The Song of Roland

The Song of Roland (French: La Chanson de Roland) is the oldest surviving major work of French literature. It exists in various different manuscript versions which testify to its enormous and enduring popularity in the 12th to 14th centuries. The oldest of these is the Oxford manuscript which contains a text of some 4004 lines (the number varies slightly in different modern editions) and is usually dated to the middle of the twelfth century (between 1140 and 1170). The epic poem is the first and most outstanding example of the chanson de geste, a literary form that flourished between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries and celebrated the legendary deeds of a hero.

The Man From St. Petersburg

This story is set London in early 1914 as Germany was mobilizing and war was inevitable to those that history would prove astute. France was in peril even if England assisted, and the British Empire itself would be at risk if the Germans prevailed. So, The First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill of the Liberal government, armed with a note from King George, convinces the (conservative) Earl of Walden to negotiate a secret treaty with his wife's nephew, Alex Orlov, also nephew to the Czar, for Russia to enter into the fray.

The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story

In the novel, the metaphor of the "fourth dimension" is used to explain a societal shift from a generation of people who have traditional values of interdependence, being overtaken by a modern generation who believe in expediency, callously using political power to bring down the old order. Its narrator is an aspiring writer who himself makes a similar transition at a personal level only to feel he has lost everything.

The Rover

The Rover is the last complete novel by Joseph Conrad, written between 1921 and 1922. It was first published in 1923.
The story takes place in the south of France, against the backdrop of the French Revolution, Napoleon's rise to power, and the French-English rivalry in the Mediterranean. Peyrol (a master-gunner in the French republican navy, pirate, and for nearly fifty years "rover of the outer seas") attempts to find refuge in an isolated farmhouse (Escampobar) on the Giens Peninsula near Hyères.

Two Spies and a General

It is the year 221 B.C. and there is a tenuous peace between the two rival states of Carthage and Rome, but vengeance, not peace is on the mind of Herotyrus -- one of Carthages' noble citizens. When his plans of revenge fail, Herotyrus is forced from the streets of Carthage to Hannibal's army in Iberia, where he is consigned to the dead, so he can become Hannibal's personal spy. But as a Carthaginian on Roman soil, Hero's loyalties are tested as he discovers slavery, treachery and love -- slavery that brings him to the brink of death, treachery that spans the Mediterranean Sea and love that transcends the hate of two warring nations.