Windsor selection

A panoramic novel, moving between Istanbul, Bucharest, Paris, Sofia and the Black Sea coast, involving Turkish secret police, Russian chekists, French aristocrats, Romanian millionaires, Polish exiles and British spies.

In Alistair MacLean's "When Eight Bells Toll," British Treasury agent Philip Calvert investigates the disappearance of ships carrying gold bullion in the Irish Sea, leading him to a seemingly sleepy bay in the Western Highlands where he uncovers a murderous gang of maritime hijackers, forcing him to navigate a web of deception and danger. Here's a more detailed overview: Plot: Millions of pounds in gold bullion are being pirated in the Irish Sea, prompting the British Secret Service to send Philip Calvert to a bleak bay in the Western Highlands, Torbay. Setting: The novel's setting on the rugged West Highland coast of Scotland allows MacLean to showcase his knowledge of his native land and the sea. Character: Philip Calvert, the hero, is sent to investigate the disappearances and soon realizes that the sleepy atmosphere of Torbay is deceptive. Genre: The novel combines the genres of spy novel and detective novel. Themes: The story explores themes of espionage, suspense, and the dangers of the sea and human nature. Twists and Turns: Calvert must determine who he can trust as apparent allies turn out to be in league with the kidnappers and vice versa. Film Adaptation: A 1971 film adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins was released

Unmarried Clare Kelso awaits trial in Glasgow in 1787 for the death by poison of her 10-month-old son. The baby's father, Frederick Striker, has vanished. Orphaned and poor, Clare had been taken in by wealthy relatives to care for their three young children, and it was through her ambiguous position as servant and family member that she met the charming, roguish Striker, whose reputation as a womanizer only enhanced his appeal. But Striker has a darker side, a fact that his submissive sister and the judge at the trial know well, each for their own reasons. Rising defense attorney Cameron Adams listens to Clare's story about the circumstances of the baby's death with mounting perplexity, and after some keen detective work he is sure that Clare is lying to protect someone. Cameron, soon comes to believe that the frail girl who refuses to defend herself could be a murderer's second victim. The key to the truth lies with Frederick Striker. Gambler, seducer, adventurer, he alone can save Clare from the gallows. If he wishes to...

The fourth novel in the "Darling Buds of May" series.

D-Day is approaching. They don’t know where or when, but the Germans know it’ll be soon, and for Felicity “Flick” Clariet, the stakes have never been higher. A senior agent in the ranks of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) responsible for sabotage, Flick has survived to become one of Britain’s most effective operatives in Northern France. She knows that the Germans’ ability to thwart the Allied attack depends upon their lines of communications, and in the days before the invasion no target is of greater strategic importance than the largest telephone exchange in Europe. But when Flick and her Resistance-leader husband try a direct, head-on assault that goes horribly wrong, her world turns upside down. Her group destroyed, her husband missing, her superiors unsure of her, her own confidence badly shaken, she has one last chance at the target, but the challenge, once daunting, is now near impossible. The new plan requires an all-woman team, none of them professionals, to be assembled and trained within days. Code-named the Jackdaws, they will attempt to infiltrate the exchange under the noses of the Germans—but the Germans are waiting for them now and have plans of their own. There are secrets Flick does not know—secrets within the German ranks, secrets among her hastily recruited team, secrets among those she trusts the most. And as the hours tick down to the point of no return, most daunting of all, there are secrets within herself. . .

"Hattie has a difficult loving partner, Martyn, an absentee mother, Lallie, and a cynical if attentive grandmother Frances. She tries to do the right and moral thing in a tricky world, and always has. But she now has a baby, Kitty, which makes true morality rather harder to achieve. Somehow, money has to be earned. Into this household comes Agnieszka, from Poland, a domestic paragon. But is she friend or foe? And even if she is foe, and seems likely to bring the domestic world crashing down around their ears, can they afford to let her go? Well, no." "Martyn works for a political magazine, Hattie for a literary agency. At work too integrity is suffering as the need for compromise becomes ever more pressing. And always in the background is Frances, tracing the family and social history which have made Hattie what she is - and not just family and society but the dwelling houses too - and all those girls and women, the au pairs, the child minders, the cleaners who've had a part in making her what she is - and now, finally, Agnieszka who has come to claim a life for herself at Hattie's expense. Will Hattie go to the wall? And poor little Kitty! Or will rescue come?"--Jacket.

Once a hotshot investigative reporter, Jack Tagger now bangs out obituaries for a South Florida daily, "plotting to resurrect my newspaper career by yoking my byline to some famous stiff." Jimmy Stoma, the infamous front man of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, dead in a fishy-smelling scuba "accident," might be the stiff of Jack's dreams--if only he can figure out what happened.Standing in the way are (among others) his ambitious young editor, who hasn't yet fired anyone but plans to "break her cherry" on Jack; the rock star's pop-singer widow, who's using the occasion of her husband's death to re-launch her own career; and the soulless, profit-hungry owner of the newspaper, whom Jack once publicly humiliated at a stockholders' meeting.With clues from the dead rock singer's music, Jack ultimately unravels Jimmy Stoma's strange fate--in a hilariously hard-won triumph for muckraking journalism, and for the death-obsessed obituary writer himself."Always be halfway prepared" is Jack Tagger's motto--and it's more than enough to guarantee a wickedly funny, brilliantly entertaining novel from Carl Hiaasen.

Detective Inspector Peter Diamond is keen to get his teeth into a new case. So when a call comes in that a woman's body has been found in one of Bath's parks, he arrives quickly at the scene: only to discover that the victim is his wife.

A young cadet is found dead at an elite military academy. Commissario Brunetti is getting nowhere with the investigation because no one is cooperating.

The second installment in the Regeneration Trilogy London, 1918. Billy Prior is working for Intelligence in the Ministry of Munitions. But his private encounters with women and men – pacifists, objectors, homosexuals – conflict with his duties as a soldier, and it is not long before his sense of himself fragments and breaks down. Forced to consult the man who helped him before – army psychiatrist William Rivers – Prior must confront his inability to be the dutiful soldier his superiors wish him to be...The Eye in the Door is a heart-rending study of the contradictions of war and of those forced to live through it.The second book in the Regeneration trilogy