Caribbean Fiction

At fourteen, the unworldly, idealistic Jack Easy leaves the luxury of his father's estate in England and sails into a world of action and adventure aboard the sloop of war HMS Harpy. At first, Jack finds it hard to stomach the discipline of naval life and, with his mischievous sense of humor, is always getting himself into scrapes. But soon he is bravely taming a band of mutinous seamen, outwitting a wily and murderous Sicilian nobleman, and breathing the smell of gunpowder and raw steel as the Harpy chases Spanish ships on the Mediterranean.

When Rachel Croft wakes up on her family’s boat in Bermuda, it’s to sunshine and yet another perfect day…until she goes to wake her seven-year-old son, Oscar. Because the worst thing imaginable has happened. He isn’t there. In the dark and desperate days that follow, Rachel struggles to navigate her grief. And while her husband, James, wants them to face the tragedy together, Rachel feels that the life they once shared is over.

Zane Obispo's new life on a beautiful secluded tropical island, complete with his family and closest friends, should be perfect. But he can't control his newfound fire skills yet (inherited from his father, the Maya god Hurakan); there's a painful rift between him and his dog ever since she became a hell hound; and he doesn't know what to do with his feelings for Brooks. One day he discovers that by writing the book about his misadventures with the Mayan gods, he unintentionally put other godborn children at risk.

Jenny Diski was a fearless writer, for whom no subject was too difficult, even her own cancer diagnosis. Her columns in the London Review of Books - selected here by her editor and friend Mary-Kay Wilmers, on subjects as various as death, motherhood, sexual politics and the joys of solitude - have been described as ‘virtuoso performances’ and ‘small masterpieces'. Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told? is a collective interrogation of the universal experience from a very particular psyche.

Cece Rios and her friends have escaped Devil’s Alley, but the fight to save their world is just beginning. Despite her growing comfort with her curandera abilities, Cece is worried that she won’t be strong enough to stop her most dangerous enemy yet: her tía, Catrina. Desperate for power and revenge, Catrina has seized the throne of Devil’s Alley and set her sights on the living world.

The brilliant conclusion to the Palliser novels, this touching story follows the elderly Duke of Omnium, the former prime minister of England, as he struggles to overcome his grief at the loss of his beloved wife, Lady Glencora. To complicate matters, he must also deal with the willfulness of his three adult children as he tries to guide and support them - his plans for them are quite different from their own. While his two sons, sent down from university in disgrace, rack up gambling debts, the duke’s only daughter yearns to marry the poor son of a country squire.

When two children happen across an ancient shrine, they unintentionally summon an impish sprite named Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow. To their wonderment, the fairy conjures up the past, taking them on ten magical adventures: They visit Roman Britain and the legion guarding Hadrian's Wall, the thirteenth-century court of King John, and Old England from the time of William the Conqueror.

The Young Carthaginian chronicles the struggle of the Second Punic War (218-203 BC) and the attempt of Hannibal to conquer Rome. At first, the struggle of Carthage against Rome was a struggle for empire, but it became a struggle for existence. Hannibal presses on despite formidable geographical barriers and the corrupt leadership in Carthage which time and again undermined all his efforts.

All Nestor Lopez wants is to live in one place for more than a few months and have dinner with his dad. When he and his mother move to a new town to live with his grandmother after his dad’s latest deployment, Nestor plans to lay low. He definitely doesn’t want anyone to find out his deepest secret: that he can talk to animals. But when the animals in his new town start disappearing, Nestor's grandmother becomes the prime suspect.

Just as Mr. Darcy finally decides to propose to the enticing Miss Elizabeth Bennet, she is summoned to Falmouth, to meet a relation she never knew she had. Thus, the ill-starred Hunsford proposal is avoided - but before he could even begin to understand his luck, adverse circumstances hasten to conspire against him, and Fitzwilliam Darcy is compelled to follow the woman he loves to the far reaches of Cornwall, into a world of deceit and peril, where few - if any - are what they seem to be...

