"In 1882, Sarah Whittier dreams of opening an art studio run by immigrant women. She plans to use the house left to her by family friend Josiah Cady as collateral for her studio. But will all be lost when the inheritance is challenged by an angry man claiming to be Josiah's son and legal heir? Rumor of gold nuggets hidden in the house, place Sarah's life in danger. Her future uncertain and her safety threatened, Sarah has nowhere to turn. That is,...

A magnificent Alaskan dog who leads his team to victory in the National Open Sled Dog Race, Kavik is bought by wealthy, unscrupulous businessman George Hunter, but his plane crashes en route to Seattle. Twelve-year-old Andy finds the badly wounded Kavik in the woods, nurses him back to health when no one believes he will survive, and loves the once proud dog, who is left fearful and cowardly by the accident. Hearing of Kavik's amazing recovery, Hunter...

Lena, a biologist and former soldier, joins a mission to uncover what happened to her husband inside Area X, a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that is expanding across the American coastline. Once inside, the expedition discovers a world of mutated landscape and creatures, as dangerous as it is beautiful, that threatens both their lives and their sanity.

The author weighs the facts and legends of hunter John Colter who left the Lewis and Clark expedition and journeyed to present-day Wyoming.

On John Franklin's 1820 expedition to find the Northwest Passage, Michel Teroahaute cannibalized two team members and was preparing a third when he was caught and killed. When Rene La Salle set off for the Mississippi Delta in 1684, he missed the target by five hundred miles, but on landing, immediately built a prison for those who fell asleep on watch. Consummate storyteller Fergus Fleming brings together these and forty-three other gripping stories...

Dennis Gifford, a courageous lad not quite twenty, had traveled to San Francisco to seek his fortune in the California gold rush. However, Dennis had suffered a fate not uncommon in those lawless times when he was shanghaied by one of the toughest crooks on the coast. Desperate, he determined to seize his one slim chance of liberty and jump ship at the old Spanish town of Monterey. So it was that Dennis found himself taking refuge in the garden of...

"After gold was discovered in California in 1848, thousands of people rushed there to strike it rich. They faced tough choices at every turn. Now the choices are yours. Would you rather use the slower method of panning for gold or use a more dangerous method of hydraulic mining? Would you rather run a store or a hotel in a California boomtown? It's your turn to pick this or that!"--

"The pursuit of science by professional scientists every day bears less and less resemblance to the perception of science by the general public. It is not the rule-based, methodical system for accumulating facts that dominates the public view. Rather it is the idiosyncratic, often bumbling search for understanding in mostly uncharted places. It is full of wrong turns, cul-de-sacs, mistaken identities, false findings, errors of fact and judgment-and...