Each book describes a classic novel and drama by explaining themes, elaborating on characters, and discussing each author's unique literary style, use of language, and point of view. Extensive illustrations and imaginative, enlightening use of graphics help to make each book in this series livelier, easier, and more fun to use than ordinary literature plot summaries. An unusual feature, "Mind Map" is a diagram that summarizes and interrelates the most important details that students need to understand about a given work. Appropriate for middle and high school students.

     The ancient civilisation is enjoying unprecedented prosperity during the 18th Dynasty under some of Egypt’s most famous Pharaohs – Ahmose I, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. But every empire has its rivals – here the Hittites, the Mittani, Nubians and Assyrians – and every royal family its enemies. Smenkhkare is the youngest son of Amenhotep III and brother to Akhenamun – later to become the ruler Akhenaten – and Thutmose, plus three older sisters. The scheming Akhenamun dismisses Smenkhkare as a mere stripling, but the wise warrior Thutmose takes the boy under his wing and sets out to make a man of him. This is crucial for Smenkhkare whose father has decided that the only role for the boy will be through a marriage of convenience to the beautiful Mittani princess Taduheppa. The bride is ravishing – but older and more worldly – and refuses to consummate the coupling. Full of sympathy for his little brother, Thutmose advises patience and also invites Smenkhkare to accompany him on a raid to hunt down bandits who have attacked a caravan in the desert. It is a fateful moment. Thutmose is killed by an arrow through the neck, igniting a calamitous chain of events as Smenkhkare discovers the arrow did not come from a bandit’s bow. Who, then, did fire the fatal missile? Who would benefit most from the death of the man next in line for the pharoah’s throne? Could the murderer be within his own family? Or was someone else close to the family plotting to seize power? Can Smenkhkare trust his favourite sister Nebetah with his thoughts? Can trusted general Coreb help him in his bid to avenge the death of Thutmose? Who would try to eliminate Smenkhkare by placing a deadly cobra in a basket under his bed? And what are the ghastly contents in two other baskets thrust under Smenkhkare’s nose? David Adkins’ absorbing historical re-imagining The Forgotten Pharaoh, explores the extraordinary and dangerous life and times of a real but little known figure from history – from his child-marriage to exile and then reinstatement in Thebes as pharaoh of one of the most influential dynasties of the ancient civilised world. David Adkins is a retired civil servant who worked for many years at English Heritage. He lives in Letchworth Garden City with his wife. His other historical fiction books to date are The Eagle’s Nest and the Wolf’s Lair, The End of a Dynasty and Season of the Gladiatrix.

    That's what the locals are saying about Llandegwen, deep in the Welsh valleys. The village choir, once a source of pride for the small mining community, has been forced to disband; the elderly choirmaster heartbroken by the empty seats belonging to those who'll never return from the battlefields. The arrival of a young war widow from the East End with her little boy sets tongues wagging, not least when rumours abound that she's looking to revive the choir. Can the community set aside their grief and lift their voices, and the village's hopes, once more?

    He's only got time to make sure everyone in his little town is safe from all danger - especially from the vicious Kinsley gang! After witnessing a fierce shooting, Trent swore to bring every single one of the gang's members to justice. For years they eluded him. They've become his obsession - until one day he meets someone else who captures his attention. Can he afford to succumb to this alluring distraction?Eliza Kinsley is a beautiful, mysterious woman trying to get a job as a new school teacher in town. But she has a well kept secret that revolves around her ties with the Kinsley gang. What is she hiding? She wants to make a new start, but someone is holding her back. Trent's feelings towards Eliza are growing rapidly, but she's keeping him at arm's length in order to protect him from the truth. Can she trust her heart, even if the risk is too high for them both?In this Romeo and Juliet kind of situation, can Eliza follow her heart and be happy, or will her secrets stand in the way of her true love? And will Trent be able to handle the truth about the woman who stole his heart?"A Mysterious Lady for the Resolute Sheriff" is a historical western romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

