Book picks similar to
Hatari! by Michael Milner
fiction
four-star
historical-fiction
travel
But Can You Drink the Water? (Droll, witty and utterly British)
Jan Hurst-Nicholson - 2010
Laugh out loud as they encounter ‘crocodiles’ on the wall, strange African customs and unintelligible Afrikaans accents. Cringe with them as their visiting in-laws embarrass them in front of their new SA friends.If you enjoyed Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine you will recognise Mavis Turner.Set in the 1970s, But Can You Drink The Water? uses subtle observational humour with an underlying pathos to portray the upsets, hurt and changing family dynamics that emigration brings. (The story is based on a 13-part sitcom) ReviewWith a droll, witty, utterly British voice, this manuscript tackles playfully and sincerely the age-old fish out of water tale. What sustains this book, however, is the narrative voice, the dry and self-deprecating humor, and the ability of this author to tell a story simply and well. Publisher’s Weekly reviewer for the ABNA semi-finals.
A Tale of Two Sisters: A heartfelt historical drama of intrigue, love and loss in a strange land
Merryn Allingham - 2019
But as their search uncovers unforeseen dangers and exposes an unexpected ardour, is Alice ready for the truths they’ll uncover?
An emotional historical drama perfect for fans of Linda Finlay and Rosie Goodwin
Hammer of God
Philip McCormac - 2015
On this occasion, the men in question are vicious thugs and killers. They don't give in easy. And mostly he brings them in slung over a saddle. But after tracking and killing a group of merciless bandits, he realises the bloodshed is too much for him. He resigns his badge and rides south to Mexico where he hangs up his guns. The peaceful life Joe is seeking is wrecked when the notorious bandit Gomez Farias guns down his friends. The Hammer of God is roused. The blood that flowed in his former life as lawman was but a trickle compared to the flood unleashed when Joe rides out on the vengeance trail… Hammer of God is a thrilling and classic adventure story set in the Wild West. Praise for Philip McCormac 'You can taste the dust and blood of the Old West on every page.' - Tom Kasey, best-selling author of Trade Off. Philip McCormac lives in the East Midlands, England, is married with two grown-up children and five grandchildren. He is the author of fourteen Western novels including Son of a Gun and Vengeance Unbound. He is also the author of detective thriller Tone Death.
Gabon: A Magical Novel of Nineteenth Century Africa
Marius Gabriel - 2011
Intelligent, charming and handsome, Jean-Patrice has Paris at his feet. But when he embarks on a passionate affair with the beautiful wife of a superior, his brilliant career in the Civil Service goes south. Packed off to the equatorial colony of Gabon to avoid a scandal, Jean-Patrice is plunged from the City of Light into the Heart of Darkness. In the company of cannibals, ghosts, witchdoctors and a gorilla named Chloe, he is forced to revise everything he has learned and find the true meaning of courage and love. Told with humor and compassion, this is the story of a young man's coming of age in the last months of the 19th Century. Also by Marius Gabriel: THE MASK OF TIME ‘Keeps you reading while your dinner burns… Great fun.’ Cosmopolitan THE SEVENTH MOON ‘Few thrillers have as strong a sense of atmosphere and adventure as this fascinating tale.’ Chicago Tribune
The Cotton Blossom: A Novel
Dawn Gardner - 2020
She’s an aspiring, young seamstress who is enchanted by a charming new suitor. His worldly ways and grandeur captivate her—until secrets, lies and unsavory behaviors bring her harm.Uncovering more than she ever imagined, Lillie is pushed to make decisions that she never expected. With the help of a close family friend and her brother Frank, Lillie tries to leave behind her mistakes.The discovery of a 1951 convertible dragged out of its watery grave leads reporters to the doorstep of Lillie Mae. The Cotton Blossom is a spellbinding journey about finding your power, learning from your mistakes and trusting your heart.
A Mother's Trust
Dilly Court - 2011
Phoebe's father was killed in gang warfare and she and her family share a deep hatred for the Paxman brothers - whose lawless ways strike terror into the whole community.Despite her English mother's feckless ways, Phoebe is fiercely protective of Annie. Then just as the family are about to go to Italy for the winter, Phoebe discovers Annie is in trouble - and the Paxmans are involved. Phoebe is determined not to betray her mother's trust and, giving up her own chance of happiness, she stays behind to care for her. But when Phoebe and Annie are forced to leave London and Annie falls dangerously ill, Phoebe has little choice but to turn to the man she holds responsible for all her family's troubles...
