John Banks

Over fifty thousand Connecticut soldiers served in the Union army during the Civil War, yet their stories are nearly forgotten today. Among the regiments that served, at least forty sets of brothers perished from battlefield wounds or disease. Little known is the 16th Connecticut chaplain who, as prisoner of war, boldly disregarded a Rebel commander's order forbidding him to pray aloud for President Lincoln. Then there is the story of the 7th Connecticut...

Guardians of the Galaxy meets The Hobbit in this rollicking fantasy adventure. It's not easy to live in a world ruled by dragons. The taxes are high and their control is complete. But for one group of bold misfits, it's time to band together and steal back some of that wealth. No one said they were smart.

This book addresses the challenge of how to equip businesses to adapt and thrive in an unpredictable and demanding economy. Told in the form of a fable and illustrated with case studies and powerful tools, the book is designed to engage, inspire, and inform listeners from all walks of business life. Helping leaders, teams, and whole organizations to bring their values to the frontline of the battle to be adaptive and productive, First Be Nimble shows...

Ignored by his dad, bullied by the teachers at his posh school, and picked on by the gang of kids who roam the stairways of his tower block home, Roland Wright thinks he has it pretty bad. Then, a broken lift hurls him into a strange kingdom where fantasy and reality meet, and Roland finds that his nightmare has only just begun. Who can Roland trust in this bizarre new world? The obsequious caretaker with his rattling keys and cryptic advice? The...

Scotland, 1477: Nicholas de Fleury, former banker and merchant, has reappeared in the land that, four years earlier, he had brought very close to ruin in the course of an intense commercial and personal war with secret enemies-and, indeed, with his clever wife Gelis. Now the opportunity for redemption is at hand, but Nicholas soon finds himself pursuing his objectives amid a complex, corrosive power struggle centering on the Scottish royal family...

"The Juganet is a circle. The circle is a machine. The machine is a cross-over point. The point is a paramagnetic intersection. That is where I must be. Not here…" Eerie, unsettling and a benchmark production for children's television in the 1970s, Sky was created by Doctor Who stalwarts Bob Baker and Dave Martin as one of the run of outstanding children's dramas HTV produced in that decade. Sky is a mixture of ecological fable, science fantasy...

With the bravura storytelling and pungent authenticity of detail she brought to her acclaimed Lymond Chronicles, Dorothy Dunnett, grande dame of the historical novel, presents the House of Niccolò series. The time is the fifteenth century, when intrepid merchants became the new knighthood of Europe. Among them, none is bolder or more cunning than Nicholas vander Poele of Bruges, the good-natured dyer's apprentice who schemes and swashbuckles his...

"The Gutter Prayer is captivating and complex. Guerdon is a city that seethes with history, horror, and hidden secrets" (Nicholas Eames). A group of three young thieves are pulled into a centuries old magical war between ancient beings, mages, and humanity in this wildly original debut epic fantasy. Enter a city of saints and thieves . . . The city of Guerdon stands eternal. A refuge from the war that rages beyond its borders. But in the ancient...

How to be both is the dazzling new novel by Ali Smith. It is longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014. Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith's novels are like nothing else. How to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's...

Guardians of the Galaxy meets TheHobbit in this rollicking fantasy adventure series.
The Dragons who once ruled over the land are dead.
The motley crew that stumbled through that revolution are rich and praised as saviors.
Everyone gets to live happily ever after, right?
Right?
Well, it might have worked out that way if the dragons in Kondorra had been the only ones. If they hadn't been just the tip of...