The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

Author: S. G. MacLean
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1849164290
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Book Description
A sleuth to rival Shardlake or Cadfael - a mystery that will chill your blood. 'Transports your body and soul to another time and place' CRAIG RUSSELL 'A delight on all levels . . . engaging and moving' MANDA SCOTT 'A truly memorable and exciting read' HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW Banff, Scotland in the 1620s. A young man walks unsteadily through the streets. Is he just drunk or is there something more sinister happening? When he collapses in front of two sisters on that dark, wet night, the women guess that he's been poisoned. His body is discovered in the house of Alexander Seaton - a fallen minister, the discovery of whose clandestine love affair has left him disgraced. Why was the body in Seaton's house? And why would anyone want to murder this likeable young man? Seaton sets out to find answers, embarking on a journey not only through the darkest part of other men's souls, but also his own. A must-read for fans of Rory Clements and SJ Parris. ***************************** HEAR WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE REDEMPTION OF ALEXANDER SEATON 'A thrilling read' 5* Reader Review 'Utterly engrossing' 5* Reader Review 'Terrific stuff' 5* Reader Review 'An enthralling book' 5* Reader Review 'The best new crime novelist I have read since Fred Vargas and Jo Nesbo' 5* Reader Review

The Devil's Recruit

Author: S. G. MacLean
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781849163194
Category : Detective and mystery stories
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
1635, Aberdeen. A girl lies dead in a frozen garden. A young man goes missing after a drunken brawl. A sinister cloaked figure watches from the shadows. The missing student, son of a Highland chief, is in Alexander Seaton's class. When the young man's companion turns up bruised and bloodied, suspicion mounts that he has murdered his friend. But Alexander is convinced that there's another explanation. Drawn ever deeper into the mystery, Alexander realises that the man in the shadows is known to him and that the strange events in the town are linked to his own past.

The Seeker

Author: S.G. MacLean
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
ISBN: 1782061665
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
A bloody murder. An open and shut case? In Oliver Cromwell's London, nothing is as it seems - Captain Damian Seeker must battle to find justice, when an innocent man's life hangs in the balance. 'Challenges CJ Sansom for dominion of historical crime' Sunday Times 'The best historical crime novel of the year' Sunday Express London, 1654. Oliver Cromwell is at the height of his power and has declared himself Lord Protector. Yet he has many enemies, at home and abroad. London is a complex web of spies and merchants, priests and soldiers, exiles and assassins. One of the web's most fearsome spiders is Damian Seeker, agent of the Lord Protector. No one knows where Seeker comes from, who his family is, or even his real name. All that is known of him for certain is that he is utterly loyal to Cromwell, and that nothing can be long hidden from him. In the city, coffee houses are springing up, fashionable places where men may meet to plot and gossip. Suddenly they are ringing with news of a murder. John Winter, hero of Cromwell's all-powerful army, is dead, and the lawyer, Elias Ellingworth, found standing over the bleeding body, clutching a knife. Yet despite the damning evidence, Seeker is not convinced of Ellingworth's guilt. He will stop at nothing to bring the killer to justice: and Seeker knows better than any man where to search.

Britten's Century

Author: Mark Bostridge
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441177906
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Book Description
November 2013 marks the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten. Here is an outstanding collection of essays to mark the event.

The Comforters

Author: Muriel Spark
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811222411
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
Spark’s mind-bogglingly stunning 1957 debut With easy, sunny eeriness, Spark lights up the darkest things: blackmail, a drowning, nervous breakdowns, a ring of smugglers, a loathsome busybody, a diabolic bookseller, human evil.

Crucible of Secrets

Author: S. G. MacLean
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1849169349
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
Knowledge is power, and when it gets in the wrong hands it can be lethal. Alchemy and murder combine in a gripping race against time from the CWA award-winning author of The Seeker. 'One of the best writers of historical crime' The Times Aberdeen, 1631. University librarian Robert Sim takes receipt of a gift of books recently arrived from overseas, mysterious works on alchemy and hermetics - the pursuit of ancient knowledge. By nightfall he has been brutally murdered. His colleague and good friend Alexander Seaton is left with the task of hunting for clues as to his killer's motive, as well as locating the missing books. What did Sim discover in the package, and what makes these books so dangerous?

