A quarter of a century ago, Andrew Barclay wrote a best-selling novel. He has never produced another book. Now a young PhD student from Los Angeles has tracked down the recluse to a backward town in... More > a third-world Central American country.
Looking for material for her thesis, she visits the writer; but instead of the brilliant author of memorable prose she finds an aging alcoholic whose twenty-five-year effort to produce another novel has generated nothing he deems worthy of publication. But Barclay is oddly certain that despite all his failures one day he will produce his second book.< Less
Four hundred years in the future, two superpowers have carved up the galaxy and share an uneasy truce.
But the Union launches a clandestine mission to kill the Empire's leader, setting in motion a... More > train of events that leads to a revelation that will forever change the balance of power. In response, the Empire unleashes the ultimate weapon, propelling a Union spy into a timestream populated by only one other person: a young physicist from a backward planet he calls Earth, who is desperate to find a way to return to normal time.< Less
The Cornish mining industry at one time accounted for well over 70% of the world's production of copper. Later, it produced more than half the world's tin.
In "Deep Down", R. M.... More > Ballantyne, with a meticulous eye for detail, weaves a story around the life of a typical mine, the Botallack Mine in the extreme southwest of Cornwall. Populated with colorful but authentic characters, "Deep Down" explores a hard, dangerous and often fatal way of life that once was common in this remote part of England.< Less
