The fates of Miwok?Indian Mary,? Elitha Donner of the Donner Party, and proud Californio Pedro Valdez entwine in a drama of passion and power on the ranch now owned by the author. 1844-1853.

Based on a true story, 1844-1853, before and during the California Gold Rush -- real people and historical events brought to life, names unchanged. Californio Pedro Valdez, Miwok "Indian Mary" and Elitha Donner from the tragically snowed-in wagon train, people of three cultures entwined in a drama of power and paradise lost. This update of West's best-seller includes details unavailable when originally researched in the early 1990s. Expanded endnotes tell the reader where fiction fills the gaps of history and where the characters are buried. For centuries, Indian Mary's people have lived peacefully on the land by the Cosumnes River. Pedro loves her and desires the land for his own rancho, but Perry McCoon stakes his claim and brings his 14-year-old Donner bride. Then the stampede for gold sweeps all before it.

“Nothing can be like watching Casablanca for the first time, but Furst comes closer than anyone has in years.”—Time Autumn 1941: In a shabby hotel off the place Clichy, the course of the war is about to change. German tanks are rolling toward Moscow. Stalin has issued a decree: All partisan operatives are to strike behind enemy lines—from Kiev to Brittany. Set in the back streets of Paris and deep in occupied France, Red Gold moves with quiet menace as predators from the dark edge of war—arms dealers, lawyers, spies, and assassins—emerge from the shadows of the Parisian underworld. In their midst is Jean Casson, once a well-to-do film producer, now a target of the Gestapo living on a few francs a day. As the occupation tightens, Casson is drawn into an ill-fated mission: running guns to combat units of the French Communist Party. Reprisals are brutal. At last the real resistance has begun. Red Gold masterfully re-creates the shadow world of French resistance in the darkest days of World War II.

I have done some traveling to the tropics and became infatuated with the climate and the terrain of rain forests. I went to Costa Rica, to the Bahamas and later to Indonesia. These travels inspired this book.

Covering the history of the Brazilian Indians from 1500 to 1760, from the point of first contact through to their conquest by the Portuguese, this is the first volume in John Hemming's history of the Amazon.

"An engrossing expereince that will haunt the reader with its historical realism." Robert Santos, CA State Univ., Stanislaus

When James Marshall found a small, soft shiny stone in a California stream, he knew it could only be one thing: Gold! His cry of discovery would be heard around the world. In the third installment of Don Brown's Actual Times series, Gold! Gold from the American River! is the story of the California gold rush--the uncharted journey across hostile land, the laborious process of panning for gold, the success of savvy entrepreneurs, and the fortunes of the marginalized, from slaves and American Indians to women and foreigners.