Books with author Robert Holland

In just over a hundred years--from the death of the Mohammed in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750--the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time. How they were able to engulf so many empires, states, and armies in such a short period of time is a question which has engaged historians since at least the ninth century. Most recent popular accounts have been based almost solely on the early Muslim sources, which were, in short, salvation history, composed for the purpose of demonstrating that God had chosen the Arabs as his vehicle for spreading Islam throughout the world. While exploiting the rich biographical and geographical information of the early Muslim sources, this groundbreaking work delivers a fresh account of the Arab conquests and the establishment of an Islamic Empire by incorporating different approaches and different bodies of evidence. Robert G. Hoyland, a leading Late Antique scholar, accomplishes this by first examining the wider world from which Mohammed and his followers emerged. For Muslim sources, the revelation of Islam to Muhammad is the starting point for their history, and modern university departments have tended to reinforce this approach. Late Antique studies have done us the service of shedding much needed light on the 4th to 6th centuries, thus giving us a better view of the nature of Middle Eastern society in the decades before the Arab conquests. In particular, Hoyland narrates the emergence of a distinct Arab identity in the region of the Roman province Arabia and western (Saudi) Arabia, which is at least as important for explaining the Arab conquests as Muhammad's revelation. The Arabs are the principal, almost sole, focus of the Muslim conquest narratives, and this is the norm for modern works on this subject. Yet, in the same period the Khazars, Bulgars, Avars and Turks established polities on the edges of the superpowers of Byzantium and Iran; in fact, the Khazars and Turks continued to be major rivals of the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries. The role of these peripheral states in the Arab success story is underscored in the narrative. Innovative and accessible, In God's Path is a welcome account of a transformative period in ancient history.

Mrs. Parks calls on Charles Oliver Jones, to investigate noises around her house at night because the police can’t spare anyone as the summer season draws toward Labor Day. On a damp, foggy night, while staking out Mrs. Parks’ lonely house at the end of a long dirt road, Charles Oliver Jones makes an astonishing discovery, one that seems to make no sense. In fact, if it weren’t for the slashes in his Ninja suit, he would have been tempted not to believe what he had seen. Between his investigations into whatever it is that comes out on foggy nights at Mrs. Parks’, to his sudden emergence as a wide receiver on the football team, this book will keep you engaged from start to finish. As always, with any Robert Holland novel, there’s no predicting how things will turn out. What you can be certain of if, is that you’re going to have a lot of fun with Charlie and his partner, Pete Hayward, as they roam the Vineyard in search of what shouldn’t be there at all.

Charles Oliver Jones and Pete Heyward are back for a third time in this highly acclaimed series set on Martha’s Vineyard. This time the mystery begins with a strange collection of jetsam drifting ashore on the beach near Gay Head Light and only slowly does it become clear that it’s part of a terrorist plot directed at the whole eastern seaboard of the United States. Even with the island crawling with Homeland Security, F.B.I., and military professionals, in the end it falls to Charlie and Pete to figure out just what is going on. It’s also right in the height of the football season and Pete and Charlie are tearing up the pea patch with some able help from Charlie Dollarhide. The action rages from page to page, suspense building and building as the mysteries slowly unravel and keep on unraveling right down to the final page.

On a summer day Maria, Peter, and Brian Bell set out to explore the land around their new home in the country. In the woods, at the far edge of a big hayfield behind the house, they find an abandoned car and decide to make it into a fort. From the start, things about the car seem odd. There are bullet holes in one side, but not the sort hunters make in using such cars for target practice. These holes are all in a vertical line. And there is an odd dark stain on the back of the driver’s seat. From their neighbor, a retired farmer named Walter Barbour, they learn that the car once belonged to a hired killer named Little Louie LaMontaigne, who was shot in that filed by the gang members he’d had a falling out with, fifty-eight years before. But things get stranger still. There is a raven that watches them and at times almost seems to speak. And there is the matter of Little Louie himself, for the body was never found ... until now ...

Mad Max Murphy is a soccer player. More to the point he is a goalie and everybody knows that goalies are a little, well, they’re just different. But even beyond his goalie attitude, Max is different. Things happen when he is around, odd things, strange things. Even his friends are different, in particular Basil and Meg Greene, the son and daughter of Lord and Lady Greene who have relocated to Madison where Max lives. Mix this in with the summer soccer league, two headless bodies, some Russian missiles, and a missing vial of something from Plum Island where the government fools around with all sorts of nasty viruses and bacteria, and you’ve got a formula for excitement.

