β Scribed by Bernard Cornwell
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
'Bernard Cornwell is a literary miracle. Year after year, hail, rain, snow, war and political upheavals fail to prevent him from producing the most entertaining and readable historical novels of his generation!Cornwell at his best is utterly compelling. And this is Cornwell at his best.' Daily Mail 'Page for page, sentence for sentence, scene for heart-stopping scene GALLOWS THIEF is the strongest historical novel I have read this year!he tells a cracking yarn and fills it with vivid characters and writes crisp dialogue and gets the period detail right..it is hard to stop reading!it is masterly.' Sunday Telegraph 'extremely powerful!Cornwell keeps one turning the pages at light infantry pace.' Evening Standard 'a historically colourful romp.' The Times 'This is the sort of beautifully crafted novel that we have come to expect from the creator of Sharpe!in the hands of Cornwell, this is a rip-roaring yarn that tips its hat to the basics of good old-fashioned storytelling.' The Times 'Bernard Cornwell is taking the popular historical novel to ever greater heights and this fast-moving thriller, shifting effortlessly across the social gamut of Regency England, is one of his masterpieces.' Sunday Telegraph
1820s Britain: after the wars with France, when unemployment was high and soldiers could be paid off, when the government was desperately afraid of social unrest, any crime was drastically punished and thousands were hung. But one could petition the King and an investigation might ensue! The man in the dark cell in Newgate Prison was due to hang in a week. He had been found guilty of murdering the aristocrat whose portrait he was painting. He claimed to be innocent -- but then the hangman had never hung a guilty man, he said. But even in 1820, the Home Secretary could occasionally use his powers to grant mercy if his investigator found cause and Rider Sandman, once of the First Foot Guards, is given the job. Rider Sandman, a hero of Waterloo, has family debts to repay but when his first steps in the investigations produce a sizeable bribe to look the other way, this only arouses his smouldering anger over the condition of England, a country which he and others in Wellington's army had fought to preserve. Stepping between gentlemen's clubs and taverns, talking to aristocrats, fashionable painters, their models, and their mistresses, dodging professional cut-throats and deceptive swordsmen, Sandman uncovers a conspiracy of silence, a group whose proudest boast was that they would do anything for any one of them. Sandman is a wonderful character, as yet undaunted by the sleazy streets, dank jails or the looming scaffold, and uncorrupted by politicians, sneering gentlemen or frightening bruisers, an investigator in the making and a brilliant, but very different, hero for all Bernard Cornwell fans.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
The year is 1820. Rider Sandman, a hero of Waterloo, returns to London to wed his fiancΓe. But instead of settling down to fame and glory, he finds himself penniless in a country where high unemployment and social unrest rage, and where men--innocent or guilty--are hanged for the merest of crimes.
From **Cullen Bunn** \- author of **_Blood Feud_** and _**Crooked Hills,**_ and creator of the comic books **_The Sixth Gun_** and **_The Damned, comes a fun size sampling of short fiction featuring the short story Gallows, and four festively fiendish tales of Halloween horror featuring the ghoulish
Corey Curtis is coasting. At thirty-three, she's in the best shape of her life and has a satisfying position at Jackson City Memorial Hospital. With a good paycheck, great friends, and occasional relationships with smart, beautiful women, she couldn't be happier. She thinks. Dr. Thayer Reynolds, wh