Here are 100 books that The Soldier's Curse fans have personally recommended if you like
The Soldier's Curse.
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History has always been a captivating adventure for me, a stage to rekindle the echoes of times long past. My journey began amid musty archives in Hobart, where I stumbled upon a handwritten prison record about my wife's feisty ancestor, transported in the 1830s. There and then, I resolved to breathe life into the fading embers of her existence, and after extensive research, I wrote my first novel, a tapestry of historical events intertwined with the resurrection of long-forgotten souls. Since then, I've applied lessons from masters like Conan Doyle to create exciting, atmospheric stories that turn us all into time travelers on an exhilarating voyage.
This is an enthralling adventure story that drags the reader across the rugged mountains, glens, and cities of 18th-century Scotland as the hero seeks to recover his stolen inheritance.
The story gallops along with vivid descriptions that transport the reader back to a time when loyalty and honour were really cherished. The character development, as David Balfour and Alan Breck risk all amongst the failed Jacobite uprising, is exceptional. This is another timeless classic that transports the reader to another age.
I love the interplay of real characters and real events with the underlying story, a technique that I use fully in my novels; it adds depth, veracity, and interest. Stevenson’s prose is also exceptional, creating images that make this a compelling and memorable adventure story.
Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, swashbuckling novel about a young boy who is forced to go to sea and who is then caught up in high drama, daring adventure and political intrigue.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by Louise Welsh and features black and white illustrations.
Headstrong David Balfour, orphaned at seventeen, sets out from the Scottish Lowlands to seek his fortune in Edinburgh. Betrayed by his wealthy Uncle…
James V. Irving was born and raised in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia, majoring in English. He holds a law degree from the College of William and Mary. After completing his undergraduate studies at UVA, Mr. Irving spent two years employed as a private detective in Northern Virginia, where he pursued wayward spouses, located skips, investigated insurance claims, and handled criminal investigations. In his early years as a lawyer, he practiced criminal law, which, along with his investigative experience and trial work, informs this fictional account of Joth Proctor. Mr. Irving and his wife, Cindy, live in Vienna, Virginia.
I was looking for a writer to breathe new life into the sometimes-stuffy traditional English novel format, and Wilkie Collins is that man. In what is widely considered the first detective novel, Collins introduces many of the tropes of the classic whodunit, including the English country house setting, the gentleman detective, the skilled professional contrasted with the bungling local investigator, and a generational curse arising from the initial theft.
Underlying this gripping tale is the truth that the moonstone belongs not to one of the principal players who compete for it but to the religious site in India from which it was originally stolen. Justice has an immediate, local, eternal, and global context. The result is a book with memorable characters and enough twists and turns to keep you guessing until the end.
Who, in the name of wonder, had taken the Moonstone out of Miss Rachel's drawer?
A celebrated Indian yellow diamond is first stolen from India, then vanishes from a Yorkshire country house. Who took it? And where is it now? A dramatist as well as a novelist, Wilkie Collins gives to each of his narratorsa household servant, a detective, a lawyer, a cloth-eared Evangelical, a dying medical manvibrant identities as they separately tell the part of the story that concerns themselves.
One of the great triumphs of nineteenth-century sensation fiction, The Moonstone tells of a mystery that for page after…
I have loved the world of Sherlock Holmes and the Victorian era ever since I first read A Study in Scarlet at age nine. Despite life getting in the way, I never lost my love for the character and the period. I continue to read both to this day. The five books I mention below are five that have stayed with me over the years. I hope you enjoy the books as much as I do.
This was the book that started my fascination with the Victorian era. From the first time the character of Sherlock Holmes was introduced, I was hooked. I first read it when I was nine. I remember sitting down with it and practically devouring it. I did not put it down until I had finished. I was enchanted by Sherlock Holmes and his mind. I still am.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet is the literary debut of the world's most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, introduced by Iain Sinclair with notes by Ed Glinert in Penguin Classics.
Convalescing in London after a disastrous experience of war in Afghanistan, Dr John Watson finds himself sharing rooms with his enigmatic new acquaintance, Sherlock Holmes. But their quiet bachelor life at 221B Baker Street is soon interrupted by the grisly discovery of a dead man in a grimy 'ill-omened' house in south-east London, his face contorted by an expression of horror and hatred such as Watson has…
History has always been a captivating adventure for me, a stage to rekindle the echoes of times long past. My journey began amid musty archives in Hobart, where I stumbled upon a handwritten prison record about my wife's feisty ancestor, transported in the 1830s. There and then, I resolved to breathe life into the fading embers of her existence, and after extensive research, I wrote my first novel, a tapestry of historical events intertwined with the resurrection of long-forgotten souls. Since then, I've applied lessons from masters like Conan Doyle to create exciting, atmospheric stories that turn us all into time travelers on an exhilarating voyage.
