A novel filled with living characters and the clash of swords and laid in the picturesque fifteenth century. At the age of twenty-eight, Colombino had become one of the great mercenary captains of the day, his fame spreading across the length and breadth of Italy. But, soldier of fortune though he was, living on the... read more »
No one but a madman would put to sea in such conditions. A blizzard cut visibility to yards. Long Island Sound was galloping whitecaps. But in this second year of the war of 1812, conditions like these spelled opportunity to Captain Josiah Peabody. His mission: break the British Blockade. The only thing in his favor... read more »
Weary of the war that he has waged nearly his entire life, Hornblower finds himself assigned an especially dangerous and dubious new task; to rescue a man he knows to be a tyrant from the mutiny of his crew in the Bay of the Seine. This risky adventure, coinciding with reports that the tide of war may be turning-as... read more »
The Young Lovell is a romance of the Borders. The date is towards the end of the 15th Century, running up to the beginnings of the reformation, through it isn't in that sense concerned with religion. The action takes place in Northumberland and the strory contains any number of things concerning 'The Percy out of... read more »
Island hoping across the South Pacific, the esteemed Dr. Saunders is offered passage by Captain Nichols and his companion Fred Blake, two men who appear unsavory, yet any means of transportation is hard to resist. The trip turns turbulent, however, when a vicious storm forces them to seek shelter on the remote... read more »
1812 and the fate of Europe lies in the hands of newly appointed Commodore Hornblower. Dispatched to northern waters, Hornblower will protect Britain's Baltic interests and halt the advance of Napoleon's empire into Sweden and Russia.\n\nFirst he must battle the terrible Baltic weather; fog, snow and icebound... read more »
Forced to surrender his ship, the Sutherland, after a long and bloody battle, Captain Horatio Hornblower now bides his time as a prisoner in a French fortress. Within days he and his first lieutenant, Bush, who was crippled in the last fight, are to be taken to Paris to be tried on trumped-up charges of violating... read more »
Biggles is sent to Jamaica to recover a cache of secret papers -- blueprints of German secret weapons under development at the end of World War II. Their owner, Werner Wolff, had been living in Jamaica under an assumed name for many years. Unfortunately, Wolff had died without revealing where he hid his papers... read more »
When Adela Quested and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced 'Anglo-Indian' community. Determined to escape the parochial English enclave and explore the 'real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr... read more »
An intriguing fairy tale about an innocent Queen of a remote kingdom, who befriends and spends much of her time, talking to a bat. The bat tells her that he was once unable to fly, and convinces her that a magic flower will give her the power to fly. An adorable tale for young readers, and a great bedtime story as... read more »
May 1810, seventeen years deep into the Napoleonic Wars. Captain Horatio Hornblower is newly in command of his first ship of the line, the seventy-four-gun HMS Sutherland, which he deems 'the ugliest and least desirable two-decker in the Navy List.' Moreover, she is 250 men short of a full crew, so Hornblower must... read more »
June 1808, somewhere west of Nicaragua-a site suitable for spectacular sea battles. The Admiralty has ordered Captain Horatio Hornblower, now in command of the thirty-six-gun HMS Lydia, to form an alliance against the Spanish colonial government with an insane Spanish landowner; to find a water route across the... read more »
Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian’s magnificent family home, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric, artistic inhabitants the Marchmains, becoming infatuated with them and the life of privilege they... read more »
January 1808, Hornblower is called upon to act as a bargeman while traveling with his wife and baby son to London where he is to take command of the Atropos. Skippering the flagship for Nelson's funeral on the Thames is not Hornblower's idea of thrilling action. But soon his orders come, and he sets sail for the... read more »
Herbert Curzon is a former cavalry officer who earned fortuitous distinction in the Boer War. He knew little then; he learned nothing since. But the army, desperate for officers in the opening months of WW I, hands Curzon, a new division to train. A few months later his formations dissolve at the Somme, hosed down... read more »
