Simon Vance

Heartfelt, incisive, and timeless, The Confessions of Saint Augustine has captivated readers for more than fifteen hundred years. Retelling the story of his long struggle with faith and ultimate conversion -- the first such spiritual memoir ever recorded -- Saint Augustine traces a story of sin, regret, and redemption that is both deeply personal and, at the same time, universal. Starting with his early life, education, and youthful indiscretions,...

Money converted into diamonds has been misplaced and plight told unknowingly to a member of the Chicago underworld.

"At a guest house in the beautiful Franschhoek wine valley, a famous English mathematician is kidnapped and his two bodyguards are killed. It's clearly a professional hit, and the spent shell cases offer a chilling clue: Each is engraved with the head of a spitting cobra. Meanwhile, in Cape Town, a skilled young thief is using his talents to put his sister through college. Then one day he picks the wrong pocket, grabbing the wallet of a young American...

Investigating the unusual murder of an antiques dealer, former police officer Zet van Heerden struggles to overcome past demons and the uncertain loyalties of people affiliated with the case in order to identify the killer.

One of the world's most famous intellectual ghost stories, The Turn of the Screw is a haunting tale of suspected supernatural possession. A governess at a country house claims that Miles and Flora, two orphaned children in her care, are being controlled by spirits for some evil purpose. No one else can see the ghosts, and the children themselves are silent. Are they being dominated by spectral forces, or are they hiding something? Is the governess

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When the Iraq war began, conservationist Lawrence Anthony could think of only one thing: the fate of the Baghdad Zoo, caught in the crossfire at the heart of the city. Once Anthony entered Iraq, he discovered that hostilities and uncontrolled looting had devastated the zoo and its animals. Working with members of the zoo staff and a few compassionate U.S. soldiers, Anthony defended the zoo, bartered for food on war-torn streets, and scoured bombed...

The Pilgrim's Progress is a 1678 Christian allegory written by the Puritan preacher John Bunyan. Begun while Bunyan served a 12-year jail sentence for his nonconformist preaching, the novel unfolds over two parts, one concerning Christian, and the other his wife Christiana and their sons. Both concern the central characters' ordeals in traveling from the worldly to the sublime, and are filled with allegorical characters with names like Hypocrisy and...

Rome: In the small church of Santa Giuliana, a magnificent Caravaggio altarpiece disappears without a trace in the middle of the night. Paris: In the basement vault of the Malevich Society, the curator is shocked to discover the disappearance of the Society's great treasure, White on White by Suprematist painter Kasimir Malevich. London: At the National Gallery of Modern Art, the museum's newest acquisition is stolen just hours after it was purchased...