Louis De Wohl's novels
598564
This is the 3rd of Louis De Wohl's historical novels that I have read and they are consistently good reads.  De Wohl has a talent for making his stories believable with enough fact included so they are informative about the life of the saint as well as being entertaining reading.  I am interested in St. Benedict because of the impact his life and teachings have had on modern spirituality and I was not disappointed in this book.
860318
Brilliant series of 5 books that follow the vicissitudes of France's royal family descended from St Louis, starting in 1313 with Philippe the Fair's controversial and iron-fisted reign, and following the successors over the course of the tumultuous 14th century. Couldn't put the series down till I was finished, and then the only thing to read next was Barbara Tuchman's masterful history of 14th century France, A Distant Mirror. The novels were meticulously footnoted and revealed the rot at the heart of power and wealth.
770707
Read Cabal of the Westford Knight first.  Thought provoking action stories.  I wish I could wipe my memory of these books so that I could redisoover them.  Yes, that good.
1850120
This book gathers under one cover stories from the worlds of the novels Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award-finalist Element of Fire [seventeenth-century Ile-Rien] ("The Potter's Daughter"), Nebula-nominated Death of the Necromancer, Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy which consists of Wizard Hunters, Ships of Air, and Gate of Gods [Victorian Ile-Rien] ("Night at the Opera"), and Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy [Cineth] ("Holy Places, Rites of Passage, Houses of the Dead, Reflections).

Cineth is special to me because the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy had protagonists from two entirely different worlds (Ilias from pastoral Cineth and Tremaine from industrialized Ile-Rien) who suddenly found themselves unlikely allies and both sets of skills (Ilias' foster brother Gilead's god-given powers and Tremaine's sorcerers) were needed to win the day.  I loved the juxtaposition of Ilias's and Tremaine's worlds as each was somewhat unfathomable to the other. One of Martha Well's strongest points is her world-building skills and I was thrilled to have two fully-fleshed out worlds in the Fall of Ile-Rien series!

Martha Wells had always intended to write another book giving Ilias' and Gilead's back stories but the publisher had balked after bringing out the third Fall of Ile-Rien book. So she ended up selling these stories to the fantasy adventure magazine Black Gate.

What is so terrific about Between Worlds is that all of these stories from the disparate worlds are published together for fans who may not have realized that they had already appeared in print. Maybe these fans had not been Black Gate subscribers or had missed the 2006 Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology: Stories of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Plus there is the bonus of the story original to Between Worlds "Night at the Opera".

In any case, Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories is a solid introduction to Martha Well's work and entirely not to be missed!
1753721
Read them in order. I love Freddy de la Hay. I love the detail to the charcters. How can people that seem so boring be interesting? Answer: The way he develops their lives and interactions with others.
4914527
This collection brings together three remarkable novellas by Joseph Conrad: Youth, Heart of Darkness and The End of the Tether. In Youth Charlie Marlow recounts the troublesome voyage of the old ship Judea and its wretched 600-ton cargo of coal. The same Marlow also serves as the narrator in Heart of Darkness, undoubtedly the most famous of the three stories. It details how Marlow takes on a foreign assignment as a ferry boat captain on the Congo River in order to restore communications with Kurtz, an eccentric ivory procurement agent isolated in the secluded midlands. Finally in The End of the Tether Captain Whalley, a former dare-devil skipper, sacrifices his retirement and embarks on a precarious voyage on the steamer Sofala in order to support his distant, beloved daughter.

Like many of Conrad's early novels these three stories are set aboard ships. These stories tell of men who go beyond the normal routine of life to challenge themselves, whether from curiosity or necessity, in order to obtain what they seemingly cannot reach. Conrad depicts these desperate men with a vigor that on its own is already enough reason to dive in these stories. But there is much more. The real power of these masterpieces will only surface after a second read. The first reading is like a voyage into the unknown, not unlike the main characters would have experienced it. Only on a second or third reading do you become more aware of the subliminal power of the words and can you appreciate the full power of the colorful narrative. This way the at first read overly long descriptive passages get more and more significance and surely reveal their significance to the story.

One of the many layers to the stories is the drive to react against the self-proclaimed dominance of the human race: both against his environment as against his fellow man. In Heart of Darkness Marlow even literally proclaims that the unbounded exploitation of the natural resources is a disfigurement to the human conscience. Therefore it is not surprising that theme of alienation was craftily interwoven in John Milius' script for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now loosely based upon Conrad's novella.

