Showing results by author "J. E Gessler" in All Categories

In the sequel to Target’d, this novel follows the crew of the crippled star cruiser Target six months after the initial disaster which had killed the majority of the 200 crewmembers aboard, leaving the survivors with only limited power and ineffectual defense mechanisms. With only minimal ability to grow plants in a makeshift hydroponics unit, their food supply consists of nothing more than nutritional tablets discovered aboard in an undelivered supply consignment for colonists on a distant planet. Originally determining these tablets would last the few remaining survivors for decades, ...

“prioR Battles”After running the Federal blockade and returning to England, Rudy and Rose have three days to spend together before he is compelled to return across the Atlantic. To use that time together in a meaningful way, Rose requests Rudy tell her of his youth. Beginning with the tragic circumstances leading to his expulsion from VMI, his return to Charleston and subsequent disinheritance, he then details for her, in words so vivid she experiences his adventures alongside him, his voyage to San Francisco and foray into the gold fields as a ‘49er. The flashback, seen through the ...

“captains RB”RB XIISummary After completing the task of transferring Rudy’s wartime fortune from French banks to a company Rose has established in Bombay, they are freed from immediate worry. Although Rudy’s health and his repeated denial that he can never again captain a ship continues to worry her, she is determined to prove to his crew that he will again be “the man he was.” Unexpectedly, Rudy provides the means for her to put a plan into action when he purchases a steamboat in her name which he christens the Lady Rose. Making it clear he will not command a steamer from the ...

A knock came on the door in the dead of night. On the verge of Civil War, such a summons meant trouble and danger. To ignore it offered momentary reprieve for the Ward family: it also meant shirking duty. Such was not in their make-up, for the Wards, otherwise known as the landlocked "Kansas Pirates," had taken the buccaneer's oath to protect one another, and, by association, the oppressed, against tyranny and injustice.Their help was urgently needed to guide runaway slaves from "Bleeding Kansas" across the river to safer ground. Barbara Nelander-Ward, former first mate aboard the Bottom ...

The explosion came close to killing him, and as Rudy Blake lay on the ground feeling the rest of his life ebb away, he comprehended one of two things would happen. Either he would find Rose Theodore’s lifeless body and join her spirit in the afterworld, or the gods would spare her – and consequently him – because they were not yet done manipulating their favorite plaything. Proving one side stronger, or perhaps simply more willful than the other, it is Rose who saves Rudy. Realizing he has been badly burned and perhaps suffered broken bones from plummeting down the stairs in the ...

“to Richmond or Bust” People called it the Civil War, but it was decidedly uncivil. Newspaper reporters styled it, “The War of Brother against Brother,” but the wounds cut far deeper than that. Southerners referred to the years 1861-1865 as “The War of Northern Aggression.” It was “Mr. Lincoln’s War,” “the War over Slavery,” “the War to save the Union.” It was everything, in fact, but, “The War to End all Wars.” Rudy Blake went to war to die but he did not die. Instead, he suffered through one soul-shattering defeat after another, until his private world shrunk...

They said the boy was haunted and the townspeople of Lawrence, Kansas, wanted nothing to do with widower Seth Ward or his two children. In 1857, superstitions run high.Left alone to raise Patricia and Peter, Seth has been isolated from his neighbors since the death of his wife from a lingering, malignant disease. Nearly at his wits end, a young woman appears in response to an advertisement for help.Barbara Nelander dared brave the terror of a dead woman's ghost and the haunting of her son because she was not like other women. Born in Nova Scotia, "Nelander," as she was called, had served as...

“RamBlings”RB X The war fought on the battlefield had ended but the real fight was about to begin: that which might be described as, “To the winner belongs the spoils.” Federal agents had arrived in England to go through the bank accounts of those whose allegiance had sided with the late Confederacy – claiming their war profiteering as restitution. Realizing if they did not act quickly, Rudy Blake’s fortune, earned as a blockade-runner and entrepreneur, would be forfeit, Rose Theodore takes the wounded man to Liverpool where they begin the arduous and dangerous task of securing ...