A New Dawn: A Titanic short story
AnneMarie Brear - 2016
Escaping a brutal father, Briony runs to James, the man she loves. With his family’s blessing, they marry and prepare for a new life in a new country – America. A wedding gift of two tickets to travel on an ocean liner is a wonderful surprise. Full of anticipation and hope, they set sail. Only, fate has sent them a challenge that tests, not just their strength and love, but their very survival.
Just the Memory of Love
Peter Rimmer
But when young love is dashed in one sweet, pure moment, Will self-inflicts exile… to Africa, the start of his odyssey through life. Will’s older, astute and devious brother, Byron, has his own ideas on making his way through life, making money no matter who he treads on and that includes his own family. After four years away, Will returns to England with a small fortune. Seeking Byron’s advice, but unbeknown to Will, he is deceitfully manipulated. Money is the driver. Life becomes misplaced. Complicated. Africa becoming further away. Lost in his concrete desert with the thirst to fabricate her memory, how strong is the power of love? This is Peter Rimmer’s third standalone book in his African Trilogy. The first being Cry of the Fish Eagle and the second, Vultures in the Wind. Just the Memory of Love is philosophical, poignant and evocative sprinkled with a tapestry of deeply rich and entertaining characters. Rimmer has that rare ability to transport you to another time and place whether that be a soft, gentle English summer or the violence and terror of an Africa storm. Pick up Just the Memory of Love today and immerse yourself in Peter Rimmer’s latest novel.
Across the Wilderness
Pamela Ackerson - 2014
A time-travel romance where a Sioux warrior from the 1800's meets a contemporary woman doctor, Across the Wilderness is a love story that transcends time, bringing two soul mates together on a journey interwoven with romance, revenge, and intrigue.
The Great Pagan Army
Vaughn Heppner - 2010
They are the Great Pagan Army—the largest array of Vikings ever assembled into one host. No army or city can resist them; no one dares… until a crippled young count finds an old Roman book on tactics. With a handful of desperate knights, Count Odo fortifies the river fortress of Paris and awaits the savage host. Neither he nor the Vikings realize that this will be young Paris’s most brutal siege and of incredibly fateful importance. THE GREAT PAGAN ARMY is the recreation of a historical campaign of brutal savagery. It is a full novel, 113,000 words in length by bestselling author Vaughn Heppner.
Ghost Train
C.J. Petit - 2021
The scheduled train from Granger was overdue by three hours. He’d suspected a mechanical breakdown or maybe even a derailment. But the engineer of the next train to use that track had just reported that he hadn’t found any signs of the train.He had no idea how an entire train could simply vanish, but as he pondered the mystery, the head telegrapher came to his office and showed him a telegram that had been sent to Union Pacific headquarters. It was a ransom demand for a hundred thousand dollars. If it wasn’t paid within a week, the train and its thirty-four passengers would be blown up.He hurried out of his office and rushed through the early morning streets to tell the resident Union Pacific special agent of the kidnapped train. It was Nelson Cook’s problem now.
The Dressmaker's Son
Abbi Sherman Schaefer - 2013
Rachael's family comes to America to start a new life after fleeing the pogroms in Russia. Rebekah comes to America with her son, Samuel, fleeing his father, Misha, a Russian soldier with whom she had an affair and has threatened to take him away from her so he will not grow up as a Jew and the son of a cobbler. Set in the Lower East Side of New York and pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, Russia, both women adjust to life in America until Misha kidnaps Samuel and returns with him to Russia. How Rebekah rises to the challenge of earning enough money as a designer of women's gowns to return to St. Petersburg to find her son, and the difficulties she encounters while there, including murder and prison, show the reader the full extent of a mother's ingenuity and determination when it comes to her child. Rachael also faces the possibility of losing a child to war when her son Solomon enlists in the army as America's entry into World War I approaches.
