Normandie, zu Beginn des Hundertjahrigen Krieges. Thomas Blackstone, Ritter der englischen Armee, halt in Nordfrankreich mehrere Stadte fur seinen Konig. Wieder und wieder greifen er und seine Manner von dort aus an und fugen den Gefolgsleuten des franzosischen Konigs empfindliche Niederlagen zu. Thomas? Ruf erreicht schon bald Paris. Konig Johann ersinnt einen Plan, um seinen Gegner auszuschalten. Der Mann, den er auf Thomas ansetzt, kennt kein ...
Francis Bacon walks the streets of World War II London, employed as a warden for the ARP to keep watch for activities that might tip off the Axis powers. Before the war, Bacon had travelled to Berlin and Paris picking up snatches of culture from a succession of middle-aged men charmed by his young face. Known for his flamboyant personal life and expensive taste, Bacon has returned home to live with his former nanny in a cramped bohemian apartmen ...
Das Fremde so nah. Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890), britischer Offizier, bricht aus den englischen Kolonien auf, um fremde Lander zu erkunden. Wie besessen lernt er die Sprachen, beschaftigt sich mit Religionen und betritt mittlerweile zum Islam ubergetreten als erster Europaer inkognito die heiligen Statten von Mekka und Medina. Dieser zu Recht hochgelobte Roman fasziniert durch die sprachliche Eleganz, in der die Biographie Burtons mit der Kult ...
These two unabridged chapters from Charles Mackay's two-volume evergreen work, Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) deal with the disastrous South Sea Bubble and the extraordinary outbreak of Tulipomania in Holland. The South Sea Company, a British joint stock company founded in 1711, was granted a monopoly to trade in Spain's South American colonies. In return, the company took on the national debt of England. Speculatio ...
Set against the rise and fall of the radical antiwar group the Weather Underground, The Company You Keep is a sweeping American saga about sacrifice, the ecstatic righteousness of youth, and the tension between political ideals and family loyalties. When Jason Sinai, one of the last Vietnam-era fugitives still wanted on murder charges for a robbery gone wrong in 1974, encounters a young newspaper reporter in search of a story, he must abandon ye ...
She is safe, and she is free…but she is still alone. In the second chapter of the Grace in Africa Series, slavers burst into Grace Winslow's life with guns blazing and tear her family apart forever. She watches in anguish as her husband is led in chains aboard a tightly packed slave ship bound for America. An old enemy has a more sinister plan for Grace and prepares her for a different kind of servitude in London. But Grace will not be ensl ...
This absorbing account of the political and social reformations that transformed the lands of Islam during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries offers a game-changing assessment of the Middle East. Beginning his account in 1798, de Bellaigue demonstrates how the Middle East has long welcomed modern ideals and practices, including the adoption of modern medicine, the emergence of women from seclusion, and the development of democracy. Wit ...
1916: Norma Wallace, age 15, arrived in New Orleans. Sexy and shrewd, she quickly went from streetwalker to madam and by 1920 had opened what became a legendary house of prostitution. There she entertained a steady stream of governors, gangsters, and movie stars until she was arrested at last in 1962. Shortly before she died in 1974, she tape-recorded her memories – the scandalous stories of a powerful woman with the city's politicians in h ...
Charles Minor Blackford, an aristocrat from Virginia, enlisted in the Second Virginia Cavalry at the start of the American Civil War. During his tour of duty, Captain Blackford kept constant correspondence with his wife, Susan Leigh Blackford. Captain Blackford wrote frequently about the horrible conditions in his camp, while Susan detailed her own struggles, including the loss of her home and the death of three children. This collection of lett ...