     Chandigarh based Khushwant Singh, itinerant writer, columnist and TV show host, pays tribute to the City Beautiful by setting his latest book–a work of fiction–amidst its broad, tree-lined boulevards. And its trappings: snazzy SUVs, glitzy homes and fast-paced lifestyles. Maharaja In Denims, a tale of love, intrigue and passion rallies around a teenaged protagonist, Hari Singh Sandhu, present-day resident of one of Chandigarh’s tony sectors, and Suzanne his girlfriend.Very early into their relationship Hari begins to get flashes of a past life that includes Maharaja Ranjit Singh, founder of the Sikh Empire. Clearly suggesting to a much-surprised teenager the very real possibility of him being Ranjit Singh’s incarnate! Alarmed at these happenings in his hitherto unencumbered and happily aimless existence, he needs little persuasion when Suzanne requests him to undergo a past life regression. Coughing up an incredible number of surprises, not least that of other, more horrific past lives.The author deftly interweaves the youthful love story with vignettes of Ranjit Singh’s life, loves, valour and conquests. With past life after past life unravelling before them, Hari and Suzanne, stumble upon people and incidents that link the present-day to the turbulent and disturbing history of Punjab. The story continues to England and then on to Mumbai before ending in an astonishing twist set in the future. Maharaja In Denims is indeed a modern tale told in a bold, moving and racy narrative.The author’s earlier works include Sikhs Unlimited, a well-received chronicle of the Sikh Diaspora in both the UK and USA, and Turbaned Tornado–an inspiring biography of the iconic 100 year-old Fauja Singh, marathon runner.

    The stories reveal their characters and histories, but the scrabble itself is a mere transient remission from the vagaries and harshness of prison life, which continues unabated around them and through them.We are party to a voyage through calm settled waters of support, camaraderie and story-telling, to storms of violence, abuse and abject despair in a rigid, alien and unforgiving environment. We feel the emotions of the highs and lows of prison life through the victimisation, determination and hope of our players, who ultimately all show resilience in one way or another.It is a fable about humanity, garnered with wit, insight and encouragement, with a little whodunnit? thrown in for good measure.

    Brown wants is a nice cup of tea and a peaceful evening with his cat on his knee. He’s too old for love and adventure. Or so he thinks. This morning when Harold Brown woke up, it seemed like a normal day. Why would a 50-year old man feel anything about a circus coming to the quiet town of Limberlost? But BonBon Circus has brought a Bengal tiger, and Harold’s never seen a tiger before. When he decides to disrupt his routine to visit the circus, it sets in motion a few other changes, all leading up to one thrilling day. Will Mr. Brown’s life ever be the same again?

    Presidential candidate. Murderer. Unpunished is a tale of murder, ambition, corruption, and the redemptive power of love. Leonard Pilcher, a scion of entitlement and privilege, is a congressman, presidential candidate...and a murderer. As an American pilot interned in Sweden during WWII, he kills one of his own crewmen and gets away with it, without suspicion. Two people have witnessed the murder--American airman Joe Gelardi and his secret Swedish lover, Pola Nilsson-MacLeish--but they cannot speak out without paying a devastating price. Tormented by their guilt and separated by a vast ocean after the war, Joe and Pola maintain the silence that haunts them both...until 1960, when Congressman Pilcher's campaign for his party's nomination for president gains momentum. As he dons the guise of war hero, one female reporter, anxious to break into the "boy's club" of TV news, fights to uncover the truth against the far-reaching power of the Pilcher family's wealth, power that can do any wrong it chooses--even kill--and remain unpunished. Just as the nomination seems within Pilcher's grasp, Pola reappears to enlist Joe's help in finally exposing Pilcher for the criminal he really is. As the passion of their wartime romance rekindles, they must struggle to bring Pilcher down before becoming his next victims.

    It is the late 1960s and the family enjoy an idyllic life in the Vale of Kashmir, despite the area being riddled with conflict and poverty. But after a devastating earthquake wipes out her entire family, Jaya is taken into the care of relatives in Delhi, who attempt to marry her off and keep secret from her the possibility that Tahir, her younger brother, has survived the earthquake. After escaping from the arranged marriage Jaya is put through medical training in Scotland, as she had always dreamed, and where she develops feelings for her foster family’s eldest son, Alastair, who is engaged to someone else. In the meantime, Tahir has been abducted by a band of Kashmiri freedom fighters, who have made him one of their own. Jaya finally returns to her troubled homeland to find him and come to terms with the loss of her family. Alastair, who arrives in Kashmir to announce his love for Jaya, is kidnapped by the freedom fighters, forcing her to risk everything to get him back.

