It was on his travels that he found his own very real gift for healing—a gift that urged him on to become a doctor. So all consuming was his dream, that he made the perilous, unheard-of journey to Persia, to its Arab universities where he would undertake a transformation that would shape his destiny forever.

    Now, the bestselling author of the acclaimed BROTHERHOOD OF WAR saga brings to life the men of the U.S. Marine Corps -- their loves and their loyalties -- as they steeled themselves for battle, and prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice...

    His monumental decision to split from Rome and the Catholic Church was one that would forever shape the religious and political landscape of Britain.Combining magnificent storytelling with an extraordinary grasp of the pleasures and perils of power, Margaret George delivers a vivid portrait of Henry VIII and Tudor England and the powerhouse of players on its stage: Thomas Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More and Anne Boleyn. It is also a narrative told from an original perspective: Margaret George writes from the King's point of view, injecting irreverent comments from Will Somers - Henry's jester and confidant.

    She unwittingly becomes a pawn in a political chess game when she photographs some ancient scrolls discovered by Bedouins. David seems to love her dearly, but Moshe has a purpose and commitment in life that intrigues her more than she can say. Through it all, Ellie discovers a people, a spirit and a person who profoundly change the direction of her life.This first book in THE ZION CHRONICLES vividly portrays the intense struggle of the Jewish people in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the forces, within and without, which engulf the Middle East in conflict and controversy even today.

    Boxed set includes The Mammoth Hunters, The Valley of Horses, Clan of the Cave Bear, and Plains of Passage.

    3 volumes.

    The time is the 15th century, when intrepid merchants became the new knighthood of Europe. Among them, none is bolder or more cunning than Nicholas vander Poele of Bruges, the good-natured dyer's apprentice who schemes and swashbuckles his way to the helm of a mercantile empire.     Niccolò Rising, Book One of the series, finds us in Bruges, 1460. Jousting is the genteel pastime, and successful merchants are, of necessity, polyglot. Street smart, brilliant at figures, adept at the subtleties of diplomacy and the well-timed untruth, Dunnett's hero rises from wastrel to prodigy in a breathless adventure that wins him the hand of the strongest woman in Bruges and the hatred of two powerful enemies. From a riotous and potentially murderous carnival in Flanders, to an avalanche in the Alps and a pitched battle on the outskirts of Naples, Niccolò Rising combines history, adventure, and high romance in the tradition stretching from Alexandre Dumas to Mary Renault.

    I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages." Thus wrote Leo Africanus, in his fortieth year, in this imaginary autobiography of the famous geographer, adventurer, and scholar Hasan al-Wazzan, who was born in Granada in 1488. His family fled the Inquisition and took him to the city of Fez, in North Africa. Hasan became an itinerant merchant, and made many journeys to the East, journeys rich in adventure and observation. He was captured by a Sicilian pirate and taken back to Rome as a gift to Pope Leo X, who baptized him Johannes Leo. While in Rome, he wrote the first trilingual dictionary (Latin, Arabic and Hebrew), as well as his celebrated Description of Africa, for which he is still remembered as Leo Africanus.

    Horrified at having witnessed her father's murder and fearing that the killers are agents of Queen Elizabeth I, eleven-year-old Alice Tuckfield hides in the Yorkshire cathedral by disguising herself as one of the choirboys.

    Disguising herself as a eunuch she flees Ephesus for Alexandria, then the center of learning. There she apprentices to a Jewish doctor but eventually becomes drawn into Church politics and is forced once again to flee. She serves as an army doctor at a Roman outpost in Thrace until, kidnapped by barbarian Visigoths, she finds her destiny to heal and also to be a woman and a wife.

    Sixteen-year-old Jem and her servant struggle to keep things going at home in Trenton, New Jersey, when the family men join the war for independence from the British king.

