Human Traces


Sebastian Faulks - 2005
    As psychiatrists, their quest takes them from the squalor of the Victorian lunatic asylum to the crowded lecture halls of the renowned Professor Charcot in Paris; from the heights of the Sierra Madre in California to the plains of unexplored Africa. As the concerns of the old century fade and the First World War divides Europe, the two men's volatile relationship develops and changes, but is always tempered by one exceptional woman; Thomas's sister Sonia. Moving and challenging in equal measure, Human Traces explores the question of what kind of beings men and women really are.'Shocking and enlightening...touching and affecting' Daily Mail

No Promises in the Wind


Irene Hunt - 1970
    In 1932, American's dreams were simple: a job, food to eat, a place to sleep, and shoes without holes. But for millions of people these simple needs were nothing more than dreams. When he was just fifteen years old, Josh had to make his own way through a country of angry and frightened people. This is the story of his struggle to find a life for himself during those turbulent times.

The Memoirs of a Prague Executioner: A HISTORICAL NOVEL BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS


Josef Svátek - 2004
    He becomes stuck in the most detested profession for the rest of his life, and he is on his way to becoming the most well-known executioner in the history of Bohemia. Master Jan finds himself in the center of the historical events of the time. The religious and political turmoil of Bohemia culminates in the 1621 White Mountain Battle. Czech Protestant rebels are defeated by Catholic forces, and Master Jan is to execute 27 men who are his fellow Protestants. The Old Town Executioner gives the reader a first hand account about how justice was carried out by the medieval law. While his memoirs offer an intriguing account of the manners and values of late medieval society, his observations about human nature may come as a surprise. The law and society have changed since the 17th century, but people have changed very little. This book contains graphic descriptions of medieval torture.

The Fairy Tale Bride


Kelly McClymer - 2000
    But when her brother's love match is thwarted by the impossibly proper Duke of Kerstone, Miranda sets off to convince the duke to champion her brother's cause for love. Unfortunately, he is too proper to consider love a suitable reason for marriage, and too proper not to marry Miranda when they find themselves compromised. Now, Miranda has a second chance for happily-ever-after, if she can uncover her new husband's darkest secret.

Don't Know Much about History: Everything You Need to Know about American History But Never Learned


Kenneth C. Davis - 1990
    In this updated edition of the classic anti-textbook, he debunks, recounts, and serves up the real story behind the myths and fallacies of American history.

Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous


Gabriella Coleman - 2014
    She ended up becoming so closely connected to Anonymous that the tricky story of her inside–outside status as Anon confidante, interpreter, and erstwhile mouthpiece forms one of the themes of this witty and entirely engrossing book.The narrative brims with details unearthed from within a notoriously mysterious subculture, whose semi-legendary tricksters—such as Topiary, tflow, Anachaos, and Sabu—emerge as complex, diverse, politically and culturally sophisticated people. Propelled by years of chats and encounters with a multitude of hackers, including imprisoned activist Jeremy Hammond and the double agent who helped put him away, Hector Monsegur, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy is filled with insights into the meaning of digital activism and little understood facets of culture in the Internet age, including the history of “trolling,” the ethics and metaphysics of hacking, and the origins and manifold meanings of “the lulz.”

