Ralph Cosham

When Chief Inspector Gamache arrives in picturesque Three Pines, he steps into a village in chaos. A man has been found bludgeoned to death, and there is no sign of a weapon, a motive or even the dead man's name. As Gamache and his colleagues start to dig under the skin of this peaceful haven for clues, they uncover a trail of stolen treasure, mysterious codes and a shameful history that begins to shed light on the victims identity - and points...

Happily retired in the village of Three Pines, Armand Gamache, former Chief Inspector of Homicide, has found a peace he'd only imagined possible. On warm summer mornings he sits on a bench holding a small book, The Balm in Gilead, in his large hands. "There is a balm in Gilead," his neighbor Clara Morrow reads from the dust jacket, "to make the wounded whole." While Gamache doesn't talk about his wounds and his balm, Clara tells him about hers. Peter,...

An obsessive historian's quest for the remains of the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, ends in murder. Could a secret buried with Champlain for nearly 400 years be so dreadful that someone would kill to protect it? Although he is supposed to be on leave, Chief Inspector Gamache cannot walk away from a crime that threatens to ignite long-smoldering tensions between the English and the French. Meanwhile, he is receiving disquieting letters from...

A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis’s honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss. Written after his wife’s tragic death as a way of surviving the 'mad midnight moments,' A Grief Observed is an unflinchingly truthful account of how loss can lead even a stalwart believer to lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings.

"No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world-famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is...

The second book of Lewis's sci-fi trilogy, this is a sharp, sophisticated fantasy that deals with an old problem, temptation, in a new world, Perelandra. "Mr Lewis has a genius for making his fantasies livable".-The New York Times. Written during the dark hours immediately before and during the Second World War, C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, of which Perelandra is the second volume, stands alongside such works as Albert Camus's The Plague and George...

Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece of the duality of good and evil in man's nature sprang from the darkest recesses of his own unconscious-during a nightmare from which his wife awakened him, alerted by his screams. More than a hundred years later, this tale of the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll and the drug that unleashes his evil, inner persona-the loathsome, twisted Mr. Hyde-has lost none of its ability to shock. Its realistic police-style narrative...

Presents a history of World War II, traces the major developments from Hitler's refusal to retreat from the Soviet Union to Stalin's ruthlessness in his fight to wear down the German army, and shows the impact of war on the people.

When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master, Mr Jones, and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless elite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to take control. Soon the other animals discover that they are not all as equal as they thought, and find themselves hopelessly ensnared as one form of tyranny is replaced...

"Hardy's penultimate work, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is arguably the greatest tragedy of all Victorian literature. It tells the story of Tess, an impoverished woman whose past relations and miscarriage cause her to be rejected by her husband on their wedding night. Touching upon the themes of class, religion, gender, and sexuality, the novel was highly controversial for its time and is held in high esteem by literary scholars to this day."--Publisher...