Not everyone will be charmed by the dense narrative and slow pace of these stories. But if you manage to see beyond this dated style, what is left is simply a masterpiece.
119718
Wouk is one of my favorite authors, and this book does not disappoint. Intrigue, personality interactions, enthralling narrative, science and a little romance... I actually read it more than once.
3228077
A WORD FROM LOUIS LAMOUR

Almost forty years ago, when my fiction was being published exclusively in pulp western magazines, I wrote several novel-length stories, which my editors called magazine novels. In creating them, I became so involved with my characters that their lives were still as much a part of me as I was of them long after the issues in which they appeared became collectors items. Pleased as I was about how I brought the characters and their adventures to life in the pages of the magazines, I still wanted the reader to know more about my people and why they did what they did. So, over the years, I revised and expanded these magazine works into fuller-length novels that I published in paperback under other titles.

These particular early magazine versions of my books have long been a source of great speculation and curiosity among many of my readers, so much so of late, that Im now pleased to collect three of them in book form for the first time.
1740158
I'm very lucky that I have the whole Series of Jean Auel's Books......To me they are all " Classics" and I have just re-read the whole series again after a couple of years,,,,, I have Archived all of these books... I loved all the stories in each book and the Adventures of Ayla & Jondalar.....A very wothwhile read and thoroughly recommend the whole series....
3352775
The Dark Tower is very interesting. It's kind of a "Twilight Zone" or "Outer Limits" type of sci-fi short story. It was printed from draft pages and notes that were found amongst  Lewis' possessions after he died.
2789863
Stark House Press uncovers three great Noir Novels from the short lived Lion Books.  Lion Books was a rival of Gold Medal Books in those formative years of paperbacks from 1949 through 1957. Like Gold Medal they specialized in Men's Adventure Novels.  While they landed many big name authors like Jim Thompson, David Goodis,  Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson and Shirley Jackson,  these are from writers that you probably never heard of.  But all are well deserving of being rediscovered.

The book features a great history of Lion Books by Dan Roberts plus an additional introduction by Gary Lovisi.

The original cover of The Man I Killed had been repurposed as the cover for this collection.  It is an excellent cover and I have included covers of all three Lion Paperback original covers just so readers can get a better feel for the stories themselves.

The first novel Hero's Lust is excellent and well deserving of leading of this collection.  It is a story of a corrupt newspaper reporter in an even more corrupt town.  His friend the Mayor controls everything and pulls all the strings in this sea of corruption.  When the Mayor's scheme to gain election votes involves our protagonist's participation in a newspaper story about a beautiful young lady with Tuberculosis, things start to spiral off the tracks for the reporter.  While the books title may mention a Hero, that role is rather dubious since he is quite corrupted himself.

The novel is written by real life Newspaper man Kermit Jaediker who brings a gritty realism to the story.  When I was reading the novel I figured there was two probable ways this story could conclude, I was delighted when it followed neither of those conclusions but to a very unexpected ending.

The second novel The Man I Killed comes in a very close second place in my ratings and is also excellent.  A young man flees town after he kills a man in night club brawl.  After a very extended period of time he goes back to the scene of the crime.  Their he becomes involved with a local gangster and ends of as a patsy in a murder he doesn't understand.  Of course he also winds up involved with a couple troubled women.  The Fem Fatale who has had a tortured past but has a heart of gold and the young Nymphette who is adopted by a policeman.

The third novel Hose Of Evil is about a psycho killer who murders beautiful young woman. The chapters rotate between the lead character and the killers own prospective.  The book's title House Of Evil is misleading and rather generic, since their is no real evil house.  The same title was also used in the recent other Stark House Press collection for you of the novels of John Trinian.  This was my least favorite of the three because I could figure out all the results of the novel by about the third way I to the story.  Still it is a good solid novel.  If I would rate the three novels with a letter grade I would go A, A and B-.

This is another great collection of hidden jewels from the past.  These are all early 50's novels.  Stark House reprints them in the large trade paperback format with easy to read large fonts.

