The Triumph of the Sun
They've come from out of the shifting sands and down from ancient mountains. Mounted on horse and camel, carrying gleaming swords and plundered rifles, the sons of Allah are led by a holy warrior imbued with jihad, driving his army of thousands to wipe out the last Englishmen from the isolated Nile city...
But in Khartoum is a legendary British general, a brilliant, mercenary trader, a beautiful woman and a courageous soldier whose fates have become one. They know that time is running out and rescue is improbable. So they prepare for one last stand--and the beginning of an epic journey of survival...
From a passionate rivalry for a woman to an unforgettable face-off between warriors, TRIUMPH OF THE SUN is adventure fiction writ large--alive with the sounds of throngs, the terror of battle, and the mystical fire of human courage in the darkest moments of all.
From Publishers Weekly
Set in colonial Egypt at the end of Victoria's reign, this sweeping romantic epic reprises Smith regulars—scions of the Courteneys and Ballantynes. (The two fictional British families have provided character fodder for least half of Smith's 30 novels.) Bloodthirsty legions of Arab dervish troops under the command of the Mahdi, or ruling successor to the Prophet Muhammad, have surrounded (but not taken) Khartoum, trapping comely 17-year-old Rebecca Benbrook; her consul general father, David; and her younger twin sisters, Saffron and Amber. The appearance of a cargo boat owned by the dashing, entrepreneurial Ryder Courteney, as well as the subsequent appearance of Capt. Penrod Ballantyne of Her Majesty's 10th Hussars, give hope. Naïve Rebecca falls in love with Ballantyne, who deflowers her before racing off to warn the rescue force commander that the commander is outnumbered 25 to one. The dervish, led by the fearsome Emir Osman Atalan, overrun Khartoum, and Rebecca's father is brutally butchered; the saga continues with Penrod heroically leading troops against Osman. Steamy romance alternates with gore, and it's all done by-the-numbers in a good way—like a junky, absorbing miniseries. Fans will not be disappointed. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
As popular as he is prolific, and as masterful a storyteller now as he has ever been, Smith once again visits Africa, the continent where he was born, the source of his inspiration, and the setting for his supremely adventuresome novels that make authentic and riveting use of history. He took readers to ancient Egypt in the marvelously wrought River God (1994), and now he returns there, this time in the late nineteenth century, at the apex of the British Empire. Smith bases this tightly woven narrative on an actual incident in British colonial history: the holy war conducted by a Sudanese man proclaiming himself the Mahdi, or savior, and his forces' siege of the British garrison at Khartoum, at the convergence of the White and Blue Nile in the Egyptian-held Sudan. Readers who appreciate World War II-era spy thrillers will enjoy this tale of espionage, disguise, and stabbings in the dark, as Smith deliciously elaborates on all the military and religious issues and events surrounding the siege. He marshals telling detail into a story that is--like the Nile itself--swift and powerful. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Time to Die
As the world around him burns with passion and death, professional hunter and guerrilla fighter Sean Courtney is trapped between his worst enemies, an overwhelming love for a woman, and his instincts to survive -- and kill.
From School Library Journal
YA --Continuing the saga of the South African family begun in When the Legends Die (Lippincott, 1963; o.p.), Smith weaves another compelling tale of high adventure, politics, and romance in the wilds of Zimbabwe and Mozambique. This new novel finds Sean Courtney leading a big game hunting expedition that is caught deep in hostile territory, where two tribal armies are engaged in battle. Courtney's fighting and survival instincts are constantly being tested throughout this action-packed story. Compassion and love interest temper the characterization of Sean Courtney, a bit of a change from his wild ways of the past. Smith's fans will not be disappointed in this addition to the Courtney chronicles, as he expertly describes the excitement and beauty of the African veldt. --Nancy Bard, Jefferson Sci-Tech, Alexandria, VA
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Publisher
These audiobooks from Macmillan UK offer abridged readings of some of the world's most popular authors. Handsomely packaged, they feature readings by eminent actors of the stage and screen, including James Fox, Martin Shaw, Tim Pigott-Smith and David Rintoul.
To Cut a Long Story Short
Amazon.com Review
To Cut a Long Story Short reads like a series of modern fairy tales. In each story, Jeffrey Archer presents a moral problem, and a character finds himself tested in a dark hour. Evil manifests itself in the form of selfish relatives, corrupt cops, racist men. Good arrives in the form of unselfish minor characters who suddenly emerge as the real center of the story, or lost souls who come out the other side of corruption and renounce their old ways.
