Bøger af Herbert E Stover

The beleaguered forces of General George Washington were hard pressed by a well-equipped British army outside Philadelphia. Patriot victory depended upon the Spanish gold and powder that Colonel George Gibson's "Lambs" were commissioned to transport from New Orleans, north through enemy territory. When the crucial cargo of gold is stolen, Martin Joe Richtier, the personal envoy of General Anthony Wayne, knows that he alone must bear the responsibility for its recovery. From the battle lines of the Pennsylvania regiments to the dank confines of a British prison in Detroit, Richtier's search is plagued by intrigue and danger. Suspicion clouds his love for the courageous Hester Jordan, who has been seen too often in the company of Tories, and a horrible death at the hands of angry natives led by a maniacal frontiersman stalks the forests through which his route lies. In Powder Mission Herbert E. Stover who has told a compelling story of excitement and romance against a background of history brought to life by an intimate knowledge of the times and the terrain. This book promises to add a host of new followers, young and old, to the readers of the author's two previous novels, Song of the Susquehanna and Men in Buckskin.

Peter Grove, in search of ginseng in upstate Pennsylvania, becomes embroiled in the events of the French and Indian War. A native of Lancaster, Grove travels throughout the Pennsylvania wilderness, as far as Fort Pitt and the West Branch of the Susquehanna. Along the way, when not seeking a young lady's hand, he interacts with many of the leading figures of the time, including Conrad Weiser, Governor Morris, John Harris, Henry Bouquet, John Forbes, Hugh Mercer, George Croghan, and numerous natives.

The Underground Railroad was the only avenue of hope for fugitive slaves who followed the star of freedom north to Canada in the years prior to the Civil War. High rewards offered for the return of human chattel inspired a relentless vigil on the part of unscrupulous deputies, making the operation of the Railroad a perilous venture for the Abolitionists.By Night the Strangers tells the thrilling story of Luke Hanley who unwittingly finds himself on the station of that Railroad and joins the valiant group of "Right People" in the lumber country of Pennsylvania. In the pattern of the misfortunes that plague him, Hanley sees the powerful hand of John Caines, county boss and lumber king, whose daughter nevertheless sacrifices her reputation to save Luke, arousing the dangerous jealousy of the fiery and embittered Hester. When the harassed hero is finally brought to trial for his life, the great Thaddeus Stevens comes to his defense; but his eloquence cannot save Hanley's lumber camp from the flames of angry slave hunters after he gives sanctuary to John Brown's son, following the raid on Harper's Ferry.Readers of By Night the Strangers will find this the most exciting of the books by Herbert Stover who has established himself as an accomplished dramatist of history through such previous works as Song of the Susquehanna, Men in Buckskin, Powder Mission, Copperhead Moon, and The Eagle and the Wind.

A desperate English king had turned loose the swarms of native warriors to threaten the northern regions of the Susquehanna with death and plunder. General Knox called on Simon Braide to make the vital map that would guide Washington's forces in defense of this territory-whenever they could be spared to bolster the meager but gallant ranks of the men in buckskin who now patrolled the lonely forest rivers.Young Braide set out upon this mission with these vicious words, his fiery-tempered bride, Celine, ringing in his ears: "Some day I'll make you truly sorry for what you have done to me ..." And as though in answer to her curse, ill fate was to dog Simon's footsteps from the evening he returned to find his home wrecked, his wife gone, and the precious map stolen or destroyed by Indian raiders.The relentless search that followed led him within the shadow of a British scaffold at Niagara, lighted by the flames of Iroquois fires. Misfortune brought down upon him, in addition, the wrath of the ailing General Sullivan, who sent troopers of Braide's own forces to arrest him for high treason and alienated the girl he came to love almost too late.With the authority of a true historian and the skill of an adept storyteller, Herbert Stover has interwoven Simon Braide's perilous adventures with the events that beleaguered the hard-pressed patriot army: Colonel Boone's attempt to build a road through native-inhabited forests against insurmountable odds; the mutiny that threatened the troops of General Wayne in Princeton; the intrigue of Britain's arch spy ring; and the menace of hordes of rapacious Indian warriors commanded by English Rangers.In Men in Buckskin, the author of Song of the Susquehanna brings a rousing drama that can be found only in history.

The Union forces faced disaster on two sides. Confederate troops advanced determinedly from the South while, in the North, an amorphous army of deserters was being organized to strike at the back of the blue-uniformed soldiers with a blow that might prove as deadly as the bite of the small reptile whose name the Copperheads bore.Discharged from the Union Army, Coleman Jons turned his knowledge of the Pennsylvania backwoods and backwoodsmen to fight the subversive threat to the Union's rear. At first he had to be content with following out Governor Curtin's order to "raise a little hell." Plagued on every hand by the hostile henchmen of the traitorous Senator Granly, to whose niece he owed his life, Jons answered the desperate call for men to stem the Confederate tide at Gettysburg. This victory, which merely intensified Copperhead activity, was to send him racing back to track down the Copperhead leaders in a series of daring escapades before they could loose, in the Union's midst, the destructive forces that lay behind the prisoner-of-war barricades at Elmira, New York-a mission which was to bring him finally into the arms of the girl who, despite her name, had won his heart. Mr. Stover has plunged his hero into one of the most vital phases of the Civil War, providing all the elements of a thrilling historical novel, from romance to violence. With renewed vigor, he writes about the territory of which he had become the ex officio historian through his Revolutionary novels, Song of the Susquehanna, Men in Buckskin, and Powder Mission.