Résultats lu par "Terry Wale" dans Toutes les catégories

1815: Napoleon's escape from Elba and the preparations for battle entangle the Morland family in a web of romance and heartbreak. The Allied Army is gathering in Flanders, and where the army is, the fashionable world must go - so London society hastens to Brussels to enjoy the most exhilarating Season ever.

The bloody revolution in France causes upheaval in the Morland family. Henri-Marie Fitzjames Stuart, bastard offshoot of the Morland family, strives to protect his daughter, Heloise; his mistress, Marie-France; and their son, Morland. To this end, he binds Heloise to a loveless marriage with a Revolutionary, and allies himself with the great Danton.

But in the bloodbath of the guillotine and the fall of Danton, Henri-Marie loses his head and Heloise flees to England.

Among the coral outcrops of the island of Rota in the Marianas Island, off the Philippines, lies the wreck of a Spanish galleon, the Santa Margarita. Here we are told a tale of the disastrous last voyage, beset by an extraordinary sequence of typhoons and storms, of the Santa Margarita on her way to Acapulco in the spring of 1601.

As the century draws to a close, Jemima Morland wearily acknowledges that her life is also nearing its end, but she has scant peace as her unpredictable children behave ever more incomprehensibly: James's marriage to Mary Ann is closer to falling apart; Lucy's marriage of convenience is in the balance - her affair with Lieutenant Watson an open scandal; Mary bears a daughter on board her husband's ship during the battle of the Nile; and William supports a mistress whose marriage cannot be dissolved.

Folies Bergère, Paris, 1927. Joe Sandilands hurries to the assistance of an old friend who has been arrested for murder. In a cell of the Quai des Orfÿvres he meets with Sir George Jardine, still in the evening dress stained with the blood of the dead man. The only other witness, a blonde who was sharing the victim's box, has vanished.

1772: Although George III reigns over a peaceful England, his colonies in the Americas are claiming independence and a tide of revolutionary fervor is gripping France. Allen Morland and his beloved wife, Jemima, work unstintingly to bring Morland Place back to its former glory. Their seven children often bring them heartache, but they are sustained by their love of each other.

The year is 1816. Napoleon has at last been defeated, but victory brings no peace to the English. The cost of war strikes deep into the country - there is a raging inflation, discharged soldiers join the ranks of the unemployed, wages tumble and the bread price soars - and hungry men are easily stirred to protest. Amid this turbulence, Heloise and James stand guard over Morland Place - for its spirit as much as its fortunes - when a tragic accident strikes at the very heart of the family.

December, 1380. When the corpse of Sir Robert Kilverby is discovered in a locked room, Brother Athelstan accompanies the King’s coronor to investigate. For the late Sir Robert had in his possession a sacred bloodstone which he was planning to donate to the Abbey of St Fulcher-on-Thames.

1803: Napoleon is poised to invade England, with only Nelson's weather-beaten ships in his way, but the French fleet are not the only threat to the fortunes of the Morland family. In the North of England, Mary Ann's relationship with the missionary, Father Rathbone, introduces her to the stark realities of life in plague-torn Manchester. In the South, Lucy's lover, Weston, is assigned to the blockade of Brest, while her neglected husband, Chetwyn, finally finds love in an affair which threatens him with disgrace and ruin.

1630: after long years of peace the reign of Charles I brings brutal civil war to England. The clash between King and Parliament is echoed at Morland Place when Richard brings home a Puritan bride while his brother, Kit, joins Prince Rupert and the Royalist cavalry, leaving their father Edmund desperately trying to steer a middle course between the fighting factions. As the war grinds on, bitterness and disillusion replace the early fervour, and the schisms between husband and wife, father and son, grow deeper.

India 1922. When a tiger, turned man-eater, starts terrorising the northern villages of Ranipur, Governor Sir George Jardine dispatches Joe Sandilands, war hero and Scotland Yard detective, to join in a hunt for the beast as the guest of the maharajah. But Joe's suspicions are soon roused about the true nature of his trip. The maharajah is dying and his succession is unclear. The first heir to the throne has already died in a panther-wrestling incident and a second violent death occurs as Joe approaches the city.

The year is 1820. The landscape of England is undergoing sweeping change as the country pioneers the steam-driven machine age. The Morlands, too, face change: Cousin Africa returns from St Helena to startle society with her unconventional ideas, and Lucy brings her sons home from their Grand Tour, brimming with ideas for their future. In Manchester, Sophie and Jasper meet fierce opposition to their plans for re-housing the factory hands, while in London, Rosamund enters a bizarre agreement.

When Melanie Hunter goes missing it is completely out of character for the polite, friendly palaeontologist, and the men in her life come under suspicion. And there’s plenty to suspect: lies, half-truths, deceptions.... It soon becomes clear that there are secrets in Melanie’s past, and pain she tried to hide from the world. Bill Slider and his team investigate, and if they are to succeed then they will need to find the answer to two questions: Who loved Melanie? And who loved her too much?

"You're out of luck, brother," are the first words Gerry says when they meet in the crush of men competing for the few women at a dance in a seaside hotel, but when Gerry betrays his lover Moira, Adam's fortunes seem to have changed. For the next four years, Adam's life and Gerry's are intertwined like good luck and bad, love and loss, life and death, their paths crossing at various points on Adam's perilous journey from the ruins of Poland to the rolling English countryside, from Egypt to Occupied France.

The year is 1807. The Napoleonic Wars continue and their violence reverberates in the lives of the Morland family. Lucy, trying to rebuild her life after the death of her lover, is thrown into doubt and confusion by an unexpected proposal of marriage. At Morland Place, the hard-won happiness of James and Heloise is threatened by his rebellious daughter, Fanny, who is determined to claim more than her inheritance. These troubled times hold many surprises. In their darkest hour, the Morlands make an astonishing discovery.

Kemp blamed himself: he should have kept more closely in touch with his younger sister. Now it appears that Lorna has gone off to Colombia with a man named Roberto Vargas. But Kemp finds the story hard to swallow - there's something fishy about it.

It was nearing the end of the road for The Merrymakers. Such companies of entertainers touring the towns and villages of East Anglia were finding things more and more difficult. For Howard Layton, player-manager of the troupe, it was a worrying time. But it was the murder of the bright young star of the show that proved to be the hardest blow he had to bear. For Debbie was his own daughter, and he and his wife Gloria had once had ambitious plans for her career on the stage.

Joe Sandilands has been dispatched to France to stay as the guest of a glamorous French war-widow who is determined that Joe should support her claim that a mysterious shell-shocked soldier is her husband. The problem is that four other claimants have identified him differently. Joe decides to investigate the four claimants and picks his way through a tangle of lies, deceit, and manipulation, uncovering a cleverly concealed murder committed during the war years.

When chimney sweep Tom Wasp is handed a pawn ticket by his friend Eliza Hogg on the day before she is due to be hanged in Newgate, both he and his apprentice Ned are mystified when the reclaimed item turns out to be a sailor doll. It is no ordinary doll, however. This one holds a secret that has the two most notorious gangs in London’s East End, the Rat Mob and the Nichols, at each other’s throats. When Dinah, the daughter of the leaders of the Rat Mob, is found murdered Tom resolves to find her killer.

Sometimes, in his own mind, Keele referred to himself as “The Booking Clerk”. This was a rather macabre private joke since the tickets he issued were all one-way. Yet whatever he was called, his was a profitable occupation. The time came, however, when he wished to leave it. Miss Rona Wickham had entered his life, and the role he played hitherto was incompatible with his association with her. Unfortunately, he found that getting out was not as easy as he had hoped.