Bücher veröffentlicht von Griffin

Newspaper publisher Jamie Swift and millionaire playboy Max Holt pose as husband and wife to track down the story of a lifetime. They become involved with a corrupt minister, a gang of mobsters on the loose, a hound dog named Fleas, and a wise-cracking computer whiz.

A history of Britain told through the story of one very special pub, from "The Beer Drinker's Bill Bryson" (Times Literary Supplement)Welcome to the George Inn near London Bridge; a cosy, wood-paneled, galleried coaching house a few minutes' walk from the Thames. Grab yourself a pint, listen to the chatter of the locals and lean back, resting your head against the wall. And then consider this: who else has rested their head against that wall, over the last six hundred years?Chaucer and his fellow pilgrims almost certainly drank in the George on their way out of London to Canterbury. It's fair to say that Shakespeare popped in from the nearby Globe for a pint, and we know that Dickens certainly did. Mail carriers changed their horses here, before heading to all four corners of Britain-while sailors drank here before visiting all four corners of the world.The pub, as Pete Brown points out, is the 'primordial cell of British life' and in the George he has found the perfect example. All life is here, from murderers, highwaymen, and ladies of the night to gossiping peddlers and hard-working clerks. So sit back with Shakespeare's Pub and watch as buildings rise and fall over the centuries, and 'the beer drinker's Bill Bryson' (UK's Times Literary Supplement) takes us on an entertaining tour through six centuries of history, through the stories of everyone that ever drank in one pub.

How far would you go for Rome?Carthage, 146 BC.This is the story of Fabius Petronius Secundus - Roman legionary and centurion - and his rise to power: from his first battle against the Macedonians, that seals the fate of Alexander the Great's Empire, to total war in North Africa and the Siege of Carthage.Fabius's success brings him admiration and respect, but also attracts greed and jealousy - the closest allies can become the bitterest of enemies. And then there is Julia, of the Caesar family - a dark horse in love with both Fabius and his rival Paullus - who causes a vicious feud. Ultimately for Fabius, it will come down to one question: how much is he prepared to sacrifice for his vision of Rome?Inspired by Total War: Rome II, the bestselling Total War series, Destroy Carthage is the first in an epic series of novels from David Gibbins. Not only the tale of one man's fate, it is also a journey to the core of Roman times, through the world of extraordinary military tactics and political intrigue that Rome's warriors and citizens used to cheat death.

A charming restaurant A book and its mysterious author A little secret A romantic meeting Paris and all its magic . . . Cyrano de Bergerac meets Chocolat and Amélie in this intelligent, charming, and entertaining publishing sensation from Europe.While in the midst of a breakup-induced depression, Aurélie Bredin, a beautiful Parisian restaurateur, discovers an astonishing novel in a quaint bookshop on the Ile Saint-Louis. Inexplicably, her restaurant and Aurélie herself are featured in its pages. After reading the whole book in one night, she realizes it has saved her life-and she wishes more than anything to meet its author. Aurélie's attempts to contact the attractive but shy English author through his French publishers are blocked by the company's gruff chief editor, André, who only with great reluctance forwards Aurélie's enthusiastic letter. But Aurélie refuses to give up. One day, a response from the reclusive author actually lands in her mailbox, but the encounter that eventually takes place is completely different from what she had ever imagined. . . . Filled with books, recipes, and characters that leap off the page, The Ingredients of Love by Nicolas Barreau is a tribute to the City of Light.

