"The Quality of Mercy" opens in the spring of 1767, in the immediate aftermath of the events in Barry Unsworth's "Sacred Hunger". It follows the fortunes of two central characters from that book: Sullivan, an Irish fiddler, and Erasmus Kemp, the son of a disgraced Liverpool slave-ship owner who hanged himself. To avenge his father's death, Erasmus Kemp has had the rebellious sailors of his father's ship, including Sullivan, brought back to London to stand trial on charges of mutiny and piracy. But as the novel opens, a blithe Sullivan has escaped and is making his way on foot to the north of England, stealing and scamming as he goes. His destination is the colliery village where his dead shipmate, Billy Blair, lived: he has pledged to tell the family how Billy met his end. In this village, Thorpe in the East Durham coalfields, live Billy's sister Nan and her miner husband, James Bordon. Their 3 sons are all destined to follow their father down the pit. The youngest, only 7, is enjoying his last summer above ground. The terrible conditions in which mineworkers laboured are vividly evoked, and Bordon has dreams of escaping the mine with his family. Meanwhile in London a passionate anti-slavery campaigner, Frederick Ashton, gets involved in a second case relating to the lost ship. Erasmus Kemp is claiming financial compensation for the cargo of sick slaves who were thrown overboard to drown, and Ashton is representing the insurers who dispute his claim. Ashton triumphs in court, but not before his beautiful sister, Jane, has encountered Erasmus Kemp and found herself powerfully attracted to him despite their polarised views on slavery. She discovers that Kemp wants to spend some of his sugar and slavery fortune on Britain's new industries: coal-mining and steel. A landowner father of a friend of Jane's tips him off about Lord Spenton's mines, for sale in East Durham, and Kemp sees the business opportunity he has been waiting for. Thus he too makes his way north, to the very same village that Sullivan is heading for...

Product Description: Barry Unsworth, a writer with an "almost magical capacity for literary time travel" ("New York Times Book Review") has the extraordinary ability to re-create the past and make it relevant to contemporary readers. In "Land of Marvels," a thriller set in 1914, he brings to life the schemes and double-dealings of Western nations grappling for a foothold in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire...read more

Product Description: ? There is something of E. M. Forster in Unsworth? s knowing depiction of a decaying empire.? ? The New YorkerIn this masterful work of historical fiction set during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, the schemes of Western powers grappling for a foothold in Mesopotamia come vividly to life...read more

Sent to uncover the conspiracies brewing against his king, Thurstan Beauchamp, a young Norman, finds intrigue, treachery, and love at the Sicilian court of King Roger in Palermo, and is torn between two different women--the widowed Lady Alicia, the woman he had loved as a youth, and Nesrin, a sensuous court dancer. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

The Booker Prize-winning novelist recounts his journeys through Crete, capturing the rich history of the island, the complex influences that have shaped Cretan culture, the island's rugged landscape, and the people of Crete. Reprint.

Sent to uncover the conspiracies brewing against his king, Thurstan Beauchamp, a young Norman, finds intrigue, treachery, and love at the Sicilian court of King Roger in Palermo, and is torn between two different women--the widowed Lady Alicia, the woman he had loved as a youth, and Nesrin, a sensuous court dancer. 20,000 first printing.

With the Greek fleet trapped in the straits of Aulis by storms, Iphigeneia, the innocent young daughter of Agamemnon, is brought to the coast under false pretenses in order to sacrifice her to appease the gods and allow the ships to continue their voyage to Troy, in a colorful historical novel about the Trojan War. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Considering himself a model of proper behavior and thinking, Donald Cuthbertson begins to lose his focus with the approach of Degree Day for Cuthbertson's Regional School and his wife Lavinia's sybaritic birthday celebration.

Disembarking from the same boat in Greece, opportunist Kennedy, whose latest scam has some unintended consequences, and Mitsos, who must face an unresolved family tragedy, find their lives intersecting in frightening ways.

The Cornish village of Lanruan and its colorful inhabitants form the backdrop to the story of two men, Foley and Moss, who are partners in a successful small business manufacturing plaster pixies for the tourist trade, and Gwendolyn, the woman who inadvertently causes the beginning of a rift between them, in the first American edition of the Booker Prize-winning author's first novel. Original.

The celebrated photographer documents the monks of Mount Athos, capturing the essence of their spirituality and asceticism in action as they live their daily lives.

Product Description: In the basement of a large Victorian house in London, Charles Cleasby painstakingly re-enacts the great sea battles of his hero, Horatio Nelson. He is also writing a faithful biography of the great man, as a true English hero for an age without idols, a 'bright angel' to Charles' dark shadow...read more

In trying to heal old wounds made fresh by a chance meeting with two old army colleagues, novelist and creative writing teacher Benson hatches a plan, partly inspired by his bizarre students, that harbors deadly results. Original.

A group of very different people--including a retired American couple, a feuding British family, two gay lovers, and a manipulative lawyer--is brought together and overwhelmed by local chicanery and the byzantine circuitry of Italian life. Reprint.

In 1908, on a small Greek island, Basile Pascali receives payment for reporting the activities of people in his community, and when he thinks the townspeople have discovered his secret, he becomes trapped in a world of paranoia, as a dashing Englishman steals the heart of the woman he loves, causing his world to come crashing down around him. Reprint. NYT.

An early novel by a Booker Prize-winning author follows the story of Simon, who digs a series of tunnels from which to snoop on other people and who ultimately comes into conflict with one of those people upon whom he spied. Original.

In fourteenth-century England, a troupe of traveling players gathers information about a local murder and incorporates it into their play in hopes of drawing a larger audience.

A winner of the Booker Prize chronicles the sexual exploits of a young Englishman in Istanbul, who becomes involved with the former mistress of his intellectual mentor, a celebrated philosopher named Mooncranker, while staying at a Turkish spa. Reprint.

Product Description: Fictional Novel, Fictional Romance

The Ottoman Empire is at its most corrupt and, with his wife and son, Englishman Robert Markham returns to Constantinople, where--twelve years earlier--he saved himself as the Turks raped and murdered his Armenian fiancee

En route to America with a cargo of African slaves, the crew of the Liverpool Merchant, enraged at the captain's impotence in the face of disease, carry out a mutiny that pits two cousins against each other.