Showing results for "simon vance"

Bleak House opens in a London shrouded by fog—a fog that swirls most densely about the Court of Chancery, where the obscure case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce lies lost in endless litigation, slowly devouring an inheritance in legal costs.Against this ominous background, Charles Dickens’ rich tapestry of a novel weaves together the fortunes and desires of several characters whose fates are tied to the case: Ada and Richard, two young orphans who stand t...

July, 1921: England is suffering a heatwave and the coast of Northumberland, just across the border from Scotland, is filled with holiday-makers bird watching and enjoying the beaches. Pilgrims also come to visit the home of Saints Cuthbert and Aiden—the founders of Christianity in England—located on the "Holy Island" of Lindisfarne, accessible by a causeway at low tide.When the murdered body of a local man washes ashore just south of Lindisfarne, the government and the Church of E...

In this newest installment of the acclaimed New York Times bestselling series, Scotland Yard’s Ian Rutledge is faced with his most perplexing case yet: a murder with no body, and a killer who can only be a ghost.Spring, 1921. Scotland Yard sends Inspector Ian Rutledge to the sea-battered village of Walmer on the coast of Essex, where amongst the salt flats and a military airfield lies Benton Abbey, a grand manor with a storied past. The lady of the house m...

Karl Marx's devastating critique of capitalism, and his proposal of communism as the answer to the failings of the capitalist system, bore their greatest fruits in the twentieth century with the formation of the communist state in the Soviet Union. This great venture has now all but completely failed. Yet the force of the communist belief offered the prospect of "justice on this earth" to countless numbers. And Marx's critique has influenced generations of thinkers who call themselves Marx...

In the first in a stunning mystery series set in eighteenth-century England, Tessa Harris introduces Dr. Thomas Silkstone, anatomist and pioneering forensic detective.The death of Lord Edward Crick has unleashed a torrent of gossip through the seedy taverns and elegant ballrooms of Oxfordshire. Few mourn the dissolute young man—except his sister, the beautiful Lady Lydia Farrell. When her husband comes under suspicion of murder, she seeks expert help from Dr. Thomas Silkstone, a yo...

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLERA novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present.A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes’...

David Copperfield is the quintessential novel by England's most beloved novelist. Based in part on Dickens's own life, it is the story of a young man's journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among its gloriously vivid cast of characters, he encounters his tyrannical stepfather, Mr. Murdstone; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; the frivolous, enchanting Dora; a...

It is September 1940—a year into the war—and as German bombs fall on Britain, fears grow of an impending invasion. Enemy fighter planes blacken the sky around the Epping Forest home of Susan Shepherd and her grandfather, Bertie. After losing her parents to influenza as a child, Susan found comfort in raising homing pigeons with Bertie. All her birds are extraordinary to Susan—loyal, intelligent, beautiful—but none more so than Duchess, who shares a special bond with Susan and an unusual cu...

This novel provides a highly charged examination of human suffering and human sacrifice, private experience and public history, during the French Revolution.A Tale of Two Cities is one of Charles Dickens's most exciting novels. Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, it tells the story of a family threatened by the terrible events of the past. Doctor Manette was wrongly imprisoned in the Bastille for eighteen years without trial by the aristocratic authorities. ...

London, 1782. The sole survivor of an ill-fated expedition to Jamaica has gone missing upon his return home. Dr. Thomas Silkstone had been entrusted to catalog all the New World specimens and therefore feels compelled to investigate the disappearance. Meanwhile, a rumor circulates that a potion with the power to raise the dead is afoot, and the formula is thought to be in the missing botanist's journal.As he investigates, the good doctor is drawn into a world of trafficking in corp...

"CSI meets the Age of Reason with a well-drawn, intriguing cast of characters" (Karen Harper) in Tessa Harris' superbly plotted historical mystery series, featuring eighteenth-century anatomist and pioneering sleuth Dr. Thomas Silkstone.In the notorious mental hospital known as Bedlam, Dr. Thomas Silkstone seeks out a patient with whom he is on intimate terms. But he is unprepared for the state in which he finds Lady Lydia Farrell. Shocked into action, Thomas vows to help ...

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Christopher Andersen comes a vivid and unsparing yet sympathetic portrait of one of the most complex and enigmatic figures of our time: King Charles III, who has taken his place on the throne after being the oldest and longest-serving heir in British history.Since the day Charles Philip Arthur George was born, he has been groomed to be King. After more than seventy years of waiting, he finally ascends the throne.