Billy Battles is not in Kansas anymore! As Book 2 of the Finding Billy Battles trilogy opens, Billy is far from his Kansas roots—and his improbable journeys are just beginning. He is aboard an ocean liner sailing to the Mysterious East (Hong Kong, French Indochina, and the Philippines), among other places. The year is 1894 and aboard the S S China Billy meets a mysterious, dazzling, and possibly dangerous German Baroness, locked horns with malevolent agents of the German government, and battled ferocious Chinese and Malay pirates in the South China Sea. Later, he is inadvertently embroiled in the bloody anti-French insurgency in Indochina–which quite possibly makes him the first American combatant in a country that eventually will become Vietnam. Later, in the Philippines, he is thrust into the Spanish-American War and the anti-American insurgency that follows. But Billy’s troubles are just beginning. As the 19th century ends and the 20th century begins, he finds himself entangled with political opportunists, spies, revolutionaries and an assortment of malevolent and dubious characters of both sexes. How will Billy handle those people and the challenges they present?

A link to the past no one could ever imagine. When a great-grandson inherits two aging trunks and a stack of meticulously detailed journals penned by his great-grandfather, he sets out to fulfill his great-grandfather's last request: to tell the story of an incredible life replete with adventure, violence, and tragedy. The great-grandfather's name is Billy Battles--a man often trapped and overwhelmed by circumstances beyond his control. For much of his 100-year-long life, Billy is a man missing and largely unknown to his descendants. His great-grandson is about to change that. As he works his way through the aging journals and the other possessions he finds in the battered trunks he uncovers the truth about his mysterious great-grandfather--a man whose deeds and misdeeds propelled him on an extraordinary and perilous journey from the untamed American West to the inscrutable Far East, Latin America, and Europe. But most of all he learns that in finding Billy Battles he has also found a long lost and astonishing link to the past.

Where in the world is Billy Battles? As Book Three of the Finding Billy Battles trilogy begins we know where Billy is. He is in Chicago with his wife, the former Baroness Katharina von Schreiber living a sedate and comfortable life after years of adventure and tragedy. That changes with a single telephone call that yanks Billy and Katharina back into a life of turmoil and peril. Persuaded by a powerful old friend to go undercover for the U.S. government the two find themselves in Mexico during the height of the violent 1910-1920 revolution. There they grapple with assorted German spies, Mexican revolutionaries, devious political operatives, and other miscreants. Caught in the middle of the 1914 American invasion of Veracruz, they must find a way out while keeping their real identities secret. After managing to extract themselves from danger, disaster strikes. It’s an ordeal Billy is all too familiar with and one that will send him plummeting into a painful abyss of despair and agony. Consequently, Billy vanishes leaving family and friends to wonder what happened to him. Where is he? Is he dead or alive? What provoked his disappearance? In Book Three of the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy, those questions are answered, and the mystery behind Billy’s disappearance is finally revealed.

The Britannica Book of the Year 2013 provides a valuable viewpoint of the people and events that shaped the year and serves as a great reference source for the latest news on the ever changing populations, governments, and economies throughout the world. It is an accurate and comprehensive reference that you will reach for again and again.

V. 1. Authors (A-D) -- v. 2. Authors (E-K) -- v. 3. Authors (L-R) -- v. 4. (S-Z) -- v. 5. Titles (A-D) -- v. 6. Titles (E-K) -- v. 7. Titles (L-Q) -- v. 8. Titles (R-Z) -- v. 9. Out of print, out of stock indefinitely -- v. 10. -- Publishers.

Micrographic reproduction of the 13 volume Oxford English dictionary published in 1933.