“How much pain and suffering must a man endure in the name of the child, for the breach of trust, oath and honor for a land he so dearly loved, for its people insofar as he WAS PREPARED to give his life for the freedom of others for the preservation of laws of mankind, for the true love and dedication before of his Queen”?

Written over a period of more than half a century, Leo Tolstoy’s stories reflect every aspect of his art and personality. They cover his experiences as a soldier in the Caucasus, his married life, his passionate interest in the peasantry, his cult of truth and simplicity, and his growing preoccupation with religion.The stories in Volume 1 of the Collected Shorter Fiction date from the period in which the young Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina and War and Peace.

Ranging in scope from lengthy novellas to fables and folktales only a few pages long, Leo Tolstoy’s short fiction provides a marvelous opportunity to become closely acquainted with Russia’s great novelist.Volume 2 of the Collected Shorter Fiction reveals howTolstoy’s growing spiritual preoccupations flowered into a series of extraordinary late masterpieces that equal anything in the earlier novels for intensity and power. Readers of The Death of Iván Ilých, The Kreutze...

The House of Tudor changed the history of Britain forever. The Tudor monarchs have been immortalised in novels and films for generations. However, the true history of this incredible dynasty is often romanticised and fact is overlooked. Alison Plowden's accessible and beautifully written history traces the family's turbulent reign of power from Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch, who fathered the great Henry VIII. Henry VIII went onto revolutionise England's armed...

As individuals, the Duchesses of Devonshire have made their mark on history, politics, and English high society. Collectively, they are a force which has made an indelible print on the conservation of their home at Chatsworth. There is no better place to try to get a sense of who these amazing women were than by visiting Chatsworth. With this book you will unlock their stories and get a room by room tour of Chatsworth. By the end you will have walked figuratively and possibly even literall...

From the author of All the Money in the World, now a major motion picture, comes a history of Lady Diana's family, the Spencers, a dynasty that rose from sheep farmers to the ranks of upper aristocracy and, finally, royalty.When Lady Diana Spencer married the Prince of Wales in 1981, very little attention was given to her feudal family. The once powerful Spencer dynasty was in disarray and seemed to have outlived its usefulness. In the years following Dian...

* Illustrated * Author Biography * Interactive Table of Contents * Free Audiobook Download Queen Victoria [Illustrated] [ Free Audiobooks Download ] Strachey's 1921 biography of Queen Victoria was unlike his more biting Eminent Victorians (1918: Florence Nightingale was one of its subjects). The anecdotal style and clear affection for the subject make this work a landmark biography. Strachey later wrote Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History (19...

This compelling book begins on the 2nd of August 1793, the day Marie Antoinette was torn from her family’s arms and escorted from the Temple to the Conciergerie, a thick-walled fortress turned prison. It was also known as the “waiting room for the guillotine” because prisoners only spent a day or two here before their conviction and subsequent execution. The ex-queen surely knew her days were numbered, but she could never have known that two and a half months would pass before she would fi...

Once again Gary Boyd Roberts has assembled all recent royal descent research, some yet unpublished, and produced an authoritative, up-to-date compendium. In this 2008 edition, he has added twenty-eight new immigrants, so that with a few disproofs (Curwens/Corwins of Massachusetts and New York, Byes ofPennsylvania, and Edwardses, one Evans and Hugh Jones of Pennsylvania), the total covered is now 688. The 387 colonial immigrants whose "best" lines are charted in this work include all but a han...

In literature, knights always have their gallant steeds to accompany them. But sometimes literature can be wrong or it could have a mix of imagination. In this nonfiction book, we're going to take a peek into the real world of real knights. Be ready for some surprising facts! Open this book today!

"Shows Marius the man, warts and all . . . an excellent biography . . . a very good breakdown of Roman politics, and a civics course in ancient Rome."— A Wargamers Needful ThingsGaius Marius was one of the most remarkable and significant figures of the late Roman Republic. At a time when power tended to be restricted to a clique of influential families, he rose from relatively humble origins to attain the top office of consul. He even went on to hold the post an un...