John Buchan’s own favourite among his novels, in which he dealt with the hypocrisy which can lie close to the surface of apparently god-fearing respectability. The story is set in the Scottish Borders during the civil war and the main character is the new young minister in a small village. The minister wrestles with his own christian faith as opposed to the severe presbyterianism of the Kirk and also has to deal with a pagan coven, a wounded soldier from Montrose’s defeated...
„Sick Heart River” is the fifth book in the Edward Leithen series. This is Buchan’s last novel, about a man who is dying, and it must reflect Buchan’s own efforts to come to terms with his looming demise."Sick Heart River” finds Leithen now in his late fifties facing a terminal diagnosis of turberculosis. Leithen has enjoyed a dazzling career as eminent barrister, member of Parliament, Cabinet minister, and attorney-general but with only months left to live, he leaves it al...
„Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” is a time-tested adage that suits Peter Pentecost, a young monk and legitimate claimant to England’s Throne. But he is not alone as others are vying for power too. Soon a plot is hatched against the present King Henry VIII and Peter is sucked into the intrigue... Buchan’s description of the ruthless king is compelling. His knowledge of the time of Henry’s reign and his love of the Oxfordshire countryside are apparent. This histori...
In the mid-sixteenth century, Jean de Rohaine, a middle-aged French nobleman, journeys to Scotland in search of adventure and a new beginning. In Scotland he meets up with his old friend, Quentin Kennedy, who informs him of a great battle to be waged. Having witnessed Royalist troops butchering suspected Covenanters, he follows the example of ‘godly’ refugees and escapes to the safety of the hills around Eskdalemuir and the head of Ettrick Water. Whilst staying at the Manse...
Although this book was listed in a collection of Richard Hannay stories, Hannay makes only a brief appearance at the beginning. Begins in the pleasant atmosphere of a country house in the Scottish borders, where Richard Hannay is the guest of his old friend, Sandy Arbuthnot. The action is set in Olifa, a fictional country on the west coast of South America. When Sandy Arbuthnot’s friend John Blenkiron discover that a charismatic industrial tycoon is plotting to rule the wor...
Vernon Milbourne, orphaned since childhood and haunted by a recurring dream, is friends with the protective lawyer and MP Sir Edward Leithen. An Aegean cruise takes them to the mysterious island of Plakos, where Vernon is fascinated by the island’s myths. Local superstitions turn to menace as Vernon’s encounter with a beautiful woman results in obsession and adventure. „The Dancing Floor” centres on a young English woman, Kore Arabin, who inherits a house on a remote Greek ...
Set during the Napoleonic Wars, „The Free Fishers” is classic Buchan and his last historical novel. It’s a fast-paced tale of treason, espionage and romance. Anthony Lammas, a professor at the St. Andrews University, finds himself involved in a web of intrigue that threatens the whole country. A conspiracy to betray England’s defences to Napoleonic agents is discovered by Lammas, a young professor who sets out to save his former students appearing to be in grave danger. You...
In John Buchan’s thrill-a-minute novel „Salute to Adventurers”, hero Andrew Garvald makes his way from the dreary moors of his native land to the deceptively bucolic landscape of early colonial America. A novel set during the beginning of the Jamestown Colony, „Salute To Adventurers” is an enthralling saga about one man’s struggle to survive and even find love in a land beset by trade controls with England enforced by pirates, religious strife manifested through a fanatic w...
Set in the closing years of the nineteenth century, „The Half-Hearted” tells the story of Lewis Haystoun, a dilettante and coward. Part I of the novel is a story of manners and romance in upper class Scotland. Part II is an adventure story on the North West frontier of India where Lewis saves the British Empire. The novel follows the life of Lewis Haystoun, a young Scottish laird, who finds himself unable to commit wholeheartedly to any course of action. His failure to seiz...
Regarded as one of the finest historical novels ever written, Jacobites, spies and thrilling intrigue are brought together by the master of suspense. As Bonnie Prince Charlie marches his army into England, his confidant Alastair Maclean is despatched on a secret mission. He is befriended by two extraordinary men – Dr. Samuel Johnson, an aspiring man of letters, and the shadowy figure known only as „Midwinter.” As he travels to rally the west of England to the Prince’s cause...
Written in 1925, the novel opens with three gentleman friends – lawyer Sir Edward Leithen, banker John Palliser-Yeates, and Cabinet member Charles Lord Lamancha – discovering that they all suffer a common and debilitating malady, a loss of zest for life, all desperate to relieve the ennui that has engulfed them. The solution can only be something devilish, with a dash of daring. Enlisting the aid of another friend, Scottish landowner Sir Archibald Roylance, the trio contriv...
A true adventure story involving the unlikely hero Dickson McCunn, retired successful businessman and former greengrocer who sets out on a walking holiday in the Scottish Borders. There he meets a young English poet, and both soon become embroiled in the plot of an international gang to capture a Russian princess. With the help of the Gorbals Die-hards, an indomitable gang of urchins from Glasgow, they frustrate and finally defeat the gang. And in the process Dickson happen...