An intimate look at the journeys of two men-a gentleman scientist and a visionary artist-as they struggled to capture the world around them, and in the process invented modern photographyDuring the 1830s, in an atmosphere of intense scientific enquiry fostered by the industrial revolution, two quite different men-one in France, one in England-developed their own dramatically different photographic processes in total ignorance of each other's work. These two lone geniuses-Henry Fox Talbot in the seclusion of his English country estate at Lacock Abbey and Louis Daguerre in the heart of post-revolutionary Paris-through diligence, disappointment and sheer hard work overcame extraordinary odds to achieve the one thing man had for centuries been trying to do-to solve the ancient puzzle of how to capture the light and in so doing make nature 'paint its own portrait'. With the creation of their two radically different processes-the Daguerreotype and the Talbotype-these two giants of early photography changed the world and how we see it. Drawing on a wide range of original, contemporary sources and featuring plates in colour, sepia and black and white, many of them rare or previously unseen, Capturing the Light by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport charts an extraordinary tale of genius, rivalry and human resourcefulness in the quest to produce the world's first photograph.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Archer, the Clifton Chronicles continues with Best Kept Secret. 1945, London. The vote in the House of Lords as to who should inherit the Barrington family fortune has ended in a tie. The Lord Chancellor's deciding vote will cast a long shadow on the lives of Harry Clifton and Giles Barrington. Harry returns to America to promote his latest novel, while his beloved Emma goes in search of the little girl who was found abandoned in her father's office on the night he was killed. When the general election is called, Giles Barrington has to defend his seat in the House of Commons and is horrified to discover who the Conservatives select to stand against him. But it is Sebastian Clifton, Harry and Emma's son, who ultimately influences his uncle's fate. In 1957, Sebastian wins a scholarship to Cambridge, and a new generation of the Clifton family marches onto the page. But after Sebastian is expelled from school, he unwittingly becomes caught up in an international art fraud involving a Rodin statue that is worth far more than the sum it raises at auction. Does he become a millionaire? Does he go to Cambridge? Is his life in danger? Best Kept Secret, the third volume in Jeffrey Archer's bestselling series, will answer all these questions but, once again, pose so many more.

Sweet, innocent Coco has always been the good one. But when she catches her boyfriend cheating on her, she decides it's time to break bad.Coco swiftly goes from spending all her time baking and reading to working nights in (and dancing on) a bar, falling in and out of love (and lust), stealing education - and along the way discovers that she is stronger than she ever knew... In a time when her best friends are suddenly plunged into break ups, break-downs, big breaks, and on the verging of quitting New York City altogether, it's up to Coco to keep them together and find herself along the way.Gemma Burgess' The Wild One: A Brooklyn Girls Novel is the inspiring story about the turmoil, uncertainty, and heartache that every twenty something faces and survives - with the help of her friends.

"A tense and compelling drama of the wars without and the wars within-and of the flame of violence that burns through the American psyche." -T.C. Boyle, New York Times bestselling author of The Women"Stunning . . . [Parker is] a brave and daring writer." -Lisa See, New York Times bestselling author of Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy"A great American family novel. . . . Parker is playing in the same league as John Steinbeck." -Stephen Harrigan, author of The Gates of the Alamo and Remember Ben ClaytonPatrick Norris has seen the worst that Afghanistan has to offer-excruciating heat, bitter cold, and death waiting behind every rock as comrades are blown to pieces by bombs and snipers. He returns home exhilarated by his new freedom and eager to realize his dream of a sport fishing business. But he is shocked to learn that the avocado ranch his family has owned for generations in the foothills of San Diego has been destroyed by a massive wildfire and the parents he loves are facing ruin.Ted Norris worships his brother and yearns for his approval. Gentle by nature, but tormented by strange fixations with a dark undercurrent, Ted is drawn into a circle of violent, criminal misfits. His urgent quest to prove himself threatens to put those he loves in peril. Patrick puts his own plans on hold to save the family's home and falls in love with Iris, a beautiful and unusual woman, when disaster strikes. When Ted's plan for redemption goes terribly wrong, he tries to disappear. Desperate to find his brother and salvage what remains of his family, Patrick must make an agonizing choice. Three-time Edgar Award-winner T. Jefferson Parker is known for his many bestselling crime novels, from Laguna Heat to The Famous and the Dead. Full Measure marks a departure; it is a literary novel that explores many subjects, among them the bonds of loyalty between brothers.

In Caroline Bock's Before My Eyes, Claire has spent the last few months taking care of her six-year-old sister, Izzy, as their mother lies in a hospital bed. Claire believes she has everything under control until she meets a guy online who appears to be a kindred spirit. Claire is initially flattered by the attention but when she meets Max, the shy state senator's son, her feelings become complicated. Working alongside Max at a beachfront food stand is Barkley. Lonely and obsessive, Barkley has been hearing a voice in his head. Narrated in turns by Claire, Max, and Barkley, Before My Eyes captures a moment when possibilities should be opening up, but instead everything teeters on the brink of destruction.