     Young Harry McGann is forced to flee Ireland for the unknown shores of America. On that voyage he meets Elizabeth Bartlett, who seems as far beyond his reach as the stars which guide him across the Atlantic. Through the years that follow, Harry finds himself involved in the formation of the American Navy. It is a world of intrigue, violence and untold dangers at sea. But always the memory of Elizabeth is there … and their paths are destined to cross again and again. ‘Old Glory’ is a tale of blistering naval battles and wild romance on the high seas. It is the first book in The McGann saga.

    each) : analog.Part Two Of Two Parts It is 30,000 years ago, the final Ice Age of the Pleistocene Epoch. The earth is peopled by Neanderthals -- squat, bow-legged, nonverbal, they live in clans, exist by foraging, and are ruled by taboos. The Cro-Magnons, the people who will replace them, are just emerging. When an earthquake destroys a Cro-Magnon dwelling, they tame the prairie, to the sudden fortune of a lucky few. "A ripping yarn...a gorgeous piece of work." (Saturday Review of Literature)

    Oakleigh Manor is the home of Rosalind Vernon who lives alone but for her devoted servants and an ill-natured parrot, cut off from the outside world by the tragic result of a childhood accident. But Rosalind is brave and bright and totally devoid of self-pity - and it is these qualities which, as the days pass and the snow continues to fall, touch Amberley's heart. On his return to London, the Marquis persuades Rosalind's brother, Philip, to bring her to town for a taste of society, despite her handicap. But the course of Amberley's courtship is far from smooth. Philip Vernon actively dislikes him; Rosalind appears to be falling under the spell of the suavely elegant Duke of Rockliffe; and worse still, Amberley is haunted by a dark and terrible secret that, if revealed, may cause him to lose Rosalind forever.

    She is in search of others like herself...and in search of love. Driven by energies she scarcely understands, she explores where the clan never dared to travel. In a hidden valley, she finds not only a herd of steppe horses, but also a unique kinship with animals as vulnerable as herself. Still, nothing prepares her for the emotional turmoil she feels when she rescues a young man, Jondalar -- the first of the Others she has seen -- from almost certain death.

    Martin is shown the leather-bound journal of another ruined man, former British cabinet minister Edwin Strafford.Martin is offered a job - to return to England and investigate the rise and fall of Strafford, an ambitious young politician whose downfall, in 1910, is as mysterious as the strange deaths that still haunt his family.Martin is intrigued. Strafford resigned at the height of his career, disappearing from the public eye. The woman he loved, for whom he was willing to sacrifice everything, suddenly and coldly rejected him. All the reasons for his fall from grace are shrouded in darkness.Martin's investigations trigger a violent series of events, throwing him straight into the path of those who believed they had escaped punishment for crimes long past but never paid for ... And Martin himself may find that he must risk his life to discover the truth.

    Erskine's extraordinary romance has been translated into 17 languages and has sold well over a million copies worldwide.

    This special value-edition book contains three novels ( Heather Hills of Stonewycke, Flight From Stonewycke, and Lady of Stonewycke) under one cover. Combining all the excitement and romance you'd expect from lavish historical fiction, with the strong spiritual message characteristic of authors Phillips and Pella, the trilogy will sweep you across generations and open doors to a world you will never forget.The story at the heart of The Stonewycke Trilogy has lost none of its romantic and exciting edge. A sweeping saga of three generations in the lives of an aristocratic Scottish family, the trilogy revolves around Margaret Duncan and the rest of her clan. Though only seventeen, Margaret feels the distance between her parents is increasing and that she is becoming alienated from her beloved father. Into this tense family circumstance arrives Ian, a spoiled distant cousin who gains a good influence among the believers living in this idyllic Scottish community.Woven around the touching family drama are all the trappings of great fiction. A secret excavation, an evil conspiracy, an unannounced wedding, and an unsolved murder are all part of this epic trilogy written by a talented and beloved writing team.

