Aces High serves to remind us that, if not an entirely scrupulous politician, nor a perfect husband, Alan Clark really was a superb military historian. There has evolved something of a myth about the war in the air between 1914-1918. The myth goes that, while in the filth and gore of the trenches below any idealism and chivalry quickly sputtered and died, in the purer air above the last noble heroes battled in one-to-one dogfights like knights of old. It is a myth that Clark shoots down in flames, with characteristic iconoclasm. One of the great RFC aces was Mick Mannock, famed for his encounter with a training instructor, out in a formation of six, with five of his very green-horned pupils. Mannock first shot down the instructor and then ruthlessly pursued each of the novices and shot them down one by one. This wasn't chivalry, it was war, and although more elegant to watch, it was every bit as lethal as Passchendaele.

Aces High: War in the Air Over the Western Front, 1914-18

History

Clark, Alan.

Military

Ballantine

Red Square

Literature & Fiction

SMITH, MARTIN CRUZ.

Contemporary

Comprising the ancient texts of The Belgariad and The Malloreon, The Rivan Codex is a book which stands in the same relationship to the Belgariad and Malloreon as The Silmarillion does to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Before David Eddings started to write his first fantasy series, the BELGARIAD, in the late 1970s, he spent a year working on the design and mythology of the fantasy world in which it is set. The Rivan Codex comprises the immensely readable background material to Eddings' best-loved series, repeated information a lot of it, but it's the books that repeat the information, and these seminal documents have about them an air of original inspiration, world-building in action. The rest of it is background which is taken for granted but not spelled out. History, geography, myths and folktales, peoples, gods, customs, social organization, political hierarchy, laws, dress, modes of address, produce, culture, flora, fauna, all presented with so light a touch one can only yearn for Eddings to be taken up by academics so that his style might catch on in the real real world. The 12-book long series grew out of these delightful preliminary sketches like a river growing from a spring of striking purity and constancy. Magically, the information reads fresh each time, minimal Eddings prose, beguilingly arcane, in which massive events attain an all-time perspective.

The Rivan Codex : Ancient Texts of the 'Belgariad' and the 'Malloreon

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Fantasy

<p>The Desert Spear is a fantasy novel written by American writer Peter V. Brett and sequel to The Painted Man (titled The Warded Man in the US). It is the second part of the Demon Cycle and was released in April 2010, published by Del Rey Books in the US and Canada, and Voyager in the UK. The novel continues the story of mankind's battle against demons known as "corelings", which rise from the planet's core each night to feast upon humans.The Desert Spear is book two of the Demon quintet. The Deliverer has returned, but who is he? Arlen Bales, formerly of the small hamlet of Tibbet's Brook, learned harsh lessons about life as he grew up in a world where hungry demons stalk the night and humanity is trapped by its own fear. He chose a different path; chose to fight inherited apathy and the corelings, and eventually he became the Painted Man, a reluctant saviour. But the figure emerging from the desert, calling himself the Deliverer, is not Arlen. He is a friend and betrayer, and though he carries the spear from the Deliverer's tomb, he also heads a vast army intent on a holy war against the demon plague and anyone else who stands in his way.</p>

The Desert Spear (The Demon Cycle)

Brett, Peter V.

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Stephen, King

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david-baldacci

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SUE MILLER

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Nelson, Demille

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James, Patterson

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