Thankfully, she is staying in the royal suite and that means she has a butler to help her. When he recruits his gym instructor BFF, Barbie, the trio turn detective to find the real killer.But someone on board doesn’t want them to succeed and when the next body is found in her kitchen, the team realise it’s more than just her freedom at stake. They’d better solve this fast or all three of them might be next.

    And then she laughs.” In this volume, which collects and amplifies two-and-a-half years’ worth of blog entries, he combs through the first three novels in Austen’s canon — Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park — with the aim of charting her growth as both a novelist and a humorist, and of shattering the notion that she’s a romantic of any kind (“Weddings bore her, and the unrelenting vulgarity of our modern wedding industry — which strives to turn each marriage ceremony into the kind of blockbuster apotheosis that makes grand opera look like a campfire sing along — would appall her into derisive laughter”).“Hilarious…Rodi’s title is a tribute. He’s angry that the Austen craze has defanged a novelist who’s ‘wicked, arch, and utterly merciless. She skewers the pompous, the pious, and the libidinous with the animal glee of a natural-born sadist’…Like Rodi, I believe Austen deserves to join the grand pantheon of gadflies: Voltaire and Swift, Twain and Mencken.” Lev Raphael, The Huffington Post

     The history of Germany is full of famous figures who defined the history of Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Yet, apart from a few well-known leaders, little is often known about medieval Germany. Ernest F. Henderson’s A History of Germany in the Middle Ages aimed to rectify this by bringing to the fore a full history of Germany from the fourth century to the thirteenth century. Henderson explains how the power vacuum left in the wake of the Romans the Frankish kingdom, which became centred in Aachen under Charlemagne, emerged. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources Henderson is able to detail how the loose collection of states in what we would now call Germany were able to come together and form the Holy Roman Empire. Rather than focusing solely on the more famous and successful leaders of the Germanic states, Henderson also uncovers less powerful rulers such as Henry IV, who was in constant conflict with Pope Gregory VII and had to fight numerous civil wars to remain in control. Henderson places the German states within the context of medieval Europe and explains how various Emperors fought back invaders from the East, led wars against France and the northern Italian states, struggled against the influence of the popes and kept order within their borders. A History of Germany in the Middle Ages is essential reading for anyone interested in medieval Europe and the role of the Germanic states and leaders within it. Ernest F. Henderson was an American historian who focused mainly on the history of Germany. A History of Germany in the Middle Ages was first published in 1894. His other works include: Blücher and the uprising of Prussia against Napoleon, 1806-1815, Select historical documents of the middle ages and Germany's fighting machine; her army, her navy, her air-ships, and why she arrayed them against the allied powers of Europe. Henderson died in 1928.

    Born in Prussia to assimilated Jewish parents, she escaped from Hitler’s Germany in 1933 and became best known for her critique of the world’s response to the evils of World War II.A woman of many contradictions, Arendt learned to write in English only at the age of thirty-six, and yet her first book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, single-handedly altered the way generations of Americans and Europeans viewed fascism and genocide. Her most famous—and most divisive—work, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, brought fierce controversy that continues to this day, exacerbated by the posthumous discovery that she had been the lover of the great romantic philosopher and Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger.In this fast-paced, comprehensive biography, Anne Heller tracks the source of Arendt’s apparent contradictions and her greatest achievements, from a tumultuous childhood to her arrival as what she called a “conscious pariah”—one of those few people in every time and place who don’t “lose confidence in ourselves if society does not approve us” and will not “pay any price” to win acceptance.

