The novel begins in the 1790s in the coastal town of Monkshaven (modeled on Whitby, England) against the background of the practice of impressment during the early phases of the Napoleonic Wars. Sylvia Robson lives happily with her parents on a farm, and is passionately loved by her rather dull Quaker cousin Philip. She, however, meets and falls in love with Charlie Kinraid, a dashing sailor on a whaling vessel, and they become secretly engaged. When Kinraid goes back to his ship, he is forcibly enlisted in the Royal Navy by a press gang, a scene witnessed by Philip. Philip does not tell Sylvia of the incident nor relay to her Charlie's parting message and, believing her lover is dead, Sylvia eventually marries her cousin. This act is primarily prompted out of gratefulness for Philip's assistance during a difficult time following her father's imprisonment and subsequent execution for leading a revengeful raid on press-gang collaborators. They have a daughter. Inevitably, Kinraid returns to claim Sylvia and she discovers that Philip knew all the time that he was still alive. Philip leaves her in despair at her subsequent rage and rejection, but she refuses to live with Kinraid because of her child. Views: 452
From the waters of Montauk to the mountains of the Caucasus and Paris in war times, these stories take you on a whirlwind tour that open unexpected vistas and insights. The book contains both memoir and fiction, told in the candid voice of a man who has lived through the 20th century’s major conflagrations, and seen much sadness, without losing his sense of humor .A great, enjoyable read for all.If every person’s life story can fill a book, Redjeb Jordania's can fill a bookshelf. The brilliant stories in this collection are just a small taste of the vast panorama of his experiences.From the waters of Montauk to the mountains of the Caucasus and Paris in war times, these stories take you on a whirlwind tour that open unexpected vistas and insights. The title story refers to Daghestan, a semi-autonomous region of the former Soviet Union, between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, on the border of the republic of Georgia. Air distance between New York and Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, is 5,572 miles. Nearly 6,000 miles is far enough for an escape, but for Mr. Jordania the trip was actually a return to the land of his ancestors—a land he has never lived in due to its turbulent political history.Mr. Jordania is the son of the first president of pre-soviet Georgia, Noe Jordania, who had to flee the Red Army’s takeover in 1921, after only three years in office. Redjeb Jordania was born and educated in Paris, so that in the short story “A Hunting Trip to Daghestan,” he finds himself “a foreigner … barely able to speak the Georgian language” in the once-again independent republic.The book contains both memoir and fiction, all told in the candid voice of a man who has lived through the 20th century’s major conflagrations, and seen much sadness, without losing his sense of humor. The book is divided into two sections, Part I, subtitled “From far away in time and space,” and Part II, “closer to home.”The autobiographical stories in part one include the moving “Closing the Circle,” in which the author returns to the village where his father’s and grandfather’s house once stood. It is now “a grassy lot where a pair of long-haired black piglets were scurrying, hunting for chestnuts.” The villagers tell him that the family graves have been demolished—but a magnolia tree, planted by Jordania senior, remains, “regal now.”“The Music Lesson” is an account of Mr. Jordania’s early, and lasting, involvement with music, beginning with piano lessons from an eccentric, hard-drinking teacher and going on to a musical evening during World War II in Paris, when an Allied bombardment “offered an astonishing spectacle of son et lumiére.” “Is where they got the idea?” he wonders.In another wartime story, “A Surprise Party,” a group of Resistance fighters hide two British airmen who have managed to parachute into German-occupied France. The students in charge of helping them stay alive disguise the pilots as “Georgians”—because “nobody knows what a Georgian is supposed to look like.” It is a close call when the dreaded “milice” arrive to check everyone’s papers.More upbeat stories from “closer to home” recount adventures on the waters off Long Island—an encounter between the author’s small trimaran and the America Cup race—and a whimsical “Letter from the New World," in which Mr. Jordania recounts his epiphany that “there is no such country as the USA”—it is a joint invention of Madison Avenue and Hollywood!These stories by this multitalented, well-traveled author offer unique personal insights into recent political and social history on both sides of the Atlantic. A must read. Views: 450
