A shocking assassination creates an unconventional bond between a princess and her guardian in a kingdom filled with political intrigue, danger and unexpected romance. Princess Shasta Soltranis enjoys a pampered life of court dances, elaborate finery, and the occasional secret fencing match with her twin brother, Daric. But in the midst of a birthday celebration, her world shatters when a mysterious assassin takes her brother's life. Shasta, the only remaining heir to the throne, narrowly escapes the assassin's blade thanks to the intervention of a traveling acrobat named Talon. With the threat of another attempt on Shasta's life imminent, her father declares that the young hero will be come the Princess's bodyguard. But what Shasta doesn't know is that her new guardian has a very well-kept secret: he is actually a she. Talon and Shasta soon grow closer than anyone, especially her father, could have predicted. Will the truth of her guardian's secret change their relationship forever?
In this story set in East Texas, a local seamstress named Chintana finds herself responsible for five orphans who are not only captivated by a storyteller’s tale of vengeance but by the long black box he sets before them. As midnight approaches, the box is opened, a fateful dare is made, and the children as well as Chintana come face to face with the consequences of a malice retold and now foretold.
A SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER 'A stunning blockbuster' Robert Fisk 'A brilliant tour de force of revisionist scholarship and thrilling storytelling' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'A compelling detective story of the highest order' Sunday Times 'Tom Holland has an enviable gift for summoning up the colour, the individuals and animation of the past' Independent In the 6th century AD, the Near East was divided between two venerable empires: the Persian and the Roman. A hundred years on and one had vanished forever, while the other seemed almost finished. Ruling in their place were the Arabs: an upheaval so profound that it spelt, in effect, the end of the ancient world. In the Shadow of the Sword explores how this came about. Spanning from Constantinople to the Arabian desert, and starring some of the most remarkable rulers who ever lived, he tells a story vivid with drama, horror, and startling achievement.
Winner, American Library Association Booklist’s Top of the List, 2019 Adult Nonfiction Acclaimed writer Marie Arana delivers a cultural history of Latin America and the three driving forces that have shaped the character of the region: exploitation (silver), violence (sword), and religion (stone). “Meticulously researched, [this] book’s greatest strengths are the power of its epic narrative, the beauty of its prose, and its rich portrayals of character…Marvelous” (The Washington Post). Leonor Gonzales lives in a tiny community perched 18,000 feet above sea level in the Andean cordillera of Peru, the highest human habitation on earth. Like her late husband, she works the gold mines much as the Indians were forced to do at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Illiteracy, malnutrition, and disease reign as they did five hundred years ago. And now, just as then, a miner’s survival depends on a vast global market whose fluctuations are controlled in faraway places. Carlos Buergos is a Cuban who fought in the civil war in Angola and now lives in a quiet community outside New Orleans. He was among hundreds of criminals Cuba expelled to the US in 1980. His story echoes the violence that has coursed through the Americas since before Columbus to the crushing savagery of the Spanish Conquest, and from 19th- and 20th-century wars and revolutions to the military crackdowns that convulse Latin America to this day. Xavier Albó is a Jesuit priest from Barcelona who emigrated to Bolivia, where he works among the indigenous people. He considers himself an Indian in head and heart and, for this, is well known in his adopted country. Although his aim is to learn rather than proselytize, he is an inheritor of a checkered past, where priests marched alongside conquistadors, converting the natives to Christianity, often forcibly, in the effort to win the New World. Ever since, the Catholic Church has played a central role in the political life of Latin America—sometimes for good, sometimes not. In this “timely and excellent volume” (NPR) Marie Arana seamlessly weaves these stories with the history of the past millennium to explain three enduring themes that have defined Latin America since pre-Columbian times: the foreign greed for its mineral riches, an ingrained propensity to violence, and the abiding power of religion. Silver, Sword, and Stone combines “learned historical analysis with in-depth reporting and political commentary...[and] an informed and authoritative voice, one that deserves a wide audience” (The New York Times Book Review).
