Jeremy Dronfield

"In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer in Vienna, was arrested by the Nazis. Along with his 16-year old son Fritz, he was sent to Buchenwald in Germany, where a new concentration camp was being built. It was the beginning of a six-year odyssey almost without parallel. They helped build Buchenwald, young Fritz learning construction skills which would help preserve him from extermination in the coming years. But it was his bond with his father that would ultimately keep them both alive. When the 50-year old Gustav was transferred to Auschwitz--a certain death sentence--Fritz was determined to go with him. His wiser friends tried to dissuade him--"If you want to keep living, you have to forget your father," they said. But that was impossible, and Fritz pleaded for a place on the Auschwitz transport. "He is a true comrade," Gustav wrote in his secret diary, "always at my side. The boy is my greatest joy. We are inseparable." Gustav kept his diary hidden throughout his six years in the death camps--even Fritz knew nothing of it. In it he recorded his story, a tale of survival and a father-son bond which proved stronger than the machine that sought to break them both"--

Jack is on the run. Alone in the world with nowhere to turn, he finds himself on the banks of the Thames. He sees a strange object in the river, and decides to fish it out. In his search to find out its worth he meets the alchemist, Barnstable. Some people say he is mad, but could Barnstable really have discovered the secret of making gold, and will he share it with Jack? Suggested level: intermediate, secondary.

Tells the story of the Russian aristocrat turned spy, including being born into wealth, falling in love with British diplomat and secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart, and a life in exile in England.

As a quartet, they lived in relative harmony, despite their differences in temperament and outlook. Rachel's dreamy goodness clashed with Audrey's waspish cynicism, but Beth's common sense and Lydia's soothing beauty always seemed to balance everything in the end. Then Salvador came. Salvador de La Simarde, child prodigy grown up bad, and perhaps the finest classical guitarist of his generation. With his dark beauty and distracted air, they couldn't help but be drawn to him. But for Lydia, that would mean being drawn into the dark and strange world of his family. A world dominated by the Chateau de Gondecourt, now a haunted ruin, and its eerie simulacrum resurrected on Dartmoor, places where ancient dreams have turned into Gothic nightmares, and where the terrifyng matriarch Madame de La Simarde still spins her intricate webs. Webs that are about to ensnare Lydia, and her friends, in their sinister strands...