Mikandra Bisumar is useless to her father: she carries the curse of infertility that plagues the Endri people of Miran. Forced to work in the hospital to pay her duty to her proud nation, she dreams of becoming a Trader, one of the people who bring great prosperity to Miran.To her surprise Iztho Andrahar, from the city's most prestigious Trading family, has agreed to take her on. That is where her troubles begin.Her father is so angry with her that she has to leave her home. Worse, the Andrahar Traders have been accused of smuggling. Iztho has disappeared and the business license suspended.Mikandra has nowhere to go, except try to help Iztho's brothers prove their innocence.In her last meeting with Iztho, he mentioned getting married to a woman from neighbouring city-state of Barresh. Iztho's brothers know nothing of this, and think she is crazy.Going to Barresh by herself while never having left the country is probably not the smartest idea, but she's desperate for the family's...

A compelling first novel which centres on a young woman and the emotional legacy left by her father's death; two widows, his mistress and his wife. Charissa finds herself torn between the two. At 25 yrs, Charissa has her life under control – until her father dies and in his dying hour extracts a promise from her to visit his weekend mistress. Since her early teenage years Charissa has been helplessly caught up in the conspiracy of silence verging on denial surrounding her father's mistress. Far from the seductress Charissa had imagined, Flora turns out to be a self-contained , down-to-earth country woman in her fifties to whom she finds herself unexpectedly drawn. Like her father, she too begins to deceive her repressed, conventional mother by paying increasingly frequent visits to Flora 's West Country home. As the relationship between herself and Flora blossoms, Charissa starts to unravel her emotional past and, with the help of Flora's attractive neighbour Andrew, to overcome...

Winner of 1971 Booker Prize «V. S. Naipaul tells stories which show us ourselves and the reality we live in. His use of language is as precise as it is beautiful.» – The London Times «A Tolstoyan spirit…The so-called Third World has produced no more brilliant literary artist.» – John Updike, The New Yorker «The coolest literary eye and the most lucid prose we have.» – The New York Review

As head coach of the 1933 Wilmington Whispers, Sarge holds a grocery list of troubles. His catcher is a double amputee. The robot outfielders are held together with chicken wire and his star player is an ego-driven hunk of chewing tobacco. Witch doctors. Vampires with tommy guns. Carnival Baseball turns our national pastime on its head and tells the tale of a born loser who refuses to fail.

Romance/Historical Fiction. 45717 words long.

On its final test flight, a new American airliner crashes mysteriously in the Arizona desert. An accident or something more sinister? Mitchell Gant, an expert on aviation accidents, must risk his life by repeating the test flight in every detail. Is it a coincidence when another plane crashes off the coast of Finland, or as some are beginning to suspect, a conspiracy that involves business, politics, and the global marketplace? Gant survived Vietnam, the Cold War, and the Gulf. Now, he finds himself fighting a different and far more dangerous war.

The year is 1319 and Tavistock's fair has drawn merchants to Devon from all over England and beyond. Keeping the streets clean and the locals in order is no easy task, for the influx of visitors and their money puts temptation in the way of cut-purses and other villains. But no one expects a murder, and butcher Will Ruby is stunned to discover a corpse – a headless corpse at that. Former Knight Templar Sir Baldwin Furnshill, Keeper of the King's Peace, and Simon Puttock, bailiff of Lydford, have just arrived in Tavistock as guests of Abbot Robert Champeaux when the body is found. The crime falls within the Abbot's jurisdiction, and when he asks Simon and Baldwin to investigate, they can hardly refuse. But with an unidentifiable victim, they're badly hampered in their inquiries. Nonetheless there's no shortage of suspicious behaviour to spur them on. Elias, the cook near whose shop the gruesome remains were found, clearly has something to hide. A surprisingly aggressive young monk has been behaving in an ungodly fashion. And the town is awash with strangers, any one of whom could be concealing a sinister past. Can Simon and Baldwin unravel the complex web of intrigue that has brought death to Tavistock, as the undercurrents of anger and violence that lie beneath the bustling activity of the fair grow ever fiercer?

A bestselling journalist exposes the connection between the Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis and the practice of confession.

To mate or not to mate? Attacked and almost killed, Selena James is surprised beyond her wildest imaginations when not one but two tall, dark and handsomes arrive to play nurse and seducer to her growing needs.

When Cecilia Lilly, a high-priced courtesan, is rescued after a severe beating by her protector, she has trouble adjusting to the fact that her savior is lord of London's Underworld instead of a Lord of the Realm. She has a considerable amount of growing up to do before her world comes right.

Praise for Publish and Be Murdered... "If you have yet to make the acquaintance of Baroness Jack Troutbeck, run, don't walk to the nearest bookstore and order yourself a copy of this book." -Dana Stabenow, Edgar-winning author of the Kate Shugak mysteries British satirist Ruth Dudley Edwards has made a habit of skewering her nation's establishment with the misadventures of civil servant Robert Amiss and the keen deductions of his sleuthing partner, the irrepressible and irreverent Baroness "Jack" Troutbeck. Now she takes on the world of magazine publishing, a place where upholding traditions can be fatal. The Wrangler is a revered and financially troubled political mag. Amiss is summoned to sort out the problems that threaten its existence: a hemorrhaging cash flow, the succession plans of its noble patron, a takeover bid from a strong-minded Australian woman, antiquated procedures, preservation of an historic London townhouse as company headquarters...and the inevitable little murder. Long mired in inertia, Amiss must break out of the civil service mentality to save The Wrangler, sort out his own emotional life, and, while he's at it, solve that murder.... Ruth Dudley Edwards was born and brought up in Dublin, studied at University College Dublin and Cambridge University, and now lives in London. A historian and prize-winning biographer, Ruth has written seriously and/or frivolously for almost every national newspaper in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom since 1993 and appears frequently on radio and television in the UK. She has been shortlisted for the John Creasey Award for the best first novel and won the Last Laugh award in 2008 for Murdering Americans. www.ruthdudleyedwards.co.uk

Do I look strange?'These were his last recorded words. That night Sosimo kissed his hands and laid them across his breast, knitting his fingers together like flowers. The next morning the household watched his coffin, held aloft by a dozen brown hands, disappear into an ocean of leaves. Every now and then, at a turn of the mountain, it would emerge from the trees, bobbing higher and higher, floating free.This remarkable debut novel tells of the last days of Tusitala, 'the teller of tales', as Robert Louis Stevenson became known in Samoa where he chose to die. In 1892 Girolamo Nerli travels from Sydney by steamer to Apia, with the intention of capturing something of Jekyll and Hyde in his portrait of the famous author. Nerli's presence sets in train a disturbing sequence of events. More than a century later, art historian Lewis Wakefield comes to Samoa to research the painting of Tusitala's portrait by the long-forgotten Italian artist. On hiatus from his bipolar...