Louis L’Amour’s long-lost first novel, faithfully completed by his son, takes readers on a voyage into danger and violence on the high seas. Fate is a ship. As the shadows of World War II gather, the SS Lichenfield is westbound across the Pacific carrying eighty thousand barrels of highly explosive naphtha. The cargo alone makes the journey perilous, with the entire crew aware that one careless moment could lead to disaster. But yet another sort of peril haunts the Lichenfield. Even beyond their day-to-day existence, the lives of the crew are mysteriously intertwined. Though each has his own history, dreams and jealousies, longing and rage, all are connected by a deadly web of chance and circumstance. Some are desperately fleeing the past; others chase an unknown destiny. A few are driven by the desire for adventure, while their shipmates cling to the Lichenfield as their only true home. In their hearts, these men, as well as the women and children they have left behind, carry the seeds of salvation or destruction. And all of them—kind or cruel, strong or broken—are bound to the fate of the vessel that carries them toward an ever-darkening horizon. Inspired by Louis L’Amour’s own experiences as a merchant seaman, No Traveller Returns is a revelatory work by a world-renowned author—and a brilliant illustration of a writer discovering his literary voice.

The adventures of a group of outcast youths, kidnapped and conscripted into a deadly and terrifying mission. Reform school inmates transformed into slaves, slaves into fugitives and finally into triumphant heroes.

Wilkinson is a professor of mathematics who feels that the abstract beauty of science must be founded on objective truth. In fact, he could imagine no ecstasy so exalted as the contemplation of a perfect balance only to be achieved after presiding inscrutably over a multitude of numbers and making lofty calculations. A dry old stick, to be sure. Therefore, when Professor Wilkinson is flummoxed by the results of a perfect experiment, he decides to test his theory himself and, quivering with esthetic rapture (his discovery after all might be the salvation of a race), leaves hypothesizing behind to become a participant. His plans go awry, however, when he slips on a mathematical banana skin and is never seen again -- not in his world anyway. The planet on which he finds himself is in a parallel dimension ruled by a group of scientists who have eliminated culture and destroyed all animals. The population lives on synthetic food which is supplemented by a little fresh butcher's meat trapped from other dimensions. In fact, immediately after his arrival the professor is placed in a moss-lined pen to be fatten up. A fantasy seasoned with a strong element of science fiction, No Traveller Returns, is a grand and bone-chilling example of Collier's inimitable wit, irony, and imagination.

"Gary Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger have added the final chapter to Bela Lugosi's career, combining fascinating unknown details of his film and stage activities with post-WWII film history. Superbly researched and written as an engrossing story of an actor's struggle against professional decline. A must-read!" - Robert Cremer, author of Lugosi: The Man Behind the Cape (Henry Regnery, 1976). "Gary Rhodes represents that elusive Gold Standard in narrative research into the full depth and breadth of Bela Lugosi's complicated career. Rhodes' devotion to the banishment of myth, and to its replacement with frank and humanizing truth, has provided a wealth of historical storytelling that, in turn, renders the actor's known body of work all the more fascinating and comprehensible. Just when I catch myself believing I know all there is to be known about Lugosi - along comes Gary Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger with a fresh brace of revelations. The process advances immeasurably in No Traveler Returns: The Lost Years of Bela Lugosi." - Michael H. Price, coauthor of the Forgotten Horrors series. In No Traveler Returns, Bela Lugosi scholar extraordinaire Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger provide a fascinating time travel journey back to the late 1940s/early 1950s, when Lugosi - largely out of favor in Hollywood - embarked on a Gypsy-like existence of vaudeville, summer stock, and magic shows. While many historians have considered this era a limbo in Lugosi's career, with precious few facts unearthed, Rhodes and Kaffenberger take the reader along for a wide-eyed ride as Bela performs in a nightclub so notorious that armed guards keep watch on the roof, dresses as Dracula in a magic show where he and a gorilla (a man in a suit) play football with the guillotined head of a woman (a dummy), and races from one stock engagement to another without ever missing a cue. Never in his American career was Bela so busy, and never did his light shine so brightly as he valiantly troupes to support his family, dominate age and illness, and please his audiences. It's a fastidiously researched education in the show business world of the time - and a stirring tribute to the charm, brilliance and inexhaustible professionalism of the star who was Dracula. - Gregory William Mank, author of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration (McFarland, 2009).

Identical twins, Bruce and Brendon Laird, take different paths after Bruce ruins his knee playing football and Brendon goes off to the middle east in the Army. Bruce becomes a famous scholar, discovering the Ur-Hamlet, legendary immediate source of Shakespeares play. He is also given a look at a cache of letters from the legendary L.S. Marker. However, he comes to grief at small Oliver Otis College, for what that institution considers moral turpitude. He alienates the woman who had received the Marker letters and loses a magnificent opportunity. He also loses Bettina Arujo and Robbie Spector along the way, and falls in love with Brendons girlfriend, Annie. Brendon, meanwhile, becomes the banker for a powerful New Jersey mob. At the end, Bruce must substitute for Brendon at a mob gathering that everyone knows will turn deadly. Finally, what happens to Annie Devereux, the woman each twin loves?

