Winner of the HW Fisher best first biography prize Spectator books of the year 2012 Sunday Times" " Daily Telegraph" " Tls" " Financial Times" " Guardian" " Daily Mail" & " Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year 2011". " He were a dark prince & infinitely suspicious & his times full of secret conspiracies & troubles". (Sir Francis Bacon). In his remarkable debut Penn vividly recreates the dark & turbulent reign of Henry VII. He traces the transformation of a young vulnerable boy Prince Henry into the aggressive teenager who would become Henry VIII & of Catherine of Aragon his future queen. & at the book's heart is the tragic magnetic figure of Henry VII
- controlling paranoid avaricious with a Machiavellian charm & will to power."
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In the great floating city of Sanctaphrax blizzards howl through the streets as the Edgeworld descends into an endless winter. Quint the son of a sky pirate has just begun his training at the Knights Academy
- training that involves heading out over the Edge on tethers to develop his flying skills. But when Quint breaks the rules & head out to Open Sky on his own he runs into the great sky leviathan known as a cloud-eater & must use all his skill & ingenuity if catastrophe is not to strike the Edgeworld...
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Snow is falling the fire is roaring
- curl up this winter with a Susan Wiggs Jennys lived her whole life in Willow Lake finding
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Fresh from his defeat of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings William of Normandy has returned home in triumph accompanied by the English nobles he cannot trust to leave behind. For Waltheof of Huntingdon however rebellion is not at the forefront of his thoughts. From the moment he catches sight of Judith daughter of the Kings formidable sister he knows he has found his future wife. When Waltheof saves Judiths life it is clear that the attraction is mutual. But marriage has little to do with love in mediaeval Europe. William refuses to let the couple wed & Waltheof joins an uprising against him. William crushes the rebellion but decides the best way to keep Waltheof in check is to agree to the marriage. But is the match between Saxon earl & Norman lady one made in heaven or hell? As their children grow Waltheof & Judith must choose between their feelings for each other & older loyalties... Based on an astonishing true story THE WINTER MANTLE reaches from the turbulent reign of William the Conqueror to the high drama of the crusades... ...

Eduardo a retiree whose wife & son have died lives on his isolated Montana ranch. His life is peaceful
- if lonely
- until he

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Steinbeck's last great novel focuses on the theme of success & what motivates men towards it. Reflecting back on his New England family's past fortune & his father's loss of the family wealth the hero Ethan Allen Hawley characterizes success in every era & in all its forms as robbery murder even a kind of combat operating under 'the laws of controlled savagery'. ...

Berlin in 1933 is in upheaval. Eleven-year-old Carla von Ulrich struggles to understand the tensions disrupting her family as Hitler strengthens his grip on Germany. Into this turmoil steps her mother's formidable friend & former British MP Ethel Leckwith & her student son Lloyd who soon learns for himself the brutal reality of Nazism. He also encounters a group of Germans resolved to oppose Hitler
- but are they willing to go so far as to betray their country? Such people are closely watched by Volodya a Russian with a bright future in Red Army Intelligence. The international clash of military power & personal beliefs that ensues will sweep over them all as it rages from Cable Street in London's East End to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii from Spain to Stalingrad from Dresden to Hiroshima. At Cambridge Lloyd is irresistibly drawn to dazzling American socialite Daisy Peshkov who represents everything his left-wing family despise. But Daisy is more interested in aristocratic Boy Fitzherbert
- amateur pilot party lover & leading light of the British Union of Fascists. Back in Berlin Carla worships golden boy Werner from afar. But nothing will work out the way they expect as their lives & the hopes of the world are smashed by the greatest & cruellest war in the history of the human race. Winter of the World is the second novel in Ken Follett's uniquely ambitious & deeply satisfying trilogy ' The Century'. On its own or read in sequence with Fall of Giants this is a magnificent spellbinding epic of global conflict & personal drama.

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In the winter of 1849 Florence Nightingale was an unknown 29-year-old
- beautiful well-born & deeply unhappy. After clashing with
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When Vavara a young orphaned Polish girl is brought to serve at Empress Elizabeths glittering dangerous court in St Petersburg she is schooled by the Chancellor himself in skills from lock-picking to love-making learning above all else to stay silent
- & listen. Soon she is Elizabeths tongue
- her secret eyes & ears. Then Sophie a vulnerable young princess arrives from Prussia as a prospective bride for Elizabeths heir. Set to spy on her by the Empress Vavara soon becomes her friend & confidante & helps her navigate the illicit seductions & the treacherous shifting allegiances of the court. But Sophies destiny is to become the notorious Catherine the Great. Are her ambitions more lofty & far-reaching than anyone suspected & will she stop at nothing to achieve absolute power?

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The Iceman crept into the house on the edge of the lake. He killed the father first. Then the mother & child. & when his work was done he set the house on fire. Lucas Davenport has tracked killers in cities across America. But the woods of rural Wisconsin are as dark & primal as evil itself. The winters are harsher & colder. & in the heart of every mother & father there is fear.. . Because tonight the Iceman cometh. ...