Rifles for Watie


Harold Keith - 1957
    It was 1861 in Linn County, Kansas, and Jeff was elated at the prospect of fighting for the North at last.In the Indian country south of Kansas there was dread in the air; and the name, Stand Watie, was on every tongue. A hero to the rebel, a devil to the Union man, Stand Watie led the Cherokee Indian Nation fearlessly and successfully on savage raids behind the Union lines. Jeff came to know the Watie men only too well.He was probably the only soldier in the West to see the Civil War from both sides and live to tell about it. Amid the roar of cannon and the swish of flying grape, Jeff learned what it meant to fight in battle. He learned how it felt never to have enough to eat, to forage for his food or starve. He saw the green fields of Kansas and Okla-homa laid waste by Watie's raiding parties, homes gutted, precious corn deliberately uprooted. He marched endlessly across parched, hot land, through mud and slashing rain, always hungry, always dirty and dog-tired.And, Jeff, plain-spoken and honest, made friends and enemies. The friends were strong men like Noah Babbitt, the itinerant printer who once walked from Topeka to Galveston to see the magnolias in bloom; boys like Jimmy Lear, too young to carry a gun but old enough to give up his life at Cane Hill; ugly, big-eared Heifer, who made the best sourdough biscuits in the Choctaw country; and beautiful Lucy Washbourne, rebel to the marrow and proud of it. The enemies were men of another breed - hard-bitten Captain Clardy for one, a cruel officer with hatred for Jeff in his eyes and a dark secret on his soul.This is a rich and sweeping novel-rich in its panorama of history; in its details so clear that the reader never doubts for a moment that he is there; in its dozens of different people, each one fully realized and wholly recognizable. It is a story of a lesser -- known part of the Civil War, the Western campaign, a part different in its issues and its problems, and fought with a different savagery. Inexorably it moves to a dramatic climax, evoking a brilliant picture of a war and the men of both sides who fought in it.

A Little History of Literature


John Sutherland - 2013
    John Sutherland is perfectly suited to the task. He has researched, taught, and written on virtually every area of literature, and his infectious passion for books and reading has defined his own life. Now he guides young readers and the grown-ups in their lives on an entertaining journey 'through the wardrobe' to a greater awareness of how literature from across the world can transport us and help us to make sense of what it means to be human. Sutherland introduces great classics in his own irresistible way, enlivening his offerings with humor as well as learning: Beowulf, Shakespeare, Don Quixote, the Romantics, Dickens, Moby Dick, The Waste Land, Woolf, 1984, and dozens of others. He adds to these a less-expected, personal selection of authors and works, including literature usually considered well below 'serious attention' - from the rude jests of Anglo-Saxon runes to The Da Vinci Code. With masterful digressions into various themes - censorship, narrative tricks, self-publishing, taste, creativity, and madness - Sutherland demonstrates the full depth and intrigue of reading. For younger readers, he offers a proper introduction to literature, promising to interest as much as instruct. For more experienced readers, he promises just the same.

Calico Bush


Rachel Field - 1931
    She promises her services to the Sargent family for six long years in return for food and shelter. But life as a "bound-out girl" is full of more hardship than Maggie ever could have imagined. Living with the family in an isolated part of northern Maine, Maggie struggles through the harsh, hungry winter of 1743, the constant threat of Indian attacks, and worst of all, the loneliness she suffers knowing that her own family is lost forever. Will the Sargent's house ever feel like home?

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man / Dubliners


James Joyce - 1914
    His two earliest, and perhaps most accessible, successes—A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners—are here brought together in one volume. Both works reflect Joyce’s lifelong love-hate relationship with Dublin and the Irish culture that formed him.In the semi-autobiographical Portrait, young Stephen Dedalus yearns to be an artist, but first must struggle against the forces of church, school, and society, which fetter his imagination and stifle his soul. The book’s inventive style is apparent from its opening pages, a record of an infant’s impressions of the world around him—and one of the first examples of the “stream of consciousness” technique.Comprising fifteen stories, Dubliners presents a community of mesmerizing, humorous, and haunting characters—a group portrait. The interactions among them form one long meditation on the human condition, culminating with “The Dead,” one of Joyce’s most graceful compositions centering around a character’s epiphany. A carefully woven tapestry of Dublin life at the turn of the last century, Dubliners realizes Joyce’s ambition to give his countrymen “one good look at themselves.” Kevin J. H. Dettmar is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He is the author or editor of a half-dozen books on James Joyce, modernist literature, and rock music. He is currently finishing a term as President of the Modernist Studies Association.--back cover

