Simon Vance

A brilliant and beguiling reimagining of Homer's classic story about the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy.

Gaius Petreius Ruso and his companion, Tilla, return to Gaul and receive an icy greeting from relatives and news of hard times, a situation that is complicated by the untimely murder of the family's chief creditor.

Detective Patrik Hedström tackles his toughest investigation yet when a string of suspicious deaths points to a potential serial killer who has turned his eye toward Fjallbacka and her dark forests, where two children vanished decades before.

Retiring from his life of crime to write novels in Venice, gentleman thief Charlie is blackmailed into committing a dastardly deed in order to reclaim a prized rare book that has been stolen by a femme-fatale burglar.

Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope, 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...

A gothic labyrinth of roofs and turrets, cloisters and corridors, stairwells and dungeons, it is also the cobwebbed kingdom of Byzantine government and age-old rituals, a world primed to implode beneath the weight of centuries of intrigue, treachery, and death. Steerpike, who began his climb across the roofs when Titus was born, is now ascending the spiral staircase to the heart of the castle, and in his wake lie imprisonment, manipulation, and murder. Gormenghast...

Examines how the French and Indian War of the mid-eighteenth century had a definitive impact on history, tracing how it served to overturn the balance of power on two continents and laid the groundwork for the American Revolution.

"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...

Nominated for the Man Booker Prize, an exquisite tale of romance and rivalry, gambling and greed, from one of England's finest writers. As the shadows lengthen over the June grass, all England is heading for Epsom Down?high life and low life, society beauties and White chapel street girls, bookmakers and gypsies, hawkers and thieves. Hopes are high, nerves are taut, hats are tossed in the air? This is Derby Day. For months people have been waiting...

Prize-winning biographer Leo Damrosch tells the story of "the Club," a group of extraordinary writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern. In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith,...