Seabiscuit

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Michael Klein

In 1979, Michael Klein, an aspiring singer/songwriter living in New York City, was broke, friendless, and drinking too much. When his lover, Richard, left him to work on a race track, Klein followed, and so began his extraordinary five-year sojourn on tracks in Ohio, New York, Florida, and finally Kentucky. At the 110th running of the Kentucky Derby, where he was groom to the winning horse, Klein was led from the winner's circle into the center of a tragic mystery, and then into a new life. "The race track put me in a kind of awe...It was a world inside a world...a labyrinth of luck, into and out of which the horses I walked every day were leading me." Among dissolute hired hands, in shedrows and tack rooms where men who care for horses also have sex, and in smoky after-hours bars, Klein tries to stop drinking, but can't; he tries to stay with Richard, but can't. He begins to have a recurring dream, strangely prophetic: a horse appearing as Richard disappears. And he revisits his past: his step-father introducing him to gambling and sex; his mother's sudden death. Then the dreamed-of horse arrives.

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Frank McCourt

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. in the 1930s and 40s. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling -- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors -- yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. - Jacket flap.

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M.C. Beaton

The villagers of Lochdubh and nearby Braikie are being plagued with a rash of poison pen letters. And while the letters seem silly (many of the claims seem to be absolutely ludicrous), Hamish Macbeth cannot help but worry about the one letter that might provoke a murder. And true enough things take a very serious turn indeed when the postmistress of Braikie, Miss Amy Beattie, is found hanging from her ceiling, an apparent suicide. But Hamish doesn't believe that it is suicide, and insists on a proper investigation. But it is only when murder claims another victim soon after Miss Beattie that Hamish begins to suspect that this could be a very complicated and dangerous case. Fortunately for Hamish (whether he likes it or not) he's going to get a lot of help in unraveling this case: first there is his friend, reporter Elspeth Grant, willing to offer her keen insights (and more if need be); and then there is also vacationing Jenny Ogilvie, a jealous friend of Hamish's ex-fiancee, Priscilla Halburton-Smythe (whom he still hasn't completely gotten over), who's come to Lochdubh with the intention of nabbing Hamish for herself. Will Hamish discover who the murderer is before (s)he strikes again? Will Jenny succeed in her plan to seduce Hamish? More importantly, will Hamish finally get over Priscilla? The last in Beaton's Hamish Macbeth series, "Death of a Village," received glowing reviews from such publications as the "New York Times Book Review, Kirkus Reviews, Chicago Sun-Times, Philadelphia Inquirer," and "Booklist," among others.

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Richard F. Welch

"This is the first full-length account of one of the most aggressive, dynamic, and successful combat leaders produced by either side in the Civil War. Based heavily on primary source material, the work chronicles the transformation of the self-assured son of a broken Bosten Brahmin family from a young, militarily inexperienced lawyer into a formidable warrior.". "Born into the Unitarian-Transcendentalist circle, which dominated New England intellectual and cultural life before the Civil War, Barlow attended the school run by the famous Brook Farm commune. From an early age he was noted for fearlessness in both speech and action - two characteristics that marked his conduct and affected his later careers. Barlow's unquestioning sense of his own intellectual and moral superiority was the source of his success as a combat officer during the war. He trained and drove his men hard, and they became one of the army's elite units in the process. Barlow's steadfast belief in himself led him to command from the front, winning respect of his troops, recognition from his superiors, public acclaim, and, often, success for his cause. Possessing innate self-confidence and almost heedless bravery in equal measure, Barlow rose from private to major general. He was heavily engaged in almost all the major battles of the Army of the Potomac beginning as a regimental colonel on the Peninsula in 1862 and finishing his career as commander of the first division in the vaunted II Corps during Grant's campaigns against Richmond in 1864. Throughout his military career, Barlow carved out a record as a fighting man that few could match and none could excel.". "Twice wounded, first at Antietam and then Gettysburg, Barlow consistently took his men into the hottest spots in most pivotal actions during Grant's bloody campaign against Lee.". "After the war, Barlow alternated a legal career with service in New York State government. As New York's attorney general he initiated suits against the Tweed Ring and other corrupt malefactors. Barlow's unfiltered forthrightness and unyielding ethics placed him at a disadvantage in the rough-and-tumble democratic politics of the late nineteenth century. His candid report exposing corruption involved in the successful Republican campaign to win the White House for Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 cost him whatever hopes he had for a further political career. Barlow returned to private life, pursued a successful legal career, and died relatively unknown in 1896."--BOOK JACKET.