„John Burnet of Barns” was Buchan’s first fully realised, full-length work of fiction. The author’s third novel is story of adventure, treachery and revenge, set in the Scottish Borders in the 17th century, telling of a young nobleman who sets out to gain an education abroad, only to find himself betrayed in his absence by his cousin. Not just a romance, but adventures of a Scottish gentleman around the Netherlands and the wildest highlands of Scotland to find himself, rega...
„Castle Gay” is the second of Buchan’s three Dickson McCunn books and is set in south west Scotland in the Dumfries and Galloway region in the 1920s. The plot revolves around the self-discovery of a media mogul named Craw, who is firstly the subject of mistaken identity and then the target of Balkan extremists who wish to use his newspapers to influence their political cause. Mr. Craw’s journey is overseen by Jaikie Galt, one of the young scamps in „Huntingtower”, who is no...
„Ania z Wyspy” („Anne of the Island”) to trzecia część z serii o Ani z Zielonego Wzgórza. W tym tomie Ania Shirley zaczyna naukę w Redmond College w Kingsport. Ciężko pracuje, by zdobyć upragniony tytuł magistra. W czasie wolnym od nauki spotyka się z nową przyjaciółką Filipą Gordon, ma też nowego adoratora, niejakiego Roya Gardnera. Nie zaniedbuje też starych znajomości. Kiedy dowiaduje się o chorobie Gilberta, uświadamia sobie, że go kocha…
John Buchan was a Scottish author and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada. He wrote a series of books that follow the adventures of Richard Hannay, an expatriate Scot who was first introduced in the classic novel The Thirty-Nine Steps. Set in Scotland in 1745, during the Jacobite Rebellion, this dark story of loyalty and betrayal on the road to Culloden Moor recounts the adventures of Francis Birkenshaw. The Jacobite cause means nothing to him until...
In The Pilot (1824), James Fenimore Cooper invented a new literary genre: the sea novel. Bold, vigorous, original, it is a tale of high adventure that vividly captures the majesty and power of the seafaring life. Cooper drew on his direct knowledge of ships and sailors to present a truer picture of life on the sea than had ever before achieved in literature. As a boy of seventeen he had experienced the life of a common seaman, learned the craft of sailing, encountered terri...
Monumentalna powieść Jana Potockiego o szkatułkowej kompozycji. Składa się na nią wiele wątków i historii – jedne wynikają z drugich i wzajemnie się zazębiają, podzielone są przy tym na dni, które wyznaczają rytm opowiadania. Główny bohater, Alfons von Worden, przeżywa niezwykłe przygody, które układają się w fascynującą, spójną i zaskakującą opowieść.
„Krumir” to cykl opowiadań przygodowych, które rozgrywają się w Afryce Północnej na pograniczu algiersko-tunezyjskim. Czytelnicy mogą obserwować współistnienie kultury chrześcijańskiej oraz islamu, a także podziwiać pięknie wykreowane, bajeczne afrykańskie krajobrazy: pustyni, puszczy, rozrzuconych wśród pustkowi ludzkich osad...
The main conflict of the story is dog-nature vs. wolf-nature, or nature vs. man. What happens to White fang, and how he goes through the many troubles that he has to. Growing up in the Yukon territory of Canada during the Klondike Gold Rush, he learned the law of the Wild at an early age: kill, or be killed, eat, or be eaten. Separated from his mother and traded from master to master, White Fang never grasped the concept of love, and violence was all that he knew. Having no...
”The Call of the Wild” is a touching novel about a great friendship between a dog and a human. The novel follows up the life of the dog Buck since he lived in sunny California all the way until the day he was kidnapped and tossed into the chaos of the Klondike Gold Rush and the brutal realities of frontier life. Buck changes hands a number of times before landing in the kindly hands of John Thornton who took care of him with great tenderness while not expecting anything in ...
„The White Company” is the story of Alleyne Edricson’s quest to win the hand of his lady love, the Lady Maud Loring. The place is England and the Continent, the year is 1366 during the reign of the King of the English, Edward III, and his realm is twenty-nine years into The Hundred Years’ War with France. Setting off on his adventures, he finds himself part of the White Company – a group of mercenary archers en route to France. A roistering tale of knight-errantry follows, ...
This was one of several fictional historical works that Doyle wrote during the last five years of the 19th century, as he tried to find something to replace Sherlock Holmes. First published in 1897, this murder mystery relates the story of a young Frenchman, Louis, who, having grown up in England, returns to France at the false invitation of his Uncle Bernac. Louis quickly finds himself in personal danger as well as involved in a conspiracy against Napoleon. We’re soon the ...
Ten tourists from England, Ireland, America and France, six men and four women are on a vacation trip down the Nile in 1895. Without warning they are captured by Islamic terrorists, and the possibility of rescue becomes more remote with each passing day. Their choice is a stark one: either convert to Islam and become slaves for the rest of their lives or die. In this story, the reader is swept out of the placid stream of existence and dashed against the horrible jagged fact...
