Double the 007: Casino Royale and Live and Let Die


Ian Fleming - 2012
    They are easier to fight for than principles'In Casino Royale, the first of Fleming's 007 adventures, a game of cards is James Bond's only chance to bring down the desperate SMERSH agent Le Chiffre. But Bond soon discovers that there is far more at stake than money.Live and Let Die'You start to die the moment you are born'Live and Let Die, Ian Fleming's second 007 novel, takes Bond from Harlem to Jamaica in a frenzied hunt for the deadly gangster Mr Big and his macabre network of associates.

The Biscuit Girls


Hunter Davies - 2014
    To those who didn’t know, the biscuit factory that towered over Carlisle might look like just another slice of the industrial North, a noisy and chaotic place with workers trooping in and out at all hours. For the biscuit girls it was a place where they worked hard, but also where they gossiped, got into scrapes and made lifelong friends. Outside the factory walls there might be difficult husbands or demanding kids, and sometimes even heartbreak and tragedy, but they knew there would always be an escape from their troubles at Carr's. Some, like Barbara, only applied because she needed the extra cash, until things got a bit easier at home. Her supervisor cross examined her about who would be looking after the kids while she was at work, but let her have the job. Like many of the women who joined up ‘temporary’ Barbara went on to stay at Carrs for 32 years.Beginning in the 1940s, these heartwarming and vividly-remembered stories have all been told by the women themselves to Hunter Davies.

Outside the Gates of Eden


Lewis Shiner - 2019
    Outside the Gates of Eden follows two men from their first meeting in high school to their final destination in the twenty-first century. Alex is torn between his father’s business empire and his own artistic yearnings. Cole finds his calling at a Bob Dylan concert in 1965. From the Summer of Love in San Francisco to Woodstock, from campus protests to the SoHo loft scene, from a commune in Virginia to the outlaw country music of Austin, the novel charts the rise and fall of the counterculture—and what came after. Using the music business as a window into half a century, Outside the Gates of Eden is both epic and intimate, starkly realistic and ultimately hopeful, a War and Peace for the Woodstock generation.

Jonah Hex - Riders of the Worm and Such


Joe R. Lansdale - 1995
    

The False Sun


R. Scott Bakker - 2012
    A story set in the far antiquity of Bakker's fictional world world of Eärwa, the setting for his Prince of Nothing and Aspect Emperor series.

Cursed City


C.L. Werner - 2021
    Its vampiric rulers have indulged their bloodlust in every shadow-clad alley, turning the once-proud metropolis into a charnel house. Already crushed beneath the tyranny of Radukar the Wolf and his Thirsting Court, a spate of vicious murders plunges the mortal inhabitants into fresh terror. Emerging to uncover a connection between the attacks is an unlikely group of heroes: a vampire hunter from Carstinia, a slum-born vigilante, a ruthless wizard, and a soldier who is the last survivor of her noble bloodline. Arrayed against them are the undead monsters that thrive upon Radukar's gory regime. But a daring search for answers turns into a fight for survival when the Wolf himself descends his Ebon Citadel and joins the carnage in the streets…

Blood & Roses: The Paston Family and the Wars of the Roses


Helen Castor - 2004
    Between 1455 and 1485 four kings, including Richard III, lost their thrones, more than forty noblemen lost their lives on the battlefield or their heads on the block, and thousands of the men who followed them met violent deaths. As they made their way in a disintegrating world, the Paston family in Norfolk family were writing letters - about politics, about business, about shopping, about love and about each other, including the first valentine.Using these letters - the oldest surviving family correspondence in English - Helen Castor traces the extraordinary history of the Paston family across three generations. Blood & Roses tells the dramatic, moving and intensely human story of how one family survived one of the most tempestuous periods in English history.

The Crew


Margaret Mayhew - 1997
    Van, the pilot is American, Jock, Flight Engineer a Scot. Piers, the hopeless navigator is a foppish aristocrat - 'Frightfully sorry, Skipper, not absolutely sure where we are'. The bomb aimer is an Aussie. Wireless operator a London cockney who was 'older than God', a mid-upper gunner with terrible eyesight, and the most heartrending of all, the rear gunner, dragged backwards in a fishbowl through the sky, a seventeen-year-old who had lied about his age to get into the air force. They are all appalling at the beginning of the book. The pilot nearly crashes them on the first landing, they don't get on all that well with each other. They all loathe Piers, the toff, and they don't cohere as a team at all. Then, slowly, as they begin their first real gut-dropping bombing raids over Germany they begin to develop as a real crew, depending on each other, becoming more proficient. Charlie's young widowed mum comes to live in a cottage near the airfield in order to be near 'her boy'. Inevitably a romance develops between her and the 'older than God' wireless operator (over thirty!). Other women become involved, love them, lose them. One of the crew is killed at the end...which one? A wonderful emotive, gripping, heart wrenching novel of men, and women, at their best.

The Devil's Pay


Dave Gross - 2013
    Sam and the Devil Dogs may be relaxing in Tarna, but it’s not by choice—they’d rather be employed than resting up. When a dangerous job offer comes from “the old man,” Sam takes the Devil Dogs and their newest recruit, Dawson, on a perilous hunt to capture an unidentified warjack before their rival Steelheads or the horrific Cryx make a claim on the never-before-seen technology.Whether their mission will be worth the risk remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: Sam and the Devil Dogs will do whatever it takes to bring home The Devil’s Pay.

Cyborg Corps


J.N. Chaney - 2020
    Finally. he will be able to feel the warm sand beneath his feet again, or so the doctor promises.Lying on a table, Warren is told by the doctor that everything is going to be okay. He's going to have a brand new leg...and a much better life.Too bad it was all a lie.The next time Warren opens his eyes, four centuries have passed. Somehow, he's standing in the middle of a battlefield, stuck on a distant alien planet, far away from home.To make matters worse, his body appears to be entirely synthetic. He's a cyborg, nearly indestructible and enhanced for extreme combat.Now, with centuries of time missing from his memory and no idea how to get home, Warren is left with no choice but to fight against those who would see him enslaved... and free as many of his brothers as possible along the way.

The Citadel


Chris Wooding - 2008
    The end of the world is near...It's up to Parakka to stop the destruction of the worlds, but just how much strength have they got left to defend the Citadel?When the final battle is over and silence reigns, will there be anyone left to tell the tale?

The History of Pirates


Angus Konstam - 1999
    Piracy flourished in the early 18th century, and produced many of the famous - and infamous - characters that have gripped imaginations worldwide for hundreds of years, including Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and Bartholomew Roberts. However, piracy on the high seas existed long before these names struck terror into the hearts of sailors and merchants - Julius Caesar was captured by pirates - and it remains a major problem in the modern world.