Valour

"A Woman of Valour is the biography of Marie-Louise Bouchard Labelle, a French-Canadian woman who found love with a priest thirty-three years her senior. Against all social convention, they lived, produced three children, and built a life together after fleeing their village. However, after several years together, Bouchard's husband ultimately chose to return to the priesthood, abandoning his family as a result. Through interviews and documentation, Claire Trepanier tells Bouchard's story of survival while highlighting the history of women's stature in Canada, and raising a question about the celibacy of Catholic priests."--Publisher's description

The second epic fantasy in The Faithful and the Fallen series, Valour by John Gwynne carries all of the excitement of the first. The Banished Lands are torn by war as the army of High King Nathair sweeps the realm challenging all who oppose his holy crusade. Allied with the manipulative Queen Rhin of Cambren, there are few who can stand against him. But Rhin is playing her own games and has her eyes on a far greater prize . . . Left for dead – her kin have fled and her country is overrun with enemies – Cywen fights to survive. But any chance of escape is futile once Nathair and his disquieting advisor Calidus realize who she is. They have no intention of letting such a prize slip from their grasp. For she may be their one chance at killing the biggest threat to their power. Meanwhile, the young warrior Corban flees from his conquered homeland with his exiled companions, heading for the only place that may offer them sanctuary. But to get there they must travel through Cambren, avoiding warbands, giants and the vicious wolven of the mountains. And all the while Corban struggles to become the man that everyone believes him to be – the Bright Star and saviour of the Banished Lands. Embroiled in struggles for power and survival, the mortal world is unaware of the greatest threat of all. In the Otherworld, dark forces scheme to bring a host of the Fallen into the world of flesh to end the war with the Faithful, once and for all. Continue the fantasy series with Ruin and Wrath, start the series with Malice.

Based on primary source research, this is the most comprehensive history of the Victoria Cross available, tracing the evolution of the award from its inception in 1856 to the most recent bestowals. The study also examines the evolution of the concept of heroism and how the definition of heroism changed along with the nature of warfare.

The collected stories of the Canadian recipients of the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration. As Canada came into its own as a nation during the First World War, proving itself capable of standing alongside Britain on the world stage, scores of Canadians were awarded the Commonwealth’s highest award for pre-eminent acts of valour, self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty, the Victoria Cross. For Valour details every Canadian VC recipient from the First World War. These men, ordinary servicemen from widely differing social backgrounds, acted with valour above and beyond the call of duty. Their stories and experiences offer a fresh perspective on the “war to end all wars.” Series editor Gerald Gliddon and contributors Stephen Snelling, and Peter F. Batchelor, examine the men and the dramatic events that led to the granting of this most prized of medals. Each of the men’s stories is different, but they all have one thing in common — acts of extraordinary bravery under fire.

A look at the Irish Volunteers who fought in the South Dublin Union building during the 1916 Easter Rising.

James Street has a gift for sifting the ashes of history, adding a portion of romance and adventure, a pinch of this and that, and compounding his own formula for historical novels. This is his best and he uses the battle for Vicksburg, the saga of the Confederate ironclad Arkansas and the Union ram Queen of the West for a story as big as the Mississippi. The epic of the Arkansas, built in the wilderness by men who hauled her iron and guns hundreds of miles by ox wagons, is one of the most amazing and little-known dramas of history. She struck terror from Illinois to New Orleans and became a ship that men whispered about; a ghost ship whose guns kept blazing although there were no men aboard her. Mr. Street gives us a galaxy of characters in this book. Most of the action revolves around three Confederate sailors; Wyeth Woodward, gunner's mate, who hates war; Simeon St. Leger Granville, a British soldier of fortune whose lust for battle is exceeded only by his lust for drink, and Vespasian Gillivray, the lovable Cajan, a descendant of the Creeks of Mr. Street's Oh, Promised Land. The fourth member of a quartet you never will forget is Dolly — fat, cold, deadly. She is a nine-inch Dahlgren gun on whose breech is engraved By Valour and Arms. There also is Gar Rivers, an inspiring Negro, an artist of sorts who fought for a slave-owning people. In these pages you will meet Laurel MacKenzie, betrothed to Wyeth, and Morna (Dabney) Alexander, who wants the young sailor just to prove to herself that marriage has not dulled her charms. Tap Roots' readers will remember her and her melancholiac husband, Keith Alexander, a Southerner who fights for the Union. Keith is here, too, contemptuous as ever of his own life and the lives of others. Then there is Sharon Weatherford, a rooming-house keeper in Natchez-Under-the-Hill. Her love for Simeon St. Leger Granville apparently is a hopeless thing, and yet she, a social and racial outcast, meets every challenge, and triumphs. The story begins with the building of the Arkansas and ends with the fall of Vicksburg, which was to the South what Hastings was to England during the Norman conquest. The Union was saved in the West, but that theater has been neglected. Few Americans realize that the Battle of Franklin was bloodier than Gettysburg, that the Arkansas created more havoc than the Merrimac, and that Vicksburg held out for more than a year. As in Tap Roots, Mr. Street warns his readers again that they will not find the Civil War of Lee and Jackson in this book. This is history as it happened, not the dry meager words of textbooks or the dulcet tones of the julep school. Scoundrels and mountebanks work and cheat in the red glare of Vicksburg's guns. But man is at his best while making war and even when human life is not as dear as rotten mule meat, there are those who prove again that there always will be honor, decency, and dignity for those willing to fight for them.