Roy McMillan
1) Pirates!
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Which pirate incubated chickens in camel-dung? What would Blackbeard do if you didn't hand over your jewellery (it wasn't nice)? Which pirate was called 'The Exterminator'? Where's the treasure buried? Why were two women dressed as men on the same pirate ship? Who made the Jolly Roger famous? And who was the greatest pirate ever?
This history answers all these questions and many more; it is the ideal introduction to the facts behind the great legends...
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"From the internationally best-selling author of Fatherland and the Cicero Trilogy--a chilling and dark new thriller unlike anything Robert Harris has done before. 1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artifacts--coins, fragments of glass, human bones--which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to...
3) Conclave
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The pope is dead. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world's most secretive election. They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals. Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on Earth.
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London, 1948. Stuck in a loveless marriage, Eve Forrester receives a mysterious inheritance from a stranger. In order to find out more, she must travel to the glittering French Riviera. She has been bequeathed an enchanting villa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, and suddenly life could not be more glamorous. But while she rubs shoulders with the rich and famous, challengers to her unexplained fortune begin to emerge-- challengers who would love...
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"Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park, first published in 1814, tells the story of young Fanny Price, who is sent to live with her wealthy relatives, the Bertrams, at the age of ten. As she grows up, she develops deep feelings for her cousin Edmund Bertram, the only person at Mansfield Park who shows her true kindness. When the Bertram family is thrown into scandal and disorder, Fanny and Edmund must overcome the chaos around them so they can come to...
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"Kidnapped from his California home and sold to prospectors embarked for the Yukon Gold Rush, Buck, a pampered house dog who has known comfort all of his life, finds himself thrust into a brutal world of cruel human masters, savage fellow sled-dogs, and an unforgiving wilderness full of hardship and misery. In the wilds, Buck earns the love of a man as rugged as he is, and he reacquaints himself with his true animal nature, a noble heritage passed...
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A servant and former slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this astonishing historical thriller that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid streets of Georgian London.
The brutal double murder of renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite, has set London abuzz. Crowds pack the courtroom, the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings. But Frannie Langton claims she cannot recall...
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First published in 1926, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" is the fascinating and brutal account of the Arab Revolt of 1916 to 1918 by T. E. Lawrence, more famously known as "Lawrence of Arabia". Written, rewritten, and edited over a period of several years from 1919 to 1926, Lawrence recounts his time serving in the British Forces in North Africa when he was based in Wadi Rum. He describes his role assisting in the organization and carrying out of attacks...
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"Crane, the former president of the Royal Geographic Society, documents the remarkable expedition undertaken by a group of twelve European adventurer-scientists in the mid-eighteenth century. The team spent years in South America, scaling volcanoes and traversing jungles before they achieved their goal of establishing the exact shape of the Earth by measuring the length of 1 degree latitude at the equator"
In 1735 twelve men boarded ships bound for...
10) No Way Out
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From Cara Hunter, author of the New York Times bestseller Murder in the Family, comes book three of her DI Adam Fawley series, one of Britain's most enduringly popular and mega-selling crime series. Fawley investigates a ghastly house fire on Christmas Day launches an investigation that shocks a community.
It's one of the most disturbing cases DI Adam Fawley has ever worked.
It's Christmas in Oxford, and firefighters
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"For fans of Hilary Mantel and The Tudors, this is the dramatic story of the concluding episode in England's War of the Roses, featuring three brothers, two of whom became kings, Edward IV and Richard III, famous from Shakespeare's great history play Richard III"--
12) Conundrum
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This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite...
13) The Black Gang
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A fearsome cadre of ex-soldiers joins Bulldog Drummond on his second explosive adventure Eight evil men assemble in an English country house. Thieves, white slavers, drug dealers, and communists, they share one common goal: the destruction of everything that England holds dear. Police surround the manor in preparation for a raid. Suddenly, a gang of men in black masks appears and knocks the officers unconscious. Whips in hand, the Black Gang enters...
14) A Dog's Heart
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A dark, fantastical satire of Communist utopianism by the author of The Master and Margarita.
Lauded Russian author and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov's A Dog's Heart (sometimes translated as The Heart of a Dog) is a zany, violent, and whimsical satire of the failures inherent in the dream of a Communist utopia, following dog-turned-human Sharik as he tries and fails utterly to live a life of goodness and virtue-but goodness and virtue as defined by...
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For almost two millennia, cathedrals have been among the most imposing, astonishing and inspiring buildings in Europe. Regardless of faith, their scale and architectural daring has never ceased to spark wonder. This guide traces the development of the cathedral from its earliest beginnings as a Bishop's house, through the Romanesque and Gothic periods and up to the most extravagant contemporary designs around the world. In doing so, it sheds light...
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Amid the lush beauty of Jamaica's northern coast lies the true story of Ian Fleming's iconic creation: James Bond.For two months every year, from 1946 to his death eighteen years later, Ian Fleming lived at Goldeneye, the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white-sand beach on Jamaica's stunning north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written here.This book explores the huge influence of Jamaica on the creation...
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The French Revolution marked the birth of modern Europe. From the storming of the Bastille to the horrors of the guillotine, the events of 1789 and after are among the most stirring—and most disturbing—in the continent's history. But what really happened in France during those turbulent closing years of the 18th century? And what does it mean for us in the 21st? This text tells the story of a nation's traumatic journey from absolute monarchy through...
18) Bulldog Drummond
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The thrilling debut of Bulldog Drummond, England's bravest veteran In the waning days of World War I, four men gather in a Swiss hotel. Two are German, one is American-and the last is a citizen of the world and a master of disguise. To enter this exclusive club, there are only two requirements: a desire to see England destroyed and the means to make it happen. In London, Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, formerly of His Majesty's Royal Loamshire...
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The Pax Britannica trilogy is Jan Morris' epic story of the British Empire from the accession of Queen Victoria to the death of Winston Churchill. Heaven's Command, the first volume, takes us from the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The story moves effortlessly across the world, from the English shores to Fiji, Zululand, the Canadian prairies and beyond.
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The Pax Britannica trilogy is Jan Morris' magnificent history of the British Empire from 1837 to 1965. This final volume charts the decline and dissolution of what was once the largest empire the world had known. From the first signs of decay in the imperial ambition in the Boer Wars, through the global shifts in power evident in the two World Wars, it offers a perspective that is honest, evocative and occasionally elegiac.