Justin Gilead and Alexander Zharkov are two men born on the same day on opposite sides of the world who are driven by forces they cannot understand to battle against each other - for only one of them can be the Grandmaster.

    But the countryside and people are war-battered, and their reception at the Chateau Beaumesnil is not all the open-hearted Americans could wish for.

    The really unfortunate took years. The survivors - people like me, who had the blood group that kept us safe from the disease - were now targets for those who believed our blood could save them.I survived for three years. I lived alone, spending my days avoiding the fascist Blackshirts who wanted my blood for their dying leader. Then I met the others - and life got complicated all over again . . .

    A closeted gay teacher, Griffin Brooke has witnessed the monumental changes his nation has undergone since being crushed by Germany’s superior fighting forces twenty-two years earlier. First came the financial collapse and crippling inflation, then the fascist uprising in the thirties that brought John Arthur to power. Now, in 1940, England has resurrected itself—but at a terrible cost. With homosexuality decreed a serious crime against the state by the dictator who was once his most avid student, Griffin has remained silent while England’s gay population has mysteriously dwindled . . . along with the nation’s Jews. But in the twilight of his years, elevated to the role of tutor in an Oxford college, Griffin is getting anxious. Thinking back on a life lived in shadow—and on his one great love affair with a young soldier during the height of the Great War—Griffin knows that revealing a secret he has guarded for decades could have devastating consequences for Britain, the world, and especially for the fascist tyrant Arthur, who cites his former teacher as a mentor and major influence.

    Also includes the novella Sole Sacrifice.The Kinshield Legacy (book 1)A mysterious stone tablet with five magical gems has sat abandoned in a cave for two hundred years. The kingdom is in ruins, with only warrant knights to keep the peace. But then, the gems in the tablet, one by one, disappear.Warrant knight Gavin Kinshield is a man of many secrets. He's the one deciphering the runes in the tablet. Unless he can find a suitable replacement, he'll be Thendylath's next king. All he really wants is the letter written by his ancestor Ronor Kinshield, champion to King Arek, confessing the truth of how the king perished... a letter he must earn by tracking down a common thief.But when Gavin saves a woman's life, what should have been a simple task draws him face-to-face with his nightmarish past... and the truth of King Arek's demise.The Wayfarer King (book 2)Beyonders, evil beings that materialize without warning from the realm of chaos, continue to invade the world of men, destroying everything -- and everyone -- in their path. The most powerful of them all, Ritol, has been confined for two hundred years inside the palace in Thendylath, trapped by King Arek's magic.Having newly claimed the right to rule Thendylath as king, Gavin Kinshield has no money or army, but he's determined to protect his people from the beyonder attacks. With his new power of Wayfarer, Gavin has the ability to journey to all seven realms. To end the invasion, he must travel to the realm of chaos and summon Ritol. But can he escape before the beyonder champion kills him, devours his soul and takes his place as Wayfarer?If wizard Brodas Ravenkind has his way, Gavin will never make it that far. Not only does Ravenkind want the throne for himself, he wants revenge for his cousin's murder too. After all, he made a promise the first time Gavin crossed him…

    But she’s the only one strong enough to break the family cycle.In Depression-era Mississippi, Millie Reynolds longs to escape the madness that marks her world. With an abusive father and a “nothing mama,” she struggles to find a place where she really belongs. For answers,Millie turns to the Gypsies who caravan through town each spring. The travelers lead Millie to a key that unlocks generations of shocking family secrets. When tragedy strikes, the mysterious contents of the box give Millie the tools she needs to break her family’s longstanding cycle of madness and abuse. Through it all, Millie experiences the thrill of first love while fighting to trust the God she believes has abandoned her. With the power of forgiveness, can Millie finally make her way into the free?Saturated in Southern ambiance and written in the vein of other Southern literary bestsellers like The Help by Kathryn Stockett and CrookedLetter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, Julie Cantrell has created Into theFree—now a New York Times bestseller—a story that will sweep you away long after the novel ends.

    Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole–and the grown woman whose story is no less enthralling.But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful?Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.” Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year–the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.That story, a wild tale of rabbits, queens, and a precocious young child, becomes a sensation the world over. Its author, a shy, stuttering Oxford professor, does more than immortalize Alice–he changes her life forever. But even he cannot stop time, as much as he might like to. And as Alice’s childhood slips away, a peacetime of glittering balls and royal romances gives way to the urgent tide of war. For Alice, the stakes could not be higher, for she is the mother of three grown sons, soldiers all. Yet even as she stands to lose everything she treasures, one part of her will always be the determined, undaunted Alice of the story, who discovered that life beyond the rabbit hole was an astonishing journey.A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire.

    And her father’s wisdom and empathy are as unusual as his despised profession. It is 1659, the Thirty Years’ War has finally ended, and there hasn’t been a witchcraft mania in decades. But now, a drowning and gruesomely injured boy, tattooed with the mark of a witch, is pulled from a river and the villagers suspect the local midwife, Martha Stechlin.Jakob Kuisl is charged with extracting a confession from her and torturing her until he gets one. Convinced she is innocent, he, Magdalena, and her would-be suitor race against the clock to find the true killer. Approaching Walpurgisnacht, when witches are believed to dance in the forest and mate with the devil, another tattooed orphan is found dead and the town becomes frenzied. More than one person has spotted what looks like the devil—a man with a hand made only of bones. The hangman, his daughter, and the doctor’s son face a terrifying and very real enemy.Page Numbers Source ISBN: 054774501X

    With language as taut as classic works by Cormac McCarthy, and a richness reminiscent of early Toni Morrison, Marlon James reveals his unique narrative command that will firmly establish his place as one of today's freshest, most talented young writers.In the village of Gibbeah--where certain women fly and certain men protect secrets with their lives--magic coexists with religion, and good and evil are never as they seem. In this town, a battle is fought between two men of God. The story begins when a drunkard named Hector Bligh (the "Rum Preacher") is dragged from his pulpit by a man calling himself "Apostle" York. Handsome and brash, York demands a fire-and-brimstone church, but sets in motion a phenomenal and deadly struggle for the soul of Gibbeah itself. John Crow's Devil is a novel about religious mania, redemption, sexual obsession, and the eternal struggle inside all of us between the righteous and the wicked.

