Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for War & Peace & Anna Karenina commonly regarded as amongst the greatest novels ever written. He also however wrote many masterly short stories & this volume contains four of the longest & best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time. In the early story Family Happiness Tolstoy explores courtship & marriage from the point of view of a young wife. In The Kreutzer Sonata he gives us a terrifying study of marital breakdown in The Devil a powerful depiction of the power of sexual temptation & in perhaps the finest of all The Death of Ivan Ilyich he portrays the long agony of a man gradually coming to terms with his own mortality. ...

The Alliterative Morte Arthure"
- the title given to a four-thousand line poem written sometime around 1400
- was part

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The master of historical fiction presents the iconic story of King Alfred & the making of a nation. As the ninth century wanes England appears about to be plunged into chaos once more. For the Viking-raised but Saxon-born warrior Uhtred whose life seems to shadow the making of England this presents him with difficult choices. King Alfred is dying & his passing threatens the island of Britain to renewed warfare. Alfred wants his son Edward to succeed him but there are other Saxon claimants to the throne as well as ambitious pagan Vikings to the north. Uhtreds loyalty
- & his vows
- were to Alfred not to his son & despite his long years of service to Alfred he is still not committed to the Saxon cause. His own desire is to reclaim his long lost lands & castle to the north. But the challenge to him as the king s warrior is that he knows that he will either be the means of making Alfred s dream of a united & Christian England come to pass or be responsible for condemning it to oblivion. This novel is a dramatic story of the power of tribal commitment & the terrible difficulties of divided loyalties. This is the making of England magnificently brought to life by the master of historical fiction.

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The ultimate Rome story The young Julius Caesar is serving on board a war galley gaining a fearsome reputation. Then his ship is captured & he is abandoned on the North African coast. After gathering a legion of men powerful enough to gain vengeance on his captors & to suppress an uprising in Greece he returns to Rome a hero. At the moment of his triumph Julius finds he must fight again. A savage rebellion threatens the city led by a gladiator named Spartacus... The second instalment in the bestselling Emperor series. ...

The master of historical fiction presents the iconic story of King Alfred & the making of a nation. Alfred the great king is said to be dying. Rivals for his succession are poised to tear the kingdom apart. The country Alfred has worked thirty years to build is about to disintegrate. Uhtred the King's warrior Viking born but Saxon bred wants more than anything else to go & fight to reclaim his stolen Northumbrian inheritance. But he knows that if he deserts the King's cause Alfred's dream
- & indeed the very future of the English nation
- will very likely vanish. Death of Kings is an outstanding novel by a master storyteller of how England was made
- & very nearly lost.


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When governess Anna Arbuthnot arrives at Ridley Hall she finds a house in deep mourning. Lyndon Wilder oldest & most beloved son of Lord & Lady Charles has been killed in the Napoleonic Wars leaving behind him a now orphaned daughter Lottie & other undiscovered troubles. Anna finds it easy to establish a bond with her young charge but other relationships in the house begin to strain under the weight of Lyndon's absence. When Thomas Wilder the younger son & new heir returns from war he finds his family in chaos & Lyndon's legacy threatening Ridley Hall's future. As executor of his brother's will & guardian of his daughter Thomas is forced to leave the military life he loves & is confined to the faltering estate of his childhood. It is only with Anna's help that Thomas can save Ridley & most crucially protect his parents from the truth about Lyndon Wilder... ...

A dead witness. A forgotten crime. Hamish Macbeth never had it so hard as in this newest Highlands mystery! When a local woman tells Sergeant Hamish Macbeth that she doesn't remember what happened the previous evening he's not unduly worried. After all she's been out drinking & he'd prefer not to be bothered with such an arrogant & annoying woman. But when her body is discovered in a ditch Hamish is forced to investigate a crime that the only known witness
- now dead
- has forgotten...

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Its the sweltering summer of 1911 & one Friday evening a young aristocrat arrives into the custody of detective Jim Stringer a man recently found guilty of murdering his father in the sleepy village of Adenwold. He warns Jim of another murder likely to happen in the same village
- that of his brother a reclusive intellectual. When Jim & his wife Lydia arrive at Adenwold they encounter a host of likely suspects & the intended victim & suddenly Jim has one weekend in which to stop a murder & unravel a conspiracy of international

Dimensions...


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An airline stewardess is entrusted with a list of names which could threaten the lives of her 700 passengers...A young woman is tortured by terrifying nightmares until she finds a gramophone record that unlocks the door concealing a dark memory... Lottery-winner turned amateur detective Alvirah Meehan returns from a trip to England to find the body of a Broadway starlet in their wardrobe... Peopled by a colourful cast of characters & brimming over with bizarre twists & turns this collection is further proof of Mary Higgins Clarks ingenious touch & superlative skill. Start reading
- & you wont be able to stop.
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She was going to die. She could feel it her life ebbing away as surely as fine sand through fingers. The thought caused her more sadness than fear; less a sense of foreboding than a cause to wonder what lay ahead. France 1963. It's a time of great change in France not least for Inspector Lucas Rocco. As part of a nationwide 'initiative' to broaden police operations he finds himself moved from the Paris metropolis to a small village. His new patch might be rural but it's certainly not uneventful: on his first day he finds a murdered woman wearing a Gestapo uniform lying in a British military cemetery. When the body is removed by order of a magistrate from the police mortuary before Rocco can finish his investigation he realises he's up against a formidable enemy. An enemy who will go to any lengths
- even murder
- to stop his investigation.

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