Fair Winds and Homeward Sail: Sophy Croft's Story

Fair Winds and Homeward Sail: Sophy Croft's Story

Sherwood Smith

Fantasy / Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

One of Jane Austen's best-loved books is Persuasion, and of the characters in it, among the most popular are Sophy and Admiral Croft, dashing Frederick Wentworth's sister and brother-in-law. In this short novel, Sherwood Smith takes a look at what the Wentworths' lives might have been like before they met the Elliots, and Sophy's view of Anne Elliot's and Frederick Wentworth's stormy relationship—and how she might have had a hand in bringing about that happy ending.
Read online
  • 174
The Wild Island

The Wild Island

Antonia Fraser

History / Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

Here, Jemima Shore, investigator and TV personality, arrives at Inverness Station for a Highland holiday. The sun is shining. Paradise, she thinks. But at that moment, she hears a voice: "All this way for a funeral." So begins an adventure far removed from Jemima's visions of heather-covered hills, crystal-clear streams, romantic men in kilts, fairy-tale castles....Instead, she is plunged into the strange world of the aristocratic Beauregard family with its tensions, its jealousies, and its violence, in many ways a primitive world dominated by the land and its possessing. The setting is the Wild Island itself, sometimes enchanting, but too often frighteningly remote; the streams, not silvery, but brown and sinister; her holiday home, with its disturbing, sometimes terrifying, influences; the people--the dashing war hero Colonel Henry and his sons, the forthright old priest Father Flanagan, Bridie the family servant, Clementina the wayward heiress...none of them quite what they seem. And then there is the specter of the Scottish "freedom fighters," in the shape of the self-styled army of the Red Rose. It all adds up to a brilliantly told story of mystery and intrigue on the Wild Island.
Read online
  • 172
Moranthology

Moranthology

Caitlin Moran

Biographies & Memoirs / Humor / Women & Gender Studies

Possibly the only drawback about the bestselling How To Be A Woman was that its author, Caitlin Moran, was limited to pretty much one subject: being a woman. In MORANTHOLOGY Caitlin 'gets quite chatty’ about many subjects, including cultural, social and political issues which are usually left to hot-shot wonks and not a woman who sometimes keeps a falafel in her handbag. These other subjects include... Caffeine | Ghostbusters | Being Poor | Twitter | Caravans | Obama | Wales | Paul McCartney | The Welfare State | Sherlock | David Cameron Looking Like Ham | Amy Winehouse | ‘The Big Society’ | Big Hair | Nutter-letters | Michael Jackson's funeral | Failed Nicknames | Wolverhampton | Squirrels’ Testicles | Sexy Tax | Binge-drinking | Chivalry | Rihanna’s Cardigan | Party Bags | Hot People| Transsexuals | The Gay Moon Landings
Read online
  • 169
Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

Dave Eggers

Biographies & Memoirs / Nonfiction / Literature & Fiction

From Dave Eggers, best-selling author of "The Circle," a tightly controlled, emotionally searching novel. "Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?" is the formally daring, brilliantly executed story of one man struggling to make sense of his country, seeking answers the only way he knows how. In a barracks on an abandoned military base, miles from the nearest road, Thomas watches as the man he has brought wakes up. Kev, a NASA astronaut, doesn't recognize his captor, though Thomas remembers him. Kev cries for help. He pulls at his chain. But the ocean is close by, and nobody can hear him over the waves and wind. Thomas apologizes. He didn't want to have to resort to this. But they really needed to have a conversation, and Kev didn't answer his messages. And now, if Kev can just stop yelling, Thomas has a few questions.
Read online
  • 169


Miracle in Seville

Miracle in Seville

James A. Michener

Historical Fiction / History / Biographies & Memoirs

America's bestselling author transports readers to magical Seville, Spain, at Easter time, a season of splendid pageantry, exciting bullfights, deep piety--and miracles. An American journalist, sent to Seville on assignment to cover the efforts of a rancher to revive his once proud line of bulls--uncovers a story that shakes his newspaperman's hard-bitten pragmatism. 26 illustrations.
Read online
  • 167
Seaward

Seaward

Susan Cooper

Children's Books / Science Fiction & Fantasy / Biographies & Memoirs

His name is West. Her name is Cally. They speak different languages and come from different countries thousands of miles apart, but they do not know that. What they do know are the tragedies that took their parents, then wrenched the two of them out of reality, into a strange and perilous world through which they must travel together, knowing only that they must reach the sea. Together West and Cally embark upon a strange and sometimes terrifying quest, learning to survive and to love and, at last, the real secret of their journey.
Read online
  • 167
Moab Is My Washpot

Moab Is My Washpot

Stephen Fry

Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs / Travel

A number one bestseller in Britain, Stephen Fry's astonishingly frank, funny, wise memoir is the book that his fans everywhere have been waiting for. Since his PBS television debut in the Blackadder series, the American profile of this multitalented writer, actor and comedian has grown steadily, especially in the wake of his title role in the film Wilde, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his supporting role in A Civil Action. Fry has already given readers a taste of his tumultuous adolescence in his autobiographical first novel, The Liar, and now he reveals the equally tumultuous life that inspired it. Sent to boarding school at the age of seven, he survived beatings, misery, love affairs, carnal violation, expulsion, attempted suicide, criminal conviction and imprisonment to emerge, at the age of eighteen, ready to start over in a world in which he had always felt a stranger. One of very few Cambridge University graduates to have been imprisoned prior to his freshman year, Fry is a brilliantly idiosyncratic character who continues to attract controversy, empathy and real devotion. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Read online
  • 165
Set This House on Fire

Set This House on Fire

William Styron

Literature & Fiction / Biographies & Memoirs

The day after Peter Leverett met his old friend Mason Flagg in Italy, Mason was found dead. The hours leading up to his death were a nightmare for Peter - both in their violence and in their maddening unreality.The blaze of events which followed was, Peter soon realised, ignited by a conflict between two men: Mason Flagg himself and Cass Kinsolving, a tortured, self-destructive painter, a natural enemy and prey to the monstrous evil of Mason Flagg. Three events - murder, rape and suicide - explode in the is relentless and passionate novel, almost overwhelming in its conception of the varieties of good and evil.
Read online
  • 165
Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment

Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment

Stephen E. Ambrose

History / Biographies & Memoirs

Based on privileged access to the president and his private papers, this classic Cold War-era history by bestselling historian Stephen E. Ambrose gives an inside look at the way President Dwight Eisenhower managed America’s secret operations as general and as commander in chief. During his time in office, Eisenhower projected the image of a genial bureaucrat, but behind that public face, he ran the most efficient espionage establishment in the world, overseeing assassination plots, the growth of the CIA, and the overthrow of governments. This book gives a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most ambitious secret operations in American history, including the 1954 overthrow of  Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán’s government of Guatemala; Operation AJAX, which toppled Iran’s Mossadegh; and the U-2 flights over Russia. Some of Ike’s most conspicuous intelligence missteps are also discussed, including the failure to predict the German attack during the Battle of the Bulge and the tragic encouragement of freedom fighters in Hungary, Indonesia, and Cuba. Ike’s Spies is indispensible to anyone interested in the development of America’s Cold War spy operations.
Read online
  • 163
183