Steve Berry/US History/Fiction

[wavingrl]

Cotton Malone Series - Steve Berry

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/review-steve-berry-back-lincoln-myth-23776901

It seems he covers other topics.

<Cotton Malone Series


About The Series

A former Justice Department operative who can&#8217;t seem to stay out of trouble, Cotton Malone has crisscrossed the globe on electrifying quests. With the smart and capable Cassiopeia Vitt by his side, Malone faces down the world&#8217;s deadliest threats&#8212;unraveling, along the way, some of history&#8217;s most legendary and iconic mysteries. If you love action, secrets, history, conspiracies, and international adventure Cotton Malone is the one for you.

Novels in this series: The Templar Legacy (2006), The Alexandria Link (2007), The Venetian Betrayal (2007), The Charlemagne Pursuit (2008), The Paris Vendetta (2009), The Emperor&#8217;s Tomb (2010), The Jefferson Key (2011), and The King&#8217;s Deception (2013). Reading the series in order is not required as each novel is written to stand on its own. If read in order, though, you might recognize a few things.>

 

[wavingrl]

FAQ | History Matters

 

[hjmick]

I've read them all, met the author, nice guy, good books.

 

[wavingrl]

I've read them all, met the author, nice guy, good books.

just heard of him--wish I had known sooner. Thought others might like him, too.

 

[hjmick]

I introduced his books to my dad a couple of years before he died, my dad not Berry, he was a prolific reader and very much appreciated the tip as he enjoyed the books immensely.

 

[wavingrl]

I have been 'desperate' for this kind of books and had given up hope that such books existed.

Spread the word around --if you find other books like this. 'Good'--not too intense --that sort of thing.


A few months ago I heard of this author/books--sounds good. Haven't read them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/b...-wide-and-starry-sky-by-nancy-horan.html?_r=0

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&#8216;Under the Wide and Starry Sky,&#8217; by Nancy Horan


By SUSANN COKALJAN. 17, 2014


Nancy Horan&#8217;s first novel, &#8220;Loving Frank,&#8221; explored the tangled personal life of Frank Lloyd Wright. Now, in her second, she takes a deep, long look at the intimate history of yet another creative man. This time, the action is viewed from two perspectives &#8212; those of Robert Louis Stevenson and (even more so) of his American wife, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, who hopes to be a painter or a writer herself. &#8220;Under the Wide and Starry Sky&#8221; is at once a classic artistic bildungsroman and a retort to the genre, a novel that shows how love and marriage can simultaneously offer inspiration and encumbrance, especially when the more successful partner believes that, as far as artists go, &#8220;a family could tolerate only one.&#8221; The Stevensons&#8217; story is full of morbidity and sacrifice, chronicling losses and gains &#8212; and, of course, the writing of classics like &#8220;Treasure Island,&#8221; &#8220;Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde&#8221; and &#8220;Kidnapped,&#8221; none of which, Horan suggests, would have been possible without Fanny Stevenson&#8217;s careful nurturing of her husband.

Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, an American, married Robert Louis Stevenson in 1880. Credit Photograph of Robert Louis Stevenson from Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The early chapters provide a stirring overture, with enough lyrical emotion and fervent aspiration to satisfy even a 19th-*century reader. Dusky-skinned, dashing and curvaceous, 35-year-old Fanny is often mistaken for an &#8220;exotic,&#8221; her dark eyes &#8220;full of sex.&#8221; In 1875, she travels with her three children from California to Europe so she and her daughter can study drawing and painting &#8212; and elude the shame caused by her loutish first husband&#8217;s multiple affairs. But in Paris, art lessons fade in importance as one of Fanny&#8217;s two young sons gradually succumbs to a horrible and lingering disease, diagnosed as &#8220;scrofulous consumption.&#8221;

In mourning, Fanny retreats to Grez-sur-Loing, a bohemian artists&#8217; colony in the French countryside where she and her two remaining children can rebuild their health and spirits with plein air painting. There Louis, as he prefers to be called, first appears, having canoed his way from Antwerp to Paris in an effort to strengthen his lungs. For the young Scottish lawyer, it&#8217;s love at first sight, even though Fanny is almost 11 years his senior. Louis&#8217;s affliction &#8212; variously described as tuberculosis, chronic pneumonia or bronchitis &#8212; has reduced him to skin and bones, though in good times he&#8217;s flamboyantly &#8220;giddy with life.&#8221; He and Fanny become lovers and, back in Paris, patient and nurse.
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