1857. Joel Heygate is the popular stationmaster at Exeter St David's railway station. So when the charred remains of a body are discovered in the embers of the town's annual Bonfire Night celebration, everyone is horrified to discover that they belong to Mr Heygate. Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Victor Leeming are dispatched to Exeter with all due haste, and quickly unearth a number of suspects. But as Colbeck closes in on the killer, he finds himself in mortal danger. Can justice prevail, or will his beloved Madeleine be robbed of a husband on the very eve of their marriage?
Spring, 1858. The route of the Caledonian Railway through the southern uplands of the Scottish countryside is disrupted by a fatal crash. Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming are called from the crime of London to investigate, and must contend with old enemy Superintendent Rory McTurk to uncover the criminals behind the disaster.
Hugo Award Winner: In backwoods Wisconsin, an ageless hermit welcomes alien visitors—and foresees the end of humanity . . . Enoch Wallace is not like other humans. Living a secluded life in the backwoods of Wisconsin, he carries a nineteenth-century rifle and never seems to age—a fact that has recently caught the attention of prying government eyes. The truth is, Enoch is the last surviving veteran of the American Civil War and, for close to a century, he has operated a secret way station for aliens passing through on journeys to other stars. But the gifts of knowledge and immortality that his intergalactic guests have bestowed upon him are proving to be a nightmarish burden, for they have opened Enoch’s eyes to humanity’s impending destruction. Still, one final hope remains for the human race . . . though the cure could ultimately prove more terrible than the disease. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, Way Station is a magnificent example of the fine art of science fiction as practiced by a revered Grand Master. A cautionary tale that is at once ingenious, evocative, and compassionately human, it brilliantly supports the contention of the late, great Robert A. Heinlein that “to read science-fiction is to read Simak.”
Farewell to Prague is a memoir set against the turbulent events of the Nazi era in Germany and World War II England. It is the story of a girl who, at the age of six, witnesses a murder being committed by German Storm Troopers. From that moment, the happy life she has known disintegrates. Her family escapes to Prague, where they create a new life. Six years later, the Germans march into Prague. Now she has to escape to England alone and on foot. She walks across the snow-covered Tatar Mountains. By train, fishing boat, and ship, she finally manages to get to England. She comes of age there during the bombing of London. When the war ends, she immediately returns to the Continent to discover the fate of her family. Farewell to Prague is a gripping true story that will fascinate and inspire readers of all ages.
1857. On the LNWR train to London, a criminal is being escorted to his appointment with the hangman. But the wily Jeremy Oxley, conman, thief and murderer, has one last ace up his sleeve - a beautiful and ruthless accomplice willing to do anything to save her lover, including cold-blooded murder. When the Railway Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck learns that Oxley, his arch nemesis, has escaped, black memories of their shared past leave him no choice but to do his duty, whatever the cost. With the faithful Victor Leeming at his side, Colbeck must use all of his skills to track his elusive enemy. But could he have finally met his match?
What seems to be quite an ordinary short story of a seduction and abduction of a young girl, "The Stationmaster" proves to be one of Pushkin’s best tales. At first sight an innocent kiss, the parting gift of Dunia to the traveler sends the mundane world of the stationmaster Samson Vyrin into complete disorder. Pushkin’s narrative style and knowledge of the human soul paint a picture of emotional waterfalls and whirlpools that threaten to engulf the characters. A story about how people cope with loss and helplessness. Deservedly labelled "the best Russian poet", Pushkin’s (1799-1837) short life did not prevent him from ushering Russian literature into its modern era. A master of the vernacular language and multifarious and vivid writing style, Pushkin’s oeuvre was of great influence to a whole legion of Russian writers and literary styles. Among his best-known works are the narrative poems "Ruslan and Ludmila" and "Eugene Onegin", the drama "Boris Godunov", several novels, short stories, and fairy tales.
R. K. Narayan (1906—2001) witnessed nearly a century of change in his native India and captured it in fiction of uncommon warmth and vibrancy. Swami and Friends introduces us to Narayan’s beloved fictional town of Malgudi, where ten-year-old Swaminathan’s excitement about his country’s initial stirrings for independence competes with his ardor for cricket and all other things British. Written during British rule, this novel brings colonial India into intimate focus through the narrative gifts of this master of literary realism.
In 1942, with a black-market chicken tucked under his arm by his mother, Leo Marks left his father's famous bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, and went off to fight the war. He was twenty-two. Soon recognized as a cryptographer of genius, he became head of communications at the Special Operations Executive (SOE), where he revolutionized the codemaking techniques of the Allies and trained some of the most famous agents dropped into occupied Europe. As a top codemaker, Marks had a unique perspective on one of the most fascinating and, until now, little-known aspects of the Second World War. This stunning memoir, often funny, always gripping and acutely sensitive to the human cost of each operation, provides a unique inside picture of the extraordinary SOE organization at work and reveals for the first time many unknown truths about the conduct of the war. SOE was created in July 1940 with a mandate from Winston Churchill to "set Europe ablaze." Its main function was to infiltrate agents into enemy-occupied territory to perform acts of sabotage and form secret armies in preparation for D-Day. Marks's ingenious codemaking innovation was to devise and implement a system of random numeric codes printed on silk. Camouflaged as handkerchiefs, underwear, or coat linings, these codes could be destroyed message by message, and therefore could not possibly be remembered by the agents, even under torture. Between Silk and Cyanide chronicles Marks's obsessive quest to improve the security of agents' codes and how this crusade led to his involvement in some of the war's most dramatic and secret operations. Among the astonishing revelations is his account of the code war between SOE and the Germans in Holland. He also reveals for the first time how SOE fooled the Germans into thinking that a secret army was operating in the Fatherland itself, and how and why he broke the code that General de Gaulle insisted be available only to the Free French. By the end of this incredible tale, truly one of the last great World War II memoirs, it is clear why General Eisenhower credited the SOE, particularly its communications department, with shortening the war by three months. From the difficulties of safeguarding the messages that led to the destruction of the atomic weapons plant at Rjukan in Norway to the surveillance of Hitler's long-range missile base at Peenemünde to the true extent of Nazi infiltration of Allied agents, Between Silk and Cyanide sheds light on one of the least-known but most dramatic aspects of the war. Writing with the narrative flair and vivid characterization of his famous screenplays, Marks gives free rein to his keen sense of the absurd and wry wit without ever losing touch with the very human side of the story. His close relationship with "the White Rabbit" and Violette Szabo -- two of the greatest British agents of the war -- and his accounts of the many others he dealt with result in a thrilling and poignant memoir that celebrates individual courage and endeavor, without losing sight of the human cost and horror of war.
