Book picks similar to
Sharpe's Ransom by Bernard Cornwell


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Two Complete Novels: Disclosure / Rising Sun


Michael Crichton - 1996
    An up-and-coming executive at DigiCom, Tom Sanders is a man whose corporate future is certain. But after a closed door meeting with his new boss--his former lover who has been promoted to the position he expected to have--Sanders is caught in a web of deceit where he is branded the villain. As Sanders scrambles to defend himself, he uncovers an electronic trail into the company's cynical and manipulative secrets.Rising SunOn the forty-fifth floor of the Nakamoto Tower in downtown L.A.--the American headquarters of the immense Japanese conglomerate--a grand opening celebration is in full swing. On the forty-sixth floor, in an empty conference room, the dead body of a beautiful woman is discovered. The investigation begins...and immediately becomes a headlong chase through a twisting maze of industrial intrigue. With a no-holds-barred conflict in which control of a vital American technology is the fiercely coveted prize, the saying "business is war" takes on a terrifying reality.Now for the first time ever, two of Michael Crichton's most captivating and controversial novels are combined in one exciting volume. Her is America's top suspense writer at the top of his form.--jacket

The Faces of a Martyr


Brian Herbert - 2004
    It briefly describes some events between The Machine Crusade and the upcoming novel, The Battle of Corrin. It's set starts off several months after the events of The Machine Crusade, when the League Armada is pounding the Tlulaxa homeworld into oblivion.

Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman


E.W. Hornung - 1898
    In these eight stories, the master burglar indulges his passion for cricket and crime: stealing jewels from a country house, outwitting the law, pilfering from the nouveau riche, and, of course, bowling like a demon-all with the assistance of his plucky sidekick, Bunny. Encouraged by his brother-in-law, Arthur Conan Doyle, to write a series about a public school villain, and influenced by his own experiences at Uppingham, E. W. Hornung created a unique form of crime story, where, in stealing as in sport, it is playing the game that counts, and there is always honor among thieves.

Clever John


Elizabeth Hoyt - 2011
    Clever John gives readers an early glimpse inside Hoyt's next Maiden Lane novel, Scandalous Desires. Extended preview of Scandalous Desires included.

Words Like Coins


Robin Hobb - 2012
    This lovely little volume featured stories by Kate Elliott, Kelley Armstrong, C.E. Murhphy and myself. It sold out in a heartbeat.Since then, I’ve heard from a number of readers asking if there is any way to get a copy of the story. I am pleased to say that “Words Like Coins” is now available as a lovely e-book with literally fantastic illustrations by Tom Kidd."

The Religion


Tim Willocks - 2006
    Brace yourselves. May 1565. Suleiman the Magnificent, emperor of the Ottomans, has declared a jihad against the Knights of Saint John the Baptist. The largest armada of all time approaches the knights' Christian stronghold on the island of Malta. The Turks know the knights as the "Hounds of Hell." The knights call themselves "The Religion." In Messina, Sicily, a French countess, Carla La Penautier, seeks passage to Malta in a quest to find the son taken from her at his birth twelve years ago. The only man with the expertise and daring to help her is a Rabelaisian soldier of fortune, arms dealer, former janissary, and strapping Saxon adventurer by the name of Mattias Tannhauser. He agrees to accompany the lady to Malta, where, amid the most spectacular siege in military history, they must try to find the boy--whose name they do not know and whose face they have never seen--and pluck him from the jaws of Holy War. The Religion is the first book of the Tannhauser Trilogy, and from the first page of this epic account of the last great medieval conflict between East and West, it is clear we are in the hands of a master. Not since James Clavell has a novelist so powerfully and assuredly plunged readers headlong into another world and time. Anne Rice transformed the vampire novel. Stephen King reinvented horror. Now, in a spectacular tale of heroism, tragedy, and passion, Tim Willocks revivifies historical fiction.

Mortal Coils


Aldous Huxley - 1920
    The grandson of Thomas H, Huxley (Darwin's famous defender), he was born in England and educated at Eton and Oxford. He traveled widely in his youth and lived in Italy for a while in the 1920s. He began his literary career with poetry and critical essays, then turned to novels. Having been born just too late to participate in World War I, he was able, in his early works, such as CROME YELLOW (1921), ANTIC HAY (1923), THOSE BARREN LEAVES (1925), and POINT COUNTER POINT (1928), to perfectly capture a sense of purposeless aftermath which resonated strongly in British society at the time. A satirical strain already evident manifested itself spectacularly in BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932), after which much of his work began to show a fantastic or speculative cast, including AFTER MANY A SUMMER DIES THE SWAN (about immortality, 1939), TIMES MUST HAVE A STOP (1944), and APE AND ESSENCE (a dystopia, 1948). ISLAND, his last work, published in 1962, is a utopia. Late in life he developed an increasing disdain for Western society and an interest in Eastern mysticism and in the possibilities of psychedelic drugs, which he described in THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION (1954). MORTAL COILS is a short-story collection from Huxley's early period, including one of his most popular stories, "The Gioconda Smile."

