Eleanor Trewynn is a widow of some years living in Port Mabyn, a small fishing village in Cornwall, England. In her younger days, she traveled the exotic parts of the world with her husband. These days, she’s retired and founded the local charity shop. Her niece, Megan Pencarrow, transferred nearby, and was recently promoted to the rank of detective sergeant. Perhaps the only downside is that she is now working for a DI who doesn’t approve of women on the police force and who really doesn’...

Aglirta is known as the Kingless Land. Once prosperous and peaceful, it has now fallen into lawlessness, studded with feuding baronies engaged in a constant state of war. The only hope for peace lies in the legend of the Sleeping King, destined to rise and restore peace when the Dwaerindim stones are recovered.Lady Embra Silvertree is the sorceress daughter of a bellicose baron with an eye towards world domination. She has been imprisoned by her father, who hopes to use her as a ma...

The last novel completed by Jane Austen before her death, Persuasion is often thought to reflect on the author’s own lost love.Sir Walter Elliot has raised his three daughters with his own sense of haughty pride. Elizabeth, at twenty-eight, has found no one good enough to marry, while Mary has, with some condescension, married the son of the local squire. The youngest, Anne, was persuaded to throw off her fiancé, Frederick Wentworth, eight years ago due to...

In the winter of 1271, death stalks the corridors of Wynethorpe Castle on the Welsh border. When the Grim Reaper touches the beloved grandson of the castle lord, Baron Adam sends for his daughter, Prioress Eleanor of Tyndal, and her subinfirmarian, Sister Anne, to save the child with their prayers and healing talents. Escorting them to the remote fortress is Brother Thomas, an unwilling monk fighting his private demons.Death may be denied once in his quest for souls but never twice...

The most perfect of Jane Austen's perfect novels begins with twenty-one-year-old Emma Woodhouse comfortably dominating the social order in the village of Highbury, convinced that she has both the understanding and the right to manage other people's lives—for their own good, of course. Her well-meant interfering centers on the aloof Jane Fairfax, the dangerously attractive Frank Churchill, the foolish if appealing Harriet Smith, and the ambitious young vicar Mr. Elton—and ends with her comp...

A traveling tinker, John Bunyan accepted long imprisonment rather than give up preaching the Gospel. He explained the life of the Spirit in language the common people could understand and in pictures that stuck in the mind. When he wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress, his fame spread rapidly, and within fifty years of his death, the book was reputed to be in most English homes.John Brown’s biography of John Bunyan remains the standard, despite the lapse of over a hundred years si...

From its sharply satiric opening sentence, Mansfield Park deals with money and marriage, and how strongly they affect each other. Shy, fragile Fanny Price is the consummate "poor relation." Sent to live with her wealthy uncle Thomas, she clashes with his spoiled, selfish daughters and falls in love with his son. Their lives are further complicated by the arrival of a pair of witty, sophisticated Londoners, whose flair for flirtation collides with the quiet, conservative country wa...

The national debate over popular music’s effect on character is both furious and confused. Conservatives complain primarily about lyrics, appealing to public decency and safety. Liberals, swift to the defense of any self-expression, simultaneously celebrate rock’s liberating ethos and deny its cultural influence. Carson Holloway is out to shatter the assumptions of pop’s critics and defenders alike, showing that music is more beneficial than we think.Plato and Aristotle, Holloway f...

Set in nineteenth-century England, this great novel of domestic realism sympathetically portrays a young woman’s vain efforts to adapt to her provincial world.Maggie Tulliver, whose father owns a mill perched on the banks of the River Floss, is intelligent and imaginative beyond the understanding of her community, her relatives, and particularly her brother, Tom. Despite their opposite temperaments, Maggie and Tom are united by a strong bond. But this bond suffers when Tom’s sense ...

There was only one mystery Agatha Christie could not solve: her own.Dame Agatha Christie is best known for her detective novels and short stories. She is one of themost popular authors of all time, her novels having sold over four billion copies and having been translated into 103 languages.On the evening of December 8, 1926, Agatha Christie disappeared from her home in Sunningdale, Berkshire, leaving only a note for her secretary indicating that she was going to Yorkshire....

When Captain Chris Baldry, a World War I soldier, is sent home with a severe case of shellshock amnesia, he is a stranger to his wife, Kitty, and his adoring cousin, Jenny. Recoiling from the horrors of war and disillusioned with years of superficial married life, his mind has regressed fifteen years, where his heart may take refuge once again in the magic circle of his youth and of his first love, Margaret Allington.In this lyrical and poignant story of a wounded man and the three...

Jane Austen's first major novel, a parody of the popular literature of the time, is an ironic tale of the romantic folly of men and women in pursuit of love, marriage, and money. The humorous adventures of young Catherine as she encounters "the difficulties and dangers of a six weeks' residence in Bath" lead to some of Austen's most brilliant social satire. There is Catherine's hilarious liaison with a paragon of bad manners and boastfulness, her disastrous friendship with an unforgettably...