It’s the spring of 1873 in the Wyoming Territory, and U.S. Marshal Tim Colter and his grizzled mentor and best friend, mountain man Jed Reno, are hunting down some train robbers when they come across a man dying of gunshot wounds. The victim turns out to be a Secret Service agent who as he breathes his last says, “President Grant … assassination … Dugan … trust nobody.” 

Growing up as an educator’s daughter, I spent afternoons running the halls of my mom’s school with the other teachers’ kids, waiting on our parents to finish grading papers, attend faculty meetings or otherwise close out their duties. My mom was a public school librarian.

The ever growing stack of my “to-read” books has had Amor Towles’ “A Gentleman in Moscow” for about a year now. Several friends, whose literary opinion I respect, raved about this novel and one of them even bought me my copy.

It’s spring of 1941 and Britain stands alone against Hitler’s Germany. The British aircraft dropping their bombs on German military and manufacturing bases, and cities, were having an effect on that nation’s morale and production, but every downed British aircraft meant fewer experienced airmen.

A little over three years ago, a stranger in a coffee shop with whom I’d struck up a conversation excused himself from the table, walked to his car and returned with a copy of Steven Pressfield’s “Gates of Fire.”