    What we don’t know is why. Excavations at a recently discovered Mayan site near Valladolid in the Yucatan unearth a codex – the first to be discovered in over 50 years. A mangled body is found among the ruins. It belongs to Father Colvin McNeery, an expert on the Gospel of Matthew, the only Gospel to mention the Star of Bethlehem. The local police say he was killed by a jaguar. Dr. Isabel Reyes, renegade daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Mexico, is called away from her clinic to issue a death certificate. She wonders, when she sees the claw marks, what sort of jaguar is left-handed? Ex-rabbi and scholar Simon Press has just seen another of his controversial lectures on the spread of Christianity end in violence. He’s back at his hotel nursing a scotch when he gets the news that his friend and colleague, Colvin McNeery, is dead in the Yucatan. Press has always been resentful of Christianity’s success; what he finds in McNeery’s translation of the codex will allow him to get even. Detective First Class Benito Rufino of the Antiquities Police is pulled off a sting he’s spent nine months setting up, and ordered to Valladolid. He’s furious until he finds out why: a codex worth $500 million pesos is missing. Leon Cortes - devout Catholic and a direct descendant of the Conquistador - has become drug overlord for all of the Yucatan because he believes his faith requires him to mortify his soul as his Savior mortified his body. Now he’s ordered by the Vatican to find the codex and send it to them. The 1500 year old codex contains an account of a holy man, a savior who is born under a bright star to a virgin, performs miracles, dies a horrible death, and is resurrected. If McNeery’s translation of the codex is correct, then something is radically wrong with the conventional accounts of the European discovery of the Americas. Or - and this is the only other possibility - something is radically wrong with Christianity’s notion of itself. Mayan Star is mystery/thriller with a Borgesian twist.

    The story takes place in the fictional town of Millport, VA (based upon Galax, VA - the author's hometown). The thrilling, chilling story of a family torn apart by death and double-dealing begins with Callie Elizabeth, an eighth grade girl with a normal life. At least her life was pretty normal until she finds herself alone staring into the eyes of a crying photograph which is over 100 years old. Who is the girl in the photograph and why does she look so much like Callie? Why does the girl in the photograph keep appearing to Callie and what does she want from her? As Callie seeks to find the answers to these questions, she finds herself tangled in a web of family secrets, haunting visits, and espionage. What really happened that night of April 14 and the early morning of April 15,1912 as the majestic Titanic sank to its watery grave? How can Callie find the answers that will put to rest the ghost of her family's past? With the help of a good friend, her grandmother's love of history, and her own keen perception Callie uncovers a devious plot that was carried out 100 years prior. Learning from the past, Callie discovers treasures that have been hidden away for almost 100 years. "Trapped on the Titanic" is intended for ages 8+. To learn more about the characters and setting visit tammyknoxbooks.com.

    One of a series of top-quality fiction for schools, this is a collection of stories of a Lancashire childhood, of football in the streets, fishing, fighting and school, of growing up and looking for work, and of characters such as Spit Nolan the champion trolley-rider, and Sam Dalt the goalkeeper.

    Is it the ghost of a child who was murdered there years before - or is there a deeper mystery?

    Two years after their twin daughters died in a flash flood, Terry and Laura Sheldon, a Vermont state trooper and his wife, take in a foster child. His name is Alfred; he is ten years old and African American. And he has passed through so many indifferent families that he can’t believe that his new one will last. In the ensuing months Terry and Laura will struggle to emerge from their shell of grief only to face an unexpected threat to their marriage; Terry’s involvement with another woman. Meanwhile, Alfred cautiously enters the family circle, and befriends an elderly neighbor who inspires him with the story of the buffalo soldiers, the black cavalrymen of the old West. Out of the entwining and unfolding of their lives, The Buffalo Soldier creates a suspenseful, moving portrait of a family, infused by Bohjalian’s moral complexity and narrative assurance.

    Each new settlement asks for a new journal, and so this Book of Shadows begins.In the spring of 1628, the Witchfinder of Wessex finds himself a true Witch. As Bess Hawksmith watches her mother swing from the Hanging Tree she knows that only one man can save her from the same fate at the hands of the panicked mob: the Warlock Gideon Masters, and his Book of Shadows. Secluded at his cottage in the woods, Gideon instructs Bess in the Craft, awakening formidable powers she didn't know she had and making her immortal. She couldn't have foreseen that even now, centuries later, he would be hunting her across time, determined to claim payment for saving her life.In present-day England, Elizabeth has built a quiet life for herself, tending her garden and selling herbs and oils at the local farmers' market. But her solitude abruptly ends when a teenage girl called Tegan starts hanging around. Against her better judgment, Elizabeth begins teaching Tegan the ways of the Hedge Witch, in the process awakening memories—and demons—long thought forgotten.Part historical romance, part modern fantasy, The Witch’s Daughter is a fresh, compelling take on the magical, yet dangerous world of Witches. Readers will long remember the fiercely independent heroine who survives plagues, wars, and the heartbreak that comes with immortality to remain true to herself, and protect the protégé she comes to love.