Honey for the Bears


Anthony Burgess - 1963
    Even on the ship's voyage across, the Russian sensibility begins to pervade: lots of secrets and lots of vodka. When his American wife is stricken by a painful rash and he is interrogated at his hotel by Soviet agents who know that he is trying to sell stylish synthetic dresses to the masses starved for fashion, his precarious inner balance is thrown off for good. More drink follows, discoveries of his wife's illicit affair with another woman, and his own submerged sexual feelings come breaking through the surface, bubbling up in Russian champagne and caviar.

The Rose of Fire


Carlos Ruiz Zafón - 2012
    Set at the time of the Spanish Inquisition in the fifteenth century, Rose of Fire tells the story of the origins of the mysterious labyrinthine library, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, which lies at the heart of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s novels The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game, and now The Prisoner of Heaven.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet


David Mitchell - 2010
    To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland.But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?”A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.

The Fallon Blood


Robert Jordan - 1980
    From bondsman to rice planter, from planter to privateer, from the beautiful Elizabeth Carver to the loving Gabrielle Fourrier, from peace to the greatest Revolution the world had ever seen. Robert Jordan writings as Reagan O'Neal. HC: Forge.

Cloud of Sparrows


Takashi Matsuoka - 2002
    After two centuries of isolation, Japan has been forced to open its doors to the West, igniting a clash of cultures and generations. And as foreign ships threaten to rain destruction on the Shogun’s castle in Edo, a small group of American missionaries has chosen this time to spread the word of their God. Among them, Emily Gibson, a woman seeking redemption from a tormented past, and Matthew Stark, a cold-eyed killer with one more death on his mind. Neither realizes that their future in Japan has already been foreseen. For a young nobleman, Lord Genji, has dreamt that his life will be saved by an outsider in the New Year. Widely reviled as a dilettante, Lord Genji has one weapon with which to inspire awe. In his family, one in every generation is said to have the gift of prophecy. And what Lord Genji sees has struck fear in many around him. As the Shogun’s secret police chief plots Genji’s death--and the utter destruction of his entire clan--the young and untried lord must prove that he is more than the handsome womanizer of legend, famed lover of Edo’s most celebrated geisha, Lady Heiko, and that his prophetic powers are no mere fairy tale. Forced to escape from Edo and flee to his ancestral stronghold, the spectacular Cloud of Sparrows Castle, Genji joins his fate with Emily and Stark, unaware of the dark forces that drive them. Together with Genji’s uncle, Lord Shigeru, a legendary swordsman knee-deep in the blood of his own kin, and the enigmatic Lady Heiko, the unlikely band embarks on a harrowing journey through a landscape bristling with danger--to prepare for a final battle.Here, on a snowscape stained with blood, horror will mix with wonder, secrets will unravel, and love will duel with vengeance--as East and West, flesh and spirit, past and future, collide in ways no one--least of all Genji--could have imagined.

The Concrete Jungle


Charles Stross - 2004
    Bob gets called out on account of a monster program called SATAN STARE, that ties back into some past work for the Laundry and others.He has to recruit, quickly, a pretty with it cop, and she helps him combat the beast, and the odd zombie.

The Hittite


Ben Bova - 2010
    This is the  tale of Lukka, the Hittite soldier who traveled across Greece in search  of the vicious slave traders who  kidnapped his wife and sons.  He tracks them all the way to war-torn Troy.  There  he proves himself a warrior to rank with noble Hector and swift Achilles.  Lukka is the man who built  the Trojan horse for crafty Odysseus, who toppled the walls of Jericho for the Israelites, who stole beautiful Helen--the legendary face that launched a thousand ships--from her husband Menelaus after the fall of Troy and fought his way across half the known world to bring her safely to Egypt.

Byzantium


Stephen R. Lawhead - 1996
    Secure in work, contemplation, and dreams of the wider world, a miracle bursts into Aidan's quiet life. He is chosen to accompany a small band of monks on a quest to the farthest eastern reaches of the known world, to the fabled city of Byzantium, where they are to present a beautiful and costly hand-illuminated manuscript, the Book of Kells, to the Emperor of all Christendom.Thus begins an expedition by sea and over land, as Aidan becomes, by turns, a warrior and a sailor, a slave and a spy, a Viking and a Saracen, and finally, a man. He sees more of the world than most men of his time, becoming an ambassador to kings and an inmate of Byzantium's fabled Golden Court. And finally this valiant Irish monk faces the greatest trial that can confront any man in any age: commanding his own Destiny.A magnificent epic of sweep, grandeur, and heroism, Byzantium is certain to secure Stephen R. Lawhead's place as one of the leading historical novelists of our time.