In "The Endgame" Cornelius Barrington decides to fake a bankruptcy. As one of the richest men in his small town, he hopes his sudden plunge into poverty will reveal the true character of his friends and relatives. He calls in debts, asks to borrow money from those he has lent to in the past, only to be turned away time and again.
After lunch Cornelius took a bus into town--a novel experience. It was some time before he located a bus stop, and then he discovered that the conductor didn't have change for a twenty pound note. His first call after he had been dropped off in the town centre was to the local estate agent, who didn't seem surprised to see him. Cornelius was delighted to find how quickly the rumour of his financial demise must be spreading.
"The Endgame" is a complex tale with a clear message. Not all the stories in To Cut a Long Story Short attempt such weightiness. "The Expert Witness" is a delightful parody of the legal system, a portrait of two pub mates--a lawyer and an expert witness--who often find themselves facing off in the courtroom, pretending not to know each other. Certain pieces (glimpses, vignettes) last a mere two pages, but whatever the length or weight of the story, throughout this collection Archer has a light touch, a quick wit, and a thorough understanding of the mechanics of suspense. --Emily White
From Publishers Weekly
Archer (Twelve Red Herrings; The Fourth Estate) maintains his obsession with surprise endings, producing a collection of 14 cleverly twisting tales, nine of which are "based on true incidents." If most of the stories fail to produce a lasting effect, they are characteristically fluid and occasionally satisfying. Among the most successful is "Something for Nothing," inspired by a real story. Jake, a New York City father making a routine telephone call to his elderly mother, overhears another conversation in which instructions are given to pick up an envelope containing $100,000. Jake dashes out of his apartment and intercepts the loot before the intended recipient, but discovers that nothing is ever as foolproof as it sounds. In "A Change of Heart," another fact-based tale, a white bigot in South Africa gets a heart transplantAand discovers the heart belonged to an African man he killed in a car accident. The incident inspires the bigot and others to reconsider their narrow views. "The Endgame" has a smart premiseAa multimillionaire widower tests his family's loyalty by declaring himself bankruptAyet the characters move as predictably as the chess pieces on the valuable set that is the focal point of the tale. "A Weekend to Remember" features bachelor-hotel owner Tony Romanelli and a sexy arts writer named Susie. Tony prides himself on being able to read if a woman is "interested" by the feel of her greeting or parting hug, but he reads the wrong story in Susie's enthusiastic squeeze. Perhaps cutting these fictions short was a mistake, their complex premises demanding lengthier elaboration. However, Archer's following is legion and the collection will doubtless find its readership. (Jan. 7)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Towers of Midnight
Brandon Sanderson | Robert Jordan
Review
“The battle scenes have the breathless urgency of firsthand experience, and the . . . evil laced into the forces of good, the dangers latent in any promised salvation, the sense of the unavoidable onslaught of unpredictable events bear the marks of American national experience during the last three decades, just as the experience of the First World War and its aftermath gave its imprint to J. R. R. Tolkien’s work.”--_The New York Times_ on The Wheel of Time®
Product Description
The Last Battle has started. The seals on the Dark One’s prison are crumbling. The Pattern itself is unraveling, and the armies of the Shadow have begun to boil out of the Blight.
The sun has begun to set upon the Third Age.
Perrin Aybara is now hunted by specters from his past: Whitecloaks, a slayer of wolves, and the responsibilities of leadership. All the while, an unseen foe is slowly pulling a noose tight around his neck. To prevail, he must seek answers in Tel’aran’rhiod and find a way--at long last--to master the wolf within him or lose himself to it forever.
Meanwhile, Matrim Cauthon prepares for the most difficult challenge of his life. The creatures beyond the stone gateways--the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn--have confused him, taunted him, and left him hanged, his memory stuffed with bits and pieces of other men’s lives. He had hoped that his last confrontation with them would be the end of it, but the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. The time is coming when he will again have to dance with the Snakes and the Foxes, playing a game that cannot be won. The Tower of Ghenjei awaits, and its secrets will reveal the fate of a friend long lost.
This penultimate novel of Robert Jordan’s #1 New York Times bestselling series--the second of three based on materials he left behind when he died in 2007--brings dramatic and compelling developments to many threads in the Pattern. The end draws near.
Dovie’andi se tovya sagain. It’s time to toss the dice.
