Moving from Alaskan prehistory, to Russian exploration, to acquisition by the United States, to statehood, this richly detailed historical novel chronicles the high points of Alaska's history through the lives of fictional and historical characters.

The ninety men, women, and children of the Donner Party are heading into one of one of the deadliest and most disastrous Western adventures in American history. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy-- they cannot seem to escape tragedy... or the feeling that someone-- something?-- is stalking them. As members of the group begin to disappear, the survivors start to wonder if the evil that has unfolded around them...

When Alexander Westcott becomes the new Earl of Riverdale, he inherits a title he never wanted and a failing country estate he can't afford. But he fully intends to do everything in his power to undo years of neglect and give the people who depend on him a better life. . . . A recluse for more than twenty years, Wren Heyden wants one thing out of life: marriage. With her vast fortune, she sets her sights on buying a husband. But when she makes the...

In war-torn France, Jo McMahon, an Italian-Irish girl from the tenements of Brooklyn, tends to six seriously wounded soldiers in a makeshift medical unit. Enemy bombs have destroyed her hospital convoy, and now Jo singlehandedly struggles to keep her patients and herself alive in a cramped and freezing tent close to German troops. There is a growing tenderness between her and one of her patients, a Scottish officer, but Jo's heart is seared by the...

Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, and anger at her mother and aunt for keeping them from her, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father, the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him,and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the communist regime.

The Great Depression has hit West Virginia hard. Men are out of work; women struggle to feed hungry children. Luckily, Nurse Becky Myers has returned to care for them. While she can handle most situations, Becky is still uneasy helping women deliver their babies. For these mothers-to-be, she relies on an experienced midwife, her dear friend Patience Murphy.

New York, 1879: After an epic snow storm ravages the city of Albany, Dr. Mary Sutter, a former Civil War surgeon, begins a search for two little girls, the daughters of close friends killed by the storm who have vanished without a trace. Mary's mother and niece Elizabeth, who has been studying violin in Paris, return to Albany upon learning of the girls' disappearance - but Elizabeth has another reason for wanting to come home, one she is not willing...

A militant group of Polish farmers wish to present grievances and demands to Szymon Bukowski, the Communist Minister of Agriculture, and this introduces the reader to a 700-year sweep of Polish history.

Orphaned in the cholera epidemic of 1883, Adria Starr was found by a slave named Louis, a man who passed up the opportunity to escape his bondage and instead tended to the sick and buried the dead. Adria needed a caring family, and Louis helped to bring her together with Aunt Ruth, a newly widowed schoolteacher. Twelve years later, Louis is being sold by his owners despite his heroic actions. Now nineteen, Adria has never forgotten what Louis did...

Set in the high country of Colorado during the Depression, this is the story of an unforgettable friendship between two women--eighty-six-year-old Hennie Comfort and seventeen-year-old Nit Spindle--and the deepest hardships and darkest secrets they shared with each other.