Kirjahaku

Based on a true story, 'RANSOMED' recounts how Henri de Mortelast, the head of a vast international conglomerate, is kidnapped while holidaying in the South of France and a ranspm demanded for his release. While arrangements for payment are made, the situation is complicated by a series of unexpected events involving his family, friends and business associates. Then a forest fire devastates the property where Henri is being held and his captors have to flee, leaving him to the mercy of the flames. Will he survive? But who was behind his kidnapping and who, apart from his captors, was to benefit from it? A business associate? His brother Maurice? His current girl friend who has just ditched him? The action takes us from a luxury pad in New York's Sutton Place, to casinos and villas on the Franch Riviera, banks and luxury hotels in Geneva and the dark cellar where Henri is held captive.

Moving between Tuscany, London, Rome and New York, The Tuscan Trilogy recounts the joys and tragedies of a woman whom fate both cuddles and flays, of her rise from childhood poverty in Southern Italy to glittering social and and financial success in London, of the men who love her, of her sons, and of the castle in the Chianti hills where the story begins and ends.

La premi re grande bibliot que et centre culturel du monde taient cr s par le pharaon Ptol m e I Soter il y a deux mille trios cents ans. Les Rivages de la Connaissance racontent l'histoire de l'ancienne Biblioth que et du Mouseion d'Alexandrie, et l'influence qu'ils eurent sur la pens e occidentale, autant si ce n'est plus que lAcad mie de Platon et le Lyc e d'Aristote Athenes. Les portraits des homm es et des femmes responsables de la renom e de la Biblioth que y sont esquiss s: Euclide et Archim de. Des astronomes tels qu'Aristarque et Claude Ptol m e, Eratosth ne le math maticien et g ographe grec, le philosophe Philo, sans oublier les premiers docteurs chr tiens Cl ment et Orig ne mais aussi les artisans des calamit s et de la destruction finale. Les Rivages de la Connaissance d crit aussi la nouvelle Biblioth que Alexandrine et comment un r ve ambitieux a t transform en une brillante r alit , digne succeesseur de l'ancienne Biblioth que durant le prochain mill naire.

This three generation saga begins in June 1944 when a young British officer, Robert Lonsdale, heir to banker sir George Lonsadale, is wounded as Allied forces are chasing a retreating enemy across Tuscany, near the Castello of his aunt, English born Contessa Lydia San Germano, and helped to safety by attractive 18 year old Rosa, an orphaned peasant girl from Southern Italy who works for her. Robert and she fall in love and plan to marry but, due to the war and a series of events and mishaps, that will only take place 30 years later when this first part of the saga ends. The action moves between Tuscany, London, Warwickshire, New York and Rome, and tells of the joys and tragedies of a woman whom fate both cuddles and flays, of the men who love her, of her sons, of the castello in the Chianti hills where everything started, and which finally becomes hers.

In a story spanning eighty years of a family that changed world history, flashbacks, fast-forwards and multiple plots intersect each other while innocent romance, steamy sex, noble sentiments, treachery and a whodunit- style mystery keeps the reader turning the pages. Set against a changing backdrop of pre-war Egypt, of Paris, London and New York in the sixties and seventies, terrorism in the Middle East and famine in Ethiopia, all the aspects of human strengths and frailties are brought to life in this three generation saga where a dramatic climax re-dimensions a man's destiny.