My Highest Recommendation.
2159189
Bernard Cornwell's Sharp's Devil is, once again, an excellently written and well crafted story of adventure and chivalry in the Napoleonic Age.  It compares well with the earlier novels as well as the trilogy set in India.  At the same time, one has to wonder when this series of books will ever end?  Next thing you know we'll see Sharpe single-handedly winning the Battle of Vera Cruz in the Mexican-American War, or maybe Mr. Cornwell could rewrite some of C.S. Forester's Hornblower books, and have Sharpe savage an entire brigade of French troops in the landings at Quiberon Bay.  Excellent books, but I think the situations are getting a bit ridiculous now; Sharpe does not need to fight any more wars.  Let him retire in peace.
3563379
I enjoyed this sequel even more than the original Scarlet Pimpernel novel. It kept me interested and never got boring. Adventure, a little drama, and many of the same characters that were introduced in the first story. These stories are also eye-opening as to the state of things in France following their Revolution. I'm on to the third in the series, The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. If you do an internet search, you can find the chronological order of the Scarlet Pimpernel stories, of which there are probably a dozen if not more. Good reading!
3351269
Two of the greatest novels ever written are included in one superb collection. "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights," two timeless stories of love, heartbreak, betrayal, and revenge. The third novel, "Shirley," is so boring. I couldn't even get past four chapters. "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights," on the other hand, are very interesting novels. I recommend this collection.
1058332
I have read several of the books in the trail series.  David R. Lewis's books are fun to read and seriously western at the same time.  It is difficult for me to put the book down as it suggests a comradery of the characters that is binding as well as entertaining.  I guess I would say that I would set Louis L'Amour down to read David R. Lewis and I really like Lewis L'Amour's writings.
Frank E. Vincent - Cowboy
2474600
If you are just discovering Theodor Fontane, keep this in mind:  he didn't write many novels, and the ones now in print often have different titles although they might be the same book.  That little warning aside, plunge ahead with his writing, which is set in the late 19th century, in northern Germany, often along the Baltic coast. His novels recall the plays of Ibsen or perhaps the works of Flaubert and Zola, and without knowing for sure I suspect they are at the center of German realism in this period.  Rakes and naive maidens abound in all his pages, and disappointment and tragedy lurk in many chapters. Buy all the novels, and read them with pleasurefor the style, the language, the characters, and the plots.
1256396
Guy Mannering is the second of the Waverly novels by Scotland's greatest novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). The novel was first published in 1815 cementing quondom poet Scott's best selling fame with the general public.
  The novel begins on a dark and stormy night in southwest Scotland during the reign of George III. England and Scotland were united as Great Britain in 1707; one of Scott's motivation for penning the Waverly novels was to introduce English readers to their new fellow citizens north of the border.
  Guy Mannering is a young Englishman who finds shelter from the storm at the estate of the Laird of Ellangowan. Mannering enjoys astronomy and astrology. He predicts to Mr. Bertram, owner of Ellangowan, that he will have a son who will face momentous events during his fifth, tenth and twenty-first year of life. That night is born Harry Bertram. A few years later Harry is stolen at the age of five by smugglers aided and abetted by the evil lawyer the odious Glisson.
  Sixteen years pass. Mrs Betram has died and her husband the weak laird also sinks into the grave insolvent. The lawyer Glissin obtains the estate. Nothing has been heard of little Harry who had been abducted on the same night his protector on a mountain ride Mr. Frank Kennedy, a government revenue agent, was murdered. Harry Bertram (under the pseudonymn of Mr, Brown) returns to Scotland. He had been raised in Holland and became a British soldier in India serving under Colonel Guy Mannering. Mannering and Henry have quarreled. Henry is in love with Julia Mannering the high spirited daughter of the Colonel. While on his way back home to Ellengowan, Henry meets Mr. Dandie Dinmont a colorful farmer who is being beaten by thugs on a dark road. Henry befriends him spending a week at Charliehope the home of Dinmont. Dinmont raises terriers and a breed is named for him. Harry is captured by smugglers but is rescued by the sybil witch Meg Merrilies who stand over six feet tall
  Meanwhile, Colonel Mannering has taken into his care Lucy Betram and Harry's eccentric clergical tutor named
Dominie Sampson. Lucy is in love with Charles Hazelwood a wealthy lawyer whose family does not want him to marry someone of a lower financial strata of society.
  Harry shoot Hazelwood in an accident. He is imprisoned but eventually, through the help of his friends, is realeased. Mr. Pleynell, a lawyer, proves to the court that Harry is not an imposter but the real Harry Betram of Ellangowan. He weds Julia and inherits the estate. His sister Lucy becomes the bride of Hazelwood. The evil Glissin and the smugglers who stole Harry away end in grisly deaths.
  Guy Mannering is more interesting that Waverly. Scott's dense Scottish dialect will slow you down but there is an excellent glossary of Scottish terms and historical footnotes to make the novel easier to digest for 21st century readers. Scott is an acquired taste but is important as the father of the historical romance in fiction. He induced men, not just women, to become devoted novel readers. His colorful characters influenced writers such as Dickens and he was admired by Jane Austen. I enjoyed this book and you will too!