NICK CARTER DETECTIVE STORY COLLECTION contains seven complete 'Nick Carter' mysteries featuring venerable private detective Nick Carter. Nick Carter first appeared as a pulp fiction private detective in dime novels during the 1880s, and has also appeared as an action hero, and since the 1960s, a super spy. Includes an active table of contents with back-linking for easy navigation. • Nick Carter Detective, No. 1• The Crime of the French Café• Nick Carter’s Ghost Story• The Mystery of St. Agnes’ Hospital• With Links of Steel• The Great Spy System• A Woman at Bay Nick Carter is a pseudonym used by various authors who have contributed to the 'Nick Carter' series, which are usually written in first person. Ostensibly written by Nick Carter himself, the books in this series were the work of John R. Coryell (1848–1924), Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey (1861–1922), Thomas C. Harbaugh (1849–1924), and Eugene T. Sawyer (1847–1924). The definitive description of Nicholas J. Huntington Carter is given in the first novel in the series Run, Spy, Run. Carter is tall (over 6 feet / 1.83 m), lean and handsome with a classic profile and magnificently muscled body. He has wide-set steel gray eyes that are icy, cruel and dangerous. He is hard-faced, with a firm straight mouth, laugh-lines around the eyes, and a firm cleft chin. His hair is thick and dark. He has a small tattoo of a blue axe on the inside right lower arm near the elbow - the ultimate ID for an AXE agent. At least one novel states that the tattoo glows in the dark. Carter also has a knife scar on the shoulder, a shrapnel scar on the right thigh. He has a sixth sense for danger.Carter practices yoga for at least 15 minutes a day. Carter has a prodigious ability for learning foreign languages. He is fluent in English (his native tongue), Cantonese,[2] French,[3] German,[3][4] Hungarian,[5] Italian,[3] Portuguese,[6] Putonghua (Mandarin),[7] Russian,[7][8] Spanish[9] and Vietnamese.[10][11] He has basic skills in Arabic,[12] Hindustani,[13] Romansch,[3] Swahili,[12] and Turkish.[14] In the early novels, Carter often assumes a number of elaborate disguises in order to execute his missions.The name Nick Carter was acknowledged by the series as having been inspired by the early 20th century pulp fiction detective of the same name in the 100th Killmaster volume (labelled Nick Carter 100) which included an essay on the earlier Nick Carter and included a Nick Carter detective short story alongside a Killmaster adventure. Views: 444
What is the essence of a war museum?The Royal Road in the kingdom of Kesteva runs nearly 1,000 miles from the southeastern marchlands to the northwest coast. Skara Station, tucked into the marchlands of southeast Kesteva, is one of dozens of waystations along that highway of merchants, pilgrims, princes and commoners.What is the essence of a war museum?The Royal Road in the kingdom of Kesteva runs nearly 1,000 miles from the southeastern marchlands to the northwest coast. A tavern tale sometimes told by upperclass engineering students at the Royal University in Roxen starts with the proposition that the Road's meandering path was laid hundreds of years before Kesteva's founding by an off-course troll who was supposed to be delivering a wagonfull of spirits from the Parsian Mountains to a settlement on the Western Sea. The story is as funny, elaborate and off-color as the upperclassmen's imaginations allow, but the punchline is always that the rotue makes perfect sense from an engineering standpoint, which of course considers the wide variety of terrain the Road must cross as well as the locations of important towns and cities the engineers of old were charged to link.Skara Station, tucked into the marchlands of southeast Kesteva, is one of dozens of waystations along that highway of merchants, pilgrims, princes and commoners. It is fully equipped with a customs house, inn, milestone, gardens, warehouses, plaza and Royal Guard garrison tower. Its namesake town has only a few hundred residents but is a proud city, one of the original founded on Aelfric and Aelin's march to the sea. Views: 443
On the icy slopes of the great ice-mountain of Bylot Island, set against the metallic blue of the Canadian Arctic sky, Shepherd has a vision of the world as it used to be, before the human race was weakened by stupidity and greed. Peter Benton, the young journalist to whom Shepherd tells his story, is dramatically snapped out of his cozy cynicism and indolent denial of responsibility, to face a dreadful reality. He discovers that he can no longer take a back-seat in the rapid self-destruction of the world, and is forced to make a momentous decision. Views: 440
Fueled by idealism and eagerness to contribute to the war effort, Guy Crouchback becomes attached to a commando unit undergoing training on the Hebridean isle of Mugg, where the whisky flows freely and respect must be paid to the laird. But the comedy of Mugg is soon followed by the bitterness of Crete, where chaos reigns and a difficult evacuation must be accomplished.
