All the usual suspects are here, along with the late Jackie Collins' wry, dry wit and observations on the 'beautiful people'. Kris Phoenix, legendary English rock star; Bobby Mondella, handsome black soul superstar, recovering from a suspicious and near-fatal accident; and Rafealla, the beautiful half-caste girl with plenty of reasons to sing the blues. Their lives will clash with billionaire Marcus Citroen and Max Sicily, the son of a mob boss posing as a waiter for his own nefarious reasons. The fund-raiser party on Citroen's lush Malibu estate, with tonnage of wealth, glamour and celebrities, will end with a big bang.
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Heidi: Johanna Spyri
$12.00First published in 1880, here is Heidi's story - a young Swiss girl whose parents' sudden death leaves her to be brought up by her Aunt Dete - a hard-working woman who loves Heidi, but does not have the time or resources to look after a child in busy Frankfurt. She leaves Heidi with Heidi's grandfather, who lives in the Swiss mountains. The lonely, embittered old man lives like a hermit on the mountain-top and has nothing to do with the people in the village below. Known to all as “Alm-uncle”, Heidi's grandfather is good-hearted but mistrustful of the villagers. He refuses to send Heidi to school and allows her to roam the pastures with a mischeivous young goat herder, Peter. They become good friends but events take a turn when Aunt Dete decides that Heidi must stay in Frankfurt and learn to earn a living as a companion to a rich invalid child, Clara, and soon learns to read and write along with the little girl. The city begins to take its toll on the young Heidi and she becomes ill and depressed, longing for the open spaces. How Heidi returns to her beloved mountains, reforms her crotchety old grandfather and helps Clara regain her health forms the rest of this perennial classic. -
London: Edward Rutherfurd
$30.00From the days of the Romans to the Victorian engineers who created the Tower Bridge, through compelling lives and adventures: Julius, the small time Roman coin forger, risking his life to find buried treasure; Dame Barnikel who runs the tavern where Chaucer carouses; Edmund Meredith and the actors of the Globe Theatre and little Lucy, who lives by the Thames in Dickens' day. A history of London, 'told' by those who were there. -
Book II of the Dublin Saga. In the days of England's colonising plantations, the ranting Puritan preacher Doctor Pincher and his land-hungry nephew Barnaby Budge oppose the passionate piety of the Walshes. Against the background of the Irish Confederation, the coming of Cromwell, the massacre of Drogheda, and the Battle of the Boyne, the middle-aged adultery of Margaret Smith with the Irish chieftain Brian O'Byrne leads to many consequences. During the English Ascendancy, through the elegant world of Georgian Dublin, the literary times of Swift and Sheridan, and the political drama of Grattan's famous Parliament, rich Walshes, poor hedge schoolmasters, and Dublin shopkeepers try to protect their position and their faith - until all compromise breaks down with the rebellion of Wolfe Tone in 1798 - the Year of the French - and the tragedy of Emmet's Rising. The story follows Tidy the Quaker, Smith the Catholic, Dudley Doyle the economist, and many others through the rise and fall of O'Connell and of Parnell, and during the day-by-day misery of the Famine, where a poor girl tries to save her family in the exciting, yet dangerous, world of the Celtic revival of WB Yeats, the growth of Sinn Fein in the streets of James Joyce's Dublin, and the remarkable story of the Women of the Easter Rising. https://cosmiccauldronbooks.com.au/p/dublin-edward-rutherfurd/ -
London, 1938. Young Jim Brown, a porter at London's Victoria Station, comes into a large sum of money and takes his aspirational girlfriend Lizzie Parrish on the foreign trip he's always promised her. During their eventful journey they find themselves caught up in high society, a daring mercy mission, and a Europe darkening under the cloud of Nazism. "Money turns people's heads...With the result they see things they never saw before.” Set in Vienna and Budapest during the advent of the Nazi invasion, this is a moving, thought-provoking yet often amusing story of a naive young couple whose lives are changed forever by the turmoil of a continent at war with itself. Featuring characters from the bestseller Victoria Four-thirty, this book can also be read and enjoyed as a stand-alone novel. -
They say no one from the convict settlement of Sydney Town crossed the steep ranges of the Blue Mountains until 1813. But the quick-witted convict Clancy Fitzgerald did it in 1798, dragging with him the proud, but reluctant, Eliza Phillips. Failure meant the noose, so their only hope was to push forward, into the unknown. Faced with constant danger and wrenching isolation, Clancy and Eliza find themselves pale-skinned strangers in a land of ancient traditions and spiritual beliefs. But their destiny is dramatically altered when Clancy discovers a golden road to fortune and makes a triumphant return to white society as a new man - in more ways than one... -
You're a loser; you were born a loser. Was that the whole truth about Charlie MacFell? Was he just the kind of nice chap who always takes the dirty end of the stick, lacking the inner strength to take a firm stand in life or love alike? Charlie is a man in search of himself and his spiritual journey carries the reader from the rural Northumberland of Edwardian times into the holocaust of the Western Front in the First World War. And at the root of the matter is the cinder path of Charlie's boyhood home; a place of harsh associations that would come to symbolise the struggle with destiny itself. -
Louis Hoyt, Jane's wild Irish husband, has traveled the world over on looks and personality. Now he is presumed dead in Red China. Jane alone cannot believe it. She travels to Hong Kong with a few thousand dollars and a great determination to help this man who, for the first time in his life, cannot help himself. From the hotels and embassies to the dives, she follows every lead. Each one points to Hank Lee - the fabulous American whom people either know too well or don't know at all - as the one who might save Louis. Knowing this, disregarding all warnings about the man, Jane seeks him out...and the stage is set for action. -