No Traveller Returns is the third book in Hindsights, Stan Erisman’s autobiographical six-part book series. On arriving in Sweden, Stan and Jeanette face daunting challenges: getting permission to stay, finding a home, learning a new language from scratch and finding jobs, all while trying to find equilibrium in a new environment. Stan gets his draft notice and declines the “invitation”; returning to the US is thereby no longer an option. While working to make a new life for themselves in Sweden, Stan and Jeanette meet Bob, Stan’s eldest cousin, who lives in Switzerland. His life and health are a train wreck, but his great humanity and intelligence shine through, and mutual friendship sprouts immediately, then grows rapidly. Bob has been wrestling with many of the same big issues – religion and politics – that have engaged Stan and Jeanette since they met, so now they are wayfarers along the same road. Bob also brings music to their lives – a huge added inspiration for Stan to continue painting, with Jeanette’s wholehearted support. Free from material ambition and ancient creeds, with only a minimum of external demands, they flourish in their simple lifestyle in a primitive apartment they’ve made comfortable. Pitfalls and obstacles continue to arise, as they are always likely to do. But they are external; they don’t overwhelm.

Marie is brought up as a country girl on the West coast of France, but world events catch up with her and life has more in store for her than her family ever expected. As a teenager working in a bar, the Resistance movement makes use of her local knowledge to help Jewish youngsters to escape the Nazi threat. Moving to Paris after the War, she is caught up in the aftermath of the Vel d’Hiv atrocity, and is sent on an investigation by a local Communist newspaper into the heart of Siberia. Back in Paris in the 1950s, she finds herself involved in the French/Algerian crisis and travels to North Africa. Here is the story of a young woman who is passionately interested in justice, not easily intimidated by political rhetoric of any sort, but most of all is touched by the personal relationships she forms with the people she is sent to investigate and those she meets on her travels. She is constantly discovering herself and the complexities of the world around her and, in all three countries, she is fascinated by the members of the Jewish community she meets, as well as those with conflicting political beliefs. Descriptions of the countryside around Les Landes, central Siberia and Algeria will draw you into the lives of the people who lived there in the 1940s and 50s. It will make you want to identify with a young woman, who becomes increasingly self-possessed and independent, despite the tragedies she endures

Louis L’Amour’s long-lost first novel, faithfully completed by his son, takes readers on a voyage into danger and violence on the high seas. Fate is a ship. As the shadows of World War II gather, the SS Lichenfield is westbound across the Pacific carrying eighty thousand barrels of highly explosive naphtha. The cargo alone makes the journey perilous, with the entire crew aware that one careless moment could lead to disaster. But yet another sort of peril haunts the Lichenfield. Even beyond their day-to-day existence, the lives of the crew are mysteriously intertwined. Though each has his own history, dreams and jealousies, longing and rage, all are connected by a deadly web of chance and circumstance. Some are desperately fleeing the past; others chase an unknown destiny. A few are driven by the desire for adventure, while their shipmates cling to the Lichenfield as their only true home. In their hearts, these men, as well as the women and children they have left behind, carry the seeds of salvation or destruction. And all of them—kind or cruel, strong or broken—are bound to the fate of the vessel that carries them toward an ever-darkening horizon. Inspired by Louis L’Amour’s own experiences as a merchant seaman, No Traveller Returns is a revelatory work by a world-renowned author—and a brilliant illustration of a writer discovering his literary voice.

The question of what happens after death was a vital one in Shakespeare's time, as it is today. And, like today, the answers were by no means universally agreed upon. Early moderns held surprisingly diverse beliefs about the afterlife and about how earthly life affected one's fate after death. Was death akin to a sleep where one did not wake until judgment day? Were sick bodies healed in heaven? Did sinners experience torment after death? Would an individual reunite with loved ones in the afterlife? Could the dead communicate with the world of the living? Could the living affect the state of souls after death? How should the dead be commemorated? Could the dead return to life? Was immortality possible? The wide array of possible answers to these questions across Shakespeare's work can be surprising. Exploring how particular texts and characters answer these questions, Shakespeare and the Afterlife showcases the vitality and originality of the author's language and thinking. We encounter characters with very personal visions of what awaits them after death, and these visions reveal new insights into these individuals' motivations and concerns as they navigate the world of the living. Shakespeare and the Afterlife encourages us to engage with the author's work with new insight and new curiosity. The volume connects some of the best-known speeches, characters, and conflicts to cultural debates and traditions circulating during Shakespeare's time.

Named a Notable Fiction Book of 2013 by The Washington Post “An engrossing adventure, with mystery, romance, humor, and impeccable historical detail.” –The Boston Globe Devon, 1815. The charming Lord Nicholas Davenant and the beguiling Julia Percy should make a perfect match. But before their love has a chance to grow, Nicholas is presumed dead in the Napoleonic war. Nick, however, is lost in time. Somehow he escaped certain death by leaping two hundred years forward to the present day where he finds himself in the care of a mysterious society – the Guild. Questioning the limits of the impossible, Nick is desperate to find a way back to the life he left behind. Yet with the future of time itself hanging in the balance, could it be that the girl who first captured his heart has had the answers all along? Can Nick find a way to return to her?