A Splendid Defiance
A Splendid Defiance

Author: Stella Riley

Publisher:

Published: 2014-11-18

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 9781499262599

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In 1644, one of Prince Rupert's cavalry officers, Justin Ambrose is posted to the garrison at Banbury Castle as a punishment. The town, already famed for its Puritan zeal, is unswervingly hostile towards the Cavaliers on its doorstep. Justin loathes the place and, deprived of action, is bored, irritable and resentful. Abigail Radford has been taught by her fanatically religious brother, Jonas, to be modest, submissive and, above all, obedient - so when Captain Ambrose crosses her path she finds him as alarming as he is intriguing.When the Parliament sends a large fighting force along with a huge artillery train to re-possess the Castle, Justin gets the action he has been craving and Abigail finds herself playing hostess to the Roundhead colonel and his staff ... but the Great Siege takes its toll on both sides. At the end of fourteen long weeks, the garrison have neither powder, shot nor food and have eaten everything except their last two horses. Remarkably, however, they still hold the Castle.Against all the odds, Justin and Abigail secretly develop a curious friendship and, out of devilment coupled with a deep dislike of Jonas Radford, Justin decides to nurture seeds of insurrection in Abigail. But what begins as a few innocent acts of defiance gradually becomes something rather different, bringing danger in its wake. Both of them know that any future relationship is doomed because the gulf between them is so wide as to be unbridgeable. For Abby, this is due to her appalling brother; for Justin, the cause is a shadow from his past that he can no longer keep hidden when it threatens both Abigail's life and the security of the Castle. But when the Parliament embarks on a second siege and surrender looms large on the horizon, the unwanted feelings that Justin knows he has no choice but to deny become stronger and more painful than any blade or bullet.A Splendid Defiance is a dramatic and enchanting story of forbidden love set against the turmoil and anguish of the Civil War. It is also the true account of one English castle and the men who defended it.

The Splendid and the Vile
The Splendid and the Vile

Author: Erik Larson

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2020-02-25

Total Pages: 609

ISBN-13: 038534872X

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis “One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

The Black Madonna
The Black Madonna

Author: Stella Riley

Publisher:

Published: 2015-02-09

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 9781505586060

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By July 1639, England has become a simmering cauldron of discontent. Less concerned by this than by his ailing finances, King Charles seeks ways of filling his empty treasury. Enter Luciano Falcieri del Santi - master-goldsmith and money-lender; a man known to London as The Italian ... and possessed of a hidden agenda.From his seat in the Commons, Richard Maxwell watches the inexorable approach of Civil War. His eldest son, Eden, struggles to save his marriage to Royalist-bred Celia whilst taking up his sword for the Parliament; and daughter, Kate, vows to hold their home against both Cavalier and Roundhead, should the need arise.A spirited redhead, Kate Maxwell takes most things in her stride. The only thing she finds impossible to handle, is her involuntary and growing attraction to irresistibly magnetic and diabolically beautiful Luciano del Santi. The paths of Richard Maxwell and The Italian cross by chance one dark night - and a friendship is born. But while, on the surface, Luciano merely operates his businesses from Cheapside, he actually has a much darker purpose; that of learning the truth behind his father's execution and avenging it. This, with the country becoming a battlefield, is difficult - but it is not Luciano's only problem. Soon, he also begins to realise that - unless he is extremely lucky - the revenge quest will cost him his life.His own safety and that of everyone he cares about rests on success. Only success will permit him to reclaim the Black Madonna and allow him to offer his heart to the girl he loves.From the machinations within Parliament to the last days of the King's cause, The Black Madonna is an epic saga of passion and intrigue at a time when England was lost in a dark and bloody conflict. Book One of the Roundheads & Cavaliers series.

