"Set in the High Plains of Colorado, Benediction is a story about the grace that lies within us all"--Back cover.

Tucked away in the idyllic hills south of Florence, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. But when two soldiers, a German and an Italian, arrive asking to see an ancient Etruscan burial site, the Rosatis bucolic tranquility is shattered. A young German lieutenant begins to court eighteen-year-old Cristina, the Nazis descend upon the estate...

"The irresistible Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is now staring down a VA cardiologist's estimate that he only has a year or two left, and he's busy as hell keeping the news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman he carried on with for years... the ultra-hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren't still best friends. Sully's son and grandson, for whom he was...

"Odyssey-like adventure of two boys' incredible quest on the Appalachian Trail where they deal with pirates, buried secrets, and extraordinary encounters"-- From the author of Newbery Medal winner Moon Over Manifest comes the odyssey-like adventure of two boys incredible quest on the Appalachian Trail. When Jack Bakers father sends him from his home in Kansas to attend a boys boarding school in Maine, Jack doesnt know what to expect. Certainly not...

The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners--a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life--has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren,...

Beautifully educated, born to the life of a Southern gentleman, Dr. John Henry Holliday is given an awful choice at the age of twenty-two: die within months in Atlanta or leave everyone and everything he loves in the hope that the dry air and sunshine of the West will restore him to health. Young, scared, lonely, and sick, he arrives on the rawest edge of the Texas frontier just as an economic crash wrecks the dreams of a nation. Soon, with few alternatives...

Louis L’Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a “big country needing big men and women to live in it.” Here are three more of his fine short stories about the West. -- Home in the Valley Steve Mehan had accomplished what many had believed to be impossible. He had taken cattle from the home range in Nevada to California in the dead of winter. Not only that, he had been successful in selling them. Now the...