Eva and Maxime are two young Normans who love to live a life of adventure! One day they travel to Bayeux for a medieval fair."Have you heard of William the Conqueror? " a lady asked. "Who's that?" Maxime replied. "William was the Duke of Normandy and he even became King of England! The tale of his conquest is told on an embroidery called the Bayeux Tapestry. Let me tell you his story…"This fascinating adventure story helps young readers discover how William the Conqueror became King of England.

"We are all now writing stories. Sometimes in memory, sometimes in air. The wind lifts and passes us in gusts. Our stories scatter over continents, camouflaged histories we cannot share. "In this exquisite collection of short stories, readers are introduced to individuals whose existence reveals "the daily miracle" of their inner lives. With eloquent, lush language, Manini Nayar brings to the forefront immigrant women making their way in the world as mothers, wives, as outliers, and as rebels. She writes about their insistence on autonomy and on the absurdity and triumphs of their struggles. While readers will meet a wide array of characters throughout the stories, it is Nina with whom they will become most familiar as she appears throughout the collection: first, as a young wife brought to the US by her husband, Siddarth Vellodi; second, as an older sister; and third, as a (divorced) mother whose daughter tragically ran away years before. This work speaks to the obstacles with marriage, tradition, and culture - "Wives were not to be loved but endured like a menstrual headache. Her own husband had not loved her nor she him. But the Dear Departed had given her a son who was hers and hers only" - and the challenges with finding one's voice in a country whose language and communication can often be misconstrued and misunderstood. Being Here provides a compelling and profound voice to lived experiences, and exudes with remarkable observations, reflective insights, and poetic prose.

Winner of the Drue Heinz for Literature. Poised on the precipice of mystery and longing, each character in Now You Know It All is on the brink of discovery - and decision. Set in small-town North Carolina, or featuring eager Southerners venturing afar, these stories capture that crucial moment when someone’s path changes irrevocably.

When radical Iranian students seize the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran and take over fifty diplomats hostage the U.

"In these three volumes we have one of the greatest novels not only of our generation, but of our language ..

Vernon Lee Walker, a young Englishman from industrial Wolverhampton, meets his death on a beach on Pentecost Island in the South Pacific on the eve of Christmas 1887. Why did Vernon die, in what circumstances, and who was responsible? Was he, as once branded, simply a 'bad colonist'? Or was he a Candide, an innocent abroad, mixing invisibly with the rich and famous, manipulated by a calculating brother, unable to change the world around him? An historian finds Vernon’s letters home to England, spanning a dozen years. With decreasing frequency, these follow his trajectory, first in Melbourne and Sydney, then as he yields to the spell of the Pacific. But what happens between the lines? Does he fall in love with his brother’s wife? What does a boy not tell his mother? The novelist steps in. This is a unique fusion of authentic history and informed invention - a tragic story of colonialism in Australia and the Pacific, told with compassion, humour and a deep understanding of time and place.

"In these three volumes we have one of the greatest novels not only of our generation, but of our language ..

Ultima Thule was published in 1929 and is the third novel in the 1930s trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, by Henry Handel Richardson. Writing in Sphere in 1929, Arnold Palmer said of these works: "In these three volumes we have one of the greatest novels not only of our generation, but of our language ..

Phillip Parotti's new novel offers fast-paced action in the skies over the Sinai desert in 1916. Lieutenant Devlin Collins, an Irish-American flier in the Royal Flying Corps, expecting to fly on the Western Front, instead finds himself flying antiquated two-seater bomber and photo reconnaissance missions over the Egyptian desert against the forces of the Central Powers which are trying to capture the Suez Canal. Pitted against German machines which are up-to-date and well equipped, the men of the RFC fight at a considerable disadvantage as they go forth to meet their enemy, but committed to their cause and with aggressive spirit, no matter how great the stress of battle, they proceed and prevail, continually forcing the Turks and Germans back as the army moves slowly toward Palestine. Constantly endangered by superior German machines, facing incessant ground fire during their bombing and strafing attacks, Dev and his fellow pilot Crisp drive home their attacks with unremitting determination. In the off hours from combat, Dev discovers that he has a particular talent for planning his flight's air raids. This talent manifests itself completely in the campaign's culminating attack on the German redoubts at the battle of Magdhaba, an attack so successful that when the pilots are finally pulled back for a rest after a year of fighting, Dev is promoted and invited onto the staff at GHQ is order to apply his expertise to air planning as the army moves on Gaza with the intention of driving into Palestine.

