Piers Paul Read - Böcker

LOST1972. A plane has crashed in the Andes mountains. The passengers are hopelessly lost in one of the most isolated places on earth.ABANDONEDAlmost three months later, two of the survivors, emaciated and frozen, reach the authorities and lead a rescue team to the remaining fourteen passengers.ALIVEThe rescue team are shocked when they reach the crash-site. Food supplies have long gone, and the remains of the dead lie scattered among the fuselage. It is only too clear how these passengers have managed to stay alive ...

The dramatic, ultimately tragic history of the Knights Templar, the largest and most powerful military order of the Crusades.Sifting myth from history, Piers Paul Read reveals the Templars - the multinational force of warrior monks, in their white tunics with red crosses over chainmail. They were not only unique among Christian institutions but constituted the first uniformed standing army in the western world and became pioneers of international banking. Expropriated by Philip IV of France in 1307, and confessing under torture to blasphemy, heresy and sodomy, the Order was finally suppressed by Pope Clement V in 1312. In a narrative that incorporates the story of the crusades and the many colourful characters who had links with the Templars, Piers Paul Read examines the question of their guilt and identifies their relevance to our own times.

‘A telling portrait of an older man after a miserable divorce ... a well-observed portrait of middle-class London life for the older single man. It's hilariously funny' Saga'At once eloquent and entertaining, intelligent and incisive ... Novels don't come more diverting or sublimely satirical than this' TatlerJomier has reached the age of retirement, his children are grown up and his wife, after having an affair, has left him. Embittered and humiliated, he lives alone in London, mourning the disintegration of his marriage as he broods about the past and the present.When he falls for Judith, things begin to improve. Yet he still cannot escape his old habits and it is only when his daughter falls ill that he begins to reassess his feelings towards those he loves and his ability to forgive. Darkly humorous, ruthlessly satirical and surprisingly moving, The Misogynist is a perceptive exploration of the ways in which we can unintentionally let past disappointments affect our present, and how difficult it can be to move forward.

Intelligent, ambitious and a rising star in the French artillery, Captain Alfred Dreyfus appeared to have everything: family, money, and the prospect of a post on the General Staff. But his rapid rise had also made him enemies - many of them aristocratic officers in the army's High Command who resented him because he was middle-class, meritocratic and a Jew.In October 1894, the torn fragments of an unsigned memo containing military secrets were retrieved by a cleaning lady from the waste paper basket of Colonel Maximilien von Schwartzkoppen of the German embassy in Paris. When French intelligence discovered they harboured a spy in their midst, Captain Dreyfus, on slender evidence, was charged with selling military secrets to the Germans, found guilty of treason by unanimous verdict and sentenced to life imprisonment on the notorious Devil's Island.The fight to free the wrongfully convicted Dreyfus - over twelve long years, through many trials - is a story rife with heroes and villains, courage and cowardice, dissimulation and deceit. One of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in history, the Dreyfus affair divided France, stunned the world and unleashed violent hatreds and anti-Semitic passions which offered a foretaste of what was to play out in the long, bloody twentieth century to come. Today, amid charged debates over national and religious identity across the globe, its lessons throw into sharp relief the conflicts of the present. In the hands of historian, biographer and prize-winning novelist Piers Paul Read, this masterful epic of the struggle between a minority seeking justice and a military establishment determined to save face comes dramatically alive for a new generation.

127 short chapters the story of one of the world’s largest religions.A History of the Catholic Church tells in 127 short chapters the story of one of the world’s largest religions from its roots in Jewish history to the pontificate of Benedict XVI. In a taut narrative, it describes how the small community of those who believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God grew into a powerful institution whose patriarch, the pope, claimed both secular and spiritual jurisdiction over all the nations of Christendom. There are chapters on the major challenges it faced such as the rise of Islam, the schism with the Orthodox Church, the Protestant Reformation, French Revolution, Bolshevism, Nazism and secularism. There are also short chapters on Catholic art, architecture, philosophy and literature. It is not an academic treatise but a selection of episodes chosen to entertain as well as inform the reader.Piers Paul Read is the author of 17 novels and eight works of non-fiction, among them Alive. The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974). He studied History at Cambridge University, and has written a history of the crusading order, The Templars (1999), and an account of the infamous miscarriage of justice in France in the nineteenth century, The Dreyfus Affair (2012).The Templars‘A highly readable and nicely paced book that draws on the lessons of modern historical scholarship while also communicating a sense of narrative excitement and drive.’Evening StandardThe Dreyfus Affair‘In bringing his novelist’s eye to bear on events, Read ensures they unfold with a compelling sense of drama.’The Sunday Times