Officers and Gentlemen is the second novel in Waugh's brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy recording the tumultuous wartime adventures of Guy Crouchback, which also comprises Men at Arms and Unconditional Surrender. Views: 439
Nancy Dale, Army Nurse By Ruby Lorraine RadfordNancy Dale, Army Nurse By Ruby Lorraine Radford Views: 439
A young man searches for meaning, creates art, and grapples with fame as he traverses the stomping grounds of the Beat Generation—from Mexico City to Manhattan—in Jack Kerouac’s semi-autobiographical novel
This urgently paced yet deeply introspective novel closely tracks On the Road author Jack Kerouac’s own life. Jack Duluoz journeys from the Cascade Mountains to San Francisco, Mexico City, New York, and Tangier. While working as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the Cascades, Duluoz contemplates his inner void and the distressing isolation brought on by his youthful sense of adventure. In Tangier he suffers a similar feeling of desperation during an opium overdose, and in Mexico City he meets up with a morphine-addicted philosopher and seeks an antidote to his solitude in a whorehouse.
As in Kerouac’s other novels, Desolation Angels features a lively cast of pseudonymous versions of his fellow Beat poets, including William S. Burroughs (as Bull Hubbard), Neal Cassady (as Cody Pomeray), and Allen Ginsberg (as Irwin Garden). Duluoz draws readers into the trials and tribulations of these literary iconoclasts—from drug-fueled writing frenzies and alcoholic self-realizations to frenetic international road trips and tumultuous love affairs. Achieving literary success comes with its own consequences though, as Duluoz and his friends must face the scrutiny that comes with rising to the national stage. Views: 439
Three high school students, bullied at school because of their strange abilities, are sucked through a portal to a sister planet called Cathora. Here they find they are not normal children but belong to a group of entities known as the Mytar. A creature, known only as Zelnoff, has invaded this planet and plans to attack Earth. There ensues many struggles and battles as they try to defeat Zelnoff.Severe weather patterns - storms, floods and strong winds - are sweeping across planet Earth. Against this backdrop, three high school students, known and tormented for their strange abilities, fight their own battles against school bullies. The discovery of a strange key by their leader Chris Reynolds plunges all three through a portal into a sister world, Cathora, in another dimension. In this world their behaviours, that labelled them as misfits on Earth, turn out to be the seeds of extraordinary powers.They soon meet Batarr, the Guardian of the portal; he tells them they are not normal children, but are part of a group of six entities called Mytar who are periodically seeded throughout the dimensions to fight planetary invasions across these portals. Cathora has been invaded by an alien army, led by a creature known only as Zelnoff. Zelnoff’s next target is Earth. The Mytar alone have the power to stop him if the other Mytar on Earth can be found. There ensues many struggles and battles as Chris, Susie and Joe seek to evade Zelnoff’s forces long enough for their powers to develop so they can detect the remaining Mytar back on Earth. Views: 437
A brand new young fiction series by TV broadcaster and intrepid explorer Ben Fogle, inspired by his real-life animal experiences... Co-written with best-selling children's author Steve Cole and illustrated throughout with beautiful black and white illustrations by Nikolas Ilic. You can always count on Mr Dog to help an animal in trouble... Mr Dog has travelled north for an island escapade. But when a local hedgehog problem seems set to threaten his new friend, Hog, he knows he'll have to act quickly to save his prickly companion... Views: 434
Viviana de Eskelling was the last in the family line of the Norman Schelins. Her family had held Okeford for 200 years. A single woman (a woman sole) was disadvantaged in law. So around 1287 Viviana married Bartholomew Turberville, taking Okeford into the Turberville estates. (Thomas Hardy tweaked 'Turberville' into 'D'Urberville'.) In Okeford, villagers prepare for their lady’s wedding.After two hundred years of isolation, the colonists of Capicua, a fertile super-earth orbiting Gliese 667C, are suddenly faced with an unknown and hostile military force.Oblivious to the impending invasion, Toni Miura joins Capicua's decrepit armed forces in a bid to escape domestic troubles, aiming for the privilege of driving the Hammerhead, a bipedal mobile suit which is the epitome of his planet's ailing warrior spirit.With the arrival of the earthborn invaders, Toni's unqualified platoon, brimming with misfits and plagued by internal differences, is