We walked and we walked and it seemed like hours before we finally made it to the cemetery and, since it was the first cemetery Eddie and Robert had ever visited, it took a lot of enticing to lure them in. “Stop bawling,” Aunt Katie screamed as she grabbed her sons by their scrawny arms and started to drag them through the half-opened gates. “We’re only going to be here a few minutes to meet your grandpa, and then we’ll go home.” Well, the minute Eddie heard the words, “meet your grandpa,” he let out a scream that could have awakened grandpa from his twenty-year nap. And as soon as Eddie started bawling, Robert grabbed hold of the iron gate with a resolution that would have done Hercules proud. Meanwhile, I decided that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to say hi to grandpa after all. Maybe we should just toss the pretty plastic flowers over the fence and run like hell. “We’re not going to see grandpa,” my mother said, “we’re just going to pay him a little respect. He’s dead and he’s buried and he’s going to stay that way! Now get a grip and follow me.”

EARTH’S REPOSE (For Joan Hartzell) The gray moon ifted up her face and smiled into the purple black abyss. The still earth yawned; her noisy seas belched, until all was quiet once again. And then the little boy fell asleep.

DigiCat present to you the collection of the great novels and stories written after the turmoil, the trauma and the heroism experienced during the American Civil War: The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane) The Little Regiment (Stephen Crane) The Veteran (Stephen Crane) An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Ambrose Bierce) A Horseman in the Sky (Ambrose Bierce) Chickamauga (Ambrose Bierce) The Private History of a Campaign That Failed (Mark Twain) A Curious Experience (Mark Twain) The Guns of Bull Run (Joseph A. Altsheler) The Guns of Shiloh (Joseph A. Altsheler) The Scouts of Stonewall (Joseph A. Altsheler) The Sword of Antietam (Joseph A. Altsheler) The Star of Gettysburg (Joseph A. Altsheler) The Rock of Chickamauga (Joseph A. Altsheler) The Shades of the Wilderness (Joseph A. Altsheler) The Tree of Appomattox (Joseph A. Altsheler) The Crisis (Winston Churchill) Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (John William De Forest) With Lee in Virginia (G. A. Henty) Who Would Have Thought It? (María Ruiz de Burton) The Long Roll (Mary Johnston) Cease Firing (Mary Johnston) The Victim: A Romance of the Real Jefferson Davis (Thomas Dixon Jr.) Kincaid's Battery (George Washington Cable) The Border Spy (Harry Hazelton) The Battle Ground (Ellen Glasgow) Who Goes There? (B. K. Benson) Ailsa Paige (Robert W. Chambers) Special Messenger (Robert W. Chambers) How Private George W. Peck Put Down the Rebellion (George W. Peck) Raiding with Morgan (Byron A. Dunn) Mohun; Or, the Last Days of Lee and His Paladins (John Esten Cooke) Brother Against Brother (John R. Musick) The Last Three Soldiers (W. H. Shelton) A War-Time Wooing (Charles King) The Iron Game (Henry F. Keenan) The Blockade Runners (Jules Verne) The Lost Despatch (Natalie Sumner Lincoln) My Lady of the North (Randall Parrish) Uncle Daniel's Story of "Tom" Anderson (John McElroy) The Red Acorn (John McElroy) Winning His Way (Charles Carleton Coffin) A Daughter of the Union (Lucy Foster Madison) Chasing an Iron Horse (Edward Robins) The Man Without a Country (Edward Everett Hale) History of the Civil War, 1861-1865 (James Ford Rhodes)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis “One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

"Set against the backdrop of Victorian and Edwardian society, a portrait of the three Jerome sisters--Jennie, Clara, and Leonie, American heiresses who married into the heights of British society -- spans three generations, from their parents through their children, including Jennie's son, Winston Churchill."--Publisher.

This memoir was first published in 1930 and describes the author's school days, his time in the Army, his experiences as a war correspondent and his first years as a member of Parliament.

The Dodger is the story of John Bigelow "Johnny" Dodge, a wartime hero and a pivotal figure in the escapade immortalised in the legendary Hollywood film The Great Escape. The American-born and well-connected Dodge was a cousin by marriage of Winston Churchill and friends with the rich and famous of both countries, including Kermit Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt's son. When the Second World War broke out, he volunteered for the Army but was quickly captured after the debacle of Dunkirk. He became a prisoner of war and an inveterate escapologist and troublemaker - eventually becoming one of the ringleaders of the "Great Escape." Surviving the murderous Gestapo, he was thrown into a VIP compound of Sachsenhausen concentration camp on the orders of Heinrich Himmler - but escaped once more. After recapture, Johnny was spirited away by the SS to a meeting in Berlin with Hitler's interpreter, who sent him on a clandestine mission to his cousin in Downing Street. His odyssey through the dying embers of the Third Reich to Switzerland and freedom in the company of a louche apparatchik is the last curious escapade in the story of Johnny's adventurous life.