For Joshua Mowll, it was the surprise of a lifetime. There, among the archives inherited from his great-aunt Rebecca MacKenzie, was a 1920’s journal recounting the thrilling and dangerous adventures of fifteen-year old Rebecca and her younger brother, Doug, in the wake of their parents mysterious disappearance in the deserts of China. Now carefully re-created in a lavish volume complete with cloth binding and a journal-style elastic clasp, the siblings tale begins aboard the Expedient, their uncle’s enigmatic research ship, and moves at a breathless pace through the streets of Shanghai and on to a terrifying island fortress. Along the way, Doug and Becca encounter an ancient order of Chinese mercenaries, a brutal pirate warlord, a feisty Texan heiress, and a stolen cache of a volatile explosive called zoridium. By their saga’s end, the intrepid duo has exposed a murderous plot involving their parents and uncovered a high-minded secret society hidden from the world for hundreds of years. Interspersed are such archival elements as:elaborate diagram and maps
Jossing Affair
In the last year of WW II, British-trained Norwegian intelligence agent Tore Haugland is a jossing—a patriot—sent to a fishing village on Norway’s west coast to set up a line to receive weapons and agents from England via the “Shetland Bus.” Posing as a deaf fisherman, his mission is complicated when he falls in love with Anna Fromme, a German widow with secrets of her own. In wartime, love and trust are not always compatible.
Echoes in the Glass
Finnian bears the scar of an unspeakable crime.
Tiria hides the pain of a terrible betrayal.
When all their secrets are laid bare, will the truth rip them apart or forever silence the echoes of the past?
Seventeen-year-old Finnian Bell has been on the run for years, but he finally has a chance to rebuild his life while restoring an abandoned lighthouse on the Oregon Coast.
Tiria Vaughn, the lightkeeper’s daughter, is still reeling from the pain of an event that has shattered her innocence. Fear and bitterness have turned her heart from Finnian, but he is determined not to let her go.
The lighthouse harbors dark secrets of its own…
When Finnian and Tiria uncover the story of two teens hidden in the tower back in 1934, they discover a shocking connection that bridges time and death.
Red Gate, The
An unexplained drowning…a muddy fall. A chain of unexpected events, a discovery and an ancient secret threaten the future. The story begins with a rainy funeral in Dublin in 1912. It tells how a very traditional, Western Irish sheep raising family learn of a secret holding them to their land and to an ancient promise. In the process of unexpected discovery they must put aside personal insecurities and failings and open up their lives to defend themselves. A devious plan hatched by a greedy academic attempts to reveal their secret to the world for his own gain. This they must prevent at all cost. Their good humored manner of removing obstacles, both figurative and solid, reminds the reader that not all sources of strength are apparent. Despite loss and fear, they learn that help can come from sources seen and unseen, as they discover their place in the greater world. Listed as an Awesome Indie title, and recipient of the 2013 Book Reader’s Appreciation Medallion. Be sure to follow the O’Deirg family’s adventures in The Gatekeepers, the sequel, published 2010
Crimson Bed
Frederic Ashton Thorpe and his best friend, Henry Winstone, are artists immersed in the Pre-Raphaelite movement, with its yearning for romantic escape from the materialism of Victorian society. Seeing a half-finished portrait of the beautiful Eleanor Farnham at Henry’s studio, Fred is fascinated and returns in order to meet her. He and Ellie fall in love and are married. But every heart hides a secret and both Fred and Ellie have put certain events behind them – events that, if exposed, could threaten their blissful new life. After her mother’s death, Ellie inherits the Crimson Bed, a family heirloom passed down through the female line since Elizabethan times. With the bed come ancestral secrets that will eventually affect Ellie as much as the unhappy memories from her own past. Meanwhile, Fred is haunted by shameful memories of his own, that lead him into the darkness of the London slums and a very different world to that of his peaceful home. As a brilliant and talented artist, Henry is beginning to experience success and fame, but his life is haunted by tragedy and loss. Despite their own problems, Ellie and Fred watch in despair as he sinks slowly into drink, illness and decline. Passions escalate as Fred becomes increasingly jealous of Ellie’s closeness to her handsome godfather, Lord Percy Dillinger, and when shocking truths finally come to light, their lives will never be the same again…
Mr. Churchill’s Secretary (Maggie Hope Mystery #1)
London, 1940. Winston Churchill has just been sworn in, war rages across the Channel, and the threat of a Blitz looms larger by the day. But none of this deters Maggie Hope. She graduated at the top of her college class and possesses all the skills of the finest minds in British intelligence, but her gender qualifies her only to be the newest typist at No. 10 Downing Street. Her indefatigable spirit and remarkable gifts for codebreaking, though, rival those of even the highest men in government, and Maggie finds that working for the prime minister affords her a level of clearance she could never have imagined—and opportunities she will not let pass. In troubled, deadly times, with air-raid sirens sending multitudes underground, access to the War Rooms also exposes Maggie to the machinations of a menacing faction determined to do whatever it takes to change the course of history.
