Modern Literature

//Modern Literature
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  • Summer, 1779: In the third year of the War of Independence, a British force of seven hundred and fifty men, led by Brigadier-General Francis McLean, sailed down from Halifax. Their mission was to establish a garrison in a crucial position controlling the New England seaboard and provide a safe haven for any still-loyal American colonists. So, supported by three small ships and his raw, ambitious lieutenant John Moore, McLean began to build the fort. The story is told from both sides, from land and sea; by McLean, the professional and Wadsworth the idealist; by ambitious Moore and  the soon-to-be famous Paul Revere; by rebels and loyalists, the early American marines and the Scottish infantrymen.
  • Book II of The Century trilogy. East German teacher Rebecca Hoffman discovers she’s been spied on by the Stasi for years and commits an impulsive act that will affect her family for the rest of their lives; George Jakes, the child of a mixed-race couple, bypasses a corporate law career to join Robert F. Kennedy’s Justice Department, and finds himself in the middle not only of the seminal events of the civil rights battle, but a much more personal battle of his own; Cameron Dewar, the grandson of a senator, jumps at the chance to do some official and unofficial espionage for a cause he believes in, only to discover that the world is a much more dangerous place than he’d imagined; Dimka Dvorkin, a young aide to Nikita Khrushchev, becomes a prime agent both for good and for ill as the United States and the Soviet Union race to the brink of nuclear war, while his twin sister, Tania, carves out a role that will take her from Moscow to Cuba to Prague to Warsaw – and into history.
  • Book II of The Celtic Crusades.  The Great Crusade is long over, or so Duncan, son of Murdo, believes until a long-lost uncle appears from the East bearing tales of immense treasure. Though the Iron Lance had been won for the emperor, an even holier relic has been found: the Black Rood - the prayer-worn, blood-stained remnant of the True Cross - now endangered by the greedy ambitions of ruthless crusader barons bent on carving kingdoms from the desert sands of the Middle East. When Duncan’s life is shattered by tragedy, he sets sail on his own pilgrimage to Jerusalem, following in the footsteps of his father. But the gates to the Holy Land are guarded by the warrior priests known as the Knights Templar. These fearsome guardians hold the key to more than just Duncan’s fate - the very destiny of the West is in their hands.
  • Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. At the convent, she is comforted by an old nun, Sister Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens...After Margherita's father steals parsley from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli, he is threatened with having both hands cut off, unless he and his wife relinquish their precious little girl. Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano, first painted by him in 1512 and still inspiring him at the time of his death. She is at the center of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition. Locked away in a tower, Margherita sings in the hope that someone will hear her. One day, a young man does...
  • An epic tale of four families from the medieval period to the 1960s: from the lies that spawn the noble line of de Cygne who claim descent from the hero of the celebrated poem The Song of Roland; the revolutionary Le Sourds who seek their destruction; from the Blanchards whose bourgeois respectability is threatened when one son joins the underworld near the Moulin Rouge, creating a scandal; and the hard-working Gascons who lose everything during the reign of Louis XV yet rise again in the age of Napoleon to become part of the art and culture of Paris. Real events and people make their appearance on this stage: Napoleon, Louis XVI, Monsieur Eiffel...the occupation of France in World War II, the Paris Commune, the World Exhibition...all these and more make up the epic tale that is Paris.
  • Wilt, Book IV.  When his endlessly capricious wife Eva receives plane tickets for the family to visit Auntie Joan and Uncle Wally in Atlanta, Wilt knows that nothing could entice him to fly three thousand miles over the water for a visit with two rotund Americans with more money than sense. What better way to escape and find equilibrium then to embark on a walking tour? Just Wilt, the countryside, and an ill-judged bottle of whiskey...Meanwhile, Eva finds her plans to inherit Joan and Wally's fortune slipping away faster than her sanity, thanks to a combination of sinister teenage quadruplets with foul mouths, and her unexpected role as lead suspect in a drug-trafficking plot.
  • Little Nell Trent lives in the quiet gloom of the old curiosity shop with her ailing grandfather, for whom she cares with selfless devotion. But when they are unable to pay their debts to the stunted, lecherous and evil money-lender Daniel Quilp, the shop is seized and they are forced to flee, thrown into a shadowy world in which there seems to be no safe haven. Dickens's portrayal of the innocent, tragic Nell made The Old Curiosity Shop an instant bestseller that captured the hearts of the nation, even as it was criticised for its sentimentality by figures such as Oscar Wilde.  This story has some of Dickens's greatest comic and grotesque creations: the ne'er-do-well Dick Swiveller, the mannish lawyer Sally Brass, the half-starved 'Marchioness' and the lustful, loathsome Quilp himself.
  • Knights Templar XXIX. 1326. In an England riven with conflict, knight and peasant alike find their lives turned upside down by the warring factions of Edward II, with his hated favorite, Hugh le Despenser, and Edward's estranged queen Isabella and her lover, Sir Roger Mortimer. Yet even in such times the brutal slaughter of an entire family, right down to a babe in arms, still has the power to shock. Three further murders follow, and bailiff Simon Puttock is drawn into a web of intrigue, vengeance, power, and greed as Roger Mortimer charges him to investigate the killings. Brilliantly evoking the turmoil of 14th-century England, this novel features well-loved characters Simon Puttock and Sir Baldwin de Furnshill as they strive to maintain the principles of loyalty and truth.
  • Rosie Ewing IV. France, August 1945. When two agents are arrested in Paris, SOE agent Rosie Ewing is sent to rescue them. Also in Paris is a woman called Jacqueline, already known to Rosie and now the mistress of a highly-placed SD officer. Rosie’s brief is to find Jacqueline, and through her discover where the two agents are being held, then get them out before they either talk or die. But how? She needs help from the French Resistance. But both Gaullist and Communist groups are stirring – and at each other’s throats. There are also several exceptionally vicious pro-Nazi groups out there…Rosie is going in, solo and virtually blind.