'Hornblower fired. There was a small cloud of smoke, but no bang. This is death, he thought. My pistol was the unloaded one.' But Horatio Hornblower does not die. He survives the duel with Simpson,…
Scarlet is the colour of sin, and the letter 'A' stands for 'Adultery'. In the 1600s, in Boston, Massachusetts, love was allowed only between a husband and a wife. A child born outside marriage was…
Elizabeth Gilbert, a successful writer, had everything - a husband, friends, a big house in New York. But one day she realized she did not want any of it. A new relationship brought more heartbreak…
People who ride racehorses love the speed, the excitement, the danger - and winning the race. Philip Nore has been riding for many years and he always wants to win - but sometimes he is told to los…
At nineteen Anne Elliot refuses an offer of marriage from Frederick Wentworth, persuaded to do so by Lady Russell, a friend of her dead mother. Wentworth is a sailor, with no money and an uncertain…
My brother preferred being with mother and me. He used to help us prepare vegetables in the kitchen or make the bread. But what he liked best was listening to my mother's stories.' But those childh…
A hundred years ago a seaman's life was full of danger, but Jim, the first mate on board the Patna, is not afraid of danger. He is young, strong, confident of his bravery. He dreams of great advent…
The African Queen is an old, dirty, ugly, unreliable steamboat. No one would expect a missionary's sister and a rough, uneducated mechanic to take a boat like that down a dangerous river through th…
‘I like work. I find it interesting… I can sit and look at it for hours.’ With ideas like this, perhaps it is not a good idea to spend a holiday taking a boat trip up the River Thames. But th…
The four Walker children never meant to go to sea. They had promised their mother to stay safely in the harbour, and to be home on Friday in time for tea. But there they are in someone else's boat,…
When it came to football, Billy was different. Black hands grab the ball. Black feet kick the ball. Black hopes rise up with the ball to the sickly white sky. No one can stop him now. He forgets ab…
I turned on the light, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the corner that made my blood turn cold. Scudder was lying on his back. There was a long knife through his heart, pinning …
High above them, Lora and Clyde heard a sound their world had not heard for centuries - the thin scream of a starship coming in from outer space, leaving a long white tail like smoke across the cle…
Dartmoor. A wild, wet place in the south-west of England. A place where it is easy to get lost, and to fall into the soft green earth which can pull the strongest man down to his death. A man is ru…
It was a very inconvenient time for murder. Florence was full of Christmas shoppers and half the police force was already on holiday. At first it seemed quite an ordinary murder. Of course, there a…
Murder in the twelfth century is no different from murder today. There is still a dead body, though this time with an arrow through the heart instead of a bullet. There is still a need to bury the …
When Christmas comes for the four March girls, there is no money for expensive presents and they give away their Christmas breakfast to a poor family. But there are no happier girls in America than…
When Nicola arrives in Crete a day early, she gets more than just an extra day of holiday. She comes to a village where no one can be trusted, and she becomes involved in a murder mystery that puts…
Dr Aronnax joins the search for the 'monster', hoping for an exciting adventure. But when he meets the mysterious Captain Nemo, his adventure becomes more extraordinary than he had ever imagined, a…
In the second century AD, when the Ninth Roman Legion marched into the mists of northern Britain, not one man came back. Four thousand men disappeared, and the Eagle, the symbol of the Legion's hon…