Niven Busch: 14 books

Greatness can―and often does―arise out of undistinguished and ignoble beginnings. This collection of biographical vignettes of celebrated Americans of a bygone era tells the stories of twenty-one individuals―a baseball player, hotel owner, producer, band leader, umpire, jockey, actress, as well...

John Charles Fremont(January 21, 1813-July 13, 1890) ― military officer, explorer, and politician ― has long stumped historians. Some scholars regard him as a military hero, while others view him as a failure who was so volatile and complex that he repeatedly defeated his own aspirations. It's...

World War II is about to end and the conquerors are coming home. For Mark Gregory, a war correspondent who has just arrived in San Francisco, the end of the war means that he is about to be reunited with his wife and son.  Apprehensive about the reunion, he also finds that San Francisco has been...

An aged and penniless man shakes a fist in the faces of the dynastic, arrogant lords of the great Railroad Bank of San Francisco and demands an accounting of his rights. Andy O'Toole holds a worn and yellowed passbook to an account opened by his father the year he was born and a contract in the flyleaf...

  With action moving from the fast-track of Silicon Valley to a Moroccan prison cell, from secret war games in the California desert to sexual espionage in the nation's capital, this story tells of a young man brought up in the weapons business–and disgusted with it – who is suddenly...

​​Three marines, one seaman, and a raider scout are thrown together on their last patrol and, bound by hardship and tragedy, become the Group; a brotherhood that is their only home and sets the standard by which they live.  When they return to Los Angeles in 1943, they are dedicated to staying...

In politics, the rise to the top can also correspond to the erosion of one's moral core.  Ask Aline Cleary Belshaw ― her father was an honest and popular senator and she grew up immersed in the excitement of political life, believing in the unshakable fiber of the political process.  So...

New Mexico cattle baron, Temple Caddy Jefford, hog-rich and gut-mean, doesn't think that either of his two sons has what it takes to manage the spread after he's gone. In lieu of a son's partnership, he offers the job to his flinty, shrewd, and passionate daughter, Vance who accepts the challenge...

Spanish Bit Ranch is the insular domain of Senator Jackson McCanles; a kingdom carved from the Texas soil in the 1880's and containing thousands of acres of “steers and wire, mesa and windmills and horses, cap rock and barren trail and pleasant river shallows.”   A way of life ruled by the...

All four were against him, and four were all it took. A bogus hunting trip on a sweet windy range of a Texas ranch was used to get the gang together and, as they sat around the campfire, the jaws of the trip snapped shut. Fifty-two year old Jed Basco, president of Basco and Western, was fired. The...

Caspar Damion Splane, pitchman extraordinaire, had a voice so compelling that no one could pass within earshot without looking to see what kind of man was talking. He could sell anything. At a time when nylon stockings were impossible to find and very expensive, Caspar popped open his sample case,...

Mr. Big, the leader of a powerful and dangerous new movement in Germany, is a seductive orator with a godlike remoteness intent on luring Bertha Carrington to his lair using a handsome young captain as bait.  Bertha―tall, blond, Junoesque―is a teacher from America who is visiting Germany...

Dan Prader is “the perfect figure of a man.” A has-been stunt man and actor looking for the way back into a profession for which he was once flawlessly suited.  Few remember him, but among those who do is his neglected and bitter son, Harold, overshadowed since childhood by the sheer size...

“If you locked the window, the past crept under the door.” As Jessica Saxe lies dying in a hospital, the story of the Saxe family — Anchylus, her husband, and Pamela, Alexandra, and Sharon, their three daughters — slowly unfolds, meandering backward and forward in time as the author...