    He is a handsome English aristocrat, sprawled in the dunes, dying of thirst. She is a white-skinned savage, fleeing the aborigine tribe that found her and raised her but still shunned the fiery-haired outcast.Suddenly, Meg is about to escape her primitive life as Luke introduces her to the strange ways of Victorian England. In a search filled with adventure and excitement that spans three continents, Meg uncovers the clues to her true identity and realizes someone is trying to kill her. But the mysteries and secrets of the aborigines still pulse through the Victorian young lady, enabling Meg to triumph in the final desperate battle for survival and claim the only man she will ever love.

    Maryse Condé's imaginative subversion of historical records forms a critique of contemporary American society and its ingrained racism and sexism." —THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBEAt the age of seven, Tituba watched as her mother was hanged for daring to wound a plantation owner who tried to rape her. She was raised from then on by Mama Yaya, a gifted woman who shared with her the secrets of healing and magic. But it was Tituba's love of the slave John Indian that led her from safety into slavery, and the bitter, vengeful religion practiced by the good citizens of Salem, Massachusetts. Though protected by the spirits, Tituba could not escape the lies and accusations of that hysterical time. As history and fantasy merge, Maryse Condé, acclaimed author of Tree of Life and Segu, creates the richly imagined life of a fascinating woman.

    each) : analog.Part Two Of Two Parts In this second novel of the Earth's Children saga, Ayla, the unforgettable heroine of THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, sets out solo into a world far from friendly. She is in search of Others like herself...and in search of love. Driven by energies she scarcely understands, she explores where the clan never dared to travel. In a hidden valley she finds not only a herd of steppe horses, but also a unique kinship with animals as vulnerable as herself. Still, nothing prepares her for the emotional turmoil she feels when she rescues a young man, Jondalar -- the first of the Others she has seen -- from almost certain death.

    The invasion of white society threatens to change their traditional way of life, and they must choose to fight or assimilate. The story is a powerful portrait of a fading way of life. The story culminates with the historic Marias Massacre of 1870, in which the U.S. Cavalry mistakenly killed a friendly band of Blackfeet, consisting mostly of non-combatants."A major contribution to Native American literature." -- Wallace Stegner.

    Bill, aging and sick but still able to best any man in a fair gunfight, just wants to be left alone to drink and play cards. But in this town of played-out miners, bounty hunters, upstairs girls, Chinese immigrants, and various other entrepeneurs and miscreants, he finds himself pursued by a vicious sheriff, a perverse whore man bent on revenge, and a besotted Calamity Jane. Fueled by liquor, sex, and violence, this is the real wild west, unlike anything portrayed in the dime novels that first told its story.

    He appeared to be ordinary enough but behind his rough charm lay some remarkable qualities, which were to have a great and lasting effect on the future lives of Fiona and the children. Before long Fiona and Bill are married and they embark on a life together. They adopt a child and have one of their own. But their path is never smooth, and fluctuating fortunes take them from success to failure and back again... Collected together in one volume for the first time, Catherine Cookson's first three Bill Bailey novels are richly entertaining tales of family life and relationships which touch the heart and offer much shrewd observation of the human condition.

    A shrewd mission-educated Maori, Coates/Kooti, perceived as a thorn in the colonial flesh, escapes imprisonment and returns to Poverty Bay with a small band of followers. Kooti becomes the ruthless leader of a considerable native army, his Bible studies leading him to see himself and his people as latter-day Israelites. The story of what follows is told through the eyes of Captain Fairweather, a British army officer turned artist, an eminently humane man whose attempts to mend relations between natives and settlers meet with signal failure; while his wryly professional view of the beleaguered colony changes after a brutal attack on the half-Maori women he loves and her family. All main characters in this strange but true novel are historical and the tragic climax occurred in 1869 with the execution of a harmless and uncomprehending young Maori - an example.

