Pistols At Dawn

When fighting for honour has tragic consequences...

Duelling is embedded in our collective consciousness, through numerous films and books. This book traces the history of the duel from its medieval antecedents in trial by combat and chivalric tournaments. Using numerous accounts of actual duels, it shows how the arcane rules of the duel evolved.

A fatal duel leaves Victoria Torrington destitute and at the mercy of a well-known rake, Simon St. John, Earl of Travis. Known as Satan to the ton, the earl has a past shadowed by secrets and a reputation for the luck of the devil. To Victoria's surprise, he declares she must select a bridegroom by the end of the London Season or he will choose one for her. Tired of irresponsible males dictating her life, Victoria disputes his authority. The couple deny a growing attraction to little effect. Beneath the earl's chilly exterior, Victoria senses an honorable and caring spirit. For all Victoria's seeming innocence, Simon knows the full extent of feminine wiles and tries to distance himself. Together they face an enemy armed with the secrets of Simon's past. Will Victoria's determination thaw a heart frozen by betrayal and bring them happiness and love, or will her attempt to rescue him from the sins of his youth bring them both to ruin?Miche le Ann Young lives and writes in Richmond Hill, Canada, where she resides with her husband and two beautiful daughters.

Eliza Kirtland will do anything to see the man who cruelly assaulted her sister brought to justice—even point a pistol at the notorious Lord Killingworth. But her mistaken accusations result in grave injury to the earl's nephew. Now Eliza's sister—a noted healer—feels obliged to nurse the young man back to health, and Eliza has no choice but to help. Killingworth is not pleased with the arrangement. Tensions swirl between the four of them, until new bonds are discovered when evil strikes again and they must work together to fight a relentless enemy, who will stop at nothing to drive Killingworth away from his estate. INTREPID HEROINES SERIES, in order Code of Honor The Hired Hero A Stroke of Luck Pistols at Dawn SCANDALOUS SECRETS SERIES, in order The Banished Bride Lady of Letters The Major's Mistake LESSONS IN LOVE, in series order The Defiant Governess Second Chances The Storybook Hero

Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Personal rivalry is the very stuff of politics. The causes and controversies, the parties and technology may have changed over time but political conflict is still dramatised by the competition of ambitious individuals for the highest offices. Over the past two hundred years the size of the electorate has grown enormously and the means of reaching it transformed out of all recognition but human nature itself hasn't changed. In his thought-provoking book John Campbell considers eight pairs of rivals and shows how their antagonism, which often evolved into outright loathing, has determined the course of political conflict. In each of his cases studies - Fox and Pitt, Castlereagh and Canning, Gladstone and Disraeli, Asquith and Lloyd George, Bevan and Gaitskell, Macmillan and Butler, Heath and Thatcher, Brown and Blair - he combines a vivid narrative with an authoritative assessment of the historical legacy that reveals how ideology is inextricably entwined with personality.

Many of the West’s best writers fought in duels or wrote about them, seduced by glamour or risk or recklessness. A gift as a plot device, the duel also offered a way to discover how we face fears of humiliation, pain, and death. John Leigh’s literary history of the duel illuminates these and other tensions attending the birth of the modern world.

A duel could result from any challenge to a gentleman's honour, from minor insult to major accusation. At a prearranged time, two men at odds would meet, armed either with swords or pistols, to engage in a formal and sometimes fatal exchange. Gentlemen considered it their prerogative to fight, despite the illegality of duelling, and figures as prominent as the Duke of Wellington and Georges Clemenceau defended their honour in this way. Why did participants flout the law, what codes were followed, what were the changing roles of the seconds, and what were the consequences for victims and victors? Stephen Banks answers these questions and examines the evolution from Norman trials-by-combat to the formalised duel, analysing the custom's decline in England by Victorian times and its final disppearance from Europe by the twentieth century.

At the 37th libel suit Thurlow Potts has brought to court to protect the family name, the family’s beleaguered lawyer Charlie Paxton loses the case. Thurlow seems driven beyond reason to protect the million dollar shoe business of his mother, Cornelia Potts, known to the press as the ‘Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe.’ But some people in the courtroom think Thurlow should be taken seriously, including Ellery Queen, who is looking on while waiting with his father, Inspector Queen of the New York Police Department, for another case. Afraid Thurlow will make good on his threats, Paxton begs Queen for help. Paxton’s fiancee is Thurlow’s sister, and she secures Queen an invitation to dinner, where Queen meets the extended and unusual Potts family. But before the meal ends, Thurlow challenges his younger brother to a duel, and not one, but two murders ensue. For the twin victims, and for Queen who must now solve the crimes, the fairytale is over.