Victory at Yorktown - A Novel

In To Try Men's Souls, New York Times bestselling authors Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen cast a new light on the year 1776 and the man who would become the father of our nation, George Washington. Valley Forge picks up the narrative a year after Washington’s triumphant surprise attack on Trenton, and much has changed since then.

It’s the winter of 1777, and Washington’s battered, demoralized army retreats from Philadelphia. Arriving at Valley Forge, they discover that their repeated requests for a stockpile of food, winter clothing, and building tools have been ignored by Congress. With no other options available, the men settle down for a season of agony. For weeks the dwindling army freezes under tents in the bitter cold. Food runs out. Disease festers. The men are on the point of collapse, while in Philadelphia the British, joined by Allen van Dorn, the Loyalist brother of the dead patriot, Jonathan van Dorn, live in luxury.

In spite of the suffering and deceit, Washington endures all, joined at last by a volunteer from Germany, Baron Friederich von Steuben. With precious few supplies and even less time, von Steuben begins the hard task of recasting the army as a professional fighting force capable of facing the British head-on—something it has never accomplished before—and in the process he changing the course of history.   

Valley Forge is a compelling, meticulously researched tour-de-force novel about endurance, survival, transformation, and rebirth. It chronicles the unique crucible of time and place where Washington and his Continental Army, against all odds, were forged into a fighting force that would win a revolution and found the United States of America.

With To Make Men Free (originally published as The Battle of the Crater), New York Times bestselling authors Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen take readers to the center of a nearly forgotten Civil War confrontation, a battle that was filled with controversy and misinterpretation even before the attack began.   June 1864: the Civil War is now into its fourth year of bloody conflict with no end in sight.  James O’Reilly—famed artist, correspondent, and former companion of Lincoln—is summoned discreetly to a meeting with the President.  His old friend gives him a difficult assignment: travel to the trenches outside of Richmond to be Lincoln’s eyes and ears amongst the men, sending back an honest account of the front.

Meanwhile, General Ambrose Burnside, a hard luck commander out of favor with his superiors, has an ingenious plan to break through the closest point on the Confederate line by tunneling forward from the Union position beneath the fort to explode its defenses. The risks are high, and Burnside needs a brave division of the United States Colored Troops for one desperate rush that just might bring victory.  As the battleground drama unfolds, this must-read work rewrites our understanding of one of the great battles of the war, providing a sharp, rousing and harshly realistic view of politics and combat during the darkest year of the Civil War.

“Masterful storytelling.” --William E. Butterworth IV, New York Times bestselling author of The Saboteurs

“Compelling narrative force and meticulous detail.” --The Atlanta Journal Constitution