By late January of 1863, the 9th Massachusetts Battery of Light Artillery has been stationed within the Washington, D.C. defenses the entirety of its five-month existence. The soldiers are badly demoralized, inadequately trained and poorly disciplined. When the inept captain of the battery believes that he's about to be fired, he hastily resigns, and the governor of Massachusetts promptly selects a twenty-three-year-old artillery officer with battlefield experience to take command. Captain John Bigelow institutes strict discipline and rigorous training which causes the men, including Chief Bugler Charles Wellington Reed, to consider him to be a heartless tyrant. However, Captain Bigelow's methods rapidly improve their capabilities and Reed reluctantly gains respect for the new captain. Nevertheless, subtle conflict between captain and bugler remains in a manner only constrained by military protocol. In late June of 1863 the battery is collected by the Army of the Potomac as it passes the Washington defenses to thwart an invasion by Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. After days of hard marching, Bigelow's Battery arrives on the Gettysburg battlefield in the forenoon of July 2, 1863. Within hours they are immersed in violent combat during which the officers and men of the battery fight like veterans against the Confederates. Unbeknownst to Charlie, he will twice disobey a direct order from Captain Bigelow before the day is out. When furious fighting reaches a crescendo, the inexperienced light artillery battery is ordered to hold its position at all hazards, meaning until it's overrun. Without hesitation the batterymen stand to their guns and sacrifice their life's blood to gain the time necessary for a second line of artillery to be formed behind them, thus helping to prevent a disastrous defeat for the Federal Army on Northern soil. Charlie saves his captain's life and is later awarded the Medal of Honor.

August 1990, 30,000 Iraqi troops have invaded Kuwait and are in a position to influence nearly half of the world's oil supply. The United Nations condemn the aggression but it is clear that only military intervention is going to displace Saddam Hussein. Captain Joseph 'Quarry' Samuels and the Marines of Scout Platoon, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Division are tasked with discovering the strength and deployment of Iraqi troops. Quarry and his scouts are soon engaged in a game of cat and mouse with the 10,000-strong 108th Iraqi Armored Division. Operating behind enemy lines, they put themselves squarely in danger's way in order to collect the intelligence necessary to launch military operations. When hostilities end, with the greatest one-sided military victory of all time, the Marines deserve to be on their way home. However, Quarry remains in Kuwait to continue the deadly game with an old nemesis, but this time with a new ally on his side.

Hot on the heels of a dressing-down by the U.S. Commander Berlin, U.

It is the summer of 1945, the last and very dangerous days of World War II. The Office of Strategic Services is in close, cooperative contact with Ho Chi Minh and the fighting cadre of the Viet Minh, working against the Japanese. In the closing months of the war, the OSS parachute a team of special operations soldiers into Tonkin, northern Viet Nam. Led by Major John Guthrie and his second-in-command, Captain Edouard Parnell, both experienced officers from their earlier assignments in occupied France and Belgium, the team are tasked with working with Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese in the midst of various groups vying for control of Indochina. Guthrie and his team have to adapt to the entirely different context of Vietnamese politics in order to encourage communist operations against the Japanese. Guthrie in particular, struggles with both his personal and professional conflicts. The relationship that Guthrie and the rest of the OSS team develops with the Viet Minh leadership is of distinct annoyance to French ambitions to regain control of their colony, Indochina.Based on the little-known true story of American and Viet Minh collaboration in 1945, this novel challenges the later-accepted dogma of both those supporting and those opposing the American role in the Viet Nam conflict. This novel notes how what is seen at a later time is often inadequate to understand what actually went on. Its contemporary relevance is simply a mirror of what is always the case in international affairs: today's enemies can and may be tomorrow's friends - and most importantly, the reverse is true also.

The Story of Katrine tells the story of a young Greenlandic woman who falls in love with a Danish craftsman, who works in Greenland over a summer. When he returns to Denmark, Katrine follows him because she thinks they should get married, having had their child. It will be a big disappointment for her, but she stays in Denmark. A dramatic and sad tale of cultural unity and oppression of women. This story, which is fictionalized here, is unfortunately not unknown for Greenlanders in Denmark.

1978 – a chance meeting on a remote military airbase between two Green Berets involved in the same operation leads to a partnership that will last over forty years. Four years after that meeting, Nick Brokhausen and Jeff Miller leave the service withing a few weeks of each other and begin an odyssey that takes them to dozens of countries on five continents. Along with a small coterie of fellow former Special Operations and intelligence community veterans like Penguini, Max, Reek, The Spider Woman and a score of others – some heroes and some villains - they undertake a variety of missions for the government, other governments, large multi-national corporations mostly in the aerospace or resource development industries, and occasionally just for suffering individuals who cannot find help anywhere else. In the process they lay the groundwork for an entire new industry of private military contractors. Two men sadly just a bit ahead of their time. Every episode in this book actually happened. Not always precisely as described herein, but close. Changes have been made sometimes to make the narrative flow more smoothly, some to obfuscate events that might be flirting with classification issues… Names have been changed, not always to protect the innocent. But the underlying story is, for the most part, the reality as they lived it.

Acclaimed author Richard Tood has a bad case of writer's block. When his publisher sends an attractive young editor to help him with his latest book, the inevitable happens. This chance meeting changes everyone's lives – in ways they never expected. But Richard's troubles are only beginning. Hearing voices in your head is rarely a good thing, and having an assassin walk into your life whenever he wants, is definitely bad news. Will Richard be able to get his head straightened out before things run away from him completely? A remarkable portrait of a modern midlife crisis, which combines the best aspects of historical and psychological fiction, THE GARFIELD CONSPIRACY is a superb novel by a major new voice in Irish fiction.