Twelve Red Herrings
From Publishers Weekly
Archer does a passable O. Henry in his third story collection (after A Twist in the Tale ), though without that master's depth of feeling or irony. Many of the 12 stories here, all of which feature false clues and twist endings, are based on "known" incidents; the fact that the weakest ones are not suggests that Archer's love of plot may exceed his unaided grasp. The leadoff yarn, "Trial and Error," for instance, an original but attenuated tale of a wronged man's thirst for revenge, kicks in only with its predictably wry twist. Also original but flaccid is the last story, which features four rather obvious alternative endings that the reader can tack onto an opening gambit about a man picking up a woman at the theater. The adaptive tales are generally stronger. "Chunnel Vision" offers a classic red herring by which Archer uses a jilted woman's revenge on her lover to divert our attention from the real threat to the lover's happiness. Similarly, the chilling "Never Stop on the Motorway" plays on our expectations about an endangered woman's plight. Written in strong, clean prose and ranging in tone from charming to achingly suspenseful, these tales, mostly entertaining but often slight, offer, like much of Archer's work, more craft than art. $365,000 ad/promo; audio rights to HarperAudio.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
There's probably not a red herring among these stories from master spy writer Archer.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Vampire Chronicles 1: Interview with the vampire
EDITORIAL REVIEW: Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force--a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses.It is a novel only Anne Rice could write...."Magnificent, compulsively readable."CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Vampire Chronicles 10: Blood Canticle
SUMMARY: Anne Rice continues her astonishing Vampire Chronicles in a new novel that begins whereBlackwood Farmleft off and tells the story of Lestat's quest for redemption, goodness, and the love of Rowan Mayfair. Welcome back to Blackwood Farm. Here are all of the brilliantly conceived characters that make up the two worlds of vampires and witches: Mona Mayfair, who's come to the farm to die and is brought into the realm of the undead; her uncle, Julian Mayfair, guardian of the family, determined to forever torment Lestat for what he has done to Mona; Rowan Mayfair, brilliant neurosurgeon and witch, who finds herself dangerously drawn to the all-powerful Lestat; her husband, Michael Curry, hero of the Mayfair Chronicles, who seeks Lestat's help with the temporary madness of his wife; Ash Templeton, a 5,000-year-old Taltos who has taken Mona's child; and Patsy, the country-western singer, who returns to avenge her death at the hands of her son, Quinn Blackwood. Delightfully, at the book's centre is the Vampire Lestat, once the epitome of evil, now pursuing the transformation set in motion withMemnoch the Devil. He struggles with his vampirism and yearns for goodness, purity and love, as he saves Patsy's ghost from the dark realm of the Earthbound, uncovers the mystery of the Taltos and unselfishly decides the fate of his beloved Rowan Mayfair. A story of love and loyalty, of the search for passion and promise,Blood Canticleis Anne Rice at her finest.
Vampire Chronicles 2: The vampire Lestat
EDITORIAL REVIEW: Returning to the hypnotic world she so brilliantly created in **Interview with the Vampire**, Anne Rice demonstrates once again her power to enthrall. With the same richness of drama, atmosphere and incident, she tells the fantastic story of the vampire Lestat, whom we first perceived as the seductive devil-vampire of **Interview with the Vampire** and whom we now follow through the ages as he searches for the origin and meaning of his own dark immortality. And who, more and more, engages our sympathy until he stands revealed as a questing romantic, a vampire-hero with his own strange and passionate courage and morality.As the novel opens, Lestat, having risen from the earth after a fifty-five years' sleep, and infatuated with the modern world, presents himself in all his vampire brilliance as a rock star, a superstar, a seducer of millions. And, in this blaze of adulation, daring to break the vampire oath of silence, he determines to tell his story, to rouse the generations of the living dead from their slumbers and to penetrate the riddle of his own existence.As he speaks we are plunged back into eighteenth-century France, into the castle where we meet the young Lestat: child of impoverished aristocrats, heroic hunter of wolves, at odds with his tyrannical father, running away to join a traveling troupe of actors. We see him in the licentious Paris of the day, first apprentice at a boulevard theater, then its most celebrated actor, idolized, adored by many and--night after night--watched by one . . . until, in a sleep filled with dreams of the wolves he killed as a boy, he is shocked awake by a dark figure and suddenly, horribly, eternally joined to the unholy brotherhood.We follow Lestat as he searches for others like him--in churches and brothels, in gambling houses, huts and palaces--sometimes joined by the vampire-angel Gabrielle, who is bound to him both by blood and by passion; sometimes traveling with his adored Nicolas, the violinist whose music and beauty are equally transcendent. We follow Lestat as he travels from the snowcapped mountains of the Auvergne and the primeval forest of ancient Gaul to Sicily, Istanbul, Venice and Cairo, searching for his origins, sometimes finding clues to the birth of the vampire race, knowing always that the central truth eludes him.But all the while, throughout his travels, through many lands and many times, Lestat has made enemies among his brethren--vampires who are in terror of his questions, who fear he will disturb the uneasy balance in which they exist with the mortal world, and who suspect in him a desire to rule. And when, in the caves below a craggy Greek island, in a sanctuary whose walls are covered with gold-flecked murals, the very first of the living dead awake, the truth at the heart of his quest is at last revealed. Ancient forces held immobile through the ages are irreversibly set in motion, and as the novel rushes to its stunning climax, Lestat's vampire foes converge in pursuit of him on the demonic freeways of the twentieth century.
