The Crimean War is full of resonance
- not least, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Siege of Sevastopol & Florence Nightingale
...

Spring 1915. On a sprawling country estate not far from London a young woman mourns her husb&, fallen on a distant battlefield.

...

The Bonehunters are marching to Kolanse, & to an unknown fate. Tormented & exhausted, they are an army on the brink of mutiny. But Adjunct Tavore will not relent. If she can hold her forces together, if the fragile alliances she has forged can survive & if it is within her power, one final act remains. For Tavore Paran means to challenge the gods.
Ranged against Tavore & her allies are formidable foes. The Fokrul Assail are drawing upon a terrible power; their desire is to cleanse the world
...

When her mother, Eve, tells Liza that she must leave their remote home, the gatehouse of a country mansion, Liza is terrified. Although seventeen years of age, she has never been on a bus or a train, has never played with a child of her own age. She has almost no knowledge of a world described by her mother as evil & destructive. Their strange, enclosed life together is over because Eve has killed a man. & he is not the first. With -100 in cash, Liza is cast aside. However, she is not alone. There is one particular secret she has kept from her mother
- her love affair with a young man who worked in the big house. With him, gradually Liza learns about the world, about herself, & must come to terms with the possibility that the murderous violence of her mother may be present in her.
...

When her mother, Eve, tells Liza that she must leave their remote home, the gatehouse of a country mansion, Liza is terrified. Although seventeen years of age, she has never been on a bus or a train, has never played with a child of her own age. She has almost no knowledge of a world described by her mother as evil & destructive. Their strange, enclosed life together is over because Eve has killed a man. & he is not the first. With -100 in cash, Liza is cast aside. However, she is not alone. There is one particular secret she has kept from her mother
- her love affair with a young man who worked in the big house. With him, gradually Liza learns about the world, about herself, & must come to terms with the possibility that the murderous violence of her mother may be present in her.
...

Harry Fielding is a shabby, solitary, but basically cheerful sort, living in a seamy flat in London & subsisting on a diet of gin & pre-packed airline meals in unmarked silver containers. He also works for MI5. Surveillance, protection, the occasional rough-&-tumble just enough to keep body & soul together. However, when Harry witnesses Lisa, his next-door neighbour, killing & burying her sister's violent husb&, he begins to lose his appetite. & when his routine shadowing of a cabinet minister & his mistress ends in her death by kitchen knife, he goes off his food entirely. Harry, crooked man, decides to go straight. ...

Sir Isaiah Berlin was one of the most formidable defenders of philosophical liberalism & distinguished practitioners of the history of ideas. Renowned all over the world for his analysis of ideologies which have influenced or transformed society, Berlin discusses, in these eight essays, the meaning & significance of utopianism, cultural history, relativism, Fascism, romanticism, nationalism, & explores the conditions which have allowed these ideals to flourish & those which have threatened them. A staunch advocate of pluralism during a century in which totalitarians & utopians claimed title to the one, single truth, Berlin questions the notion that there can be one final answer to organizing human society which would not lead to bloodshed, coercion, & deprivation of liberty. In line with his political & philosophical positions, these essays are bound together by a firm rejection of tidy answers to the great social & political problems of the twentieth-century which continue to loom so largely today. ...

England 1371: a solemn convoy wends its way into York. William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, is bringing home the remains of Sir Ranulf Pagnell, patriarch of a powerful local family, who has died in France. But the family hold the bishop responsible for Sir Ranulf's death, & ill feeling surrounds his arrival. An accident in the grounds of York Minster nearly kills the bishop.

Then, only a few days after, his townhouse is found ablaze. When the body of a young woman is discovered in the undercroft of the house, scandal threatens to destroy Wykeham. The Archbishop of York, John Thoresby, asks Owen Archer for his help.

The one-eyed spy is troubled. Was the fire an accident or arson? Was the woman trapped or the fire started to conceal a corpse? Stationing guards in front of the smouldering remains, he starts to ask questions. When it appears the dead woman was a midwife known to many of the city's women, including Lucie, Owen's wife, his quest becomes personal.



...

England 1371: a solemn convoy wends its way into York. William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, is bringing home the remains of Sir Ranulf Pagnell, patriarch of a powerful local family, who has died in France. But the family hold the bishop responsible for Sir Ranulf's death, & ill feeling surrounds his arrival. An accident in the grounds of York Minster nearly kills the bishop.

Then, only a few days after, his townhouse is found ablaze. When the body of a young woman is discovered in the undercroft of the house, scandal threatens to destroy Wykeham. The Archbishop of York, John Thoresby, asks Owen Archer for his help.

The one-eyed spy is troubled. Was the fire an accident or arson? Was the woman trapped or the fire started to conceal a corpse? Stationing guards in front of the smouldering remains, he starts to ask questions. When it appears the dead woman was a midwife known to many of the city's women, including Lucie, Owen's wife, his quest becomes personal.



...