This unique book chronicles the misadventures of the school bully from Tom Brown’s Schooldays who has matured into an unapologetic coward marching across the pages of 19th-century British imperialism.
Its historical depth weaves in actual events and characters of the time and blends humour, adventure, satire, and great character development. Flashman, with his roguish charm, makes for an unforgettable character who, despite or perhaps because of his cowardice, always seems to find a way to come out on top.
Fraser writes with an easy pace, and his meticulous research into history adds another dimension. It is a technique that I use unashamedly in my own books, although Fraser’s tongue-in-cheek commentary on the social mores of the age set this author apart from everyone else.
Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all.
Many have marvelled at General Napier's daring 1868 expedition through the treacherous peaks and bottomless chasms of Abyssinia to rescue a small group of British citizens held captive by the mad tyrant Emperor Theodore. But the vital role of Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., in the success…
I’ve now written four books, of which three are Australian history. My first two books were World War 2 military history. My publishers persist in calling each book a best-seller, and who am I to disagree? I live in France and my third book A Good Place To Hide is about a French community that rescued Jews from the Nazis. My fourth book Ten Rogues took me back to Australian history, telling the story of a bunch of ten convicts who in 1834 nicked a brig and sailed it from Tasmania to Chile without a map or a compass.
Tom is an old mate, and a magician with words. He is also a prodigious researcher. Books: yes. The bibliography in The Commonwealth of Thieves runs to seven tight-packed pages, divided between primary sources (three pages) and secondary sources. The bibliography is underpinned by no fewer than 27 pages of notes. The Australian history I was taught at school was hogwash. Tom has set it straight in this brilliantly researched and off-the-wall history of our early days.
In this spirited history of the remarkable first four years of the convict settlement of Australia, Thomas Keneally offers us a human view of a fascinating piece of history. Combining the authority of a renowned historian with a brilliant narrative flair, Keneally gives us an inside view of this unprecedented experiment from the perspective of the new colony’s governor, Arthur Phillips. Using personal journals and documents, Keneally re-creates the hellish overseas voyage and the challenges Phillips faced upon arrival: unruly convicts, disgruntled officers, bewildered and hostile natives, food shortages, and disease. He also offers captivating portrayals of Aborigines and of…
I’ve loved fairytales, myths, and history since childhood. After graduating with honors in Russian and Chinese history, I’ve been researching and writing for decades. My work ranges from educational materials to award-winning nonfiction books for children on the theme of heroism. I’ve traveled the world, partly for research, but mostly out of a passion for discovery. My last nonfiction work was a book about women writers. I also penned a historical trilogy that started out as one book, plotted out when I was eighteen. It grew. And, returning full circle to my first loves, my most recent book for children is a traditional Buddhist tale from ancient India.
This book was my introduction to Australian literature. I loved its eloquent evocation of a world totally new and mysterious to its characters. Although I was vaguely familiar with Australia’s penal colony past and with the destruction wrought on Aboriginal lives and culture, this book brought it home. I deeply appreciated the way it took me into the minds of men and women, most of them well-meaning but ignorant, and showed me how they missed the point of where they were and how to thrive there. The tragedy of that ignorance resonates with me, since I see it all around the world.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2006 COMMONWEALTH WRITERS' PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE IMPAC DUBLIN PRIZE
London, 1806. William Thornhill, happily wedded to his childhood sweetheart Sal, is a waterman on the River Thames. Life is tough but bearable until William makes a mistake, a bad mistake for which he and his family are made to pay dearly.
His sentence: to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. Soon Thornhill, a man no better or worse than most, has to make the most difficult decision of his life.
I am a Dutch astronomer and historian of maritime navigation who somehow landed a coveted academic job in Sydney, Australia. I spend much of my free time on weekends at the Australian National Maritime Museum as a guide on our vessels, as a speaker, as a consultant on matters related to the historical determination of longitude at sea, and as a deckhand on our historic tall ships. I’ve written 2 history of science books, including a biography of William Dawes, the astronomer on the ‘First Fleet’ from England to Australia (1787–1788). In addition to this, I enjoy writing about the history of medicine and diseases during the Age of Sail.
This is a heavy tome, but it is really compelling reading for a history buff like me. Hughes tells the story of the British colonisation of the continent we now know as Australia by focusing on details, details, details—and people! This is not a dry academic book taking the reader through a timeline. Instead, I like its focus on the people at the basis of this brutal period in the history of Australia, associated with huge human costs—both for the convicts forcibly transported half a world away and for the Indigenous population.
Hughes is a storyteller, and he does engage in some speculation, but overall, his facts hold up, and so this book is a must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in how modern Australia developed over the past 250 years.
