on the continent before European settlers arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the first contact between natives and settlers, tribes like the Sioux, Cherokee, and Navajo have both fascinated and perplexed outsiders with their history, language, and culture.

There are few cases in American history as well-known as Sacco and Vanzetti, and perhaps none of them were as controversial or socially charged as the trials against the two Italian immigrants in the early 20th century. The two avowed anarchists were ultimately tried and executed for murder and armed robbery, but the case said as much about the society trying them as it did about their guilt or innocence.

The fighting in North Africa during World War II is commonly overlooked, aside from the famous battle at El Alamein that pitted the British under General Bernard Montgomery against the legendary "Desert Fox", Erwin Rommel. But while the Second Battle of El Alamein would be the pivotal action in North Africa, the conflict in North Africa began all the way back in the summer of 1940, when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared Italy’s entrance into the war, seeing an opportunity for Italy to enlarge its colonial holdings in Africa by seizing portions of the British Empire.

James always does the right thing. He knows his place in the family and feels guilty about his negative feelings towards his brother. Dependable and honest, James follows his father's request and fetches his brother from London. His stable life goes from peaceful to unacceptable in a very short time. Lady Elizabeth Comerford understands that it is unlikely that she will be allowed to marry for love. She only hopes that she will be able to tolerate the man who becomes her husband. When her father informs her of his plan, she learns very quickly that what she will tolerate does not come close...

The Great Migration was the name coined for the mass movement of African-Americans north of the Mason-Dixon line in the years following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. The enormous promise of emancipation proved to be illusory for the majority of Southern blacks, whether free or formerly enslaved, and as a result, hundreds of thousands made use of their fundamental freedom to leave. This resulted in a “push” away from the South, caused by ongoing discrimination, punishing Jim Crow laws, and increasing violence directed at blacks by whites.

Stuntman and two-time cancer survivor Memphis Haines excels at beating the odds. When he's presented with the opportunity to help his ex-boyfriend with a charity event, he jumps at the chance to make up for the devastating way he left Tyler 10 years ago. Memphis might have taken the college geek's virginity, but the former mathlete is now a hell of a head turner.

As the oldest political party in the United States, the Democratic Party has been one of the nation's major political parties for over 150 years, and diverse men and ideas have fallen under its tent since the 19th century. Today the Democrats are generally viewed as proponents of a strong, centralized federal government, and yet the forerunner of the modern party was none other than Thomas Jefferson, the man most associated with states' rights and limited government.