The Lincoln Deception
Overview
A Barnes & Noble Top 10 "Mystery Pick" for August 2013!
In 1900, John Bingham lies dying in Cadiz, Ohio. He tells his doctor, Jamie Fraser, that he learned a terrible secret thirty-five years before when he prosecuted John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators. That secret of the Lincoln assassination, he confides, could destroy the republic, but will die with him.
Fraser, a 39-year-old widower who is weary of small-town doctoring, becomes obsessed with Bingham’s secret. Fate throws him together with the voluble Speed Cook, the last black man to play in the big leagues and aspiring newspaper publisher. Together they puzzle over the fragmentary evidence of the Booth conspiracy and set out to learn more. Their trail takes them to Booth’s nephew (a star actor himself) and the man’s beautiful business manager (who captures Fraser’s heart), and leads to the nation’s leading cotton tycoon, a man with murky connections to the Sons of Liberty, a Northern pro-Confederacy group from the 1860s.
Fraser and Cook face immense risks -- a mugging on an Indiana riverside, a race riot in New York City, and a terrifying trap atop the new Williamsburg Bridge. Confounding their pursuers with resourcefulness and courage, they reach a Washington, DC showdown with the shadowy tycoon and the senior surviving general of the Confederate Army and the appalling truth of Mr. Bingham’s secret.
For a video of David O. Stewart's talk on The Lincoln Deception, click here.
For a video of David O. Stewart's talk on "Family of Assassins: The Surratts of Maryland," click here.
Read MoreThe Paris Deception
Overview
Against the backdrop of the Paris Peace Conference that would remake Europe in the wake of World War I, The Paris Deception reunites Dr. Jamie Fraser and Speed Cook, protagonists of the acclaimed The Lincoln Deception, in an intriguing presidential mystery.
After four years of horror The Great War has ended, and President Woodrow Wilson’s arrival in Paris in December 1918 unites the city in ecstatic celebration. Major Jamie Fraser, an army physician who has spent ten months tending American soldiers, is among the crowd that throngs the Place de la Concorde for Wilson’s visit. As an expert on the Spanish influenza, Fraser is also called in to advise the president’s own doctor on how best to avoid the deadly disease. Despite his robust appearance, Wilson is more frail than the public realizes. And at this pivotal moment in history, with the Allied victors gathering to forge a peace treaty, the president’s health could decide the fate of nations.
While Fraser tries to determine the truth about Wilson’s maladies, he encounters a man he has not seen for nearly twenty years. Speed Cook—ex-professional ball player and advocate for Negro rights—is desperate to save his son Joshua, an army sergeant wrongly accused of desertion. Pledging to help Cook, Fraser approaches Allen Dulles, a charming American spy who is also Wilson’s close aide. Soon Cook and Fraser’s personal quest dovetails with the dramatic events unfolding throughout Paris, as French premier Georges Clemenceau narrowly survives an assassination attempt and peace negotiations begin to unravel. Rivalries and hidden agendas abound. At stake is not only Joshua Cook’s freedom, but the fragile treaty that may be the only way to stop Europe and the world from plunging into another brutal war.
With a cast of vividly drawn characters that includes T.E. Lawrence, David Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill, The Paris Deception provides a riveting and expertly researched blend of history and suspense—illuminating, deftly plotted, and thoroughly satisfying.
Read MoreThe Babe Ruth Deception
Overview
As the Roaring Twenties take off, corruption seems everywhere--from the bootleggers flouting Prohibition to the cherished heroes of the American Pastime now tarnished by scandal. Swept up in the maelstrom are Dr. Jamie Fraser and Speed Cook, and Babe Ruth...
The Babe, the Sultan of Swat, is shattering records in his first season as a New York Yankee, hitting more home runs than any other team in the American League. Larger than life on the ball field and off, Ruth discovers what the Chicago White Sox players accused of throwing the 1919 World Series have learned-- scandal can reach baseball heroes. Rumors swirl around Ruth’s 1918 World Series win for the Boston Red Sox. Under scrutiny by the new baseball commissioner and enmeshed with gambling kingpin Arnold Rothstein, Ruth turns for help to Speed Cook--a former professional ballplayer himself before the game was segregated and now a promoter of Negro baseball--who knows the dirty underside of the sport.
Cook in turn enlists the help of Dr. Jamie Fraser, whose wife Eliza is producing a silent film starring the Yankee outfielder. Restraint does not come easily to the reckless Ruth, but the Frasers try to keep him clean while Cook investigates.
At the same time, a shocking terrorist attack throws together Cook’s son and Fraser’s daughter. Their interracial romance is as perilous in 1920 as any public scandal--even more so because Joshua is heavily involved in bootlegging. Trying to protect Ruth and their own children, Fraser and Cook find themselves playing a delicate game against dangerous adversaries.
Once again masterfully blending fact and fiction, David O. Stewart delivers a nail-biting historical mystery that captures an era unlike any America has seen before or since in all its moral complexity and dizzying excitement.
Read MoreThe New Land
Overview
Seeking a new life, the Oberstrasse family lands on the wild Maine coast in 1753. They find that the American frontier teems with conniving swindlers, hostile French and Indians, killing diseases, and then a powerful movement for independence from Britain. They have come because Christianne has decided that their infant sons will never soldier for the Landgraf of Hesse like their father, hired out to serve King George of England.
Johann finds that opportunity on the rocky coast comes from the forest, not land, so he must learn carpentry and trapping. To advance in an English world, he adapts their name to Overstreet.
But war follows them. The French and their Indian allies attack the English settlements of New England. To protect their growing family and Broad Bay neighbors, Johann accepts the captaincy of the settlement’s militia and leads it through the British assault on the citadel of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia. Left behind in Broad Bay, Christianne, their small children, and the old and young stave off Indian attacks, hunger, and cruel privations.
Peace brings Johann success as a furniture-maker, but also searing personal losses. When the fever for American independence reaches Broad Bay in 1774, Johann is torn, then resolves to kill no more . . . unlike his son, Franklin, who leaves to stand with the Americans on Bunker Hill. At the same time, Johann faces old demons and a new crisis when an escaped prisoner—a hired Hessian soldier, just as he had been—arrives at his door.
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The Burning Land
HOW HISTORY PLAYS HAVOC WITH THE LIVES OF ORDINARY PEOPLE
In 1860, Henry Overstreet, a young boat-builder on the Maine coast, falls hard for lively Katie Nash, whose family obligations have deferred her hopes to teach school. Initially surprised by Katie's anti-slavery feelings, then by the explosions of the Civil War, Henry enlists in the 20th Maine Infantry, rising to sergeant in a regiment that will become legendary through a dozen bloody fights, including the pivotal defense of Little Round Top at the battle of Gettysburg. Katie wins short-term teaching contracts while organizing local women to make socks and blankets for local men in the army. Quiet, intimate letters between military camp and home front steadily bring the lovers to a hurried wedding and a few precious days together as man and wife.
But the world piles adversity on top of setbacks for Henry and Katie, bringing a ghastly battlefield wound, a long recuperation, and a never-resolved argument over whether to make their lives in Maine or join the pell-mell rush for new lives and opportunities in the West. Finally transplanted to booming Chicago, little goes right for their young family in the overnight metropolis, testing Henry and Katie's strength and commitment as never before.
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