In 1787, the twenty-eighth year of the reign of King George III, the British Government sent a fleet to colonise Australia.
Documenting the brutal transportation of men, women and children out of Georgian Britain into a horrific penal system which was to be the precursor to the Gulag and was the origin of Australia, The Fatal Shore is the definitive, masterfully written narrative that has given its true history to Australia.
'A unique phantasmagoria of crime and punishment, which combines the shadowy terrors of Goya with the tumescent life of Dickens' Times
I’m Victoria Twead, the New York Times bestselling author of Chickens, Mules and Two Old Fools and the Old Fools series. However, after living in a remote mountain village in Spain for eleven years, and owning probably the most dangerous cockerel in Europe, we migrated to Australia to watch our new granddaughters thrive amongst kangaroos and koalas. We love Australia, it is our home now. Another joyous life-chapter has begun.
David Hill’s research is incredible and results in a mind-blowing account of how not only convicts, but their guards and sailors, would colonise Australia, enduring the most brutal hardships. The transportation is described, and it is a miracle that anyone ever reached the destination in the leaky, unseaworthy ships. The enterprise was poorly-planned and underfunded, resulting in appalling suffering.
With such a shocking start, it is a wonder that Australia ever developed into the wonderful, successful country that it is now.
Set against the backdrop of Georgian England with its peculiar mix of elegance, prosperity, progress, and squalor, the story of the First Fleet is one of courage, shortsightedness, tragedy, but above all, extraordinary resilience. Separated from loved ones and traveling in cramped conditions for the months-long journey to Botany Bay, the first European Australians suffered the most unbearable hardship upon arrival on Australian land, where a near famine dictated that rations be cut to the bone. Questions such as Why was the settlement of New South Wales proposed in the first place? and Who were the main players in a…
I am a lifelong reader of science fiction and fantasy from all eras, coming from a family that was obsessed with both science and speculative fiction. I am the co-creator of Forbidden Futures magazine, the world’s only full color, fully illustrated genre fiction periodical, and I have been writing and publishing science fiction and horror comics, art, and stories for over four decades. I have contributed to the worlds of Star Wars, Aliens VS Predator, Dungeons and Dragons, DC and MARVEL comics, and The Wheel Of Time. I am an instructor teaching fantasy illustration, comics, and graphic novel writing at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
In this book the people and families of a human penal colony on a water-covered alien world are driven from their homes and into open waters after offending the indigenous alien species.
Out in the planet-wide ocean on a flotilla of ships, they encounter bizarre creatures and odd experiences. As the community falls apart, individuals come together, but ultimately, they will find that the planet itself is guiding them towards total unity.
This book will make you consider the bond between all living creatures, the need for forgiveness and progress forward, and succumbing to what is inevitable.
"This is hard sci-fi done right." -Publishers Weekly (starred review). "One of the enduring classics of science fiction." -George R.R. Martin
Deep in the future, natives of the planet Hydros, an ocean planet whose inhabitants live on artificial floating islands, force the entire human population of the island of Sorve into exile, leaving the outcasts to ponder their fate, their past, and the true purpose of humanity.
After a human offense against the natives of Hydros, the human population of the island of Sorve are ordered to leave. Forbidden on all other islands, in a flotilla of ships they seek…
I was living in Xinjiang on 9/11 and got to witness the swiftness with which the state imposed strict regulations that harmed the Uyghur community. For me, this was an indelible lesson in the abuses of power and authority on people who just wanted to work, raise families, and enjoy their lives. Since then I’ve tried to raise awareness, first in my memoir, The Tree That Bleeds, then in my journalism. I hope my work helps people think about how to respond as both politically engaged citizens and consumersto one of the worst human rights violations of the 21st century.
Byler’s concise book is a vital read because it foregrounds the experiences of people detained in the camps, stories that overlap and cohere into a raw portrait of systematic brutality and dehumanising routines. Into these are woven an account of the digital surveillance technologies that underpin the network of detention, many of which are not unique to China, the difference between its use of them and many Western countries’ being only a matter of scale. The book also offers an important section on the increasing role of forced labour in Xinjiang, emphasising the need for greater scrutiny and accountability of supply chains that potentially rely on goods and labour from the region.
How China used a network of surveillance to intern over a million people and produce a system of control previously unknown in human history
Novel forms of state violence and colonization have been unfolding for years in China's vast northwestern region, where more than a million and a half Uyghurs and others have vanished into internment camps and associated factories. Based on hours of interviews with camp survivors and workers, thousands of government documents, and over a decade of research, Darren Byler, one of the leading experts on Uyghur society and Chinese surveillance systems, uncovers how a vast network of…
