Alec Cowie and the Sword of Persia

Alec Cowie and the Sword of Persia PDF

Author: Charles Munro

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2013-06-28

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 1483645495

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It is the year 524BC, and the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser V, is enraged when he finds out that Hoshea, King of Israel, one of his vassal states, is seeking the help of Egypt in rebelling against him. Swiftly gathering his army, he swoops down from the north and crushes the rebellious state, taking Hoshea captive and deporting the surviving Israelites throughout the eastern areas of the Assyrian Empire. The story then moves forward to Calcutta, in India, in the year 1755, where young Alec Cowie, now a Captain in the militia of the Honourable East India Company, arrives back from a recent assignment to the Mughal Emperor in Delhi. (see Alec Cowie and the Delhi Assignment). He finds himself seconded to the British Intelligence Service and directed to lead a new mission to Abdul Shah Durrani, the new king of Afghanistan, seeking passage of the Companys goods through the Khyber Pass to the Silk Road. Accompanied by his old friend Harry Arburthnot, he travels up the Indus valley and through the Bolan Pass to Kandahar, where he encounters a beautiful Jewish girl with a mission of her own; to return the powerful Sword of Persia to Shah Durrani with the prophesy that goes with it. Continually harassed by the Russians, Jesuits and rebellious Afghans themselves, Alec and Harry finally complete their mission to Cabool, and stage a thrilling escape through the Khyber Pass back into India.

Alec Cowie and the Delhi Assignment

Alec Cowie and the Delhi Assignment PDF

Author: Charles Munro

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2012-09-28

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1477153977

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An enthralling prologue describes Genghis Kahn’s crushing thrust from the east into the Empire of Khwarazm in 1219, from which the Shah flees south across the Indus River into India, taking with him the fabled Jewel of Khwarazm. The reader is then carried forward some three hundred years into Scotland, where a young man, Alec Breville Cowie, sets out for London to join the East India Trading Company as a writer. Displaying outstanding skills in bookkeeping, languages and trading negotiations, he is posted to Madras on the east coast of India with two friends, Warren Hastings and Harry Arburthnot. Promoted to Senior Writer, and transferred to Calcutta, he is attached to perilous mission, led by the enigmatic Sir James Ness, to the Moghul Emperor in Delhi. Dogged by murderous thugee, and tracked by Marathas and French intent on disrupting the mission, they finally meet the Emperor, and Alec is given charge of the Emperor’s beautiful niece, the Princess Shastri. Fleeing to the abandoned city of Fatehpur-Sikri, pursued by savage Pindarees, Alec and the Princess finally reach Lucknow. A traitor in their camp is unmasked, and the true purpose of the Delhi Assignment is revealed.

Heritage or Heresy

Heritage or Heresy PDF

Author: B. Schildgen

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2008-07-21

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780230603295

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This is an account of the roles of local and national movements, and of memory and regret in the destruction or preservation of the architectural, artistic, and historic legacy of Europe in which the author examines what is cultural heritage and why it matters.

Grimoires

Grimoires PDF

Author: Owen Davies

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2010-09-23

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0191509248

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What is a grimoire? The word has a familiar ring to many people, particularly as a consequence of such popular television dramas as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. But few people are sure exactly what it means. Put simply, grimoires are books of spells that were first recorded in the Ancient Middle East and which have developed and spread across much of the Western Hemisphere and beyond over the ensuing millennia. At their most benign, they contain charms and remedies for natural and supernatural ailments and advice on contacting spirits to help find treasures and protect from evil. But at their most sinister they provide instructions on how to manipulate people for corrupt purposes and, worst of all, to call up and make a pact with the Devil. Both types have proven remarkably resilient and adaptable and retain much of their relevance and fascination to this day. But the grimoire represents much more than just magic. To understand the history of grimoires is to understand the spread of Christianity, the development of early science, the cultural influence of the print revolution, the growth of literacy, the impact of colonialism, and the expansion of western cultures across the oceans. As this book richly demonstrates, the history of grimoires illuminates many of the most important developments in European history over the last two thousand years.

Children’s Literature and Transnational Knowledge in Modern China

Children’s Literature and Transnational Knowledge in Modern China PDF

Author: Shih-Wen Sue Chen

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-04-29

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 9811360839

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This book examines the development of Chinese children’s literature from the late Qing to early Republican era. It highlights the transnational flows of knowledge, texts, and cultures during a time when children’s literature in China and the West was developing rapidly. Drawing from a rich archive of periodicals, novels, tracts, primers, and textbooks, the author analyzes how Chinese children’s literature published by Protestant missionaries and Chinese educators in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries presented varying notions of childhood. In this period of dramatic transition from the dynastic Qing empire to the new Republican China, young readers were offered different models of childhood, some of which challenged dominant Confucian ideas of what it meant to be a child. This volume sheds new light on a little-explored aspect of Chinese literary history. Through its contributions to the fields of children’s literature, book history, missionary history, and translation studies, it enhances our understanding of the negotiations between Chinese and Western cultures that shaped the publication and reception of Chinese texts for children.

Crime Films

Crime Films PDF

Author: Thomas Leitch

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-08-15

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780521646710

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This book surveys the entire range of crime films, including important subgenres such as the gangster film, the private eye film, film noir, as well as the victim film, the erotic thriller, and the crime comedy. Focusing on ten films that span the range of the twentieth century, Thomas Leitch traces the transformation of the three leading figures that are common to all crime films: the criminal, the victim and the avenger. Analyzing how each of the subgenres establishes oppositions among its ritual antagonists, he shows how the distinctions among them become blurred throughout the course of the century. This blurring, Leitch maintains, reflects and fosters a deep social ambivalence towards crime and criminals, while the criminal, victim and avenger characters effectively map the shifting relations between subgenres, such as the erotic thriller and the police film, within the larger genre of crime film that informs them all.

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