Crusades Historical Fiction

Thanks to the stratagems of Bohemund de Hauteville, leader of the Apulian Normans, the Crusade has taken the city of Antioch, and just in time. Once the besiegers, Bohemund and his men are about to become the besieged - a huge Turkish-led army, commanded by the fearsome General Kerbogha, is fast approaching. Provisions are desperately needed, but the surrounding countryside is near barren and the storerooms of Antioch much depleted. The Crusaders will not hold out for long without falling prey to starvation.

In each section of Michael Cunningham's new book, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. "In the Machine" is a ghost story which takes place at the height of the Industrial Revolution, as human beings confront the alienated realities of the new machine age. "The Children's Crusade," set in the early twenty-first century, plays with the conventions of the noir thriller as it tracks the pursuit of a terrorist band which is detonating bombs seemingly at random around the city.

About this new installment of the saga we can say that all the accumulated knowledge, all the scholarly theories and all the accumulation of popular tales, Judaic and Christian legends, are gathered here in a chronicle that begins with the Antediluvian Age and continues through to the ages of giants, nephilim, titans, and the appearance of the first hybrid men, the coming of the flood and judgment, the punishment of the hybrid beings, establishment of the Kingdom of Israel, the rebellion of man, and the repeated incursions of supernatural beings into human history.

Battles result, blood is spilled, and women are won and lost when William and Thomas return from the crusades and discover that King Richard has ignored his regent's appointment of William and appointed someone else to be the Earl of Cornwall. This is the fourth audiobook in the acclaimed Archers saga set in beautiful and brutal medieval England.

When Christina Van Pelt is let go from her teaching position, she feels lost and rejected. Teaching meant everything to her, and without it, she wonders if she truly has a purpose. A letter from a family friend inviting her to come teach in Denver brings her to life again and she eagerly agrees to make the trip, but when she arrives, she finds that the plans have gone horribly awry. John Hall has been teaching in the Denver schoolhouse for five years while also trying to see to the needs of his aging mother.