Fortune's Flower


Anthea Lawson - 2008
    One last adventure abroad with her botanist uncle and his family, and then she will do as her parents bid and wed the proper (and boring) viscount her mother has selected as Lily's ideal husband.James Huntington is on a mission. Retrieve his grandfather's lost journals from the wilds of Tunisia, and win the estate and fortune he so desperately needs. This quest will be the making of him--or his ruin.Thrown together on a botanical expedition, James and Lily's attraction is immediate, and impossible. Despite every reason to keep their distance, the two find themselves inexorably drawn together as they race to reach a hidden valley before their enemies can bring all their dreams crashing down.      *Formerly published as PASSIONATE by Kensington Books

Red Hugh: Prince of Donegal


Robert T. Reilly - 1957
    In 1587, teenaged Hugh Roe O'Donnell, son of the rulers of Donegal, is seized by the English and imprisoned in Dublin Castle for three years before escaping to join in the struggle to rid Ireland of English rule.

The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors


Dan Jones - 2017
    A band of elite warriors determined to fight to the death to protect Christianity’s holiest sites. A global financial network unaccountable to any government. A sinister plot founded on a web of lies.Jerusalem 1119. A small group of knights seeking a purpose in the violent aftermath of the First Crusade decides to set up a new order. These are the first Knights Templar, a band of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the medieval world. Their legend has inspired fervent speculation ever since. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Dan Jones tells the true story of the Templars for the first time in a generation, drawing on extensive original sources to build a gripping account of these Christian holy warriors whose heroism and alleged depravity have been shrouded in myth. The Templars were protected by the pope and sworn to strict vows of celibacy. They fought the forces of Islam in hand-to-hand combat on the sun-baked hills where Jesus lived and died, finding their nemesis in Saladin, who vowed to drive all Christians from the lands of Islam. Experts at channeling money across borders, they established the medieval world’s largest and most innovative banking network and waged private wars against anyone who threatened their interests.Then, as they faced setbacks at the hands of the ruthless Mamluk sultan Baybars and were forced to retreat to their stronghold in Cyprus, a vindictive and cash-strapped King of France set his sights on their fortune. His administrators quietly mounted a damning case against the Templars, built on deliberate lies and false testimony. Then on Friday October 13, 1307, hundreds of brothers were arrested, imprisoned and tortured, and the order was disbanded amid lurid accusations of sexual misconduct and heresy. They were tried by the Pope in secret proceedings and their last master was brutally tortured and burned at the stake. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state? Dan Jones goes back to the sources tobring their dramatic tale, so relevant to our own times, in a book that is at once authoritative and compulsively readable.

To Have and to Hold: A Tale of Providence and Perseverance in Colonial Jamestown


Mary Johnston - 1899
    Within this world, a simple, godly soldier braves all odds to defend his honor and his duty to uphold God’s sacred laws, all the while fighting to win the love of his new wife.To Have and to Hold brings to life the exciting beginnings of America, weaving a story of adventure, intrigue and romance with providence and perseverance in colonial Jamestown. This exciting story makes a wonderful family read-aloud, as well as a “can’t put down” book for the individual reader, capturing the imaginations of young and old, men and women alike.

Fault Lines


Nancy Huston - 2006
    Huston's novel is a profound and poetic story that traces four generations of a single family from present-day California to WW II era Germany. Fault Lines begins with Sol, a gifted, terrifying child whose mother believes he is destined for greatness partly because he has a birthmark like his dad, his grandmother, and his great-grandmother. When Sol's family makes an unexpected trip to Germany, secrets begin to emerge about their history during World War II. It seems birthmarks are not all that's been passed down through the bloodlines. Closely observed, lyrically told, and epic in scope, Fault Lines is a touching, fearless, and unusual novel about four generations of children and their parents. The story moves from the West Coast of the United States to the East, from Haifa to Toronto to Munich, as secrets unwind back through time until a devastating truth about the family's origins is reached. Huston tells a riveting, vigorous tale in which love, music, and faith rage against the shape of evil.