The Bear Pit

Author: S.G. MacLean
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
ISBN: 1787473597
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
'Could challenge CJ Sansom for dominion' Sunday Times London, 1656: Captain Seeker is back in the city, on the trail of an assassin preparing to strike at the heart of Oliver Cromwell's Republic The Commonwealth is balanced on a knife edge. Royalists and disillusioned former Parliamentarians have united against Oliver Cromwell, now a king in all but name. Three conspirators, representing these factions, plan to assassinate the Lord Protector, paving the way back to the throne for Charles Stuart once and for all. Captain Damian Seeker, meanwhile, is preoccupied by the horrifying discovery in an illegal gambling den of the body of a man ravaged by what is unmistakably a bear. Yet the bears used for baiting were all shot when the sport was banned by Cromwell. So where did this fearsome creature come from, and why would someone use it for murder? With Royalist-turned-Commonwealth-spy Thomas Faithly tracking the bear, Seeker investigates its victim. The trail leads from Kent's coffee house on Cornhill, to a German clockmaker in Clerkenwell, to the stews of Southwark, to the desolate Lambeth Marshes where no one should venture at night. When the two threads of the investigation begin to join, Seeker realises just what - and who - he is up against. The Royalists in exile have sent to London their finest mind and greatest fighter, a man who will stop at nothing to ensure the Restoration. Has Seeker finally met his match?

Doris Lessing

Author: Alice Ridout
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441192646
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
Despite winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, Doris Lessing has received relatively little critical attention. One of the reasons for this is that Lessing has spent much of her lifetime and her long published writing career crossing both national and ideological borders. This essay collection reflects and explores the incredible variety of Lessing's border crossings and positions her writing in its various social and cultural contexts. Lessing crosses literal national borders in her life and work, but more controversial have been her crossings of genre borders into sci-fi and "space fiction", and her crossing of ideological borders such as moving into and out of the Communist Party and from a colonial into a post-colonial world. This timely collection also considers a number of the most interesting recent critical and theoretical approaches to Lessing's writing, including work on maternity and abjection in relation to The Fifth Child and The Grass is Singing, eco-criticism in Lessing's 'Ifrakan' novels, and postcolonial re-writings of landscape in her African Stories.

The Bookseller of Inverness

Author: S. G. MacLean
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1529414199
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
A GRIPPING HISTORICAL THRILLER SET IN INVERNESS IN THE WAKE OF THE 1746 BATTLE OF CULLODEN. 'This slice of historical fiction takes you on a wild ride' THE TIMES After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drummossie Moor. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades. Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of his regular customers, he notices a stranger lurking in the upper gallery of his shop, poring over his collection. But the man refuses to say what he's searching for and only leaves when Iain closes for the night. The next morning Iain opens up shop and finds the stranger dead, his throat cut, and the murder weapon laid out in front of him - a sword with a white cockade on its hilt, the emblem of the Jacobites. With no sign of the killer, Iain wonders whether the stranger discovered what he was looking for - and whether he paid for it with his life. He soon finds himself embroiled in a web of deceit and a series of old scores to be settled in the ashes of war. ****************** PRAISE FOR THE BOOKSELLER OF INVERNESS 'Fresh and intriguing . . . Her best yet' ANDREW TAYLOR 'Everything you could ask for from a historical thriller' ANTONIA HODGSON 'An intricately wrought, compulsively page-turning tale' CRAIG RUSSELL 'A first rate historical thriller' 5* READER REVIEW 'From the moment I began reading I was hooked' 5* READER REVIEW 'Hugely entertaining . . . fast paced, twisting and turning' 5* READER REVIEW

The Wrath of Alexander the Great

Author: Manhattan West
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615301211
Category : Carthage (Extinct city)
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
"The Wrath of Alexander" introduces a bold new character into the realm of hair-raising adventure: The legendary Commander Barkane of Carthage. Combat-trained down to his fingernails, Barkane is the world's first military commando. He and his highly-trained crew must break into the famed fortress-city of Tyre and retrieve secrets of the state so valuable that Alexander the Great himself will turn the continent upside-down to get his hands on them. One problem: Tyre is under siege by one hundred thousand of Alexander's men, each and every one of them hungering for Barkane's blood. The commandos must somehow break into the city, secure the secret, and then escape. It is impossible, of course, and Alexander knows it. But Carthage has sent Commander Barkane, and so Alexander is in for a surprise.