    From Morgan Llywelyn, bestselling author of Lion of Ireland and the Irish Century novels, comes the story of a magnificent, sixteenth-century heroine whose spirit and passion are the spirit and passion of Ireland itself.Grania (Gaelic for Grace) is no ordinary female. And she lives in extraordinary times. For even as Grania rises as her clan's unofficial head and breadwinner and learns to love a man, she enters a lifelong struggle against the English forces of Queen Elizabeth -- her nemesis and alter ego.Elizabeth intends to destroy Grania's piracy and shipping empire--and so subjugate Ireland once and for all. But Grania, aided by Tigernan, her faithful (and secretly adoring) lieutenant, has no choice but to fight back. The story of her life is the story of Ireland's fight for solidarity and survival--but it's also the story of Grania's growing ability to love and be strong at the same time.Morgan Llywelyn has written a rich, historically accurate, and passionate novel of divided Ireland -- and of one brave woman who is Ireland herself.

    Samantha's stories describe her life during this important period of change. Her own world is filled with frills and finery, parties and play. But Samantha sees that times are not good for everybody. That's why she tries to make a difference in the life of her friend Nellie, a servant girl whose world is nothing like Samantha's Samantha befriends a servant girl named Nellie who moves in next door. The girls become fast friends, though their lives are different.

    Though Japanese, eleven-year-old Yoko has lived with her family in northern Korea near the border with China all her life. But when the Second World War comes to an end, Japanese on the Korean peninsula are suddenly in terrible danger; the Korean people want control of their homeland and they want to punish the Japanese, who have occupied their nation for many years. Yoko, her mother and sister are forced to flee from their beautiful house with its peaceful bamboo grove. Their journey is terrifying -- and remarkable. It's a true story of courage and survival.

    Wounded and adrift for days, he washes ashore on the German-occupied island of Jersey. The news spreads panic through the Allied high command: Kelso knows the time and place of the invasion. He must be rescued -- or silenced. A British professor turned Nazi impersonator and a young Jersey girl posing as his mistress set off to find Kelso in the fiercely guarded island fortress. The pair join a deadly game of wits that they must win....or perish in the darkness of the "Night of the Fox"

    Outcast and wanderer, Joe Cobden, a half-breed hunchback, becomes Joe Buffalo, famed Kansas buffalo hunter of the 1870s until the buffalo herds diminish and he must learn to live a conventional life.

    Moving up into the mountains of Tennessee introduces Rachel to a possible calling, as she learns about folk medicine from a local healer, until the Civil War divides the family loyalties and brings romance into her life.

    This trilogy, which incorporates Lords of Misrule, A Folly of Prices and The Captive Crown, reveals how the ruling House of Stewart managed to cling to power despite being a family torn by hatred and jealousy.

    Latro, a mercenary soldier from the north, has suffered a head wound in battle and has been separated from his compatriots. He has not only lost the memory of who he is and where he is from, he has also lost the ability to remember from day to day and must live out of context in an eternal present, every day rediscovering the shreds of his identity and the nature of the world around him, aided only by a written record that he attempts to continue daily and must read every morning.But in recompense for his unhappy condition Latro has received the ability to see and converse with invisible beings, all the gods and goddesses, ghosts and demons and werewolves, who inhabit the land and affect the lives of others, all unseen. Everyone knows that supernatural creatures are constantly around them and sometimes, under special circumstances, can perceive them—but Latro is now constantly able to penetrate the veil of the supernatural, which is both a triumph and a danger.

    Four years later, to distract her from her fear as cannonballs batter the besieged city, Rosemary writes about what she has been through.While she has been growing up, enjoying the social pleasures of a Southern young lady, the tensions between North and South have developed into civil war. Because she is English, Rosemary brings an outsider's perspective to the issues that sparked the conflict, but nonetheless she is torn between her sense of outrage at the very idea of slavery and her feelings for the Southerners she has come to love. For Rosemary, her brother Derek, and their American friends -- old and young, white and black -- the disastrous siege of Vicksburg comes as a crucial test of courage and the will to survive.Once again, Patricia Clapp has created a heroine of wit, charm, and indomitable spirit in a vividly evoked historical setting.

