Publisher: Charles River Editors
R.D. Blackmore was a 19th century British author during the Victorian era. Blackmore’s works are noted for their depiction of English society similar to other authors of his time including Thomas Hardy. This edition of Springhaven: A Tale of the Great War includes a table of contents.
Money. Power. Prestige. These were the riches that destiny had awarded Edward Enger, but a greedy, ruthless family conspired against him and his own relentless desires enslaved him! As the descendant of a German immigrant, Edward built a business empire and dominated three generations of his family. Caldwell weaves the tale of a modern financial genius and the secret passions that obsessed him.Show book
The “darkly exuberant and passionate” saga of a man who flees Victorian England in disgrace—only to build an empire of corruption in America (The New York Times). The son of a wealthy English merchant, John Turnbull’s destiny appears to be a life of gentlemanly leisure. His path: graduate from his fashionable school and marry his beautiful cousin, Eugenia, whom he loves. Yet, one wild night, a jealous classmate tricks him into making a fateful mistake. Forced to give up his former life, Turnbull sails for America. He soon falls in with the unscrupulous businessman Mr. Wilkins. Together, they steal patents, smuggle contraband through the Southern blockade during the Civil War, run guns to Japan, and finance the opium trade. But as Turnbull amasses a fortune large enough to vanquish his most powerful enemies, he doesn’t realize his gravest threat comes from within his own family. Packed with fascinating period details, The Turnbulls is a mesmerizing family drama from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Captains and the Kings and Dynasty of Death.Show book
Erik Thorvald was drafted into the army ten days after graduating from college. He went in with an open mind to learn and get along with a cross section of American young men who were mentally and physically acceptable yet represented a wide variety of intelligence and personalities. He found the experience to be interesting and oftentimes very funny. Of course most draftees knew they were heading to the Nam after 8 weeks of basic training followed by a like number of weeks in Advanced Infantry Training (AIT). In short, Erik was destined to be a grunt with the MOS of 11B20--light weapons infantry. Arriving in Vietnam in January of 1969, friendships were helpful in surviving as he went up-country near the Parrot's Beak not far from the Cambodian border. The reality of war sets in and he is soon enough exposed to the crap shoot of fatalism and the playing for keeps in brutal conflict. He reflects on how he ever ended up in such an existential fix and relives his life growing up in the Midwest in flashbacks to make any sense of life up to now. Erik resolves to "get out of himself" and meet head-on whatever is thrown at him. In a chance meeting at a book store in a Central Highlands city, he meets a beautiful Vietnamese woman and falls in love. Although very difficult to maintain such a relationship, where there's a will there's a way and eventually Erik returns to Vietnam for its resolution accompanied by capture and postwar re-education camps where Erik's resourcefulness is called upon once again. Unlike many novels of this genre, Perfect Ice depicts changes in Vietnam when the Americans left up to the present day. It is based on extensive travel throughout this enigmatic country during four different trips.Show book
From the acclaimed author of The Captain's Daughter and The Postcard, a powerful historical novel about one garden across 1,000 years and the women who found solace within its walls. Iris Bagshott strolls down the paths of her ancient garden, close to Lichfield in the heart of England, wondering if it is time to sell her house and land for development. She is unaware that around every corner myriad family secrets from the past unfold. From a Saxon clearing to a monastery, Tudor dwelling to the present day, this sacred plot has nurtured her ancestors. Generations of Bagshott women have found refuge and solace tending it through years of plague, civil war and beyond. This is their story.Show book
The acclaimed novel by the author of The Why of Things tackles “the Deep South during the Gothic worst of Jim Crow times . . . truly a bravura performance” (Geoffrey Wolff).“One of the finest writers of her generation,” and author of three previously acclaimed novels, Elizabeth H. Winthrop delivers a brave new book that will launch her distinguished career anew (Brad Watson).On the eve of his execution, eighteen-year-old Willie Jones sits in his cell in New Iberia awaiting his end. Across the state, a truck driven by a convict and his keeper carries the executioner’s chair closer. On a nearby highway, Willie’s father Frank lugs a gravestone on the back of his fading, old mule. In his office the DA who prosecuted Willie reckons with his sentencing, while at their gas station at the crossroads outside of town, married couple Ora and Dale grapple with their grief and their secrets.As various members of the township consider and reflect on what Willie’s execution means, an intricately layered and complex portrait of a Jim Crow era Southern community emerges. Moving from voice to voice, Winthrop elegantly brings to stark light the story of a town, its people, and its injustices. The Mercy Seat is a brutally incisive and tender novel from one of our most acute literary observers. “Artful and succinctly poetic . . . A worthy novel that gathers great power as it rolls on propelled by its many voices.”—The New York Times Book Review “A miracle of a novel, with rapid-fire sentences that grab you and propel you to the next page . . . It’s a breakout. It’s a wonder.”—Dallas Morning NewsShow book
It's like no audio book you've ever listened to! Re-imagined by the author as a 1950's-style radio play, the audio presentation of B.S. Levy's The Last Open Road features professional Hollywood voice actors in the major roles, amazing and authentic sound effects, period music and a cast of over 40 players, including many famous motorsports personalities. The Last Open Road audio book won multiple awards as “The Best Motoring Book of the Year,” and several reviewers—including non-gearheads—have called it the most entertaining and unique audio book ever.The print edition of The Last Open Road was originally self-published in 1994 after being turned down by major fiction publishers, but earned rave reviews in both the mainstream and motoring press and has become a genuine cult classic on the motorsports and collector-car scenes. It's also been used in high school and college-level English classes and is on the recommended reading lists at many libraries and book clubs.Set in the spring, summer and fall of 1952, it's an entertaining and oft-hilarious coming-of-age tale told by an engaging, 19-year-old New Jersey gas-station mechanic named Buddy Palumbo, whom several reviewers have likened to Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. Buddy's a true working-class hero whose mean-spirited, bullying father is a union shop steward at a big chemical plant in Newark, and he wants Buddy to work there, too. But Buddy hates the place, and really wants to hang around the corner gas station—Finzio's Sinclair in Passaic—and learn how to fix cars from the tough, combative, ex-Marine hard-hat diver named Butch and tentatively flirt around with Old Man Finzio's voluptuous, spirited and occasionally acid-tongued niece, Julie Finzio.Then the station's top customer, a street-wise, several times-divorced, Cadillac-driving scrap-yard owner/wheeler dealer named Big Ed Baumstein (who may or may not be mob-connected) buys himself a new Jaguar XK120 sports car, and Buddy has to learn how to care for it. Which naturally involves runs to the Jaguar dealership in Manhattan run by the slick, stylish, shifty and unscrupulous ex-pat Brit named Colin St. In the process, Buddy and Big Ed are drawn inexorably into the toney, upper-crust, dangerous and occasionally decadent world of open-road sports car racing at places like Bridgehampton, Long Island, Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin and Watkins Glen, New York.It's a wild, road-trip adventure through the America of 1952—before the Interstate Highway System, national motel chains and fast-food restaurants—and all the history in the book, from the real characters, events and machinery to the news headlines and social culture of the period, are presented exactly as they were, but as seen through Buddy's amazed, wide-open and oft-blinking eyes. As the reviewer for the Fort Worth Star Telegram put it:“The characters weave in and out of a story that features classism, elitism and racism, that is about triumph and tragedy, and right and wrong...a rich, compelling story that deserves a wide audience.”Show book