An Act of Defiance
An Act of Defiance

Author: Irene Sabatini

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781911648048

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Harare, 2000: Gabrielle is a newly-qualified lawyer fighting for justice for a young girl. Ben is an urbane and charismatic junior diplomat attached to Harare with the American embassy. With high-level pressure on Gabrielle to drop the case, and the president's youth wing terrorizing his political opponents as he tightens his grip on power, they begin a tentative love affair. But when they fall victim to a shocking attack, their lives splinter across continents and their stories diverge, forcing Gabrielle on a painful journey towards self-realization. Irene Sabatini, winner of the 2010 Orange Award for New Writers, navigates Zimbabwe's unfolding political crises, showing how the dehumanizing effects of state-sponsored violence can shape and remake a life. An Act of Defiance is a sweeping political drama about a young woman's fight for love and agency in turbulent times.

Thunderstruck
Thunderstruck

Author: Erik Larson

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2006-10-24

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0307351920

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A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world’s “great hush.” In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men—Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication—whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time. Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners; scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed; and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, “the kindest of men,” nearly commits the perfect murder. With his unparalleled narrative skills, Erik Larson guides us through a relentlessly suspenseful chase over the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate.

Our Missing Hearts
Our Missing Hearts

Author: Celeste Ng

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-10-04

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0593492552

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An instant New York Times bestseller • A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 • Named a Best Book of 2022 by People, TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, Los Angeles Times, and Oprah Daily, and more • A Reese's Book Club Pick • New York Times Paperback Row Selection From the #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, comes the inspiring new novel about a mother’s unshakeable love. “It’s impossible not to be moved.” —Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review “Riveting, tender, and timely.” —People, Book of the Week “Thought-provoking, heart-wrenching . . . I was so invested in the future of this mother and son, and I can’t wait to hear what you think of this deeply suspenseful story!” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick) Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn’t know what happened to her—only that her books have been banned—and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him. Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both. Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and the power of art to create change.

The Time Between
The Time Between

Author: Karen White

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2014-05-06

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0451468112

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The New York Times bestselling author of the Tradd Street novels delivers a tale that spans two generations of sisters and secrets, set in the stunning South Carolina Lowcountry. Eleanor Murray will always remember her childhood on Edisto Island, where her late father, a local shrimper, shared her passion for music. Now her memories of him are all that tempers the guilt she feels over the accident that put her sister in a wheelchair—and the feelings she harbors for her sister’s husband. To help support her sister, Eleanor works at a Charleston investment firm during the day, but she escapes into her music, playing piano at a neighborhood bar. Until the night her enigmatic boss walks in and offers her a part-time job caring for his elderly aunt, Helena, back on Edisto. For Eleanor, it’s a chance to revisit the place where she was her happiest—and to share her love of music with grieving Helena, whose sister recently died under mysterious circumstances. An island lush with sweetgrass and salt marshes, Edisto has been a peaceful refuge for Helena, who escaped with her sister from war-torn Hungary in 1944. The sisters were well-known on the island, where they volunteered in their church and community. But now Eleanor will finally learn the truth about their past: secrets that will help heal her relationship with her own sister—and set Eleanor free....

The Good Hand
The Good Hand

Author: Michael Patrick F. Smith

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-02-16

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 1984881523

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“A book that should be read . . . Smith brings an alchemic talent to describing physical labor.” —The New York Times Book Review “Beautiful, funny, and harrowing.” – Sarah Smarsh, The Atlantic “Remarkable . . . this is the book that Hillbilly Elegy should have been.” —Kirkus Reviews A vivid window into the world of working class men set during the Bakken fracking boom in North Dakota Like thousands of restless men left unmoored in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, Michael Patrick Smith arrived in the fracking boomtown of Williston, North Dakota five years later homeless, unemployed, and desperate for a job. Renting a mattress on a dirty flophouse floor, he slept boot to beard with migrant men who came from all across America and as far away as Jamaica, Africa and the Philippines. They ate together, drank together, argued like crows and searched for jobs they couldn't get back home. Smith's goal was to find the hardest work he could do--to find out if he could do it. He hired on in the oil patch where he toiled fourteen hour shifts from summer's 100 degree dog days to deep into winter's bracing whiteouts, all the while wrestling with the demons of a turbulent past, his broken relationships with women, and the haunted memories of a family riven by violence. The Good Hand is a saga of fear, danger, exhaustion, suffering, loneliness, and grit that explores the struggles of America's marginalized boomtown workers—the rough-hewn, castoff, seemingly disposable men who do an indispensable job that few would exalt: oil field hands who, in the age of climate change, put the gas in our tanks and the food in our homes. Smith, who had pursued theater and played guitar in New York, observes this world with a critical eye; yet he comes to love his coworkers, forming close bonds with Huck, a goofy giant of a young man whose lead foot and quick fists get him into trouble with the law, and The Wildebeest, a foul-mouthed, dip-spitting truck driver who torments him but also trains him up, and helps Smith "make a hand." The Good Hand is ultimately a book about transformation--a classic American story of one man's attempt to burn himself clean through hard work, to reconcile himself to himself, to find community, and to become whole.

