Showing results by narrator "Vanessa Benjamin" in All Categories

Christmas, 1141 A.D. Abbot Radulfus returns from London, bringing with him a priest for the vacant living of Holy Cross (known as the Foregate), a man of presence, scholarship and discipline, but neither humility nor the common touch. When he is found drowned in the mill-pond, suspicion is cast in many directions, not least toward a young man who came in the priest's train, sent to work in Brother Cadfael's garden. For he has little obvious priestly calling. Indeed, he soon attracts the friendship of a girl both beautiful and formidable. To Brother Cadfael, once wordly, now dedicated, if gently cynical, is left the familiar task of sorting the complicated strands which define guilt and innocence.

Outside the pale of the Abbey of Saint Peters and Saint Paul, in September of the year of our Lord 1140, a priestly emissary for King Stephen has been reported missing. But inside the pale, what troubles Brother Cadfael is a proud, secretive 19-year-old novice. Brother Cadfael has never seen two men more estranged than the Lord of Aspley and Meriet, the son he coldly delivers to the abbey to begin a religious vocation. Meriet, meek by day, is so racked by dreams at night that his howls earn him the nickname the Devil's Novice. Shunned and feared, Meriet is soon linked to the missing priest's dreadful fate. Only Brother Cadfael believes in Meriet's innocence, and only the good sleuth can uncover the truth before a boy's pure passion, not evil intent, leads a novice to the noose.

The winter of 1139 will disrupt Brother Cadfael's tranquil life in Shrewsbury with the most disturbing events. Raging civil war has sent refugees fleeing north from Worcester. Among them are two orphans from a noble family, a boy of thirteen and an eighteen-year-old girl of great beauty, and their companion, a young Benedictine nun...

The summer of 1273 is peaceful for most of England, except in the village of Tyndal, where Martin the cooper has been poisoned at the local inn. Martin had plenty of enemies; the killer could be anyone. Prioress Eleanor grieves for her friend, the newly bereaved Crowner Ralf, and offers what help she can. But then her own problems multiply.

One of the world's most famous intellectual ghost stories, The Turn of the Screw is a haunting tale of suspected supernatural possession. A governess at a country house claims that Miles and Flora, two orphaned children in her care, are being controlled by spirits for some evil purpose. No one else can see the ghosts, and the children themselves are silent. Are they being dominated by spectral forces, or are they hiding something? Is the governess simply paranoid, or is something else going on?

Exactly 100 years ago, a sensitive woman naturalist, nature lover, and accomplished artist began to chronicle all that she encountered while walking and cycling around the countryside of her native England and neighboring Scotland.

When one of her company falls ill on a return journey to Tyndal, Prioress Eleanor accepts lodging at a nearby manor. There, Master Stevyns's wife is having an affair with the groom, while a local widow acts more like the lady of the manor than the lady herself. The master's eldest son and spouse are obsessed with sin and heaven, while his youngest son, bound for the church, unexpectedly returns with more interest in lute playing than the priesthood.

Scream of Eagles is the fourth book in William W. Johnstone’s epic saga of the MacCallister clan, a family caught up in the vivid sweep of American history. Jamie Ian MacCallister has survived the bloodshed of the Alamo and the Civil War. Now the battle has gotten personal: Jamie is on a one-man vendetta against the Miles Nelson gang, the men responsible for the brutal murder of his wife Kate. His journey of revenge will take him from Atlantic City to the deadly landscape of the Colorado Rockies - and finally to the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Jamie Ian and Kate MacCallister are together now, buried side by side on a ridge overlooking the huge Colorado valley they had settled and the town they had founded. It’s up to their children now to carry on the MacCallister legacy. Falcon MacCallister is more than willing to take on that task. He’s the spitting image of his father, Jamie. He stands six foot three and is heavy with muscle. Just like his father, Falcon literally doesn’t know his own strength. And like his father, Falcon is quick on the shoot. Lightning quick.

Being the life of the party had always been easy for Emerson Greene until one fatal night five years ago that sent him into a spiral of self-destruction. A night that cost him, not only his best friend, but also the only woman he's ever loved. As a result, the bad boy of the NHL is trying to outskate the ghosts of his past and the regrets that haunt his every turn.

In this, the second book of Elyse Larson's Women of Valor series, two friends caught in a frightening web of espionage are determined to search for truth and a way out.

While the France they have known is crumbling around them, two courageous women face danger and betrayal under Hitler's tyranny. Giselle Munier and Jean Thornton are more like sisters than cousins, having spent many of their summers together, but with the outbreak of World War II, both women's lives take a dramatic turn.

Uncovering a diabolical Nazi plot, Marge Emerson is secretly reassigned to a medical post in France. There she meets a conscientious objector and finds his outspoken belief in God a challenge to her own fragile faith. When David shares his desire to return to Europe after the war and build an orphanage for Germany's homeless children, Marge is drawn to this selfless, compassionate man.

Ancient papyrus scrolls recovered among the charred ruins of the Library of Alexandria reveal astonishing texts that detail the wonders of Atlantis — knowledge that could shatter the blueprint of world energy. Archaeologist Annja Creed confronts shadow figures determined to preserve empires built on power, greed, and global manipulation, finding unlikely allies in a mysterious American with connections in high places, and a young linguistics prodigy with attitude.

Alternating between nineteenth-century Europe and present-day New England, this tale follows the great British painter J. M. W. Turner - and his scene of artists, intellectuals, and lovers - and Henry, a middle-aged family man whose otherwise mundane existence is disrupted by the discovery of The Center of the World, Turner’s controversial painting of Helen of Troy that had been thought lost forever.

Alexander Domokos wrote this memoir of his years during and after the Second World War with two purposes in mind. He wanted to allow his daughter a glimpse into his past and to enlighten others about the tragedy of his homeland, Hungary.

En Afanes sin provecho, Lorenzo Silva recoge cuentos escritos en los últimos cuarenta años, entre 1984 y 2024; relatos con una marca común: la literatura como un modo de habitar la vida y observarla. En estas páginas encontramos desde ficciones históricas, contemporáneas o de género negro hasta textos autobiográficos —una rareza en su trayectoria— que nos devuelven a un Silva más confesional y directo. Sin pretensión de cerrar nada, el autor traza un mapa vital que complementa su obra y la humaniza.

On the Empire’s home world of Logres, King Douglas deals with the beautiful Treasure Mackenzie’s seduction attempts while Finn Durandal, with Parliaments’ approval, wages war on the esper city of New Hope. The quest of Lewis Deathstalker and his companions takes them to the fiercely hostile planet Shandrakor, in search of the lost Deathstalker Standing and the answers it may hold, but first Lewis’ people will have to contend with the indigenous population, the horrific results of human scientists’ genetic experimentation.

Two hundred years after the events chronicled in Deathstalker Destiny, it is a golden age for the Human Empire. Lewis Deathstalker is a remote descendant of the legendary Owen and foremost among the Paragons, an elite force of noble warriors in service to a benevolent constitutional monarchy. The new monarch, Douglas Campbell, grandson of Robert and Constance, and his reluctant Champion Lewis Deathstalker find themselves in deep and treacherous waters on Campbell’s first day in Parliament.

In the royal inner circle, the immovable wills of Lewis Deathstalker, the King’s Champion, and Jesamine Flowers, the King’s betrothed, labor in vain against the most irresistible force they’ve ever known. Or so they think. In fulfillment of Owen Deathstalker’s warning of 200 years earlier, a nightmarish alien entity has intruded into Human space, a creature that devours planets and suns and shrugs off any defense humanity hurls against it.