Showing results by publisher "Crossroad Press" in Historical Fiction

Like The Last Temptation of Christ, Saint Francis is a fictionalized biography of a widely venerated Christian figure: Francis of Assisi, whose renunciation of his young man’s life of leisure and founding of a religious order dedicated to living in poverty and sharing the Gospels with all living things profoundly influence the ways in which Christians the world over worship and give service to their god even today.

There are monsters roaming the desert and menacing the roads. There are sorcerers, harlots, and gamblers rampant in the city. In a compound in a forest, at the base of a mountain, one man and his family have received a prophecy. There will be a reckoning. There will be a flood. They will survive, but only if they obey the prophecy. Only if they build an ark, where there is no water. Only if they gather all of the creatures of the world. Only if they are faithful. Everyone else? Well, they're going to die.

Chiliad consists of two interrelated stories, stories filtered through the melancholy imagination of a narrator perched on the banks of a river that flows backward and forward through time. The first movement, "Men and Sin", takes place in the millennial year of 1000 AD. The second, "A Moment at the River's Heart", occurs exactly 1000 years - the length of a "chiliad" - later, as the new millennium approaches.

The world is ending. One by one the mighty cities are falling to earthquakes, to flood, to raiders on both land and sea. In a time of war and doubt, Gull is an oracle. Daughter of a slave taken from fallen Troy, chosen at the age of seven to be the voice of the Lady of the Dead, it is her destiny to counsel kings.

The Bennett family moved to Jamaica after inheriting a coffee plantation in the Blue Mountains. This novel covers three generations of their lives, loves, triumphs and failures as the build an amazing, profitable plantation, producing some of the finest coffee in the world, and then run afoul of history. This novel , in many ways, parallels the amazing life of it's author, Hugh B. Cave, who owned a plantation on the last road into the Blue Mountains in Jamaica, only to lose it to the government.

In the days of pre-Civil War slavery - the unforgettable novel of a shocking portion of our American heritage. The time was not all magnolia blossoms and crinolines. It was more than romance and splendor. It was debauchery and slavery, gambling tables and dens of iniquity. It was murder and forgiveness. It was all the great contradiction of life in a golden era...

Eminent Oxford don Sir Harrison Ashcroft, on the verge of proving that Hitler did not die in the bunker, is murdered in Berlin. His daughter, Emily, continues this quest. Her life is endangered but she has new and unexpected protectors: Rex Foster, researching the vainglory of Nazi architecture; Nicholas Kirvov, curator of a Soviet art museum; and Tovah Levine, Mossad agent. The four prove a tough match for a coterie of neo-Nazis conspiring to perpetuate Hitler's image and obscure the details of his death.

Set in the era of two world wars, this comprehensive work weaves together the bizarre mythology and eccentric beliefs that explain how a nation went insane for 12 years. Told through the compelling lives and loves of a pair of very unique characters, this tour de force will take you into a radical blend of religion and myth frighteningly similar to what is going on in parts of the world today.

"There is a plague coming....For forty days and forty nights fear shall savage the streets. Those steeped in sin shall burn. The dying begins now" With this chilling message a wave of terror unlike anything the world has ever seen sweeps the streets of Europe. Thirteen martyrs burn themselves alive in thirteen major cities simultaneously. And this is just the beginning. A religious cult calling itself the Disciples of Judas has risen in the Middle East. They twist the words of ancient prophecies to drive home the fear.

1967: Chestnut Circle is an average suburban community inhabited by ordinary people - teenagers, housewives, retirees. Seventeen-year-old Nick Blake's only major worries are homework, high school, and how to date the pretty girl across the way. Then a fierce storm strikes the neighborhood and, overnight, all of Chestnut Circle is transported to an enchanted realm unlike anything its residents have ever known.

The year is 1985. Manhattan’s Times Square area is sleazy, and the streets are full of what Coleman Sackler calls “New York Street Skunk”. Cole is the night manager and self-proclaimed hotel detective for the transient Hotel Destiny, which has been plagued with scandals over the century, including several murders, gangster occupation and ownership, and fleabag status during the 1960s and '70s. Five recent slayings in the building have been attributed to - the police believe - one killer.

The year is 1939 just after a Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City. A serial killer is loose, leaving strange occult symbols on the foreheads of murdered young women. Adam Paradise works as a private investigator with an office over MORT’S drugstore on Fifth Avenue, but Adam also has a secret; he is almost two hundred years old, assembled from the parts of dead bodies by VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN! The reality of his existence became a legend and then a fictionalized book by Mary Shelley.

Three lives. One man. Christopher Marlowe was the first rock star poet, a spy, an atheist, a gay rebel whose controversial plays thrilled audiences and challenged the government. Christopher Wild is Kathe Koja’s new novel, a daring remix of eras - the glitter and threat of Elizabethan England, a grimy mid-20th century, and a dark near-future of constant surveillance - as Marlowe loves and fights and writes his way through every dangerous age.

1888, Whitechapel. Jack the Ripper terrorizes prostitutes and baffles Scotland Yard; 1888, London. Annie Oakley thrills audiences of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show with her expert marksmanship. The Ripper may have picked the wrong target in this fascinating retelling of Jack the Ripper's reign of terror...with a western twist. This blend of fact and fiction will keep you resisting to pause long after bedtime as the story unfolds in gaslit, Victorian London.

A momentous archeological discovery, the greatest of all time - and the immediate effect it has on the varied group of men and women whose lives are intimately touched and altered by it - is at the heart of this exciting novel. In the ruins of the ancient Roman seaport of Ostia Antica, an Italian archeologist has discovered a first-century papyrus, its faded Aramaic text revealing a new gospel written by James, younger brother of Jesus, the original source of the four gospels of the New Testament.

For more than 1600 years, Nick Medea has followed and guarded the Gate that keeps the mortal realm and that of Feirie separate, seeking in vain absolution for the fatal errors he made when he slew the dragon. All that while, he has tried and failed to keep the woman he loves from dying over and over. Yet in the 50 years since the night the dragon breathed over the city of Chicago, the Gate has not only remained fixed, but open to the trespasses of the Wyld, the darkest of the Feiriefolk.

Dr. Andrew Doran has been out of touch with the major civilizations for quite a while. When an emissary from his Alma Mater demands his assistance, Andrew is in such a state that he has no choice but to help. The Nazis have taken the Necronomicon from Miskatonic University's library. With it they could call upon every form of darkness and use the powers of the void to destroy all who stand in their way of unlimited power.

Charmian is handmaiden to Cleopatra. She is also an oracle, gifted with ancient memories that may hold the key to preserving Egypt. Through blood and fire, war and peace, love and death, she will face a desperate struggle that will remake the future of the world.

Dr. Andrew Doran is back! Narrowly saving the world from the cosmic advance of the Nazi armies, Andrew Doran is loathing with his new position as dean of Miskatonic University. The duties of a dean are too slow for the lifestyle that Andrew had become accustomed to, but he doesn't have to wait long until he finds that the previous dean had sold documents to the Nazis direct from the library of Miskatonic University.

Alexander the Great's soldier, Lydias of Miletus, has survived the final campaigns of the king's life. He now has to deal with the chaos surrounding his death. Lydias throws his lot in with Ptolemy, one of Alexander's generals who has grabbed Egypt as his personal territory.