Modern Literature

//Modern Literature
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  • Menabilly stands bare and desolate on the Cornish coast, its ivy-covered walls hiding the secret which two people will take to the grave: Honor Harris, so injured as a girl she never walked again; and Sir Richard Grenville, the King's General in the West, resentful, proud and bitter to the end...and the only man Honor ever loved.   She met him on the night of her 18th birthday at the Duke of Buckinghma's ball. Richard was already a veteran of foreign wars, on his way to fame and power. She bade him farewell years later, when, his cause lost and Menabilly surround by the enemy, he vanished through a secret passage from her life...
  • From the moment of Katharine's betrothal to Arthur, Prince of Wales, she believed she would be the future Queen of England.  But Arthur died just after their marriage and it was as the wife of his brother, Henry VIII, that she went to her Coronation.  Here is her life with the infamous Henry Tudor - many happy years, the birth of her daughter Mary, her popularity with the people.  But after twenty years, Henry's eyes fixed firmly on the young Anne Boleyn.  He repudiated their marriage, subjected Katharine to the humiliation of a public 'trial' and banished her from his life.
  • The Ladies of Missalonghi:  Missy Hurlingford is a poor, plain spinster and she's sick of her life. She's tired of being plain, poor, pitied and most of all, having to wear brown. Then she finds a new friend, Una, whose radical and rebellious ideas begin to work a change in Missy and in the lives of her mother and aunt until they, and the other genteel and poor ladies of the Hurlingford family set out for revenge against the men of the Hurlingford clan who have kept them down and poor.  Set in the Blue Mountains in the imaginary town of Byron in the early 1900s. Tim:  Mary Horton is content with her comfortable, solitary existence... until she meets Tim - a beautiful young man with the mind of a child; a gentle outcast in a cruel, unbending world. Tim, in his own special and wonder-filled way,  illuminates the darkness of Mary's days with his boyish innocence. And he will shatter the lonely, middle-aged spinster's respectable, ordered life with a forbidden promise of a very special love.
  • 1470: the legendary Wars of the Roses threatens to tear England apart. In the middle of the conflict is a most unlikely heroine. For Margery, the beautiful and spirited ward of Warwick the Kingmaker, freedom is the only prize worth having. But it is a prize that could cost her her life. Sent to France on a mission for King Edward IV, she finds herself the target of a man who may be one of the king's most dangerous enemies. Sir Richard Huddleston is bold, enigmatic, and devastatingly handsome. He is used to getting what he wants, and he wants Margery to be his wife. But what else does he want? Margery suspects that Richard has abandoned the king and the house of York and is conspiring with the rebel queen and the traitorous house of Lancaster. Caught between her role as a spy and a fierce passion that neither she nor Richard can deny - yet she cannot admit her real mission to Richard. For if she stays true to her noble cause, she'll save many men...and lose the one that matters most.
  • Book I of the Plantagenet and Tudor sequence. Descended from Melusina, the river goddess, Jacquetta always has had the gift of second sight. As a child visiting her uncle, she met his prisoner, Joan of Arc, and saw her own power reflected in the young woman accused of witchcraft. They share the mystery of the tarot card of the wheel of fortune before Joan is taken to a horrific death at the hands of the English rulers of France. Jacquetta understands the danger for a woman who dares to dream. Jacquetta is married to the Duke of Bedford, English regent of France, and he introduces her to a mysterious world of learning and alchemy. Her only friend in the great household is the duke’s squire Richard Woodville, who is at her side when the duke’s death leaves her a wealthy young widow. The two become lovers and marry in secret, returning to England to serve at the court of the young King Henry VI, where Jacquetta becomes a close and loyal friend to his new queen. The Woodvilles soon achieve a place at the very heart of the Lancaster court, though Jacquetta can sense the growing threat from the people of England and the danger of royal rivals. Not even their courage and loyalty can keep the House of Lancaster on the throne. Henry the king slides into a mysterious sleep; Margaret the queen turns to untrustworthy favorites for help; and Richard, Duke of York, threatens to overturn the whole kingdom for his rival dynasty.
  • At Hawkridge House  in the English summer of 1636, botanist John Nightingale wants only to spend his life in the peaceful ordering of his estate. In Amsterdam, stock market and speculation is rife as fortunes are gambled on rare tulips. John is blackmailed into joining an elaborate money-making scheme.  Falling in love with two very different women, pursued by demons of his past and trying desperately to keep ahead of a game spiralling out of his control, John must quickly learn the ways of the world.

  • Sequel to When The Wind Blows. Frannie's life turned upside down when six incredible children blew in on the wind. Rescuing them from the School that created them took all her cunning and courage, but the children captured her heart. Now the flock want to go back to the couple they regard as parents, and Frannie and FBI maverick Kit Brennan are suing for custody. But when the case involves the most extraordinary creatures ever to land on Earth, someone will ensure there is no happy ending. Only Max, the eldest and most remarkable of the winged children knows there is another terrifying biological experiment taking place. Somewhere, an evil, brilliant surgeon is secretly researching, performing a cruel travesty of an operation as he scoops the life from people hoping for a better future.  But to complete the experiment he needs the ultimate prize - Max herself. And as the children dream of returning to the happy safety of the lake house, where for a few precious months they flew free, danger moves ever closer...

  • A 'ham' radio report, picked up in England by Ian Ferguson's father - paralytic, speechless and motionless in a wheelchair, who had died in his attempt to pass it on - is discounted by all except Ian who goes to Labrador to contact the authorities there. Briffe and Baird, members of a geological expedition in the cold wilderness of Labrador, have been given up for dead by the authorities on the word of Laroche, the pilot who had survived to bring the news. Ian believes, on the strength of the radio message, that they are alive and tries to revive interest in a search - he feels he must do this so that his father did not die for nothing.   Laroche tries to prevent Ferguson's continued stubborn efforts to prove his father's claim. Paule, Briffe's daughter, engaged to Laroche, begins to believe in Ian and questions Laroche's strange evasions. Could it be possible that her father had survived? Did Laroche callously abandon the men? All three finally make their way to the Lake of the Lion for a revelation.
  • Book VI of Earth's Children. Settling into life in the Ninth Cave, Ayla and Jondalar find much pleasure in their baby daughter and being reunited with friends and family. Her new people are impressed by her knowledge of plants and healing and in awe of her uncanny relationship with her mare Whinney and Wolf.  But Ayla is torn between her desire to concentrate on her family and her training as a Zelandoni acolyte and her relationship with Jondalar begins to suffer.