    With one gesture, the man later hailed as Charlemagne claimed his empire and forever shaped the destiny of Europe. Becoming Charlemagne tells the story of the international power struggle that led to this world-changing event.Illuminating an era that has long been overshadowed by legend, this far-ranging book shows how the Frankish king and his wise counselors built an empire not only through warfare but also by careful diplomacy. With consummate political skill, Charlemagne partnered with a scandal-ridden pope, fended off a ruthless Byzantine empress, nurtured Jewish communities in his empire, and fostered ties with a famous Islamic caliph. For 1,200 years, the deeds of Charlemagne captured the imagination of his descendants, inspiring kings and crusaders, the conquests of Napoléon and Hitler, and the optimistic architects of the European Union.In this engaging narrative, Jeff Sypeck crafts a vivid portrait of Karl, the ruler who became a legend, while transporting readers far beyond Europe to the glittering palaces of Constantinople and the streets of medieval Baghdad. Evoking a long-ago world of kings, caliphs, merchants, and monks, Becoming Charlemagne brings alive an age of empire building that continues to resonate today.

    It also shines a light on topics such as the origins of scalping, the famous Lincoln County War, the grim medical reality of Western gunfights, cowboy jargon, and the first rodeo.

    In this book, we get to hear Cavett's best tales, as he recounts great moments with the legendary entertainers who crossed his path and offers his own trenchant commentary on contemporary American culture and politics.

    

    

    Eleven were hanged. In New Haven, William Meeker was accused of cutting off and burning his pig's ears and tail as he cast a bewitching spell. After the hanging of Fairfield's Goody Knapp, magistrates cut down and searched her body for the marks of the devil. Through newspaper clippings, court records, letters and diaries, author Cynthia Wolfe Boynton uncovers the dark history of the Connecticut witch trials.

    . . the greatest war of all time told as it is best told - by the people who lived it." - The Washington Post All first-person accounts of great events have their own fascination, but the editors of American Heritage have discovered that people writing about World War II seem to tell their own story with particular passion and eloquence. That is one reason American Heritage has published so many of them - and why noted military historian Stephen W. Sears has selected the most compelling. The result of his search is a uniquely moving and valuable anthology - a series of personal histories that, marshaled together, become an intimate history of the Second World War. Here is Edward Beach, the highly decorated submarine skipper and author of Run Silent, Run Deep, recalling what it was like to be sent into hostile waters with torpedoes that didn't work; Charles Cawthon recounts the landing at Normandy Beach in a restrained and poetic narrative whose quiet humor does nothing to blunt the savagery of the experience; General James Gavin tells of the jump into Sicily and of a battle fought that never should have been fought; Hughes Rudd watched the war from overhead in a flimsy spotter plane, his "Maytag Messerschmitt; and William Manchester remembers a particularly audacious and hilarious scam that a reckless Marine buddy played on the entire army. Some of the stories are heartbreaking, some amusing, some horrifying, but every one of them - whether told by the women who hammered fighter planes together or the men who flew them - glows with hard-won experience.

    Slowly, inevitably, Europe and Islam came together, through trade and war, crusade and diplomacy. The ebb and flow between these two worlds for seven hundred years, illuminated here by a brilliant historian, is one of the great sagas of world history.

    After the Germans invaded Norway, many Norwegians knew that small boats were constantly sailing from the Shetland Islands to land weapons, supplies, and agents and to rescue refugees.In The Shetland Bus, David Howarth, who was second in command of the Shetland base, recounts the hundreds of trips made by fishing boats in the dark of Arctic winter to resist the Nazi onslaught.For the Norwegians who remained in Norway, The Shetland Bus fortified them both physically and spiritually. Nothing but war would have made seamen attempt such dangerous journeys. Some stretched two thousand miles in length and lasted as long as three weeks in boats only fifty to seventy-five feet long. Fishing boats crossing the North Sea were sometimes attacked and sunk in minutes, hundreds of miles from a friendly ship or shore. Their crews had no hope of being saved. But to "take the Shetland Bus" meant escape when capture became the only other option. The Shetland Bus is the amazing true-life account of storms, attacks, danger, and the heroic efforts of brave men.

    Preston Lauterbach recounts the rise and fall of Beale Street through the life of the South’s first black millionaire, an ex-slave who built an underworld dynasty in the booming river town and created a space for black culture to flourish. A thrilling narrative history, Beale Street Dynasty tells an intriguing, previously unknown story about race in an American city.

    In both countryside and towns, from peasants to the bourgeoisie to nobility, no aspect of life in this era is left unexplored.