Vampire Chronicles 3: The Queen of the Damned
SUMMARY: "A welcome chance to catch up with old friends...Fascinating...When we emerge from its folds, there's good news on the last page: 'The chronicle of the vampires will continue.' Yum."PHILADELPHIA INQUIRERA feat of mesmerizing storytelling, a chilling entertainment, THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED unleashes Akasha, the Queen herself, who has risen from a six-thousand year sleep to let loose the powers of the night. Akasha has a marvelously devious plan to "save" mankind and destroy Lestat--in this extraordinarily sensual novel of the complex, erotic, electrifying world of the undead. SUMMARY: "A welcome chance to catch up with old friends...Fascinating...When we emerge from its folds, there's good news on the last page: 'The chronicle of the vampires will continue.' Yum."PHILADELPHIA INQUIRERA feat of mesmerizing storytelling, a chilling entertainment, THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED unleashes Akasha, the Queen herself, who has risen from a six-thousand year sleep to let loose the powers of the night. Akasha has a marvelously devious plan to "save" mankind and destroy Lestat--in this extraordinarily sensual novel of the complex, erotic, electrifying world of the undead.
Vampire Chronicles 4: The Tale of the Body Thief
SUMMARY: "A wonderfully mesmerizing adventure, delving into the convoluted mind of one of modern fiction's most famous anti-heroes, the vampire Lestat. Rice's writing is elegant and thought-provoking and her story is a gem."THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNEFor centuries Lestat has been a courted prince in the universe of the dead. Now he is alone and everything he once believed in seems false. So he embarks on a dangerous journey to destroy his doubts and loneliness forever....
Vampire Chronicles 5: Memnoch the Devil
SUMMARY: In Anne Rice's extraordinary novel, the Vampire Lestat--outsides, canny monster, hero-wanderer--is at last offered the chance to be redeemed.He is brought into direct confrontation with both God and the Devil, and into the land of Death.We are in New York. The city is blanketed in snow. Through the whiteness Lestat is searching for Dora, the beautiful and charismatic daughter of a drug lord, the woman who arouses Lestat's tenderness as no mortal ever has.While torn between his vampire passions and his overwhelming love for Dora, Lestat is confronted by the most dangerous of adversaries he has yet known.He is snatched from the world itself by the mysterious Memnoch, who claims to be the Devil. He is invited to be a witness at the Creation. He is taken like the ancient prophets into the heavenly realm and is ushered into Purgatory.He must decide if he can believe in the Devil or in God. And finally, he must decide which, if either, he will serve.In the first four Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summoned up for us worlds that are fantastic and distant, making them as resonant, real, and immediate as our own. In this, her most daring and darkest novel, she takes us, with Lestat, into the mythical world that is most important to us--into the realms of our own theology.
Vampire Chronicles 6: The Vampire Armand
SUMMARY: In the latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice summons up dazzling worlds to bring us the story of Armand--eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel. Armand, who first appeared in all his dark glory more than twenty years ago in the now-classicInterview with the Vampire, the first of The Vampire Chronicles, the novel that established its author worldwide as a magnificent storyteller and creator of magical realms. Now, we go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood--a ruined city under Mongol dominion--and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius, who masquerades among humankind as a mysterious, reclusive painter and who will bestow upon Armand the gift of vampiric blood. As the novel races to its climax, moving through scenes of luxury and elegance, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to nineteenth-century Paris and today's New Orleans, we see its eternally vulnerable and romantic hero forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul.