Paola Merla Livres

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. All eighteen books are being re-issued in hardback by HarperCollins with stunning new jackets to coincide with a new film based on the adventures and to introduce these modern classics to a new generation. It is still the War of 1812. Patrick O'Brian takes his hero Jack Aubrey and his tetchy, sardonic friend Stephen Maturin on a voyage as fascinating as anything he has ever written. They set course across the South Atlantic to intercept a powerful American frigate outward bound to play havoc with the British whaling trade. If they do not come up with her before she rounds the Horn, they must follow her into the Great South Sea and as far across the Pacific as she may lead them. It is a commission after Jack's own heart. Maturin has fish of his own to fry in the world of secret intelligence. Aubrey has to cope with a succession of disasters - men overboard, castaways, encounters with savages, storms, typhoons, groundings, shipwrecks, to say nothing of murder and criminal insanity. That the enemy is in fact faithfully dealt with, no one who has the honour of Captain Aubrey's acquaintance can take leave to doubt.

The first book in the Treasures of the Nile series Anippe has grown up in the shadows of Egypt’s good god Pharaoh, aware that Anubis, god of the afterlife, may take her--or her siblings--at any moment. She watched him snatch her mother and infant brother during childbirth, a moment which awakens in her a terrible dread of ever bearing a child. When she learns that she is to be become the bride of Sebak, a kind but quick-tempered Captain of Pharaoh Tut’s army, Anippe launches a series of deceptions with the help of the Hebrew midwives—women ordered by Tut to drown the sons of their own people in the Nile—in order to provide Sebak the heir he deserves and yet protect herself from the underworld gods. When she finds a baby floating in a basket on the great river, Anippe believes Egypt’s gods have answered her pleas, entrenching her more deeply in deception and placing her and her son Mehy, whom handmaiden Miriam calls Moses, in mortal danger. As bloodshed and savage politics shift the balance of power in Egypt, the gods reveal their fickle natures and Anippe wonders if her son, a boy of Hebrew blood, could one day become king. Or does the god of her Hebrew servants, the one they call El Shaddai, have a different plan for them all?

La 4ème de couverture indique : 1806. Dans une Angleterre usée par les guerres napoléoniennes, un magicien à l'ancienne mode, Mr Norrell, offre ses services afin d'empêcher l'avancée de la flotte française. En quelques jours, les Anglais ont repris l'avantage. Norrell devient la coqueluche du pays. C'est alors qu'il fait la connaissance d'un Jeune et brillant magicien, Jonathan Strange. Ensemble, les deux hommes vont éblouir l'Angleterre par leurs prouesses. Jusqu'à ce que l'audacieux Strange, attiré par les aspects les plus sombres de la magie, provoque la colère de Mr Norrell...

The first in Robert Wilson's Seville series, featuring the tortured detective Javier Falcon. The man is bound, gagged and dead in front of his television. The terrible self-inflicted wounds tell of his violent struggle to avoid some unseen horror. On the screen? In his head? What could make a man do that to himself? It's Easter week in Seville, a time of passion and processions. But detective Javier Falcon is not celebrating. Appalled by the victim's staring eyes he is inexorably drawn into this disturbing, mystifying case. And when the investigation into the dead man's life sends Javier trawling though his own past and into the shocking journals of his late father, a famous artist, his unreliable memory begins to churn. Then there are more killings and Falcon finds himself pushed to the edge of a terrifying truth!

Graham Greene's The Third Man meets Paul Auster as the Cold War heats up amidst the ruins of occupied Berlin.

Nome: Jack Reacher, ex agente della polizia militare, un vero duro, onesto, coraggioso, praticamente una leggenda vivente. Luogo: Margrave, una tranquilla cittadina della Georgia rurale, dove non succede niente, dove è difficile immaginare che qualcosa possa succedere. Ora, quasi per caso, sull'onda di un vago ricordo, Jack arriva a Margrave, proprio nel momento in cui viene scoperto un efferato delitto. Mezz'ora dopo viene arrestato per omicidio. Ma Jack non ha ucciso nessuno, perlomeno non a Margrave...

1786. Il comandante di vascello William Rennie e il suo secondo James Hayter sono a terra, desiderosi di tornare a navigare dopo una preoccupante pausa nella loro carriera nella marina militare, quando ricevono una missione particolarmente importante: la messa a punto della nave di Sua Maestà Expedient, una fregata da trentasei cannoni. Dopo un varo difficile e l'ancor più complessa organizzazione di un equipaggio non proprio di prim'ordine, superano il mitico capo Horn e veleggiano nel Pacifico, apparentemente incaricati di svolgere una missione scientifica. Ma gli ordini segreti, rivelati solo in mare aperto, sono differenti...

Assunto il comando di una piccola fregata, la Surprise, Jack Aubrey, in compagnia dell'inseparabile Stephen Maturin (erudito medico di bordo nonché agente segreto), si trova ad affrontare una delle traversate più difficili della sua carriera. Per far giungere in Indonesia un inviato di Sua Maestà britannica, infatti, il suo vascello dovrà scendere fino alle basse latitudini, compiere il periplo dell'Africa e affrontare poi l'oceano Indiano. Ma giunti infine, dopo furiose tempeste e interminabili bonacce, a Calcutta, Aubrey e Maturin si accorgeranno anche che la loro avventura è appena incominciata, perché l'India, fascinosa e inebriante, ha pronte per loro mille sorprese, non esclusi duelli all'ultimo sangue e cocenti delusioni d'amore...