WondRous BackdropsSummary They needed a fresh start; of that neither Rudy Blake nor Rose Theodore disagreed. But where to begin? With the ink still wet on her Master’s papers, Captain R. B. Theodore could have chosen to take the Lady Rose back to sea but an undercurrent of doubt troubled her. The Civil War was over, but reconstruction in the South had not gone the way either had hoped. With a Southerner in the White House, there was every reason to believe reunification meant a return to the Old Ways. Slavery was abolished but the hatreds remained. Northern cotton Factors paid little, if ...

“Ask him about John Paul.” If one sentence stuck in Rose Theodore’s mind, that was it. Innocuous by itself, within those five words lay a world of accusation, charged against Captain Blake not only by the speaker, First Officer D’Artagnan, but held in resentment by the entire crew of the Reprobate. Although the un-Civil War had ended and Rudy returned to England, the horrors of his service in the artillery lingered. Professing “not to be the man I was,” Rose is more than willing to give him the time he needed to recover. Not so the federal agents who have swarmed over England ...

The ReproBate Saga“time and tRouBle”RB XVSummary Time and trouble wait for no man. The time had been set for Rudy Blake’s execution and the Federal authorities in charge of the city knew there would be trouble if the hanging did not take place. The provost-marshal, had been given an assignment: find a charge and make it stick. It was finally decided Blake would be tried for his participation in a duel dating back to 1849 when facing a man on the “Field of Honor” was illegal. The trial had been short and to the point. One month from the day Rudy was found guilty, he was to be taken...

What is a dream but a fight against the odds? A struggle to rise above the ordinary and express a creativity that encapsulates the soul. When love is shared, that emotion becomes a dual consciousness. As a small child, Seth Ward had seen a valley filled with wild strawberry plants and imagined that one day he would own that land and cultivate those plants. Growing to adulthood and facing the harsh reality of raising two small children in Bloody Kansas of the 1850's, however, life was reduced to dreary survival and dreams were tucked away into the recesses of yesteryear.When love and ...

Atlanta has fallen and Rudy Blake has left the city, penniless and without hope. Following in the footsteps of the ragtag Confederate Army, he comes upon an officer and makes the startling announcement he wishes to join up. Proving his prowess with a rifle, he signs his name on the enlistment form and is assigned to the sharpshooters. Here, Private Blake gets his first taste of what war really means: deprivation, fear, loss, death and a despair deeper than any he has ever experienced. After a particularly dispiriting encounter with Federal forces, he is overheard commenting on the lack of ...

“carRying Battlescars” The tall, gaunt man stood at the door and for a moment, Rose Theodore did not recognize him. Then, with a cry of joy tempered by shock she welcomed home her long-lost wayfarer, Rudy Blake. Civil War had done much to Rudy. Gone was the cocksure reprobate, the captain who had dared run the Federal blockade, the businessman who owned Southern railroads and numerous profit-generating enterprises. In his place was a broken man who had gone for a soldier: a man who served his country but not the Cause; an artillerist who had imbibed too many defeats and seen too much ...

“New Beginnings:Book IV Peas in a Pod” Summary How do you put your life together after an unimaginable tragedy? How to rediscover and restructure your identity? How to find purpose out of chaos? Dr. Robert Kamer is forced to face those questions after the devastating events involving his brother at the Kamer/Jackson Institute. Finding no answers at the K/J I, he flees to the one person in the world who can help him. In so doing, he leaves his partner, Dr. Samuel Jackson, behind to face not only his own personal agonies but the suspicion and distrust of the staff he is compelled to ...

The expression "holy revenge" might seem a misnomer, as it is often believed that vengeance belongs to the Lord. When a race of people were cruelly and habitually enslaved, however, freedom meant more than emancipation: it offered the opportunity to redress wrongs in a more earthly court. The man called "Red" arrived in Hellhole with an aura of trouble surrounding him. Immediately sensing his presence meant bloodshed, Marshal Kiley ordered him out of town but not before allowing him to have his wounds treated by the doctor, Fiz Ward. Even more intuitive than the lawman, Dr. Ward is quick to...