In the hottest hour of the hottest day of the year, a fateful wind blows into Oaxaca City. It whistles down cobbled streets and rustles the jacaranda trees before slipping into the window of an 11-year-old girl named Clara. Unbeknownst to her, Clara has been marked for la Lotería. Life and Death deal the Lotería cards but once a year, and the stakes could not be higher. Every card reveals a new twist in Clara’s fate - a scorpion, an arrow, a blood-red rose. If Life wins, Clara will live to a ripe old age. If Death prevails, she’ll flicker out like a candle.

Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880), known by her pen name George Eliot, was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels are known for their realism and psychological insight. Four of them are included in this volume: Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, The Mill on the Floss, and The Lifted Veil.

England, 1947: A young woman finds herself under close observation in an insane asylum, charged with a violent crime she has no memory of committing. As she tries to make sense of her recent past, she recalls very little. But she still remembers wartime in Yugoslavia. There she and her lover risked everything to carry out dangerous work resisting the Germans - a heroic campaign in which many brave comrades were lost. After that, the trail disappears into confusion. How did she come to be trapped in a living nightmare?

She's a fine sailor... and a better witchThe sailing life brings a person close to the elements; it's a life where the unusual is ordinary and the mysterious, even the magical can be downright common. Short handed and with a charter coming up, taking Sira on... on a test basis, you understand, was expedient. She seemed to have a fine knack for boats, and a better one for the elements of the unexpected. She had a closer relationship to them than I could have ever imagined.

Dani Berger and Liz Chirac's new charter guest is hiding something. Connie Barrera brought more aboard Vengeance than just her luggage, but they don't know that. Connie's on the run. Connie booked Vengeance under an assumed name to escape the Bahamas. She's not sure who's chasing her, but she knows what they want. She's determined that they won't get it. Connie couldn't have picked better people to fight her corner than Dani and Liz. The three quickly become friends, but Dani and Liz are puzzled by Connie's occasional moments of paranoia. Why is Connie on the run? Who's chasing her as they ...

In 2021, the Panama Papers exposed a web of corruption, revealing how the global elite dodged taxes and hoarded wealth. Among the lush and secretive havens of the Cayman Islands, Eloise Deen emerges, on a relentless hunt for stolen fortunes. Known for her unyielding resolve and a knack for persuasion that borders on the lethal, Eloise is a force to be reckoned with. She's well aware that stealing the money is the easy part... getting away with it is a killer. Dive into this short tale where the stakes are as dangerous as the secrets uncovered, and where getting what you want might just cost...

Between the years of 1762 and 1763, James Boswell kept a journal of his time in London. During his time, he met the renowned writer, moralist, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, with whom Boswell would form a close relationship. This account, told with much detail and candor, was one of the various journals written by Boswell, but it is the journal that has undergone the least amount of censorship, leading it, and the racy material within, to be deemed a best seller upon publication.

When the Cayman Islands police investigate a burglary, Constable Nora Sommer recognizes the victim from a past she's desperate to forget. As thefts continue, consuming the department's focus and resources, Nora can't shake her newfound knowledge—a guilty man living a happy life…behind a lie. A missing girl adds further strain, and with little evidence in either case, Nora develops an improbable theory she's determined to prove. How far will Nora go to right the wrong one man will do anything to hide?

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by the English poet William Blake consists of a series of texts written in the style of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own beliefs. Composed between 1790 and 1793, the book makes reference to Milton and Swedenborg, and adopts a device from Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost: a visit to hell. Blake expresses a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are both part of the divine order.

The most fearsome enemy he ever faced. Of all the enemies that our hero has shrunk away from, there was one he feared above them all. By his own admission they gave him nightmares into his dotage. It was not the French, the Spanish, the Americans, or the Mexicans. It was not even the more exotic adversaries such as the Iroquois, Mahratta, or Zulus. While they could all make his guts churn anxiously, the foe that really put him off his lunch were the Ashanti.