by Preston Fleming

4.3 stars – 957 reviews

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An American GulagKamas, Utah, 2024. America has become a totalitarian dystopia after the Unionist Party’s rise to power. The American West contains vast Restricted Zones dotted with ghost towns, scattered military garrisons and corrective labor camps where the regime disposes of its real and suspected enemies.

A former businessman from Pittsburgh, Paul Wagner, arrives at a labor camp in Utah’s Kamas Valley. He is unaware that his eleven-year-old daughter, Claire, has set off to Utah to find him. By an odd quirk of fate, Claire has traveled on the same train that carried her father into internal exile.

˃˃˃ The Inmates Seize Control

Only after Wagner has renounced all hope of survival, cast his lot with anti-regime hard-liners and joined them in an unprecedented and suicidal revolt does he discover that Claire has become a servant in the home of the camp’s Deputy Warden. Wagner is torn between his devotion to family and loyalty to his fellow rebels. On the eve of an armored assault intended to crush the revolt, he faces an agonizing choice between a hero’s death and a coward’s freedom.

˃˃˃ Chillingly realisticForty Days at Kamas is both a stirring portrait of a man determined to survive under the bleakest of conditions and a nightmare vision of what America could become if political extremists rise to power.

by James Conroyd Martin

4.4 stars – 1,169 reviews

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Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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Looking for historical fiction that will transport you to another time and place? One with the sweep of a Doctor Zhivago and Gone with the Wind?
Based on the diary of a countess, this story will enthrall you.A book club favorite and IPPI Gold Medal Winner!
Anna and Zofia~two cousins~different as sun from shade.
One chooses love and patriotism~the other, deceit and treason.
And yet~love binds them even as their country hurtles toward the abyss.
Suddenly alone in the world, Anna falls prey to the schemes of Cousin Zofia even as she falls in love with Jan, a patriot ready to put his life on the line for Poland’s Constitution. Zofia refuses to submit to an arranged marriage and will go to any lengths to avoid it, no matter who it may hurt.
Based on a true diary, “Push Not the River contains all the sweep and romance of the classic romantic epics, such as Gone with the Wind and Doctor Zhivago, with a heroine who remains strong in the face of both personal and political tragedy….Anna Maria’s story is at once timeless and timely.” –India Edghill, author of Queenmaker and Delilah
A panoramic and epic novel in the grand romantic style, Push Not the River is the rich story of Poland in the late 1700s–a time of heartache and turmoil as the country’s once peaceful people are being torn apart by neighboring countries without and divided loyalties within. At the vulnerable age of seventeen, Lady Anna Maria loses both of her parents and must leave to go to live with relatives, thrusting her into a world of love and hate, loyalty and deceit. Even kind Aunt Stella, Anna’s guardian who personifies Poland’s courage and spirit, can’t protect Anna from the uncertain future of the country.
Anna turns to love and comfort in Jan, a brave patriot and architect of democracy, unaware that her beautiful and enigmatic cousin Zofia has already set her sights on the handsome young fighter. Thus Anna walks unwittingly into Zofia’s jealous wrath and darkly sinister intentions. Surviving several tragic events, some orchestrated by the crafty Zofia, a strengthened Anna learns to place herself in the way of destiny–for love and for country. Heeding the proud spirit of her father, Anna becomes a major player in the fight against the countries who come to partition her beloved Poland.
Push Not the River is based on the eighteenth-century diary of Anna Maria Berezowski, a Polish countess who lived through the rise and fall of the Third of May Constitution. Vivid, romantic, and thrillingly paced, it paints the emotional and unforgettable story of the metamorphosis of a nation–and of a valiant and resilient young woman.