Fabrizio lived in desperate poverty. Sereno was born to privileged wealth. Both friends longed for a better life. A life they thought they found as Franciscan friars. The year is 1318. Fabrizio now lives in the Friary of San Stigliano in the hills of Lombardy. The wounds of his childhood are slowly healing in this place of peace and security. Sereno scorns the friary life. Instead, he roams the Italian countryside with a band of homeless Spiritual Franciscans who speak out against all those in the Order who do not live according to the absolute poverty of Saint Francis. When papal representatives command the band of Spirituals to appear before the Inquisition at the Friary of San Stigliano, the two friends meet again--on opposite sides. As the line between friend and enemy becomes obscured, Fabrizio learns the truth about Christian brotherhood in an autumn that changes his life forever. This Reader's Guide Edition also contains Discussion Questions, a Historical Time Line, and a Behind the Scenes section with epilogue.

This panoramic exploration of French life between the wars reads like a prequel to Irène Némirovsky’s international bestseller Suite Française. At the end of the First World War, Bernard Jacquelain returns from the trenches a changed man. Broken by the unspeakable horrors he has witnessed, he becomes addicted to the lure of wealth and success. He wallows in the corruption and excess of post-war Paris, but when his lover abandons him, Bernard turns to a childhood friend for comfort. For ten years, he lives the good bourgeois life, but when the drums of war begin to sound again, everything around which he has rebuilt himself starts to crumble, and the future—of his marriage and of his country—suddenly becomes terribly uncertain. Written after Némirovsky fled Paris in 1940, just two years before her death, and first published in France in 1957, The Fires of Autumn is a coruscating, tragic novel of war and its aftermath, and of the ugly color it can turn a man's soul.

A rogue agent crisscrosses the globe to investigate the assassination of JFK in this acclaimed spy novel by the acclaimed author of The Miernik Dossier. When President Kennedy is shot in Dallas, the nation is shocked and mystified. But American spy Paul Christopher has a different perspective. He believes he knows who arranged the assassination and why. But if his theory is correct, it would destroy the dead president’s image and endanger vital foreign policy. Christopher is therefore ordered to end his investigation. Determined to uncover the truth, Christopher resigns from the Agency and embarks on a quest that takes him from Paris to Rome, Zurich, the Congo, and Saigon. Threatened by Kennedy’s assassins and by his own government, Christopher follows the scent of his suspicion into the dark heart of a geopolitical conspiracy. The Tears of Autumn is an incisive study of power and a brilliant commentary on the force of illusion, the grip of superstition, and the overwhelming strength of blood and family in the affairs of a nation.

The dark will bring your worst nightmares to light in this gripping and eerie survival story! On Marin’s island, sunrise doesn’t come every twenty-four hours—it comes every twenty-eight years. Now the sun is just a sliver of light on the horizon. The weather is turning cold and the shadows are growing long. Because sunset triggers the tide to roll out hundreds of miles, the islanders are frantically preparing to sail south, where they will wait out the long Night. Marin and her twin brother, Kana, help their anxious parents ready the house for departure. Locks must be taken off doors. Furniture must be arranged. Tables must be set. The rituals are puzzling—bizarre, even—but none of the adults in town will discuss why it has to be done this way. Just as the ships are about to sail, a teenage boy goes missing—the twins’ friend Line. Marin and Kana are the only ones who know the truth about where Line’s gone, and the only way to rescue him is by doing it themselves. But Night is falling. Their island is changing. And it may already be too late.