suddenly thrown into the midst of battle. Abandoned by their seniors in the course of their mission, Toni and the remnants of his unit become lost in a world which, owing to the nature of its orbit, suffers periodically from planet-wide hurricane conditions.So begins a race against time, where a handful of cadets will be forced to outmaneuver a pursuing enemy in the boondocks of a turbulent planet, all the while seeking to deliver an odd but important Bavarian prisoner-of-war to their headquarters."Comparisons to Heinlein's Starship Troopers are justified. Fans of hard Military Science Fiction, salute your new commander!" - D. B. Rose"Much better than expected! I can barely wait for the next installment. Very interesting world building, good extrapolation of current technological warfare!" - RAZVAN ANDREI Views: 433
In 1951, it was suggested to Jack Kerouac by his friend Ed White that he "sketch in the streets like a painter but with words." In August of the following year, Kerouac began writing down prose poem "sketches" in small notebooks that he kept in the breast pockets of his shirts. For two years he recorded travels, observations, and meditations on art and life as he moved across America and down to Mexico and back. In 1957, Kerouac sat down with the fifteen handwritten sketch notebooks he had accumulated and typed them into a manuscript called Book of Sketches; he included a handful of new sketches he had written that year. Published now for the first time, and with an introduction by George Condo, Book of Sketches offers an intimate glimpse of Kerouac at a key period of his literary career. Views: 433
From the author of the prizewinning New York Times bestseller Empire of the Summer Moon comes a thrilling account of how Civil War general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson became a great and tragic American hero.
Stonewall Jackson has long been a figure of legend and romance. As much as any person in the Confederate pantheon, even Robert E. Lee, he embodies the romantic Southern notion of the virtuous lost cause. Jackson is also considered, without argument, one of our country’s greatest military figures. His brilliance at the art of war tied Abraham Lincoln and the Union high command in knots and threatened the ultimate success of the Union armies. Jackson’s strategic innovations shattered the conventional wisdom of how war was waged; he was so far ahead of his time that his techniques would be studied generations into the future.
In April 1862 Jackson was merely another Confederate general in an army fighting what seemed to be a losing cause. By June he had engineered perhaps the greatest military campaign in American history and was one of the most famous men in the Western world. He had, moreover, given the Confederate cause what it had recently lacked—hope—and struck fear into the hearts of the Union.
Rebel Yell is written with the swiftly vivid narrative that is Gwynne’s hallmark and is rich with battle lore, biographical detail, and intense conflict between historical figures. Gwynne delves deep into Jackson’s private life, including the loss of his young beloved first wife and his regimented personal habits. It traces Jackson’s brilliant twenty-four-month career in the Civil War, the period that encompasses his rise from obscurity to fame and legend; his stunning effect on the course of the war itself; and his tragic death, which caused both North and South to grieve the loss of a remarkable American hero. Views: 432
Second story in the 'Slayer of Evil (Prices Negotiable)' series. A freelance monster hunter's gotta eat, and Eric Margrave is no exception. Follow our 'hero' in a day on the job, as he deals with all the same problems you deal with in your own job; necromancy, zombie hordes, and a shortage of piano wire.Okay, maybe not EXACTLY the same problems.The world of the supernatural is a place of intense horror and blood-chilling danger. Dark, twisted monsters stalk among humanity from the shadows, seeking only to devour us.Seems like somebody should make some money from all that, right? Enter Eric Margrave, semi-professional monster hunter (He'd be a professional, but they really don't have a certification process for this sort of thing.). When the things that go bump in the night start actually knocking on the door, he's the one who serves them their walking papers... for a nominal fee. Prices negotiable. No demons, please.In this short, Eric has taken on a job from the residents of a little town in the middle of nowhere, who find themselves with a minor case of the next town over disappearing. To some this would be a sign it was time to pack up and leave the diner; to Eric, it just means time buckle down and make a quick buck doing what he does best: The judicious application of extreme violence. Just another day at the office. Views: 431
