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.
The Modern Age is one of information overload. Bombarded, surrounded, and battered by facts, figures, opinions and seemingly whatever else comes out of anyone’s head from all directions at all hours of the day and night. It’s exhausting. However, in this volume we go back a little way to when social media was an actual chat on the street corner or a dinner party, when breaking news was tomorrow’s newspaper or something momentous when a TV or radio programme could be interrupted with the outbreak of war or the death of a leader or sovereign. In the pens of such luminaries as Henry James, E M Delafield, C E Montague, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and many others we connect with old fashioned media from publishing and advertising to telegrams and radio and everything in between in ways that are surprising, enlightening but always entertaining. 1 - The Media - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 2 - The Death of the Lion - Part 1 by Henry James 3 - The Death of the Lion - Part 2 by Henry James 4 - The Voice of God by Winifred Holtby 5 - Home Life Relayed by E M Delafield 6 - His Wife's Deceased Sister by Frank R Stockton 7 - Over the Wires by H D Everett 8 - The Night Wire by W F Arnold 9 - The Millionaire's Telegram by Barry Pain 10 - Mutiny by Dorothy Edwards 11 - The Eidoloscope by Robert Duncan Milne 12 - The Cloud-Men by Owen Oliver 13 - Why Herbert Killed His Mother by Winifred Holtby 14 - Looking at the Classics by E M Delafield 15 - Making a Living by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 16 - Two or Three Witnesses by C E MontagueShow book
Indian Territory, 1881. Brody Martin, at 15, has survived a gunpowder explosion, a bear attack, a panther attack, and more than one attempt on his life. But now he is wanted in Fort Smith for a crime he did not (exactly) commit, and bounty hunters are on his trail. In an effort to elude them, he finds a crack in the face of a ridge and slips into a cavern known as the Devil's Den, trapped by the men who would like to redeem the price on his head dead or alive. Separated from his closest friend Ames, a former slave and Civil War veteran, and Wolf, a Cherokee tracker and unlikely ally, Brody is left to contemplate his options and the friends and family he may never see again.Show book
Flying into action, daredevil photojournalist Johnny Brice is always looking for trouble ... and more often than not, finding it. But he doesn't know what real trouble is until he rescues the beautiful woman he calls Jinx from a sinking ship.Get the picture? Well, Johnny always does. The problem is, with Jinx now in the picture, all his photo-scoops are going down the drain—losing his film to water, fire or war. And it all comes to a head on assignment in China, when the Japanese shoot his plane down and take Jinx and Johnny prisoner. Their lives at risk, it's time for Johnny to get the real story about the lady. Is she really a jinx ... or something even more sinister? In an adventure full of surprising discoveries, getting at the truth leads to the most shocking twist of all.Show book
1950 - Seven year old Carol Martin lies encased in an iron lung, struck down by the killer disease, polio. Distraught at her side, her mother, Violet, wonders if this is her punishment - for Carol is the love child who should not have been born . . . Family of Women is the story of three generations of women read by actress Annie Aldington: Bessie, scarred by a childhood of poverty in the slums of Victorian Birmingham and left a young widow with four children, is a hard, bullying woman who will go to disturbing lengths to keep her family under her thumb. Violet, one of Bessie's four children, marries young to escape, into the arms of a man whose life will be broken by war. Linda grows up on a large housing estate in the 1950s with older sister Joyce and her beloved young sister Carol. Intelligent and energetic, she craves education and something more than the life she sees around her. Torn from her longed for place at the grammar school, she gives up hoping for anything better. It takes a tragic love affair to make her question the limitations of her life and the secrets which haunt her family. Spanning more than half of the last century, Family of Women by Annie Murray is a story of one family - and of the joys, struggles and changes in women's lives.Show book
Thirteenth century. Wales and England. To young Gruffyd, life has been unkind. Eking out a meagre living with his father, he has learned very quickly how to look after himself in the hostile borderlands. His father, an archer, has taught him well, and at 17 Gruffyd is a keen and able bowman. Young, loyal and skilled, it’s not long before Gruffyd finds himself following in his father’s footsteps, working as an archer in the bordering castle. But tragedy strikes when his lord commits a devastating deed, and Gruffyd is forced to make a life altering decision. This is the story of a young archer’s riotous journey from avenging outlaw to merchant’s bodyguard to, finally, the captain of archers for the heir to the throne.Show book
Books four through six in the Pulitzer Prize–winning series of historical novels about an international spy in the first half of the twentieth century. An ambitious and entertaining mix of history, adventure, and romance, Upton Sinclair’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Lanny Budd novels are a testament to the breathtaking scope of the author’s vision and his singular talents as a storyteller. “Few works of fiction are more fun to read; fewer still make history half as clear, or as human” (Time). In these three novels, as the threat of Nazism grows in the 1930s, Lanny progresses from international art dealer to international spy. Wide Is the Gate: When his arms dealer father strikes a business agreement with Hermann Göring, Lanny uses the opportunity and his art world reputation to move easily among the Nazi high command and gather valuable information he can transmit back to those who are dedicated to the destruction of Nazism and Fascism. He’s playing a dangerous—albeit necessary—game, which will carry him from Germany to Spain on a life-and-death mission on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. The Presidential Agent: In 1937, Lanny’s boss from the Paris Peace Conference—now one of Roosevelt’s top advisors—connects him to the president. Appointed Presidential Agent 103, he embarks on a secret assignment that takes him back into the Third Reich as the Allied powers prepare to cede Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler in a futile attempt to avoid war. But Lanny’s motivations are not just political: The woman he loves has fallen into the brutal hands of the Gestapo, and Lanny will risk everything to save her. Dragon Harvest: Lanny has earned the trust of Adolf Hitler and his inner circle, who are convinced the American art dealer is a “true believer” committed to their Fascist cause. But when Roosevelt’s secret agent learns of the Führer’s plans for conquest, his dire warnings to Neville Chamberlain and other reluctant European leaders fall on deaf ears. The bitter seeds sown decades earlier with the Treaty of Versailles are now bearing fruit, and there will be no stopping the Nazi war machine as it rolls relentlessly on toward Paris.Show book