A “magical, marvellous” epic of an empire in collapse: Book one in the acclaimed Ottoman Quartet by the award-winning Turkish author and political dissident (La Stampa, Italy). Tracking the decline and fall of the Ottoman empire, Ahmet Altan’s Ottoman Quartet spans fifty years from the end of the nineteenth century to the post-WWI rise of Atatu ̈rk as leader of the new Turkey. In Like a Sword Wound, a modern-day resident of Istanbul is visited by the ghosts of his ancestors, finally free to tell their stories “under the broad, dark wings of death.” Among the characters who come to life are an Ottoman army officer; the Sultan’s personal doctor; a scion of the royal house whose Western education brings him into conflict with his family’s legacy; and a beguiling Turkish aristocrat who, while fond of her emancipated life in Paris, finds herself drawn to a conservative Muslim spiritual leader. As their stories of intimate desire and personal betrayal unfold, the society that spawned them is transforming and the sublime empire disintegrating. Here is a Turkish saga reminiscent of War and Peace, written in lively, contemporary prose that traces not only the social currents of the time but also the erotic and emotional lives of its characters. “An engrossing novel of obsessive love and oppressive tyranny, a tale of collapse that dramatizes the fateful moments of an empire and its subjects.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations. Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage—and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon. For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave. Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada’s agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the waters—terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. . . . China Miéville is a writer for a new era—and The Scar is a luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of spectacular. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from China Miéville’s Embassytown.
The definitive modern take on the timeless tale of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round table. The legends of King Arthur date back to medieval Europe, and have become some of the dominant myths of Western culture. In The Once & Future King, T. H. White reinvents the story for a modern audience. The novel starts by introducing the reader to a young Arthur – just a child, and far from the King he will become – as he is raised by the wizard Merlyn, and moves on to chronicle his rise to Kingship, the affair between Guinevere and Lancelot, and the eventual destruction of the round table. The first section, released independently as The Sword in the Stone, was adapted into an animated film by Walt Disney Pictures. Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.
From the award-winning author of Swordspoint comes a witty, wicked coming-of-age story that is both edgy and timeless. . . . Welcome to Riverside, where the aristocratic and the ambitious battle for power and prestige in the city’s labyrinth of streets and ballrooms, theatres and brothels, boudoirs and salons. Into this alluring and alarming world walks a bright young woman ready to take it on and make her fortune. A well-bred country girl, Katherine knows all the rules of conventional society. Her biggest mistake is thinking they apply. Katherine’s host and uncle, Alec Campion, the capricious and decadent Mad Duke Tremontaine, is in charge here—and to him, rules are made to be broken. When he decides it would be far more amusing for his niece to learn swordplay than to follow the usual path to ballroom and husband, her world changes forever. And there’s no going back. Blade in hand, it’s up to Katherine to find her own way through a maze of secrets and betrayals, nobles and scoundrels—and to gain the power, respect, and self-discovery that come to those who master. . . . “Unholy fun, and wholly fun . . . an elegant riposte, dazzlingly executed.”—Gregory Maguire, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked
Naji al-Ali grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in the south Lebanese city of Sidon, where his gift for drawing was discovered by the Palestinian poet Ghassan Kanafani in the late 1950s. Early the following decade he left for Kuwait, embarking on a thirty-year career that would see his cartoons published daily in newspapers from Cairo to Beirut, London to Paris. Resolutely independent and unaligned to any political party, Naji al-Ali strove to speak to and for the ordinary Arab people; the pointed satire of his stark, symbolic cartoons brought him widespread renown. Through his most celebrated creation, the witness-child Handala, al-Ali criticized the brutality of Israeli occupation, the venality and corruption of the regimes in the region, and the suffering of the Palestinian people, earning him many powerful enemies and the soubriquet “the Palestinian Malcolm X.” For the first time in book form, A Child in Palestine presents the work of one of the Arab world’s greatest cartoonists, revered throughout the region for his outspokenness, honesty and humanity. “That was when the character Handala was born. The young, barefoot Handala was a symbol of my childhood. He was the age I was when I had left Palestine and, in a sense, I am still that age today and I feel that I can recall and sense every bush, every stone, every house and every tree I passed when I was a child in Palestine. The character of Handala was a sort of icon that protected my soul from falling whenever I felt sluggish or I was ignoring my duty. That child was like a splash of fresh water on my forehead, bringing me to attention and keeping me from error and loss. He was the arrow of the compass, pointing steadily towards Palestine. Not just Palestine in geographical terms, but Palestine in its humanitarian sense—the symbol of a just cause, whether it is located in Egypt, Vietnam or South Africa.”—Naji al-Ali, in conversation with Radwa Ashour
