A “riveting . . . sweeping epic” of one man driven by gold fever, by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of North and South (Richmond Times-Dispatch).
 
At the height of California’s Gold Rush, men left everything behind for the chance at striking it rich. Now, some thirty years after its peak, gold fever still entices adventurous Easterners like James Macklin...

The Gold Bandits Struck with Impunity, But Zac Cobb Could Not Abide Injustice With rumors swirling around a series of stolen gold shipments, Wells Fargo sends Zachary Cobb to the California gold fields to investigate the unsolved robberies. A gang of vigilantes called the Vindicators have taken it upon themselves to prosecute men suspected of the hold-ups, but while innocent people are being lynched, the real bandits seem able to strike with impunity...

In April 1950, the rusting hulk of a steam locomotive rises from the waters of a Montana lake, revealing the remains of three men who died 44 years before and astonishing all those who look on. In 1906, the American West has been suffering a two-year crime spree: a string of bank robberies committed by one man who murders all witnesses, and then vanishes without a trace. The US government brings in the best man they can find - a no-nonsense detective...

"In the declining Weimar Republic, Egon Loeser works as a stage designer for New Expressionist theatre. His hero is the greatest set designer of the seventeenth century, Adriano Lavicini, who devised the so-called Teleportation Device for the whisking of actors from one scene to another-a miracle, until the thing malfunctioned, causing numerous deaths and perhaps summoning the devil himself. Apolitical in a dangerous time, sex-driven in a dry spell,...

A naïve young man follows a fallen woman to a Nevada mining town and risks his life to win her. Early in the Civil War, the Confederacy sends Roger Duval to Sacramento to keep an eye on the situation in California in hopes of turning the Western territory toward the Southern cause. It's a plush assignment, well out of the line of fire, but he hasn't been there long before he comes into mortal danger. Duval nearly drowns in the Sacramento River...

A fictionalized account of Charley (Charlotte) Parkhurst who ran away from an orphanage, posed as a boy, moved to California, and fooled everyone by her appearance.

Appalled by conditions in the uncivilized nineteenth-century silvermining town to which her husband has brought his family, Mrs. Perkins sends him to live in the town's bachelor quarters, until, a year later, their daughter's determination to go to high school makes reconciliation possible.

"1941. Steven Katz is the son of prosperous landowners in rural California. Although his parents don't approve, he's found true friends in Nick, Suki, and Ollie, sons of field workers. The group is inseparable. But Steven is in turmoil. He's beginning to acknowledge that his feelings for Nick amount to more than friendship. When the bombing of Pearl Harbor draws the US into World War II, Suki and his family are forced to leave their home for the internment...

"In 1893, Mae Duffy and her family arrive in El Dorado seeking the California dream, but the easy gold is gone and depression grips the nation. Breaking free, she stumbles into Sacramento's urban underworld and corrupted government, where girls are political favors. She meets tycoons and senators of the Gilded Age while her brother and other homeless strikers fight the Southern Pacific Railroad. Humbled, Mae returns to Consumne and learns about life...