God wills it! The year is 1095 and the most prominent leaders of the Christian World are assembled in a meadow in France. Deus lo volt! This cry is taken up, echoes forth, is carried on. The Crusades have started, and wave after wave of Christian pilgrims rush to assault the growing power of Muslims in the Holy Land. Two centuries long, it will become the defining war of the Western world.

The story of the wars and conquests initiated by the First Crusade and its successors is itself so compelling that most accounts move quickly from describing the Pope's calls to arms to the battlefield. In this highly original and enjoyable new book, Christopher Tyerman focuses on something obvious but overlooked: the massive, all-encompassing, and hugely costly business of actually preparing a crusade. The efforts of many thousands of men and women, who left their lands and families in Western Europe, and marched off to a highly uncertain future in the Holy Land and elsewhere have never been sufficiently understood. Their actions raise a host of compelling questions about the nature of medieval society.How to Plan a Crusade is remarkably illuminating on the diplomacy, communications, propaganda, use of mass media, medical care, equipment, voyages, money, weapons, wills, ransoms, animals, and the power of prayer during this dynamic era. It brings to life an extraordinary period of history in a new and surprising way.

Son of the Morning Star is the nonfiction account of General Custer from the great American novelist Evan S. Connell. Custer's Last Stand is among the most enduring events in American history--more than one hundred years after the fact, books continue to be written and people continue to argue about even the most basic details surrounding the Little Bighorn. Evan S. Connell, whom Joyce Carol Oates has described as "one of our most interesting and intelligent American writers," wrote what continues to be the most reliable--and compulsively readable--account of the subject. Connell makes good use of his meticulous research and novelist's eye for the story and detail to re-create the heroism, foolishness, and savagery of this crucial chapter in the history of the West.

Although he may be best known for his novels Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge, or perhaps for his brilliant biography of Custer, Son of the Morning Star, Evan S. Connell is an undisputed master of the short story. His restraint, concision, and perfect pitch lend themselves beautifully to the form, and he intuitively senses when to explain and when to let silence stand in speech's stead. Lost in Uttar Pradesh collects new work by Connell along with some of his earlier masterpieces. Memorable characters like the corpulent Mr. Bemis, Katia and her lion, and a wanderer back from Spain ring true not because their stories are filled with monumental events but because they center around seemingly insignificant events that somehow remain in the mind. Through Connell's mastery, the most trivial happening, the voice that speaks only once, resonates far beyond the final page.

The author of Son of the Morning Star and Deus Lo Volt probes the mind of the Spanish painter, reconstructing the violent, repressive Spain he called home and charting his powerful influence on Western art. This biography of Francisco Goya breaks the mold--recounting with stunning immediacy the uncommon genius behind the renowned Spanish painter. Darkly brilliant and casually masterful in turn, Francisco Goya changed art forever. During the days of the Spanish Inquisition, Goya painted royalty, street urchins, and demons with the same brush, bringing his own distinctive touch to each. This unusual man and his ghastly times are the perfect subject for Evan S. Connell, one of our greatest and least conventional writers. Introducing a wealth of detail and a cast of comic characters--a motley group of dukes, queens, and artists, as lewd and incorrigible a crew as history has ever produced--Connell has conjured Goya's life with wit, erudition, and a sparkling imagination.

Spurned by his wife at home and by superiors at work, a young man sits in his cramped San Francisco apartment during the turbulent 1960s and channels everything around him into a diary that is a perfect record of a world going to pieces.

Winner, 2022 Society of Midland Authors award for Biography/Memoir Evan S. Connell (1924–2013) emerged from the American Midwest determined to become a writer. He eventually made his mark with attention-getting fiction and deep explorations into history. His linked novels Mrs. Bridge (1959) and Mr. Bridge (1969) paint a devastating portrait of the lives of a prosperous suburban family not unlike his own that, more than a half century later, continue to haunt readers with their minimalist elegance and muted satire. As an essayist and historian, Connell produced a wide range of work, including a sumptuous body of travel writing, a bestselling epic account of Custer at the Little Bighorn, and a singular series of meditations on history and the human tragedy. This first portrait and appraisal of an under-recognized American writer is based on personal accounts by friends, relatives, writers, and others who knew him; extensive correspondence in library archives; and insightful literary and cultural analysis of Connell’s work and its context. It also illuminates aspects of American publishing, Hollywood, male anxieties, and the power of place.

Praise for Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel: “A unique tour de force.” --The New York Times Book Review “One of the most remarkable books that I have read in a long time.” --Kenneth Rexroth “Mr. Connell’s Notes are what one intelligent, sensitive artist has been able to salvage from all experience as testimony to the rather pathetic integrity of the human species in the face of extinction. The book is no manual or tract, however, although its political meaning is unmistakable, but a work of art, even a work of high art.” --Hayden Carruth

In 1942, German submarines prowled the Canadian coastline, searching for the lost Templar treasure... and its most powerful spiritual object, the Holy Grail. All that stands between Hitler and world domination are three ghosts of long-dead Templar Knights... and their newest recruit: the sickly, wheelchair-bound child Richard. As his body lies in a coma, the Templar ghosts take Richard's spirit on journey through time as they train him for knighthood. Richard meets Crusaders and Hospitlars, Vikings and Saracens, Pirates... and, ultimately, Nazis. Sailing a wooden longship, armed only with swords and catapults, can Richard and his ghostly allies protect the Grail from enemy U-Boats bearing gun-toting stormtroopers?

An epic novel steeped in action, intrigue, and romance. July 1187: the forces of the Muslim sultan known as Saladin have defeated the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, allowing Saladin to achieve his lifelong ambition of recapturing the Holy City for Islam. This sets the stage for the Third Crusade: the confrontation between Saladin and the legendary Christian warrior, Richard the Lionheart. Both men believe they are destined by God to lead their holy armies to complete victory. Richard, a legendary warrior with a keen military mind, finds his vow to retake Jerusalem complicated by infighting over succession to the British throne, a rivalry with the French king, and a choice between two potential queens. Meanwhile, Saladin struggles to keep his fractious forces together while remaining true to the noblest principles of Islam. These events are also portrayed through the eyes of two common men: Pierre of Botron is a Christian knight who is captured on the battlefield and subjected to the indignity of slavery. Rashid of Yenbo is a Muslim trader who finds prosperity in Saladin's triumphs. The relationship between Rashid and Pierre offers the possibility that people of good will can overcome polarizing conflicts. As events build toward the Battle of Jaffa, one of the most well-known conflicts of the Crusades, the fates of the characters depend on the choices they make between the compassionate and fanatical aspects of their faiths. The Swords of Faith offers an eye-opening comparison and contrast of the tenets of Christianity and Islam, insights that reverberate into the present day.