Publisher: Universe
A five-year story of love between ordinary people who survived World War II on just 49 days spent together. How did they do it? This true story based on real lives explores the conundrum.
Ben Schroeder, a talented young man from an East End Jewish family, has been accepted as a pupil into the Chambers of Bernard Wesley QC. But Schroeder is an outsider, not part of this privileged society, where wealth and an Oxbridge education are essentials. He encounters prejudice, intrigue and scandal. Kenneth Gaskell, a rising star of Wesley's Chambers has become involved in an affair with a high-profile client and the relationship, if known, could ruin his career, and the careers of all those around him. But Bernard Wesley has some information - he knows about a student prank that went terribly wrong - can he use this knowledge in a desperate gamble to save his Chambers and turn the tables on his old rival, Miles Overton QC? Ben Schroeder has proved his ability, but he is no more than a pawn in this game. Can he survive in this world where nothing, not even justice, is sacred?Show book
Felix Dahn was a nineteenth century German Professor of Jurisprudence, as well as a historian, novelist and poet, who was greatly admired by his academic contemporaries for his grasp of the historical detail of the periods about which he wrote. He has been well served by this magisterial translation, which at last makes this astonishingly rich novel available to the modern English reader. This is a story - perhaps the story - of the clash between two great civilizations of the sixth century of the Common Era, when the Roman Empire had crumbled into dust; the struggle for Rome, and for Italy, between the Eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium, ruled by Justinian, and the Gothic warrior tribes who had captured Italy under their legendary king Theodoric. We see this epoch through the eyes of different personalities at the centre of these events which shook the world as they knew it; most are historical figures and some are imaginary but typical; Justinian and his beautiful and scheming wife, Theodora; the great commander Belisarius, immortalised by Robert Graves; Totila and Teias, two Gothic kings, one as bold and bright as the sun and the other as black as night; and Cethegus, the Prefect of Rome and the last of the Romans, whose cold and calculating nature runs through the book like a steel thread, who will stop at nothing to regain the ancient city, and who, in the end, fails and redeems his many crimes with a hero's death. Firmly based on historical fact and contemporary sources, A Struggle for Rome is one of the great historical novels of the world.Show book
Swashbuckling British adventurers find triumph and tragedy in nineteenth-century Afghanistan in this novella J. M. Barrie called “the most audacious thing in fiction.” While on tour in India, a British journalist encounters Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, two foolhardy drifters with a plan. Claiming they’ve exhausted all the schemes and odd jobs they could find in India, the two are in search of an even greater adventure. They tell the journalist they’re venturing to nearby Kafiristan—modern-day Afghanistan—to depose a weak ruler and establish themselves as kings. With a cache of the best rifles and knowledge of Masonic rituals that will baffle the native tribesmen, Daniel and Peachey don’t see how they can fail. But they may have underestimated the locals . . . Inspired by tales of real-life explorers, Rudyard Kipling wrote The Man Who Would Be King when he was only twenty-two years old. Featuring vivid prose, exotic settings, and unforgettable characters, this dissection of the heroic pretensions of imperialism and colonialism is a swashbuckling tale for the ages, and served as inspiration for the 1975 John Huston film starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.Show book
Joel, a crippled boy, cannot play with the children and has nothing to care about. Rabbi Phineas helps him to find something he can do and tells him the reason that he is so kind is because of a boy from his hometown of Nazareth. Soon stories are going about everywhere of miracles, and some people think that the Messiah has come. Then someone tells Joel he should ask for his back to be healed. Will Joel be able to find the miracle worker? (Summary by AdeledePignerolles)Show book
Chased by bandits, stagecoach passengers race for their livesEleanor Gates is a long way from Baltimore. Love for a cavalry lieutenant has lured her across the western plains, to an outpost so remote that it can only be reached by overland stage. Accompanying her on this dusty, uncomfortable journey is her aged aunt, a leering salesman, and a mysterious stranger named Riley. As dusk falls, Eleanor spies a dust cloud on the horizon—a band of comancheros come to rob the stage, and kill its passengers. Riley’s quick shooting wards off the bandits, but the driver is fatally wounded. It’s up to him to get them to safety, but he’s not sure he wants to take them there.His real name is Cameron Black, a notorious outlaw who will hang if he sets foot inside an army fort. But there are women in danger, wounded to think of, and the comancheros will strike again soon. There’s no way to go but forward.Show book
From the award-winning author of Eliza Waite comes a gripping tale of adventure and survival based on the true story of the ill-fated Donner Party on their 2,200-mile trek on the Oregon–California Trail from 1846 to ’47.Nineteen-year-old Ada Weeks confronts danger and calamity along the hazard-filled journey to California. After a fateful decision that delays the overlanders more than a month, she—along with eighty-one other members of the Donner Party—finds herself stranded at Truckee Lake on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, stuck there for the entirety of a despairing, blizzard-filled winter. Forced to eat shoe leather and blankets to survive, will Ada be able to battle the elements—and her own demons—as she envisions a new life in California?Researched with impeccable detail and filled with imagery as wide as the western prairie, Answer Creek blends history and hearsay in an unforgettable story of challenging the limits of human endurance and experiencing the triumphant power of love.Show book
