Western Survival

Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of. Here, in a biography that finally gives this outsize character his due, Jerry Enzler takes this frontiersman's full measure for the first time—and tells a story that would do Jim Bridger proud.

The galaxy remembers Hadrian Marlowe as a hero: the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives - even the emperor himself - against Imperial orders. But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier. Fleeing his father and a future as a torturer, Hadrian finds himself stranded on a strange, backwater world.

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to Earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers - men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

Jed Welch thought washing out of the Marines Corps was the worst thing that could happen. It landed him back in his old life of crime, running with drug dealers in Queens. Just when he thought his luck couldn’t get worse, a global viral outbreak unleashed virulent hordes of Alpha predators. He quickly finds himself alone, saving his own skin, and on the run in New York City as the outbreak spreads.

David Roberts describes the culture of the Anasazi - the name means "enemy ancestors" in Navajo - who once inhabited the Colorado Plateau and whose modern descendants are the Hopi Indians of Arizona. Archaeologists, Roberts writes, have been puzzling over the Anasazi for more than a century, trying to determine the environmental and cultural stresses that caused their society to collapse 700 years ago. He guides us through controversies in the historical record, among them the haunting question of whether the Anasazi committed acts of cannibalism.

No one expected Ragnarok. The miles-wide meteor fell from the sky in 2030, taking most of humanity with it. The lucky ones took refuge in the Bunkers. The unlucky ones had to deal with the meteor's aftermath...and the alien virus it unleashed. Now, that virus is evolving, creating an army of mutants and monsters, mixing Earth genetics with something...not Earth. As humanity struggles in the wastelands of what's left, it might already be too late...unless a band of young heroes can rise up, and fight.

In 1860, life in New York City’s slums is hard and dangerous. For a widow with six children, it is impossible. So when Mrs. Kelly learns of the Children’s Aid Society, she sees a way to provide for her children. They will be sent west on an “orphan train” to families eager for help on their farms. Thirteen-year-old Mary Frances is confused and angry. How could a mother send her children away? At her new home in Missouri, however, Mary Frances is surprised to discover that the kind family provides a refuge on the Underground Railroad.

Margaret "Peggy" Thomas and her husband, James, lead a simple and peaceful life; she tends to the farm while he works as sheriff in the nearby town of Bleak Knob. Their evenings are spent doing the thing they love most - being together. One afternoon, after picking up fabric at the general store, Margaret watches helplessly as James is gunned down on the sidewalk in front of her. Days of mourning turn into weeks and then years, filled with little more than grief and alcohol.

At the height of the California gold rush in the late-1840's, a wagon train of men, women, children, and their animals stumbled into a 130-mile-long valley in the Mojave Desert through a "shortcut" to the California coast. What ensued was an ordeal that divided the camp into remnants and struck them with hunger, thirst, and a terrible sense of being lost and beyond hope, until one of their party volunteered to cross the desert to get help. This young hero was one of the survivors of the tragedy, and he lived to tell the tale in this gripping autobiographical account. In a time of unmarked ...

In December 1850, the dark hours before dawn make 12-year-old Patrick O’Connell shiver. He lives with his mother and older sister in a wet and drafty shack. Patrick has been the man of the family ever since Da, his father, sailed from Ireland to America. But now he has a problem he can’t solve: there isn’t enough money to pay the rent.

Beryl Markham, the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, describes her childhood on a farm in Kenya, her apprenticeship as a horse trainer, and her later career as a pioneer aviator who piloted passengers and supplies in a small plane to remote corners of Africa.

West with the Night is the story of a remarkable woman molded and shaped by many things: the African jungle, a certain dog, horses, airplanes, friendships with white men and black. There is no life, no story quite like it.

In 1804, John Colter set out with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on the first US expedition to traverse the North American continent. During the 28-month ordeal, Colter served as a hunter and scout, and honed his survival skills on the western frontier. But when the journey was over, Colter stayed behind. He spent two more years trekking alone through dangerous and unfamiliar territory, charting some of the West's most treasured landmarks.

The prairie fires that sweep the grazing lands, the coming of white men with their guns and diseases, and the quick slaughter of the vast buffalo herds leave Running Fawn's Blackfoot tribe with little choice but to take up residence on the assigned Reserve. All her life, Running Fawn has known only contentment, but now what will become of her hopes and dreams?

This collection of narrative essays by sex workers presents a crystal-clear rejoinder: There's never been a better time to fight for justice. Responding to the resurgence of the #MeToo movement in 2017, sex workers from across the industry - hookers and prostitutes, strippers and dancers, porn stars, cam models, Dommes and subs alike - complicate narratives of sexual harassment and violence, and expand conversations often limited to normative workplaces.

In 1963, Jim Whittaker became the first American to summit Everest via the South Col route. Roughly two weeks after Whittaker's achievement, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, fellow American mountaineers on the same expedition, became the first climbers ever to summit the world's highest peak via the dangerous and forbidding West Ridge—a route on which only a handful of climbers have since succeeded.

In Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, the historian Gary Roberts takes aim at the most complex, perplexing, and paradoxical gunfighter of the Old West, drawing on more than 20 years of research - including new primary sources - in his quest to separate the life from the legend. Doc Holliday was a study in contrasts: the legendary gunslinger who made his living as a dentist; the emaciated consumptive whose very name struck fear in the hearts of his enemies

Before men ruled the earth, there were wolves. Once abundant in North America, these majestic creatures were hunted to near extinction in the lower 48 states by the 1920s. But in recent decades, conservationists have brought wolves back to the Rockies, igniting a battle over the very soul of the West. With novelistic detail, Nate Blakeslee tells the gripping story of one of these wolves, O-Six, a charismatic alpha female named for the year of her birth.

17th century Russia, where innocence collides with the harsh realities of life in the midst of a Cossack rebellion. In this gripping tale, Fyodor, 20, blond, extremely strong and a serf on a small Russian estate is chosen for a dangerous mission that will take him far from the only home he has ever known. As he ventures far from the safety of his estate, his innocence and naivety ultimately leave him vulnerable to criminals who relieve him of both money and documents including his transit papers, without which he is subject to arrest. Managing to evade capture he makes his way home only to ...

An old-fashioned quest by a modern-day adventurer. When A. J. Mackinnon quits his job in Australia, he knows only that he longs to travel to the well at the world’s end, a mysterious pool on a remote Scottish island whose waters, legend has it, hold the secret to eternal youth.