Roger Thursby aged twenty-four is called to the bar. He is young inexperienced & his love life is complicated. He blunders his way through a succession of comic adventures including his calamitous debut at the bar. His career takes an upward turn when he is chosen to defend the caddish Alfred Greenat at the Old Bailey. In this first Roger Thursby novel Henry Cecil satires the legal profession with his usual wit & insight. ...

Brothers in War" is the immensely powerful & deeply tragic story of the Beechey brothers & how they paid the ultimate price for King & country. All eight went to fight in the Great War on such far-flung battlefields as France Flanders East Africa & Gallipoli. Only three would return alive. Even amid the carnage of the trenches it was a family trauma almost without parallel. Their wives & sweethearts were left bereft their widowed mother Amy devastated. It is a tragedy that has remained forgotten & unmarked for nearly 90 years. Until now. Kept in a small brown case handed down by the brothers youngest sister Edie were hundreds of letters sent home from the front by the Beechey boys: scraps of paper scribbled on in the firing line heartfelt messages written from a deathbed exasperated correspondences detailing the absurdities of life in the trenches. From it all emerges the remarkable tale of the lost brothers. Tragic & moving poetic in its intensity " Brothers in War" reveals first-hand the catastrophe that was the Great War; all told through one family forced to sacrifice everything." ...

1915: Ben Retallick is asked by a War Office friend to provide two traction engines for a secret expedition attempting to take two gunboats overland from Cape Town to Lake Tanganyika
- more than 3 000 miles
- to wrest control of the lake from the Germans. He sends engines with young Ruddlemoor as the driver who meets a Portuguese East African nurse & takes her side against a group of white racist south Africans. Meanwhile Antonia St Anna is influential in having Ben released when he is arrested on circumstantial evidence provided by a business rival & accused of being pro-German. In Brothers in War E. V. Thompson returns to his acclaimed Retallick saga immersing the family in the upheaval of the First World War & through them creating a captivating tale of love & war loyalty & betrayal loss & adventure that weaves its way from Cornwall to the uncharted territory of the depths of Africa
- & an eventful conclusion in Cornwall once more.


...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's powerful meditation on faith meaning & morality The Brothers Karamazov" is translated with an introduction & notes by David Mc Duff in " Penguin Classics". When brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov is murdered the lives of his sons are changed irrevocably: Mitya the sensualist whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for parricide; Ivan the intellectual whose mental tortures drive him to breakdown; the spiritual Alyosha who tries to heal the family's rifts; & the shadowy figure of their bastard half-brother Smerdyakov. As the ensuing investigation & trial reveal the true identity of the murderer Dostoyevsky's dark masterpiece evokes a world where the lines between innocence & corruption good & evil blur & everyone's faith in humanity is tested. This powerful translation of " The Brothers Karamazov" features & introduction highlighting Dostoyevsky's recurrent themes of guilt & salvation with a new chronology & further reading. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was born in Moscow. From 1849-54 he lived in a convict prison & in later years his passion for gambling led him deeply into debt. His other works available in " Penguin Classics" include " Crime & Punishment" " The Idiot" & " Demons". If you enjoyed " The Brothers Karamazov" you might like Nikolai Gogol's " Dead Souls" also available in " Penguin Classics". " There is no writer who better demonstrates the contradictions & fluctuations of the creative mind than Dostoyevsky & nowhere more astonishingly than in " The Brothers Karamazov"". (Joyce Carol Oates). " Dostoyevsky was the only psychologist from whom I had anything to learn: he belongs to the happiest windfalls of my life". (Friedrich Nietzsche). " The most magnificent novel ever written". (Sigmund Freud)." ...

The Brothers Karamazov" is a murder mystery a courtroom drama & an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving Karamazov & his three sons
- the impulsive & sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; & the healthy young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story Dostoevsky portrays the social & spiritual strivings in what was both a golden age & a tragic turning point in Russian culture."
...

The fourth & final instalment in the epic saga of Larten Crepsley
- vampire hero & victim of fate... Just as Larten is finding
...

The fourth & final instalment in the epic saga of Larten Crepsley
- vampire hero & victim of fate... Just as Larten is finding
...

Ex Ireland rugby player & now successful businessman Jim OConnor is shot dead point blank range in the car park of a restaurant where he is hosting a family celebration. DCI Percy Peach is brought back from holiday to head up an investigation that has got nowhere. It seems Jim OConnor had some rather unpleasant business contacts many with the motive to get rid of him. However when law-abiding Dominic OConnor is also killed within days of his brother Brunton CID can only assume there must be some link between the two murders so should they really be looking closer to home for the culprit.. .? ...

Rebel Cast out from his home rejected by his family Tom Rivers returns to his regiment. But his commander believes the young hothead's recklessness & contempt for authority has no place in his troop. But to a spymaster like Captain Crafte Tom's dark & fearless nature is in itself a weapon to be turned upon the hated Cavaliers
- who else would dare to infiltrate Oxford now the Royalist capital to destroy the King's printing press & strike a blow at the very heart of the enemy? Renegade Raw with grief at the death of his father Edmund Rivers rejects the peace talks between Parliament & the King. He chooses instead to lead a hardened band of marauders across the moors appearing out of the frozen world to fall on unsuspecting rebel columns like wolves. But Prince Rupert
- recognising in Mun a fellow child of war
- has other plans for him from stealing a colossal gun to tunneling beneath the walls of Lichfield. The only peace the enemy will get from Mun Rivers is that of the grave. Huntress Her heart broken following the deaths of her beloved Emmanuel & her father Bess Rivers takes the hardest decision of her life: to leave her new-born son & depart Sheer House in search of the one person who might help her re-unite what is left of her broken family. Risking her own life on the road Bess will do whatever it takes to find her brother Tom & secure his Royal pardon but can she douse the flames of her brothers' fury & see them reconciled?


...

George Brough started building motorcycles shortly after the First World War. The machines were named Brough Superior both to distinguish them from his father's Brough machines & to denote the highest levels of performance & quality of manufacture. Throughout the 1920s & 1930s the name Brough Superior was synonymous with the very best in motorcycle design. The machines gained fame in the hands of riders such as Bert le Vack Eric Fernihough Noel Pope & of course T E Lawrence ' Lawrence of Arabia'. ...