     When Joseph Drayton, the head of the family, refuses to let his sister marry — and, what’s more, sends her suitor packing — he little knows what turmoil he’s creating for the future. For Jessica is pregnant by her lover, and her predicament has far reaching consequences in the close-knit community of the Staffordshire village of Burslem. Joseph Drayton, Master Potter, is immaculate in velvet and lace, narrow-minded in the efficiency with which he runs the family business but untrammelled in his private ambitions. Those ambitions include Meg, the spirited gypsy girl who slaves in his turning sheds, but not Martin, his gifted younger brother. Martin is bound by indentures to work five years in Joseph’s pot bank, but longs for the day when he comes into the Drayton legacy and can express his artistry in a more personal way. In this he is helped by his friend, Simon Kendall, the canal digger, a humble genius who can neither read nor write but whose vision as an architect and engineer transforms the potteries trade… The Drayton Legacy is an involving novel, rich in character and detail, which takes as its background the rapidly industrialising potteries of the 18th century. Told with humour and insight, the story of The Drayton Legacy will grip all readers who enjoy colourful, authentic historical romance.

    (Nancy Pearl)

    Barbara Helfgott Hyett heard poems in the eyewitness testimony of United States soldiers. She has shaped the words of thirty speakers into a songle narrative, a single voice.

    The year is 1936. The rise of fascism has plunged Spain into savage conflict. Ever since his father died fighting for the Republicans in Spain, Will has felt drawn to their cause; but when he tries to join up as a volunteer in the International Brigade he is told he is too young.So Will travels to London where he meets a group of young men committed to the Republican cause. Together they embark on a perilous journey through France in a van they call Pegasus, carrying smuggled guns and ammunition. They narrowly escape the clutches of the French authorities and finally reach the Spanish border.Will and his comrades are soon in combat, first in the freezing, rat-infested trenches of the Aragon front, then in defence of supply routes vital to the failing Republican cause at Jarama. Will meets Molly, a volunteer nurse. They are captured by Moroccan troops serving under General Franco. Together they seize a chance to escape north, reaching Guernica, a small market town as yet untouched by war. Yet Guernica’s symbolic significance is far greater than its physical size, for it is the home of the Freedom Tree, a sacred oak under whose branches the liberties of the people of the Basque country are sworn and reaffirmed. It is market day, April 1937. The townsfolk are going about their quiet business as usual…until there comes the sound of approaching aircraft: German Heinkel-51s, followed by Junker-52s, fighter planes and bombers, about to launch history’s first blitzkrieg on a defenceless population.

    Spanning two hundred years, this saga of romance and adventure in the untamed Alaska wilderness begins with Tasha Tarakanov, a beautiful Aleut woman, and her beloved Andrei, a noble and ambitious Cossack hunter. From their union come seven generations of proud Alaskans, including the beautiful Marisha, who finds her fortune as a legendary madam, and Wylie Cole, who bravely defends his homeland during World War II. Glorious and grand, The Great Alone is a story of brave young men and women, whose dreams, heritage, betrayals, loves, and fortitude are as vast and wild as the land from which they sprang.