Harley Keene is the new guy in town, but he’s used to that because for thepast three years he’s been in a new town and a new high school every year.He spends his summer shooting pool at a local pool hall called Shorty’sand when he’s not doing that he’s working on his three point shot becauseeven when you play point guard you have to be able to shoot. When school starts in the fall, he begins to hear all sorts of stories aboutsome guy called Snake and then he winds up in Calculus, sitting directlybehind the guy that everybody says is the nastiest guy in town. Then one night when he’s picking up pizza for his family he sees aman robbing another man in the alley next to the pizza place. That murder becomes another murder and then another and Harley isright in the middle of it, just as he’s starting the basketball season and gettingready for a pool tournament, and even as he begins to learn more and more about the guy called Snake

Damon Foxrucker can flat out throw a football but because he’s a freshman, and because his coach doesn’t believe in passing, the chance that he’ll get to show what he can do looks pretty slim. Still, he’s determined to find a way, even if it means going behind the coach’s back. He’s got some other problems too. He’s got a big mouth, especially in class, which explains why he spends a lot of time in the principal’s office. And then too, there’s the matter of not only finding a date for the prom but finding someone to double date with because for sure he doesn’t want his parents to drive him. Help come s from a strange quarter in the form of Larry the Rat, a chemistry whiz with the highest grades in the school and a knack for blowing things up. And when the Rumble Brothers begin to expand their drug operation, Damon and Larry decide to do something about that too. All in all, it makes for some exciting times in good old Wally’s Falls.

Charles Oliver Jones fancies himself a private investigator and, in fact, he has solved a couple of small mysteries, much to the surprise of both his parents and the Chief of Police. But Charlie has also been wearing a trench coat and an old brown felt like the private eyes of old. That has pretty much set him apart from the rest of the kids at school, and as any strange behavior will do, has left him on the outside looking in. But at the beginning of summer a new mystery arises when his next-door neighbor dies and Charlie begins to think she was murdered. He enlists his old friend Pete Heyward to help solve the mystery, but Pete, who is also the starting quarterback, agrees only after Charlie says he’ll give up the hat and coat. Strange things begin to happen. Mobster enforcers turn up and then come the spooks, government men working for obscure agencies, men with strange ideas and even stranger methods. The question is what they are looking for and it’s a question only Charles Oliver Jones can answer.

Cam Bates and his buddy Jack are exploring an old quarry in town when suddenly a car plunges off one of the cliffs, lands in the water and begins to sink. It’s the start of a substantial mystery that pits Cam and Jack against the mob and a nasty pack of drug dealers, and leads them into trying to solve a murder that no one thinks ever happened. And just to make sure there’s plenty of excitement in this fast-paced new novel from Robert Holland, there’s a good dose of lacrosse as Cam tries to get his team up to where it can win the way it did the year before. To do that he has to find a way around their new coach who knows absolutely nothing about the game, and he needs one more player, a guy to lead the offense, and he’s got a good idea who that guy might be. And for those of you like to fish, this tale also introduces you to the Connecticut River where some very big fish reside.

It’s summer in New Hampshire and TomHobson is playing with his dog, Bucket, on the front lawn when the shooting breaks out on the dirt road downhill from the house. A lot of shooting, twelve ... fifteen shots, big-bore, semi-auto and all Tom can do is drop to the ground and keep down. When it stops he goes to have a look and Bucket bursts from under the porch, crashes into Tom and sends him tumbling down the hill, into the road and into a mystery full of bad guys, guns, and bombs. And, just to sweeten the mix, there’s baseball and fishing and a very fast boat.

Pike Hunter, the narrator, of this fast-paced action-packed novel takes the reader though a maze of dangerous and complicated situations, even as he experiences a baseball season which carries him well beyond any level he has reached before. The Big Bang will not only keep you fully entertained, but it will provide you with plenty to think about. And from then on when you see a fog you’ll be checking to see how dark it is and whether it is moving toward you.

Asa and Ike live on Kidd’s Creek, less that a mile apart. Those are the only two houses on the creek which stretches for miles through wide saltwater marshes. And because those marshes are full of clams, Ike and Asa plan to dig and sell enough quahogs to buy dirt bikes. But for anyone living near Kidd’s Creek there is always the question of whether Captain Kidd, as legend has it, buried the remains of his pirated gold somewhere in the marshes. No sooner do they start to look than they discover a strange albino camped out on the High Ground, digging holes everywhere. They begin their search in earnest, a search that takes them deep into the marshes, into a cave full of surprises, and pits them against the albino and his partner, Fishbone Watson in the rush to find the lost gold of Captain William Kidd.