The Spanish discovered Mexico in 1518. It was then a land inhabited by different tribes of Indians. The most powerful were the Aztecs. In 1519, a Spaniard, Hernando Cortez, set out to conquer Mexico. One of the soldiers who went with him was Bernal Diaz del Castillo, whose story this is.
Nora Roberts - Charmed & EnchantedSummury: This is the third and fourth installments of the Donovan Legacy (after Captivated & Entranced). The series concerns a contemporary family whose members possess magical powers.
While most Austen biographers have accepted the assertion of Jane's brother Henry that "My dear Sister's life was not a life of events," Tomalin shows that, on the contrary, Austen's brief life was fraught with upheaval. Tomalin provides detailed and absorbing accounts of Austen's ill-fated love for a young Irishman, her frequent travels and extended visits to London, her close friendship with a worldly cousin whose French husband met his death on the guillotine, her brothers' naval service in the Napoleonic wars and in the colonies, and thus shatters the myth of Jane Austen as a sheltered and homebound spinster whose knowledge of the world was limited to the view from a Hampshire village.
As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper.