    The Trilogy spans over 100 years and depicts the hard but rewarding life of three generations of the Zande Allan family. The Big Sur Coast extends 100 miles from Carmel to San Simeon and is bordered by the Santa Lucia Mountains and Pacific Ocean. This remote wilderness contains some of the most rugged terrain in the American continent. From the beginning of time the south coast was accessible only by foot, mule or horseback. Although inhabited by three nomadic American Indian tribes, the Spaniards refused to travel along the coast because of the high mountains, steep canyons and dangerous water crossings.In the 1870s a partial wagon road was built from Mal Paso Crossing to Bixby Creek Ranch. The next 74 miles of the Big Sur Coast was not accessible by auto until 1937 with the opening of Highway One, which took eighteen years to build, mostly by convict labor using dynamite and steam shovels.When completed, it became the only road in the United States that went directly from a horse trail to an auto road, thus bypassing the traditional, interim wagon road. The road changed forever the lives of the Big Sur homesteaders as the mainstream modern American culture motored into their once-private coast.Before the road, few ‘outlanders’ visited the south coast because travel was strenuous, the trail precarious and the homesteads were few and far between, but those who ventured there were greeted with coast hospitality, lively conversation and ranch grown food.The Big Sur pioneer families worked long hours and full days with little time for frills or fancy things, and they had no patience for what was not plain spoken. A trip to Monterey to buy supplies or to Salinas to sell cattle took three hard days by horseback along narrow trails at the edge of granite cliffs often falling straight to the sea some 2000 feet below. Twice a year the ranchers would gather for a coast barbecue with neighbors on the beach while waiting for the cargo schooner to arrive and winch ashore their load of hard stock supplies too bulky for pack mule or horse. The second novel is named after one of Zande and Hannah’s twin children, Blaze Allan, who took her stubborn likenesses from her father and her tender feelings and love for natural things from her mother.She could sit a saddle as good as any man on the coast, but she was a sensitive and beautiful woman. But when father Zande sternly informed her about his plans to marry her off to a young man not to her liking, she rebelled against his wishes. One day she met a stranger on the trail, a tan bark stripper. She fell in love with this passing stranger and dreamed about him as she struggled against her father’s plan to marry a man she despised. A young Spaniard, Pete Garcia, teased Blaze into fetching Abalone in a remote cove on rocky beach, but once there, his interest quickly changed from Abalone to Amore. As a proper coast girl who was not about to lose her reputation, she rejected his advances. But as the tide came in they became trapped in the cove, which would cause a forbidden overnight stay. Knowing the coast folks would assume the worst and gossip about her, against Blazes’ wishes, Pete tried swimming for help, but he drowned in the powerful surf. Although still pure and innocent, during Pete’s funeral her father and neighbors shunned her as a ruined woman and blamed her for Pete’s death, then her rejected suitor spread the false rumor that they had been together, further tarnishing her reputation.

    At twenty-six, still a spinster and heiress to her mother's potato pie shop, she's resigned to a lonely old age. But toiling over the bake-house fire she dreams of a better world - a world of glamour and romance as seen on the silver screen. Then she meets Sam a dashing Clark Gable look-alike and chauffeur to a wealthy London businessman - and suddenly her life is changed forever... and the woman who had resigned herself to being an 'old maid', finds herself embarking on an affair with a married man.

    

    Although he is made from wood, he has real feelings. Jenny is special. When she rides Sunflower, something magical happens both to him and to her.

    Sachiko, set in Nagasaki in the painful years between 1930 and 1945, is the story of two young people trying to find love during yet another period in which Japanese Christians were accused of disloyalty to their country.In the 1930s, two young Japanese Christians, Sachiko and Shūhei, are free to play with American children in their neighborhood. But life becomes increasingly difficult for them and other Christians after Japan launches wars of aggression. Meanwhile, a Polish Franciscan priest and former missionary in Nagasaki, Father Maximillian Kolbe, is arrested after returning to his homeland. Endō alternates scenes between Nagasaki--where the growing love between Sachiko and Shūhei is imperiled by mounting persecution--and Auschwitz, where the priest has been sent. Shūhei's dilemma deepens when he faces conscription into the Japanese military, conflicting with the Christian belief that killing is a sin. With the A-bomb attack on Nagasaki looming in the distance, Endō depicts ordinary people trying to live lives of faith in a wartime situation that renders daily life increasingly unbearable. Endō's compassion for his characters, reflecting their struggles to find and share love for others, makes Sachiko one of his most moving novels.