Before there was Black Company, there was the Dread Empire, an omnibus collection the first three Dread Empire novels: A Shadow of All Night's Falling, October's Baby and All Darkness Met. For the first time in eBook format, the A Cruel Wind collection is available as individual books.

The international bestselling author of THE LEGACY and THE UNSEEN returns with a searing novel of secrets and feuds Italy, 1921. When Leandro Cardetta returns to Puglia from America a rich man, he is determined to make his mark. But how did he get so wealthy? Boyd, a quiet English architect, is hired to build Leandro's dreams. But why is he so afraid of Leandro, and what really happened between them years before? When Boyd's wife, Clare, is summoned to Puglia, she is instantly desperate to leave, but soon finds a compelling reason to stay. And Ettore, starving, poor and grieving for his lost fiancée, is too proud to ask his Uncle Leandro for help. Until events conspire to force his hand. Tensions are high as poverty leads veterans of the Great War to the brink of rebellion. And under the burning sky, a reckless love and a violent enmity will bring brutal truths to light . . . Your favourite authors love Katherine Webb's sweeping historical dramas: 'An enormously talented writer' Santa Montefiore 'Webb have a true gift for uncovering the mysteries of the human heart and exploring the truth of love' Kate Williams 'Katherine Webb's writing is beautiful' Elizabeth Fremantle 'A truly gifted writer of historical fiction' Lucinda Riley 'Katherine's writing is rich, vivid and evocative' Iona Grey

"Anyone who can get through a newspaper," Jeanne Murray Walker says, "will find this book a piece of cake." Indeed, the poems in this book are strong but unpretentious pieces rich in meaning and feeling. / The poems in New Tracks, Night Falling acknowledge that we are people driven and divided by fear. They talk about racism, war, loss, greed, alienation, our disregard of the earth, and our disregard of each other. Sometimes we feel like night is falling in the bright light of day. Yet we get glimpses of hope, of what could be: / In this dark time I want to / make light bigger, / to toss it in the air like a pizza chef, / to stick my fists in, stretching it / till I can get both arms into radiance above the elbow / and spin it above us. / Hope continually threads its way through these poems. We hear its voice as Walker writes about choices both those we make and those beyond our making. / And we feel hope rising like bread when Walker focuses on the gifts of potential, resolution, mercy, joy the new tracks that we can make in fresh snow, on old paths, along the roads more or less traveled. These are stays against the falling night. / With a keen eye for both physical and emotional detail, Walker explores a journey that all of us are on, and she does so in a way that speaks to our deep fears and deeper joys, that engages and inspires. Tempering somber notes with more joyful ones, she reminds us of the good things, great and small, that are still possible in this world.

This collection of poetry is about time and consciousness. In one way, time is merely a human construct that does not exist except as we have imagined it, so that we can function in our daily lives. In another way, time is omnipresent, a super-reality, existing and permeating everything. It weaves in-between the vastness of space and in-between the vast spaces of our minds and it makes us a whole: the universe and each of us as individuals. Time encompasses everything, all of the past, present and future. Time, then, is truly timeless. This other kind of time, for me, has become synonymous with consciousness, the consciousness of this universe, which holds in it all that has been, is and will be. It is the great author, the teller of all stories and all histories simultaneously.These poems are a composite of a small amount of consciousness: mine. It is me falling through my time here on earth. I hope they will resonate with you and your own exquisitely unique and universal consciousness. I have organized these poems into three sections, as different clusters of poems seemed to better represent different aspects of time. They are: Relative Time, Story Time and Cosmic Time. Relative Time is primarily autobiographical; my life as I remember it; as accurate as we are able to be. The poems in Story Time are either pure fiction or intentionally embellished autobiography. Cosmic Time holds my philosophical and spiritual beliefs. I have included some traditional forms of poetry, along with predominately contemporary free verse. You will find within these pages, free verse, rhyme, narrative poetry, sonnets and haiku.

One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year New York Times bestselling author Danielle Trussoni's unforgettable memoir of her wild and haunted father, a man whose war never really ended. From her charismatic father, Danielle Trussoni learned how to rock and roll, outrun the police, and never shy away from a fight. Spending hour upon hour trailing him around the bars and honky-tonks of La Crosse, Wisconsin, young Danielle grew up fascinated by stories of her dad's adventures as a tunnel rat in Vietnam, where he'd risked his life crawling head first into narrow passageways to search for American POWs. A vivid and poignant portrait of a daughter's relationship with her father, this funny, heartbreaking, and beautifully written memoir, Falling Through the Earth, "makes plain that the horror of war doesn't end in the trenches" (Vanity Fair).

It is 1987 and thirty-three-year-old Lina has just left her husband and two teenage sons and returned to her mothers house, emotionally spent from the pain of harboring the secret of domestic violence for too long. As her journey eventually leads her to the mountains and into the arms of new lovers, Lina has no idea of what lies ahead. She only hopes it is peace. After enjoying sexual freedom for a while, she remarries a kind and gentle man and lives in the Australian Alps. But Lina begins to feel dissatisfied with monogamy, leaving her with unfulfilled dreams of freedom and travel. After she makes a shocking discovery of past lives as a sacred prostitute and realizes how it has affected her modern, sexual adventures, Lina travels with nothing but a backpack to the Middle East to search for answers. Vulnerable and terrified, she plummets through time, reliving death and entombment. When she meets old lovers, her fear is explained. But can she survive illness and exposure within a strange but beautiful culture? Falling through Time reveals one womans fascinating search for God, meaning, and redemption after she travels to the Middle East to uncover secrets from her soul.

Widely hailed as one of the finest humorist of the twentieth century, James Thurber looks back at his own life growing up in Columbus, Ohio, with the same humor and sharp wit that defined his famous sketches and writings. In My Life and Hard times, first published in 1933, he recounts the delightful chaos and frustrations of family, boyhood, youth odd dogs, recalcitrant machinery, and the foibles of human nature.