Empire Day (New England Book 1)
James Philip - 2018
It is the day before Empire Day – 4th July - the day each year when the British Empire marks the brutal crushing of the rebellion dignified by the treachery of the fifty-six delegates to the Continental Congress who were so foolhardy as to sign the infamous Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on that day of infamy in 1776. It is nearly two hundred years since George Washington was killed and his Continental Army was destroyed in the Battle of Long Island and now New England, that most quintessentially loyal and ‘English’ imperial fiefdom – at least in the original, or ‘First Thirteen’ colonies - is about to celebrate its devotion to the Crown and the Old Country, of which it still views, in the main, as the ‘mother country’. Yet all is not roses. Since 1776 in a world of empires the British Empire has grown and prospered until now, it stands alone as the ultimate arbiter of global war and peace. The Royal Navy has enforced the global Pax Britannia for over a century since the World War of the 1860s established a lasting but increasingly tenuous ‘peace’ between the great powers. Nonetheless, while elsewhere the Empire may be creaking at the seams, struggling to come to terms with a growing desire for self-determination; thus far the Pax Britannica has survived – buttressed by the commercial and industrial powerhouse of New England stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific North West - intact for all that barely a year goes by without the outbreak of another small, colonial war somewhere... This said, the British ‘Imperial System’ remains the envy of its friends and enemies alike and nowhere has it been so successful as in North America, where peace and prosperity has ruled in the vast Canadian dominions and the twenty-nine old and recent colonies of the Commonwealth of New England for the best part of two centuries. In Whitehall every British government in living memory has complacently based its ‘American Policy’ on the one immutable, unchanging fact of New England politics; that the First Thirteen colonies will never agree with each other about anything, let alone that the sixteen ‘Johnny-come-lately’ new (that is, post-1776) colonies, protectorates, territories and possessions which comprise half the population and eight-tenths of the land area of New England, should ever have any say in their affairs! New England is a part of England and always will be because, axiomatically, it will never unite in a continental union. Notwithstanding, in the British body politic the myths and legends of that first late eighteenth-century rebellion in the New World still touches a raw nerve in the old country, much as in former epochs memories of Jacobin revolts, Oliver Cromwell and the Civil War still harry old deep-seated scars in the national psyche. Empire Day might not have originally been conceived as a celebration of the saving of the first British Empire and but as time has gone by it has come to symbolise the one, ineluctable truth about the Empire: that New England is the rock upon which all else stands, an empire within an empire that is greater than the sum of all the other parts of the great imperium ruled from London. In past times a troubling question has been whispered in the corridors of power in London: what would happen to the Empire – and the Pax Britannica – if the British hold on New England was ever to be loosened? Generations of British politicians have always known that if the question was ever to be asked again in earnest it has but one answer.
The Caesar Secret Box Set: Books 1-3
Ernest Dempsey - 2018
But soon after Desmond and his two friends, Corin and Diego, start exploring the museums and ancient ruins of Rome, fate, it seems, intervenes. Almost by accident, the kids find a hidden map that appears to lead to a heretofore unknown treasure—hidden long ago by none other than Julius Caesar himself, one of the most powerful emperors in all of recorded human history. But finding the hidden treasure proves to be just as difficult and inscrutable as Caesar himself, and unfortunately their hunt attracts a heap of unwanted attention from some seedy underworld characters. Now you can join the adventure with Desmond, Corin, and Diego with this complete digital box set of all three books in the Adventure Guild Trilogy of The Caesar Secret. Don't miss out on this page-turning adventure for all ages.
Tennis and the Masai
Nicholas Best - 1987
Drop him into a ghastly Kenya prep school in the middle of Rider Haggard country. A school where cricketing news comes by carrier pigeon, leopards are assaulted with a red-hot poker, and runaway boys are hunted down with spearmen and a pack of foxhounds... For Martin Riddle, the experience is unforgettable. For the riding mistress, Lady Bullivant, it is all part of the day's work. And for the headmaster, a disreputable ex-Guards officer, it is simply a means of staving off bankruptcy for a few more weeks. As for the Masai, tennis may be on the curriculum at Haggard Hall, but midnight meetings with naked warriors definitely are not! 'The funniest book I have read since David Lodge's Small World' - Sunday Times 'Wickedly funny' - Daily Mail 'Less savage than Evelyn Waugh, Best is every bit as sharp... an immensely enjoyable book' - Evening Standard 'Very good entertainment' - Sir Alec Guinness (Sunday Times book of the year) Nicholas Best's books have been translated into many languages. He was the Financial Times's fiction critic for ten years and was long-listed in 2010 for the Sunday Times-EFG Bank 30,000 award, the biggest short story prize in the world. For more details, see www.nicholasbest.co.uk