But the rich, as author Stephen Birmingham so insightfully points out, are also different from the very rich. There’s Society, and then there’s Real Society, and it takes multiple generations for families of the former to become entrenched in the latter. Real Society is not about the money—or rather, it’s not only about the money—it is about history, breeding, tradition, and most of all, the name. The Right People is an engrossing and illuminating journey through the customs and habits of the phenomenally wealthy, from the San Francisco elite to the upper crust of New York’s Westchester County. It is a marvelously anecdotal, intimately detailed overview of the lives of the American aristocracy: where they gather and dine; their games and sports, clubs and parties, friendships and feuds; their mating, marriage, and divorce rituals—a potpourri of priceless true stories featuring the Astors, Goulds, Vanderbilts, Vanderlips, Dukes, Biddles, and other lofty names from the pages of the Social Register.

    

    At the heart of the story is a Quaker family, who hide the boy after his landing party has been killed in an ambush. Because the captain of the Hessians had ordered the hanging of a local whom he thought might be a spy, the town militia lay in wait, massacred the Hessians, and hunted down the only survivor, Hans Pohl. His capture and trial provide an opportunity to explore the difficult moral position that war presents, complicated by the presence of the Quaker family. The story is told from the point of view of Evan Feversham, a doctor who has seen enough of death, and an outsider in the narrow world of Puritan New England. Based on a true event.

    Raveneau sardonically agrees to deliver her to her childhood sweetheart in Virginia but doesn’t count on his own potent attraction to the enchanting, courageous Devon. HER HUSBAND, THE RAKE -“And they lived happily ever after...” Or did they?Can a rake like André Raveneau truly be tamed into a domesticated husband and father...or is he a pacing tiger, destined to break free of his cage?Come into the Raveneaus’ Connecticut home, as Devon struggles to balance the needs of her little children with the demands of her restless, hot-blooded husband. When two people reappear from the past, St. Valentine’s Day becomes a time of reckoning for André and Devon Raveneau.

    Barely does she set foot on American soil before she is embroiled in the schemes and intrigues against the British Crown...Daniel Haynes is a bold and courageous post-rider, whose Christian beliefs more him to work secretly in the fight for freedom from England... and whose revolutionary activities put him in constant danger... Amid the conflict and drama of the Colonies in uprising, these two people meet, drawn together by circumstance and unexpected emotions. But tragedy and treachery separate them, and only their faith in God - and a miracle - can bring them together again. A gripping drama of love and triumph is set against the colorful backdrop of pre-Revolutionary America.

    Into this tumultuous age of constant warfare came three remarkable individuals: Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). Each would play a unique role in the re-unification of the disparate, fragmented collection of warring provinces which constituted Japan in the sixteenth and early seventeenth-centuries. This new narrative history of the sengoku era draws together the epic strands of their three stories for the first time. It offers a coherent survey of the Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1568-1600) under both Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, followed by the founding years of the Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1616). Every pivotal battle fought by each of these three hegemons is explored in depth from Okehazama (1560) and Nagashino (1575) to Sekigahara (1600) and the Two Sieges of Osaka Castle (1614-15). In addition, the political and administrative underpinnings of their rule is also examined, as well as the marginal role played by western foreigners ('nanban') and the Christian religion in early modern Japanese society. In its scope, the story of Japan's three unifiers ('the Fool', 'the Monkey', and 'the Old Badger') is a sweeping saga encompassing acts of unimaginable cruelty as well as feats of great samurai heroism which were venerated and written about long into the peaceful Edo/Tokugawa period.

    In March 2016, Kanhaiya Kumar the president of the JNU Students Union was arrested on charges of sedition, locked up in Tihar Jail and beaten up by lawyers in Patiala House court. He came out of the crisis as a young political star, dubbed by the BBC as 'India's most loved and loathed student'. This is his story—from his childhood in rural Bihar, college days in Patna, to his political coming of age in Delhi. And it is told in his extraordinary voice—colourful, witty, eloquent, and raw. From Bihar to Tihar is the story of a young political star in the making and a rare window into the lives of small town young Indians and their aspirations.The story of Kanhaiya’s incredible journey from a village school, his deepening involvement in student politics, his controversial arrest on charges of sedition and its aftermath.“Bhagat Singh had said it is easy to kill individuals, but you cannot kill ideas. I don’t know where this fight of ours will take us, but I thought our ideas should be permanently etched in history as a book. I want to write about the inherent contradictions of Indian society through my personal experiences and to reveal the hopes, despair and struggles of the youth of this country,” says Kanhaiya Kumar.“This will be a defining book of our times. Kanhaiya’s is a voice that everyone should hear and we at Juggernaut are very proud to bring it to the widest possible readership,” says Chiki Sarkar.

    After ten years’ training in the great medical schools of Europe, Alec Gordon has returned to Scotland to take up the post of physician in the Aberdeen Dispensary. Alec has ambitious plans for modernizing medical practice in the town, starting with the local midwives, whose ignorance and old-fashioned methods appal him.But Alec’s dreams of progress are thrown into disarray when a mysterious disease suddenly strikes the town, attacking and killing every newly delivered mother for miles around. Alec alone recognizes it as childbed fever, a disease more deadly than the plague, a condition that has baffled the greatest physicians of the age, an illness with no known cause and no known cure.Desperate to save his patients’ lives, Alec sets out on an astonishing medical quest to conquer the disease. But while Alec struggles to find solutions that lie far in the future, his wife Elizabeth is increasingly lost in the past, prey to terrifying memories of her childhood in Antigua. As she knows and he will learn, some diseases lie beyond the reach of reason.Based on a true story, Touching Distance is a stunning historical novel that brings to life a fascinating period in world history, exploring the tragic limitations of knowledge and the deep-seated tension between reason and passion in the Age of Enlightenment.

