The 39 Steps, Buchan’s best-known thriller, introduces his most enduring hero, Richard Hannay—who, despite claiming to be an “ordinary fellow,” is caught up in a dangerous race against a plot to devastate the British war effort.
Pretty, impecunious Sally Nicholas never dreamed a fortune could prove a disadvantage, until she becomes an heiress and watches in bewilderment as her orderly existence goes haywire.
The epic quest of Aenas, who flees the ashes of Troy to found a new civilization: Rome. A unique hero, Aenas struggles and fights not for personal gain but for a civilization that will exist in the far future. Caught between passion and fate, his vision would change the course of the Western world.
Fifty-year-old William Whittlestaff becomes guardian to Mary Lawrie and gradually finds himself falling in love with her. But Mary has already given her heart to the John Gordon, who has gone to seek his fortune in South Africa. Gordon’s sudden return after a three years’ absence, on the very day of William’s proposal, precipitates the crisis at the centre of the story.
They called him unfit to rule- a lowborn, callow boy, Uther’s bastard. But his coming had been foretold and he had learned powerful secrets at the knee of the mystical sage Merlin. He was Arthur Pendragon, who would rise to legendary greatness in a Britain torn by violence, greed, and war and who would fall at the treacherous hands of the one he loved more than life.
The belly of Paris is a story of wealth and poverty amidst a sumptuous banquet of food and commerce. Having just escaped from prison, young Florent arrives in Paris' food market, Les Halles, half-starved, surrounded by all he can't have and indignant at his world, which he now knows to be unjust. Gradually, he takes up with the local Socialists, who are more at home in bars than on the revolutionary streets.
Young David Balfour must defend himself and his friend, Alan Breck Stewart, against false murder charges, becoming further entangled in a political conspiracy between feuding Scottish clans. His new adventure will include shipwreck, murder, intrigue, and a Scottish lass named Catriona, with whom he falls in love at first sight.
With absorbing detail about the secret world of agents, this book traces Churchill's connections with the world of intelligence, from his days as a member of the Cabinet that established the Secret Service to the war years, when his intelligence network provided him with superior information - the payoff for his years of nurturing these contacts.
The tumultuous life of the Roman who became emperor in spite of himself and his handicaps. The crippled Claudius describes himself as the fool of the royal family, whom none of his ambitious and blood-thirsty relatives considered worth the trouble of killing. Once in the throne, however, he finds himself at last at the center of the political maelstrom.
This is the timeless tale of a thoughtful orphan discovering how to live and love in a cutthroat, indifferent adult world. Copperfield's experiences echo Dickens's own life story, revealing much about the author and the society of his time.
1348, the year of the Black Death. From the city of Florence, seven ladies and three gentlemen escape to Fiesole, where they pass ten days telling each other stories. In contrast to their enchanted dream world of beauty and luxury the stories are marked by an intense, cynical realism and feature ordinary people of less privileged classes.
Joyce paints vivid portraits of the poorer classes of Dublin, his city of birth, in a collection of stories whose brilliant, tightly focused observations are by turns bawdy, witty and tragic.
Julio Desnoyers, a wealthy young Spanish American, tries to escape the dirt, blood, and horror of World War I. Why should he fight for a country that is not his own? But the war follows Julio, changing everything. His lover no longer desires their old life and his father has no use for his cowardly son. When he finally decides to fight, the world knows him for a different man.
Published in 1885, this novel helped establish Zola, an artist of unsparing candor, as the leading figure in the French school of naturalistic fiction.
The Great Terror was the definitive work on Stalin’s purges but relied on unofficial sources. Later developments have provided an avalanche of new material for this revised and updated edition. Many details have been added, including hitherto secret information on the great “Moscow Trials,” the purge of writers and members of the intelligentsia and life in the labor camps.
Keegan, formerly a military historian at Sandhurst and now defense editor for a London newspaper, offers an account of armed conflict through the ages. He addresses the archaeological proofs of war, the impact of weaponry, the reasons why men fight, the various 'warrior fraternities,' and the circumstances that cause war.
British Secret Service is fighting for its very survival. George Smiley and agent Gerald Westerby battle the Soviet case worker who masterminded its ruin.
Considered an idiot because of his physical infirmities, Claudius survives palace intrigues and poisonings to become emperor of Rome in A.D. 41. This masterpiece of historical fiction is written as an autobiographical memoir.
Keats suffered an early tragic death of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-six but today is recognized as the archetypal Romantic genius who explored the limits of the imagination and celebrated the pleasures of the senses. His muse was the goddess of truth and beauty, and his worship of her found its finest expression in his immortal odes.
