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  The Hill of Evil Counsel - Three...

  Amos Oz

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  Three stories of “sensuous prose and indelible imagery” that re-create the world of Jerusalem during the last days of the British Mandate (The New York Times).   Refugees drawn to Jerusalem in search of safety are confronted by activists relentlessly preparing for an uprising, oblivious to the risks. Meanwhile, a wife abandons her husband, and a dying man longs for his departed lover. Among these characters lives a boy named Uri, a friend and confidant of several conspirators who love and humor him as he weaves in and out of all three stories. The Hill of Evil Counsel is “as complex, vivid, and uncompromising as Jerusalem itself” (The Nation). “Oz evokes Israeli life with the same sly precision with which Chekhov evoked pre-Revolutionary Russian life.” —Los Angeles Times

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  A Burden Shared: The Dundee Murders

  Malcolm Archibald

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  The second book in the Mendick Mystery Series. Following "The Darkest Walk", when Sergeant Mendick is sent to Dundee to collect a prisoner, he expects a speedy return to London but instead an unfortunate turn of events see him retained to help solve a particularly gruesome murder. Within days Mendick finds himself leading the hunt for the mysterious China Jim who appears to control the criminal classes of Dundee through fear. Mendick's investigations take him from the curling rinks to the foul closes of the disregarded poor, and the bed of the enigmatic Johanna Lednock. More deaths follow and suspicion falls on a handful of men the elite of Dundee society, including Johanna's husband and Mr Gilbride, a local ship owner. Each murder involves apparent cannibalism, shocking even the war-hardened Mendick, who strives to find a connecting link. Dundee seems closed against him apart from the friendly Adam and Mrs Leslie, a prosperous couple who mourn the death of their seaman son. An attempt on Mendick's life convinces him he is nearing the truth, but only when a pawnbroker uncovers a watch stolen from one of the murdered men does Mendick begin to unravel the case.

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  David Copperfield

  Charles Dickens

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  "David Copperfield," often referred to as "The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery," is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a book in 1850. It follows the life journey of David Copperfield, from his birth and idyllic early childhood through trials and tribulations in youth, to his eventual success and happiness as an adult. The story is written in the first person and has been described by Dickens himself as his "favorite child" among his works. Throughout the narrative, Dickens addresses themes like class, family, and the challenges and rewards of personal development.

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  Mr Beethoven - A Novel

  Paul Griffiths

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  Based on the German composer's own correspondence, this inventive, counterfactual work of historical fiction imagines Beethoven traveling to America to write an oratorio based on the Book of Job.It is a matter of historical record that in 1823 the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston (active to this day) sought to commission Beethoven to write an oratorio.The premise of Paul Griffiths's ingenious and delightful novel is that Beethoven accepted the commission and traveled to the United States to oversee the first performance of the work.Griffiths grants the composer an additional lease on life of several years, and starting with his voyage across the Atlantic and entry into Boston harbor, chronicles his adventures and misadventures, his happy surprises and frustration, in a new world in which, great man though he is, he finds himself a new man.Relying, apart from the initial conceit of the novel, entirely on historically attested possibilities to develop his plot, Griffiths's novel not only shows Beethoven learning a form of sign language pioneered on Martha's Vineyard, struggling to rein in the uncertain inspiration of Reverend Ballou, his designated librettist, and finding a kindred spirit in the widowed Mrs. Hill, all the time keeping his hosts guessing as to whether he will in the end come through with his promised composition.(And just what, the reader also wonders, will this new piece by Beethoven turn out to be?)The book that emerges is not only an affectionate portrait of an unusual man, but a fascinating picture of the United States in its early years, a meditation on what we can and can't know about others and the past, and an improvisation, as virtuosic as it is delicate, on an historical theme.

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  Under Ground - Jem Flockhart Book 6

  E S Thomson

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  A plague is coming to London. Dreaded more than the Devil himself, cholera - the 'blue death' - spares no one. As fear grows across the city, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain are called to the bedside of a dead man, murdered, and with his throat torn out, in the back room of a brothel. When an innocent man is taken to Newgate, Jem and Will have until execution day to save him. The search for the identity of the corpse, and the killer, takes them to the gates of Blackwater Hall, home to the secretive, and corrupt Mortmain family. With the approach of autumn, no one is safe, for the fog brings with it an evil and poisonous sickness - the perfect shroud for murder.When family secrets are prised out into the open, people begin dying. But who, or what, is the cause? Searching for answers, Jem and Will are driven underground, to the passages and tunnels beneath the city's teeming streets. Here, their adversary proves to be more elusive, and more deadly, than ever.'Jem Flockhart books are the best I've read in years' - KIRSTY LOGAN'A marvel . . . thoroughly engrossing' - MARY PAULSON ELLIS

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  The Sound of Thunder - A Novel

  Taylor Caldwell

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  From the New York Times–bestselling author of Captains and the Kings: A self-made man sacrifices everything for his family in turn-of-the-century New York. The son of a socialist German shopkeeper, Edward Enger has one dream: to turn his father’s modest delicatessen into an empire. With an astute head for business and talent for making money, he achieves success beyond his wildest imagination. Yet something is keeping him from enjoying his extraordinary good fortune.   Fourteen-year-old Edward believed he would love ten-year-old Margaret Proster all the days of his life . . . until she moved away. Now, she has returned and is planning to marry another man, someone very close to Edward. His need to succeed at all costs drives him to take on this latest challenge, along with more mortgages, more debt, and speculative investments on Manhattan’s burgeoning Wall Street. A man does not become powerful without making enemies, and as his family life begins to unravel, a day of reckoning is nearing. Soon Edward will have to confront a painful event from his boyhood—a secret buried deep inside that he has never told another living soul.   A man in the right place at the right time, Edward’s meteoric ascent coincides with the rise of America’s middle class as the nation transforms from an agricultural and industrial force to a financial world leader. But his success comes at a great cost in this towering novel of love and sacrifice by one of our most gifted storytellers.

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