Simon Vance

"In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was England's Saxon capital, eternity is loitering between the firetrap housing projects. Embedded in the grubby amber of the district's narrative among its saints, kings, prostitutes, and derelicts a different kind of human time is happening, a soiled simultaneity that does not differentiate between the petrolcolored puddles and the fractured dreams of those who navigate them. Fiends last mentioned...

For years, critics have celebrated best-selling author Patrick O'Brian's seafaring adventures for their magnificent blend of swashbuckling excitement and historical accuracy. With The Hundred Days, he transports you to the high seas of the Napoleonic era when the French demagogue is making a desperate attempt to control the European world. While Napoleon pursues the British across Europe, rumors fly about him forging a secret link with the forces...

A tale set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution follows the struggles of Kai Ying to safeguard her family when her teacher husband is arrested and sent to a "reeducation" labor camp for criticizing the Communist Party.

Edgar Allan Poe is an American boy in England, a child standing on the edge of mysteries. In 1819, two Americans arrive in London. Soon afterward a bank collapses. A man is found horribly mutilated on a building site and an heiress flirts with her inferiors. All the while, Poe's young schoolmaster struggles to understand what is happening before he and his loved ones are destroyed. But the truth, like the youthful Poe himself, has its origins in the...

In 1924 the wife of a Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead. Reporters dubbed her the blonde Witch of Lime Street, but she was known to her followers simply as Margery. Her most vocal advocate was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed so thoroughly in Margery's powers that he urged her to enter a controversial contest, sponsored by Scientific American. Her supernatural...

The fierce summer heat and pollution have driven the ruling class out of London and the resulting anarchy allows technology-hating Luddites to challenge the intellectual elite. A set of perforated punch cards comes into the hands of the daughter of an executed Luddite leader, who sets out to keep them safe and discover what secrets they contain.

The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

When Rob Hale wakes up in the hospital after a motorcycle crash on the Isle of Man, his first thought is for Lena, the gorgeous blonde who was on the back of his bike. But the doctors and the police insist that he was found alone at the scene and don't believe she exists. Convinced that Lena is real, Rob sets out to uncover the truth behind her disappearance.

Internationally bestselling author Lyndsay Faye was introduced to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries when she was ten years old and her dad suggested she read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band." She immediately became enamored with tales of Holmes and his esteemed biographer Dr. John Watson, and later, began spinning these quintessential characters into her own works of fiction -- from her acclaimed debut novel, Dust...

A volume of fourteen stories about loss, friendship, and longing includes the tales of a recently divorced real-estate agent who invades a reticent girlfriend's privacy, a couple that meets over an illicit cigarette, and a widower who struggles to let go of grief.