A portrait of the residents of an English country town in the mid nineteenth century, Cranford relates the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances. Through a series of vignettes, Elizabeth Gaskell portrays a community governed... read more »
Set against a backdrop of pre-Renaissance Italy (a larger than life time, with swaggering condottieri, Machiavellian plotting, and high stakes in politics and war) convent-bred orphan Bellarion is sidetracked almost immediately upon setting out on a journey from the monastery at Cigliano to study at Pavia. The... read more »
John Turner, a young man with a checkered past, has been told he has just one year to live. He decides to use his remaining time in search of three very different men he met in the hospital during the war, each of them in trouble of some kind: a pilot whose wife had betrayed him, a young corporal charged with... read more »
The Peace of Amiens is breaking down. Napoleon is building ships and amassing an army just across the Channel. Horatio Hornblower, who, at age twenty-seven, has already distinguished himself as one of the most daring and resourceful officers in the Royal Navy-commands the three-masted Hotspur on a dangerous... read more »
The nineteenth century dawns and the Napoleonic Wars rage as Horatio Hornblower is ordered to the Caribbean and dangerous waters. New Lieutenant Hornblower's latest ship is HMS Renown, a sound vessel whose captain is unfortunately of rather unsound mind. When ordered to attack a Spanish anchorage, the chain of... read more »
The tragic tale of a young woman caught between the attractions of two very different men. England is at war with France, and press gangs are seizing young men for service. Charley Kinraid, a whaling harpooner who captured the heart of Sylvia Robson, was one of their victims. After her true love is believed to have... read more »
Maugham found a parallel to the turmoil of our own times in the duplicity, intrigue and sensuality of the Italian Renaissance. Then and Now enters the world of Machiavelli, and covers three important months in the career of that crafty politician, worldly seducer and high priest of schemers. read more »
The year is 1793, the eve of the Napoleonic Wars, and Horatio Hornblower, a seventeen-year-old boy unschooled in seafaring and the ways of seamen, is ordered to board a French merchant ship and take command of crew and cargo for the glory of England. Though not an unqualified success, this first naval adventure... read more »
Dinny Cherrell has been proposed to numerous times. But no one has ever come close to touching her independent spirit. That is, until she encounters Wilfred Desert. They had first met at Fleur and Michael Mont's wedding and the spark of attraction felt all those years before develops into a deep, all-consuming love... read more »
The institution of marriage, that gives to a man all the rights over a woman, is a theme once again visited by Galsworthy. Clare Charwell has just fled her sadistic husband to England. Along the way she met the charming Tony Croom, but when she refuses to return to her husband he falsely accuses her of adultery in a... read more »
Conrad's unfinished novel that he was working on before his death in 1924, in which he returns to one of his favorite subjects: the French Revolution. Unlike Duel, his character here is a young Englishman named Cosmo Latham, who visits Genoa during the days in which Napoleon was imprisoned on Elba, where a... read more »
The fourth and final volume of the Herries Chronicles is a love story of 'effortless brilliance' which starts with the triumph of Judith Paris's hundredth birthday in the 1870's and then moves to the tragic disillusionment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Set, predominantly, as before, amidst the grandeur... read more »
This masterful performance of historical fiction centers on Katharine Howard--clever, beautiful, and outspoken--who catches the jaded eye of Henry VIII and becomes his fifth Queen. Corruption and fear pervade the King's court, and the dimly lit corridors vibrate with the intrigues of unscrupulous courtiers hungry... read more »
Her name was Katherine Christian--but many called her the Devil's own handmaiden. Born of a proud English beauty and a roving gypsy, she was mistress to many men but slave to none as she climbed toward wealth and power. Rashleigh and Peter were brothers, members of the great Herries clan. But their ties of blood... read more »
The tumultuous relationship between Katharine Howard and England's King Henry VIII was inextricably entwined with the rise to power and eventual fall of Thomas Cromwell, who served as the Lord Privy Seal. In this fictionalized account from Ford Madox Ford, the once-innocent Katharine begins to be swept up in the... read more »