     When 17-year-old Adam Fletcher is forced into an apprenticeship, he unwittingly becomes a pawn in a smuggling war. Soon, he’s forced to make a tough decision. Will he agree to become a spy performing a civic duty to the Crown? Or will he risk everything—possibly even putting his own family in danger—to protect his new master? Secrets will be revealed, loyalties will be questioned, betrayals will be uncovered, and a young man’s character will be put to the test in ... The Smuggler’s Gambit.

    Through Hogarth's lifelong marriage to Jane Thornhill, his inability to have children, his time as one of England's best portrait painters, his old age and unfortunate dip into politics, and his untimely death, I, Hogarth is the remarkable story told through the artist's eyes. Michael Dean blends Hogarth's life and work into a rich and satisfying narrative, recommended for fans of Hilary Mantel and Peter Ackroyd.

    Browning explores the often-changing war aims of the major belligerents-Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, Piedmont-Sardinia, and Spain-and links diplomatic and military events to the political and social context from which they arose.

    Those first pioneering citizens of the Big Easy were thieves, vagabonds and criminals of all kinds. By the time Louisiana fell under American control, New Orleans had become a city of debauchery and corruption camouflaged by decadence. It was also considered one of the country's most dangerous cities, with a reputation of crime and loose morals. Rampant gambling and prostitution were the norm in nineteenth-century New Orleans, and over one-third of today's French Quarter was considered a hotbed of sin. Tales in this volume include that of the notorious Axeman who plagued the streets of the Crescent City in the early 1900s and Kate Townsend, a prostitute who was murdered by her own lover, a man who later was awarded her inheritance.

    Increasingly dependent on the efforts of others over our own, Americans are free to freeload. From the corporate bailouts on Wall Street to the alarming increases in personal default and dependency, from questionable tax exemptions to enormous pension, healthcare, and other entitlement costs, the new moocher culture cuts across lines of class, race, and private and public sectors. And the millions that plan and behave sensibly, only to bail out the profligate? They're angry.Charles Sykes' argument is not against compassion or legitimate charity, but targets the new moocher culture, in which self-reliance and personal responsibility have given way to mass grasping after handouts. A Nation of Moochers is a persuasively argued and entertaining rallying cry for Americans who are tired of playing by the rules and paying for those who don't.

    Although they initially take the city of light by storm, they soon discover that the glittering facade of social success hides a multitude of sins and iniquities while their own dark secrets could well destroy everything that they have worked so hard to achieve...Based on The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton, Before the Storm is a tale of passion, betrayal and true love set against the backdrop of the opulent and often treacherous worlds of Georgian London, Versailles and Revolutionary Paris.‘It was a blissfully warm day. The worst of the heat wave was now over and a light flower scented breeze blew leaves into the pavilion where the party drowsily lazed against cushions, idling listening as Eugène d’Aigueville played his guitar, his eyes fixed on Venetia, who smiled lazily back at him.Comte Edmond reclined in between Phoebe and Eliza, none of them spoke but the air around them shimmered with tension as both girls subtly did their best to claim his attention for themselves. Phoebe had long since realised that she was fighting a losing battle though and that although he very much enjoyed flirting with her, it was Eliza that he looked for first whenever he walked into a room.Eliza did not share this view though and kept thinking about Venetia’s wedding day when Phoebe, radiant with sexual confidence had told her that she wouldn’t let her chastity stand in the way of making a good match for herself. She curled her hands into fists every time Comte Edmond and her friend left the room together and tried not to think about what they might be doing. He’d tried to kiss her once, but she’d shoved him away. Perhaps that was a mistake? She looked across at him now as he gazed up at Phoebe and her heart sank.‘Who is that woman?’ Phoebe said suddenly, shielding her blue eyes as she looked back towards the house.Venetia followed her gaze and gave a nervous laugh. ‘It’s your landlady, Eliza,’ she said, with a quick look at Edmond, who immediately sat up and automatically began to retie his loosened cravat. ‘Madame de Saint-Georges.’They all stood up and instinctively, Eliza, Phoebe and Venetia stood close together as Corisande de Saint-Georges hurried across the lawn towards them. She had dressed to impress in a shimmering, rich lace trimmed blue and white striped silk gown, with wide skirts pulled back from flounced flower sprigged white silk underskirts. A huge muslin fichu was arranged around her shoulders and on her elaborately curled, ringleted and backcombed powdered hair was a vast ribbon and flower bedecked white straw hat.‘Goodness me, she really means business,’ Venetia murmured as they watched this vision of elegance and high fashion approach. She looked back over her shoulder at Edmond, who was standing uneasily behind them, looking as if he desperately wished he could run away. ‘I wonder what she wants?’

    Cunningly structured and as satisfying as an intricate piece of clockwork, it plays with narrative, revels in ideas and succeeds in being both fey and sharp, detached and compassionate. At a time when fiction gives all to the tired virtual realities of sex and violence, internets, Agas and middle-class Angst, it is a brilliant reminder of the power of the imagination to surprise, delight and open windows."David Coward in The Times Literary Supplement"Crumey does produce excellent post-modernist novels, each as concentric and cunning as the others. This is a triptych starting with D'Alembert penning his imagined memoirs. The literary equivalent of an Escher, the story has no identifiable end or beginning. Clever, entertaining, engaging