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  The Widow of the South - A Novel

  Robert Hicks

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  Carnton Plantation, 1894: Carrie McGavock is an old woman who tends the graves of the almost 1,500 soldiers buried there. As she walks among the dead, an elderly man appears – the same soldier she met that fateful day long ago. Today he asks if the cemetery has room for one more.Based on an extraordinary true story, this brilliant, meticulously researched novel flashes back to 1864 and the afternoon of the Civil War. While the fierce fighting rages on Carrie's land, her plantation turns into a Confederate army hospital. Four generals lie dead on her back porch; the pile of amputated limbs rises as tall as the smokehouse. But when a wounded soldier named Zachariah Cashwell arrives at her house, he awakens feelings she had thought long dead – and inspires a passion as powerful and unforgettable as the war that consumes a nation.A Hachette Audio production.

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  The Cazalet Chronicles - Five...

  Elizabeth Jane Howard

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  For fans of Downton Abbey: A multigenerational saga of an upper-middle-class British family before, during, and after World War II by a bestselling author.   As war clouds gather on England’s horizon, the Cazalet siblings, along with their wives, children, and servants, prepare to leave London and join their parents at their Sussex estate, Home Place. Thus begins the decades-spanning family saga that has engrossed millions of readers.  The Light Years: Hugh, the eldest of the Cazalet siblings, was wounded in France and is haunted by recurring nightmares and the prospect of another war. Edward adores his wife, a former dancer, yet he’s incapable of remaining faithful. Rupert desires only to fulfill his potential as a painter, but finds that love and art cannot coexist. And devoted daughter Rachel discovers the joys—and limitations—of intimacy with another woman.  Marking Time: Narrated primarily through the voices of teenagers Louise, Polly, and Clary, the second novel details the continuing story of their fathers. With the outbreak of war, Edward is determined to do his bit for England. But Hugh, injured in World War I, must sit back and watch other men fight for their country, including his brother Rupert, who enlists and goes missing in action.  Confusion: As the world reels in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the Cazalets are dealt a tragic blow, and a new generation struggles to find peace with each other, a peace that seems to prove as elusive as it is in the larger world.  Casting Off: The war is over, but for the Cazalets—and England—the challenges continue. Against the backdrop of a crumbling empire, the family soldiers on in the wake of disappointment, heartbreak, and tragedy. But the family comes together again as three generations of Cazalets struggle to hold onto Home Place, the beloved Sussex estate that has been their refuge and their heart.  All Change: In 1956, the death of eighty-nine-year-old matriarch Kitty “the Duchy” Cazalet marks the end of an era—and the commencement of great change for the family. And Home Place, the beloved Sussex estate where the Cazalets have gathered for years, is now a beloved relic that, with its faded wallpaper and leaky roof, has aged along with its occupants.   A rich historical read for those who love E. M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, or Downton Abbey, this is the story of a family “[rendered] thrillingly three-dimensional by a master craftsman” (TheSunday Telegraph).

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  The Chaneysville Incident - A Novel

  David Bradley

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  Winner of the PEN/Faulkner: “Rivals Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon as the best novel about the black experience in America since Ellison’s Invisible Man” (The Christian Science Monitor).   Brilliant but troubled historian John Washington has left Philadelphia, where he is employed by a major university, to return to his hometown just north of the Mason–Dixon Line. He is there to care for Old Jack, one of the men who helped raise him when he was growing up on the Hill, an old black neighborhood in the little Pennsylvania town—but he also wants to learn more about the death of his father.   What John discovers is that his father, Moses Washington, left behind extensive notes on a mystery he was researching: why thirteen escaped slaves reached freedom in Chaneysville only to die there, for reasons forgotten or never known at all.   Based on meticulous historical research, The Chaneysville Incident explores the power of our pasts, and paints a vivid portrait of realities such as the Underground Railroad’s activity in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, and the phenomenon of enslaved people committing suicide to escape their fate. This extraordinary novel, a finalist for the National Book Award, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “perhaps the most significant work by a new black male author since James Baldwin dazzled in the early ’60s with his fine fury,” and placed David Bradley in the front ranks of contemporary American authors.

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  Murder at the Tower of London -...

  Magda Alexander

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  After a royal prince is assassinated, Kitty Worthington is asked to investigate. The murder seems to be the work of a madman who soon makes her his next target.London. 1923. Excited about her new direction in life, Kitty Worthington motors about London in her spiffy new roadster. Granted, finding purloined Poodles and lost Labradors may not be what she envisioned, but they keep her busy enough. At least, there aren't any bodies dropping at her feet.But then a visiting royal dignitary loses his head at the Tower of London, and she finds herself embroiled in yet another murder investigation. The suspects are endless. Could it be the wastrel son? The betrayed wife? The devious cousin? The ghost of Anne Boleyn?With the help of her ace team, comprised of lords and ladies, her maid and chauffeur, and her ever flatulent Basset Hound, Sir Winston, she sets out to solve the mystery. But there's a madman on the loose who seems equally at home among the glamorous world of British high society and London's dark underbelly. If she wants to catch the murderer, she needs something more, someone who knows all about the royals. And that can be only one person, heaven help her, her mother.

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  Top 10 Short Stories The - The...

  Joseph Conrad, Saki the...

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  Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart.  A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. 
   
  In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?  
   
  The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme.  Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. 
   
  Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made.  If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. 
   
  It may well be that Empire has raised generations of its Nation’s kin abroad.  And some, born abroad, adopted England as their home in preference to their own.  For both this lure of ‘Home’ has nourished their ambition whilst all around them stories are to be found that they, with their unique outsider’s view, can create and deliver to our ears their literary masterpieces. 
   
  1 - The Top 10 - The English. Born Abroad - An Introduction 
  2 - The Informer by Joseph Conrad 
  3 - The Interlopers by Saki the pseudonym for H H Munro 
  4 - The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling 
  5 - Major Wilbraham by Hugh Walpole 
  6 - A Little Dinner At Timmin's by William Makepeace Thackeray 
  7 - The Story of the RipplingTrain by Mary Louisa Molesworth 
  8 - The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railroad by Baroness Emmuska Orczy 
  9 - A Little Holiday by Oswald Sickert 
  10 - A Resurrection by H B Marriott Watson 
  11 - Amour Dure - Part 1 by Violet Paget writing as Vernon Lee 
  12 - Amour Dure - Part 2 by Violet Paget writing as Vernon Lee

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  The House Behind the Cedars

  Charles W. Chesnutt

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  The classic novel of two mixed-race siblings who flee the South after the Civil War, hiding their identities—until a romance brings the truth to light.A landmark in African American literature, The House Behind the Cedars tells the tale of Rena Walden, who runs away from North Carolina to start a new life with her brother. Their mixed ancestry allows them to “pass” as white—and they settle into life in Clarence, South Carolina, keeping their past a secret.But Rena eventually becomes romantically involved with a white man from a prominent and wealthy family—and their lives are turned upside-down when her true heritage is revealed. “A story of sustained strength and interest, wrought out to an artistic finale.” —Detroit Free Press

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