Ensnared in a web of spies, murder, and intrigue, Maggie must work quickly to balance her duty to King and Country with her chances for survival. And when she unravels a mystery that points toward her own family’s hidden secrets, she’ll discover that her quick wits are all that stand between an assassin’s murderous plan and Churchill himself.
In this daring debut, Susan Elia MacNeal blends meticulous research on the era, psychological insight into Winston Churchill, and the creation of a riveting main character, Maggie Hope, into a spectacularly crafted novel.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel
In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, “old same,” in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she’s painted a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men.
As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on fans, compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. Together, they endure the agony of foot-binding, and reflect upon their arranged marriages, shared loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.
Bound (Satucket #2)
Alice Cole spent her first seven years living in two smoky, crowded rooms in London with her family. But a new home and a better life waited in the colonies, or so her father promised a bright dream that turned to ashes when her brothers and mother took ill and died during the arduous voyage. Arriving in New England unable to meet the added expenses incurred by their misfortunes at sea, her father bound Alice into servitude to pay his debts.
By the age of fifteen, Alice can barely remember the time when she was not a servant to John Morton and his daughter, Nabby. Though work fills her days, life with the Mortons is pleasant; Mr. Morton calls Alice his “sweet, good girl,” and Nabby, only three years older, is her friend, companion, and now newly married, her mistress.
But Nabby’s marriage is not happy, and soon Alice is caught up in its storm; seeing nothing ahead but her own destruction, she defies her new master and the law and runs away to Boston. There she meets a sympathetic widow named Lyddie Berry and her lawyer companion, Eben Freeman. Frightened and alone, Alice impulsively stows away on their ship to Satucket on Cape Cod, where the Widow Berry offers Alice a bed and a job making cloth in support of the new boycott of British wool and linen.
At Widow Berry’s, Alice believes her old secret is safe, until it becomes threatened by a new one. As the days pass, the political and the personal stakes rise and intertwine, ultimately setting off a chain of events that will force Alice to question all she thought she knew. Bound by law, society, and her own heart, Alice soon discovers that freedom as well as gratitude, friendship, trust, and love has a price far higher than any she ever imagined.
Library Journal hailed Sally Gunning’s previous novel, The Widow’s War, as “historical fiction at its best.” With Bound, this wonderfully talented writer returns to pre-Revolutionary New England and evokes a long-ago time filled with uncertainty, hardship, and promise.
Sumerton Women
Orphaned at age eight, Lady Cecily Burkhart becomes the ward of Harold Pierce, Earl of Sumerton. The charming Lord Hal and his wife, Lady Grace, immediately welcome sweet-natured Cecily as one of their own. With Brey, their young son, Cecily develops an easy, playful friendship. But their intensely devout daughter, Mirabella, is consumed by her religious vocation—and by her devotion to Father Alec Cahill, the family priest and tutor.
With Father Alec as her closest confidant, Cecily begins to glimpse the painful secrets at the heart of the Pierce family. When tragedy strikes at home, and Henry VIII’s obsession with Anne Boleyn leads to violent upheaval across England, Mirabella is robbed of her calling and the future Cecily dreamed of is ripped away in turn. As Cecily struggles to hold together the fractured household, she and Alec also grapple with a dangerous mutual attraction. Plagued with jealousy, Mirabella unleashes a tumultuous chain of events that threatens to destroy everyone around her. For with treachery and suspicion rampant, desire has the power to shatter a family—and tear a kingdom apart…
Highlander (The Rise of The Aztecs Series, book 1)
Born in the Highlands, Kuini thought his life was simple. You hunt and you fight, defending your towns against the raids of the Lowlanders and then raiding their lands in turn. His father was the Warriors’ Leader, and he wanted to be just like him.
Yet, Texcoco, the mighty Capital of the Lowlands, seemed incredibly beautiful, sparkling, its pyramids magnificent. A friendship with the Lowlander boy, the First Son of the Texcoco Emperor, seemed harmless in the beginning. They were just boys, and their clandestine meetings were always fun, providing great entertainment.
However, on the day Kuini agrees to finally enter the magnificent city, it would all change. He expected to get into trouble, but he could not foresee the extent of the trouble and, worst of all, he did not expect to uncover hidden secrets concerning his own family.
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