Happy and innocent, Dawn's daughter Christie has grown up in the safest, most loving of homes - yet Christie can't help feeling as if a dark cloud hovers over Cutler's Cove; a cloud whose origins lie in her family's troubled history, and the many questions no one, not even Dawn, will answer. Only one person can always chase away her blues: Gavin, Daddy Jimmy's young and handsome stepbrother. Then, in one harsh night, Christie's world is changed forever. She is shocked to discover her Uncle Philip's unbrotherly love for her mother but even worse is the way he now looks at Christie, his eyes bright with tortured passion. Fleeing to New York City, she finds her real father - a pathetic, helpless has-been. Desperate and heartbroken, she turns to Gavin, who travels with her to The Meadows, the plantation where Christie was born. In Gavin's arms, in the first, tender moments of true love, Christie finds a refuge from her painful memories. But The Meadows is blighted by its own dark secrets - and all too soon Christie is torn from Gavin's embrace. Now as black storms of evil gather around her, Christie must struggle to break the cruel bonds of the past...to defy the curse that has haunted Cutler's Cove for generations.... -
Margaret Mitchell died in 1949 and her dying wish was that her personal papers, letters and other writings be destroyed. Yet half a century later, the impossible happened: a book she had written when she was sixteen came to light in the deceased estate of her lifelong friend and one-time youthful suitor, Henry Angel. The manuscript, in two lined notebooks, was found hidden in a cache of his papers. His family had not been aware that he had known the Margaret Mitchell of Gone With The Wind fame, never mind that he had been in possession of a manuscript. The story is of one of honour, adventure and unrequited love, set in the South Pacific and in many ways, set the stage for her characters of Rhett, Ashley and Scarlett; two central male characters, one a gentleman and the other more rough-hewn, vie for the attention of a feisty, independent-minded woman, and who will go to any lengths to defend her honor. The ending is terrible, cataclysmic and unforgettable. This edition includes letters and photos of Henry and Margaret. -
One of Us: Barry Crump
$18.00Meet Sam Cash, Ponto Mason and Toddy Dunn - ingenuous, aimless and expert at dodging work. Sam can spin a yarn, crack a joke and mastermind a situation; Ponto is a dedicated drifter and scrounger, with no past or future and Toddy is not the man his father was; nor does he want be, since he's a refugee from efficient agriculture. The three find work on Burke's farm and there develops a series of ingenious practical jokes that produce more anger than humour and more suspicion than appreciation. In the outcome of this mess, the individual problems of this hapless trio are surprisingly resolved. Illustrated by Dennis Turner. -
In the remote barren wasteland of North-western Australia, three wandering thugs make a murderous bid to gain ownership of a newly discovered nickel fortune by crippling the legitimate owners' vehicles and setting the occupants adrift, without food or water, to die in the searing heat. The victims attempt the seemingly-impossible desert crossing, close-herded by the thugs. But the killers have reckoned without the power of gratitude, when the victims receive assistance from someone they never expected to meet... -
Book III of The Brethren trilogy. This volume chronicles an era few people know about - what happened when the Templars returned from the Crusades and found that the monarchs of Europe did not want an army of religious warriors back on European soil. Leaving the Christian empire in the East in ruins, Knight Templar Will Campbell returns to the West to discover that the Temple has forged an alliance with his enemy, King Edward of England, vowing to help the king wage war on Scotland. This pact against his homeland strikes at the core of Will’s faith and allegiances, while his daughter, Rose, is led into a dangerous affair in the French royal household. Will now faces a choice: Should he protect his family, or lead his men into a new world? The fight for the Holy Land has ended. But the Temple’s last battle has just begun. -
Previous to the first publication of this book in 1957, Kendall had been regarded as a gentle romantic, a spinner of sweet and melancholy lyrics and elegies. This edition includes his realistic satires, topical verses, bush songs and ballads and classical and biblical themes. -
I Return: Doris Leslie
$8.00Francois Villon tells his own story - brought up the gutters of Paris, educated by a disease-ridden hag, adopted by a priest and becoming a thief and a whoremonger, yet always seeking the truth, even in brothel and boudoir. Francois Villon, the poet, wrote his name in blood and fire across the pages of French literature. -
Sean Dillon XVII. On Long Island, a trusted operative for the president nudges his boat up to a pier, when a man materialises out of the rain and shoots him. In London, General Charles Ferguson, adviser to the prime minister, approaches his car on a side street, when there is a flash and the car explodes. In New York, a former British soldier, who is also a bit more than that, takes a short walk in Central Park to stretch his legs, when a man comes up fast behind him, a pistol in his hand. And that is only the beginning. Someone is targeting the members of the elite intelligence unit known as "the Prime Minister's private army" and all those who work with them - and whoever is doing it has a lot of resources at his command. Sean Dillon has an idea of who it may be, an old nemesis who has clearly gotten tired of their interference in his schemes. But proving it is going to be a difficult task. And surviving it the hardest task of all. . . -
The story of the evacuation of Dunkirk. Trapped between the German army and the sea, the Allies face defeat. May will die, many are wounded or captured. But in only nine days over a quarter of a million men are back in England, saved by the citizens who went to sea to rescue their army. -
Adventurer Richard Hannay, just returned from South Africa, is thoroughly bored with London life - until he is accosted by a mysterious American, who warns him of an assassination plot that could completely destabilise the fragile political balance of Europe. Initially sceptical, Hannay nonetheless harbours the man - but one day he returns home to find him murdered. An obvious suspect, Hannay flees to his native Scotland, pursued by both the police and a cunning, ruthless enemy. His life and the security of Britain are in grave peril - and everything rests on the solution to a baffling enigma: what are the 'thirty nine steps?' First published in 1915. Cover art by Samuel J. Peffer ('Peff').