    The runaway evacuees who give her shelter call her Nellie, the only girl in 'Toff' Hecht's gang, until, yet again, tragedy strikes, and she is forced to move on. But when Nellie meets the great music hall illusionists, Monsieur and Madame Pierre - alias Bert and Doris Beckwith - her life begins again. In the magical world of bright lights and greasepaint she finds a wonderful new family. But even as she is happily stitching costumes backstage, Nellie can't stop thinking about her old life in the bombed-out rubble - and more particularly, about the restless young Jewish boy, 'Toff' Hecht...

    Grahame in this work. Merriman is plunged headlong into the world of espionage and when Grahame is seriously wounded it falls to Merriman to carry on the investigation.Young James Merriman must keep all his wits about him to foil these plans especially when his adversary is revealed to be an exceptional French agent Henri Moreau who hopes that by helping the Irish to throw off the English yoke, France will be able to use Irish ports from which to attack England.

    

    Her husband and elder son rode off to save slavery in the Confederate Cavalry. Their plantation would now be controlled by a brutish slave master and sadistic slave overseers. Would their slaves revolt? Would Yankee armies attack and destroy their way of life? The slave master already had designs on Clare Ellen Fairchild and couldn’t wait until her husband rode off to war and hopefully die for his Cause. It was April, planting season. The very long and very hot summer awaited them. Clare Ellen was told that this war would be over by September and to ‘not worry her pretty little head’ about it. Clare Ellen was told wrong. She and her children should have worried their pretty little heads.

    Here, historian Alexander Ivanov reveals their fears and betrayals, privilege and debauchery, conspiracies and rivalries, love and tragedy as they forged Russia into one of the world's greatest empires. No ruler in history has embodied the oppressive domination of these rulers more vividly than Alexander Ivanov's opening subject, Tsar Ivan IV, the first of all the Russian tsars, known to history as Ivan the Terrible. Although a gifted ruler who did much to unite and improve the conditions in his primitive country, Ivan was also a notorious sadist who delighted in torturing and murdering anyone who displeased him. Ivan's death in 1584 ushered in the Time of Troubles, thirty-five years of famine, plague, and war that crippled the nation. A series of rulers attempted to cope with the devastation, beginning with Ivan's successor Boris Godunov. Finally, grasping for stability, Russia's nobles begged young Michael Romanov, the great-nephew of Ivan's beloved wife Anastasia, to take the throne. Michael successfully united the war-torn and ravaged nation and founded a dynasty that would rule for 300 years. The Romanov line produced Russia's most brilliant yet most unconventional sovereign: Peter the Great, a towering figure of a man whose restless, creative mind led him on an inexorable quest to modernize and civilize the still backward nation. The reforms he enacted so enraged nobles and peasants alike that Peter had to quash a series of rebellions to keep his crown. Ruthlessly stifling dissent and massacring rebels, he ultimately cowed the Russian people into submission, achieving a legacy that nearly equaled his ambitions. It was left to a woman - and a foreigner, at that - to lead the nation further out of the darkness. German princess Sophie Friederike Auguste of Anhalt-Zerbst, known to the world as Catherine the Great, absorbed the principles of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and applied them to a country built on the backs of millions of serfs. However ineffective some of her policies, in the end, she made Russia a major player on the European stage. Serfdom was finally abolished in the nineteenth century, but it would be decades before Russian peasants could own land of their own and learn to farm it productively. The boyars and tsars clung to power until the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The sad fate of the last tsar, Nicholas II, and his family, marked the end of the absolute power that Ivan the Terrible had so exploited. The abuses would continue but under a new and drastically different form of government.

    When Amy visits her husband Hugh at Beckett's Park Hospital, he doesn't recognise her. Broken after serving four devastating years in the First World War, Hugh is a shadow of the man he once was. Can he ever again be the man Amy knew and loved?Barnsborough, 1912. The first time Hugh and Amy meet, the connection between them is instant and electric. While a librarian's assistant and a collier might not be the most conventional pair, the two come together over a love of books that quickly turns into more. Neither suspects their families have secrets that threaten to tear them apart...True love's path is rarely simple... but can Hugh and Amy find their way back to each other?