Night of the Assassins
Night of the Assassins

Author: Howard Blum

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-06-02

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 0062872915

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"A truly thrilling expose of the previously unknown Nazi assassination plot that could have changed history." — Edward Jay Epstein, New York Times bestselling author of The Assassination Chronicles The New York Times bestselling author returns with a tale as riveting and suspenseful as any thriller: the true story of the Nazi plot to kill the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the U.S.S.R. during World War II. The mission: to kill the three most important and heavily guarded men in the world. The assassins: a specially trained team headed by the killer known as The Most Dangerous Man in Europe. The stakes: nothing less than the future of the Western world. The year is 1943 and the three Allied leaders—Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin—are meeting for the first time at a top-secret conference in Tehran. But the Nazis have learned about the meeting and Hitler sees it as his last chance to turn the tide. Although the war is undoubtedly lost, the Germans believe that perhaps a new set of Allied leaders might be willing to make a more reasonable peace in its aftermath. And so a plan is devised—code name Operation Long Jump—to assassinate FDR, Churchill, and Stalin. Immediately, a highly trained, hand-picked team of Nazi commandos is assembled, trained, armed with special weapons, and parachuted into Iran. They have six days to complete the daring assignment before the statesmen will return home. With no margin for error and little time to spare, Mike Reilly, the head of FDR’s Secret Service detail—a man from a Montana silver mining town who describes himself as “an Irish cop with more muscle than brains”—must overcome his suspicions and instincts to work with a Soviet agent from the NKVD (the precursor to the KGB) to save the three most powerful men in the world. Filled with eight pages of black-and-white photographs, Night of the Assassins is a suspenseful true-life tale about an impossible mission, a ticking clock, and one man who stepped up to the challenge and prevented a world catastrophe.

The King's Falcon
The King's Falcon

Author: Stella Riley

Publisher:

Published: 2015-05-13

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 9781511922265

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A tale of war and witchcraft ... plots and playhouses ... love and loyalty.Following his coronation in Scotland, Charles ll leads an army south to reclaim his throne but the dream ends in a crushing defeat at Worcester, leaving no alternative but flight. With little more than the clothes on their backs, Ashley Peverell and Francis Langley flee to Paris where Ashley, known to some as The Falcon, resumes his covert work for the King.Beautiful, stubborn and street-wise, Athenais de Galzain has risen from the slums of Paris to become the Marais Theatre's leading actress. Unfortunately, this brings her to the attention of the Marquis d'Auxerre - an influential nobleman of unsavoury reputation who is accustomed to taking what he wants.While the Prince's Fronde turns the city into a battle-ground, Francis is bullied into helping his sister, Celia, obtain a divorce from Eden Maxwell. Meanwhile, in London, Eden watches Cromwell's rise to unopposed power and begins to question the cause he has been serving for a decade.From the first, Ashley and Athenais are drawn together with the force of two stars colliding; a force which Ashley, conscious of the frequency with which he is required to risk his life, cannot deny but resolves to conceal. He has only two priorities; his work for Charles ll and his determination to protect Athenais from the Marquis. Both are to test him to the limits.The King's Falcon follows the Cavaliers' last crusade and their subsequent bitter, poverty-stricken exile whilst also going behind the scenes at the Theatre du Marais. There is danger, intrigue and romance in this sequel to The Black Madonna and Garland of Straw.