Roosevelt's Beast is a reimagining of Teddy and Kermit Roosevelt's ill-fated 1914 Amazon expedition: a new novel from the acclaimed Louis Bayard 1914. Brazil's Rio da Dúvida, the River of Doubt. Plagued by hunger and suffering the lingering effects of malaria, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, his son Kermit, and the other members of the now-ravaged Roosevelt-Rondon scientific expedition are traveling deeper and deeper into the jungle. When Kermit and the Colonel are kidnapped by a mysterious Amazonian tribe, they soon discover the price of their freedom. They must find and kill a ravenous beast - a beast that has never been seen and that leaves no tracks. With his characteristically rich storytelling and a touch of old-fashioned horror, the bestselling and critically acclaimed Louis Bayard turns the well-known story of the Roosevelt-Rondon expedition on its head and anatomizes the demons that can haunt us from birth to death.

Before the Boston Red Sox became the 2013 World Champions, there was the season that broke the curse and started it all...Saul Wisnia's Miracle at Fenway tells that story.The players and coaching staff of the 2004 Boston Red Sox are now and forever, legends. After all, it had been eighty-six years since Boston last won a World Series, a fact anybody even remotely associated with the team as a player, executive, or fan was reminded of on a daily basis. For members of the 2004 Red Sox roster, winning that October was one of the greatest experiences in their lives. For fans, the '04 team will always be remembered as the one that finally silenced the "1918" chants.Hundreds of articles and numerous books were written in the immediate aftermath of the thrilling '04 season, but ten years have passed and Miracle at Fenway has a fresh perspective, including the type of analysis and insight that comes with a decade of reflection. As a Red Sox fan since birth, and from having written about and worked alongside the team for his entire professional life, Saul Wisnia has cultivated relationships with people at every level of the Sox organization. From the players to the fans to the upper echelons of team management, he has their accounts of 2004 as they saw it and as they remember it today, now that the memories have had time to take root and blossom. In the winning tradition of baseball oral histories, Wisnia tells the story of 2004 as experienced by the people who lived it, in an engaging style filled with insight and excitement.

"A suspenseful memoir from the real life American gangster, Frank Lucas "In his own words, Frank Lucas recounts his life as the former heroin dealer and organized crime boss who ran Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. From being taken under the wing of old time gangster Bumpy Johnson, through one of the most successful drug smuggling operations, to being sentenced to seventy years in prison, "Original Gangster "is a chilling look at the rise and fall of a modern legacy. Frank Lucas realized that in order to gain the kind of success he craved he would have to break the monopoly that the Italian mafia held in New York. So Frank cut out middlemen and began smuggling heroin into the United States directly from his source in the Golden Triangle by using coffins. Making a million dollars per day selling "Blue Magic"--what was known as the purest heroin on the street--Frank Lucas became one of the most powerful crime lords of his time, while rubbing shoulders with the elite in entertainment, politics, and crime. After his arrest, Federal Judge Sterling Johnson, the special narcotics prosecutor in New York at the time of Lucas' crimes, called Lucas and his operation "one of the most outrageous international dope-smuggling gangs ever, an innovator who got his own connections outside the U.S. and then sold the narcotics himself in the street." This powerful memoir reveals what really happened to the man whose career was dramatized in the 2007 feature film "American Gangster, "exposing a startling look at the world of organized crime.

Ted Kosmatka's sensational new thriller, Prophet of Bones, thrusts readers into an alternate present.Paul Carlson, a brilliant young scientist, is summoned from his laboratory job to the remote Indonesian island of Flores to collect DNA samples from the ancient bones of a strange, new species of tool user unearthed by an archaeological dig. The questions the find raises seem to cast doubt on the very foundations of modern science, which has proven the world to be only 5,800 years old, but before Paul can fully grapple with the implications of his find, the dig is violently shut down by paramilitaries.Paul flees with two of his friends, yet within days one has vanished and the other is murdered in an attack that costs Paul an eye, and very nearly his life. Back in America, Paul tries to resume the comfortable life he left behind, but he can't cast the questions raised by the dig from his mind. Paul begins to piece together a puzzle which seems to threaten the very fabric of society, but world's governments and Martial Johnston, the eccentric billionaire who financed Paul's dig, will stop at nothing to silence him.

