Ralph Cosham
Spring Into Reading Children's Fiction and Non-fiction
David Copperfield is considered to be Charles Dickens's most autobiographical novel. He said of it: "Like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield." It is a Bildungsroman, a tale which follows the development into maturity of its narrator, David Copperfield. The Russian greats Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky both greatly admired the novel, as did Kafka, Joyce and James. Freud called it
...The Good Soldier is a story about the complex social and sexual relationships between two couples—one English, one American—and the growing awareness of American narrator John Dowell of the intrigues and passions behind their orderly Edwardian façade. It is Dowell's attitude—his puzzlement, uncertainty, and the seemingly haphazard manner of his narration—that makes the book so powerful and mysterious. In Ford's brilliantly
...World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost sixty million lives—an average of twenty-seven thousand a day. For thirty-five years, Max Hastings has researched and written about different aspects of the war. Now, for the first time, he gives us a magnificent, single-volume...
9) Smokescreen
Dick Francis, Edgar Award–winning master of mystery and suspense, takes you into the thrilling world of horse racing.
Edward Lincoln may be an international film star who plays daring detectives...
It wasn't the rain that upset Carole Seddon during her walk on the West Sussex Downs, nor was it the dilapidated barn in which she sought shelter. What upset her was the human skeleton she discovered there, neatly packed into two blue fertilizer bags.
Thus begins the mystery for strait-laced Carole and her more laid-back neighbor Jude, whose investigation takes them to the small hamlet of Weldisham. There gossips quickly identify the corpse
...The seaside town of Fethering, home to Carole Seddon and her friend Jude, is a place rife with foul play, as evidenced in this sixth mystery in the series.
Carole is thrilled with the coming wedding of her once-estranged son, Stephen. She finds it odd, though, that the parents of the bride have no interest in arranging the wedding and seem terrified at the prospect of publicizing it. Things turn deadly intriguing when the father of the bride
...The Hopwicke Country House Hotel once boasted a clientele of the rich and famous. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so owner Suzy Longthorne throws open her doors to welcome the Pillars of Sussex, an elitist group of local businessmen whose social gatherings revolve around drinking and off-color commentary. Short staffed, Suzy recruits Jude Seddon as a waitress to help keep the spirits flowing. But the next morning, Jude discovers
...Recently retired, Carole Seddon is residing in the Fethering the cottage she purchased with her ex-husband. Theree she maintains a quiet and sensible life with the companionship of Gulliver, her Labrador retriever. But everything changes when she and Gulliver, while taking their daily constitutional, find a corpse on the beach. What's more, there are two wounds on its neck. The body mysteriously disappears and the police dismiss Carole as a befuddled
...A dinner party at an English mansion with some stuffy, not-very-close friends is not exactly Jude's cup of tea—but the practically mummified torso of a woman found in the cellar is right up her alley. There is no way of knowing how long the dead body has been there, or even who it once was. Intrigued by this new mystery, Jude elicits the help of her reluctant neighbor, Carole, to help solve the case. And perhaps in the process she can snap
...16) A Deniable Death
Fethering's favorite sleuths are at it again. Jude and Carole Seddon find themselves in the midst of some horseplay after stumbling upon the body of ex-equestrian Walter Fleet at Long Bamber Stables. The police attribute the stabbing death to the mysterious "Horse Ripper," who's been mutilating mares across West Sussex and who Walter obviously caught in the act. But considering Walter's reputation out of the saddle, Jude and Carole find that there
...18) Europe Central
In this magnificent work of fiction, William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye to the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the twentieth century. The result is a daring and mesmerizing perspective on human actions during wartime.
Assembling a composite portrait of these two warring leviathans and the terrible age they defined, the narrative intertwines experiences both real and fictional: a young German who joins the SS to
...Huw Morgan remembers the days when his home valley was prosperous, verdant, and beautiful—before the mines came to town. The youngest son of a respectable mining family in South Wales, he is now the only one left in the valley, and his reminiscences tell the story of a...