"Eloquent, lyrical, and richly textured . . . There is no one quite like [McCrumb] among present-day writers. No one better either." -San Diego Union-TribuneWith a career spanning decades, and superlatives from reviewers nationwide--whose bestselling novels have been named Notable Books by the New York Times and the LA Times--this is one of Sharyn McCrumb's most cherished novels. The stage is set for family drama when Randall Stargill lies dying on his southern Appalachian farm, and his four sons come home to build him a coffin made from the special cache of rosewood he has saved for this purpose. Meanwhile, mountain wisewoman, Nora Bonesteel, prepares another box-to be buried with him. Among them, a real estate developer is hovering over the family's farm bringing secrets and tensions to the surface.In a style both lyrical and beautifully detailed, with a narrative that flows from Native American lore and the burnished tales of Daniel Boone-up to the sharpest, and keenly realized landscapes of Appalachia today, The Rosewood Casket is a novel as hauntingly beautiful as the mountains that gave it charge--and a stunning addition to our collection of McCrumb Ballad novels.

The first complete biography of the Baltimore Orioles' Hall of Fame baseman Brooks Robinson, the greatest defensive third baseman of all time.Finalist for the 2014 Casey Award!Selected by the National Baseball Hall of Fame for the 2014 author's seriesBrooks Robinson is one of baseball's most transcendent and revered players. He won a record sixteen straight Gold Gloves at third base, led one of the best teams of the era, and is often cited as the greatest fielder in baseball history. Credited with almost single-handedly winning the 1970 World Series, this MVP was immortalized in a Normal Rockwell painting. A wholesome player and role model, Brooks honored the game of baseball not only with his play but with his class and character off the field.Author of The Bird: The Life and Legacy of Mark Fidrych, Doug Wilson returns to baseball's Golden Age to detail the birth of a new franchise through the man who came to symbolize it as one of baseball's most beloved players. Through numerous interviews with people from every part of the legendary player's life, Wilson reveals never-before-reported information to illuminate Brooks's remarkable skill and warm personality.Brooks takes readers back to an era when players fought for low-paying yearly contracts, spanning the turbulent 60s and 70s and into the dawning of the free agent era. He was elected to the MLB All-Century Team and as president of the MLB Players Alumni, Brooks continues to influence today's baseball players.In the climate of astronomic salaries, steroids, off-field troubles, and heroes who let down their fans, Brooks reminds baseball fans of the honor and glory at the heart of America's favorite pastime.

In 1976 the creators of National Lampoon, America's most popular humor magazine, decided to make a movie. It would be set on a college campus in the 1960s, loosely based on the experiences of Lampoon writers Chris Miller and Harold Ramis and Lampoon editor Doug Kenney. They named it Animal House, in honor of Miller's fraternity at Dartmouth, where the members had been nicknamed after animals. Miller, Ramis, and Kenney wrote a film treatment that was rejected and ridiculed by Hollywood studios-until at last Universal Pictures agreed to produce the film, with a budget of $3 million.A cast was assembled, made up almost completely of unknowns. Stephen Furst, who played Flounder, had been delivering pizzas. Kevin Bacon was a waiter in Manhattan when he was hired to play Chip. Chevy Chase was considered for the role of Otter, but it wound up going to the lesser-known Tim Matheson. John Belushi, for his unforgettable role as Bluto, made $40,000 (the movie's highest-paid actor). For four weeks in the fall of 1977, the actors and crew invaded the college town of Eugene, Oregon, forming their own sort of fraternity in the process. The hilarious, unforgettable movie they made wound up earning more than $600 million and became one of America's most beloved comedy classics. It launched countless careers and paved the way for today's comedies from directors such as Judd Apatow and Todd Phillips.Bestselling author Matty Simmons was the founder of National Lampoon and the producer of Animal House. In Fat, Drunk, and Stupid, he draws from exclusive interviews with actors including Karen Allen, Kevin Bacon, Peter Riegert, and Mark Metcalf, director John Landis, fellow producer Ivan Reitman, and other key players-as well as behind-the-scenes photos-to tell the movie's outrageous story, from its birth in the New York offices of the National Lampoon to writing a script, assembling the perfect cast, the wild weeks of filming, and, ultimately, to the film's release and megasuccess. This is a hilarious romp through one of the biggest grossing, most memorable, most frequently quoted, and most celebrated comedies of all time.