Isabella: Braveheart of France
Page 23
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There was no God, no justice. But there was such a thing as hell, and he was living in it. You should have taken the money. He couldn’t breathe. He slid down the wall and started to sob.
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“Your father is a pit bull who has to tell himself he is a romantic because otherwise he would lie awake at night screaming at his own evil. He is the devil with a brandy balloon. All my life I try and explain this to you. Please do not try and make me cry for him. I would rather weep for a scorpion being crushed under the wheels of a truck.”
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The Jerusalem Series
The story of how Israel became Palestine. Palestine, 1933. The centuries old rhythms of sleepy Rab’allah have been disturbed by the building of a Jewish kibbutz on the swamp in the valley below the village. The Jews are the future, the twentieth century. The Jews are the enemy. The Jews are their new neighbors.
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The story of how Israel became Palestine. Rosenberg could feel the net closing in. After his father dies in a Nazi concentration camp he tries everything to get himself and his mother out of Germany – even if it means leaving behind the woman he loves.
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The story of how Israel became Palestine. Palestine, 1945. Netanel Rosenberg has escaped the Nazi death camps, only to almost die on the rocks of his Promised Land, breaking the British blockade.
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The story of how Israel became Palestine. And Rishou Hass’an thought: How many more sons must I bury?
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Ebook Short Stories
"If you haven’t read one of Colin Falconer’s novels, then I promise you are in for a real roller-coaster ride …’ Mirella Patzer, Historical Novel Review
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'It was the year I broke a bone in my leg, the year I got my first kiss and the year Jesus got himself shot.'
One dead Japanese pearl diver is starting to smell. A big, slow Filipino crewman is making trouble in Sheba Lane. And a beautiful girl called Amy O'Rourke has stirred his dreams.
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Other Historicals
“If you haven’t read one of Colin Falconer’s novels, then I promise you are in for a real roller-coaster ride of never ending intrigue ...” --Mirella Patzer, Historical Novel Review
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Santa Maria, the Solomon Islands, 1941.
According to Father Goode, the worst thing Corrigan ever did was impregnate his housekeeper during the Sunday service.
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Other Books by Colin Falconers
What is the most terrible secret a father could hide from his daughter?
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“Nick Davis first saw Daniela Simonici in the American Bar of the Athenee Palace Hotel in Bucharest in June of 1940. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. The city was full of beautiful women, penniless countesses and fox-furred demi-mondaines looking to be rescued, and until that moment he had spared them only an appreciative glance. But this woman was different . . .”
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“I just figured what with guns going off and things blowing up, there’d be plenty of deep truths and penetrating insights.” --P.J. O’Rourke, Holidays in Hell
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'Falconer, whose books have been translated into 17 languages over the last 25 years, has spun together a fiction which will appeal to readers of all ages. With several twists to keep the reader engaged until the very last, Silk Road is sure to find its way onto the bookshelves of lovers of a thrilling tale.' - Liverpool Daily Post
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“Colin Falconer is one of those historical fiction authors that takes a subject and not only researches it thoroughly but also has the talent to take you to the heart of the matter whilst making you feel that you’re seeing history being made at the time of the events. As with his other work the story has a cracking pace, the lead character Philip of Vercy believable and when blended with religious heresy alongside crusade, makes for an edge of your seat read. Add to this top notch prose a wonderfully almost cinematic feel to the story and of course a lead character that you can really get behind and all in it’s a wonderful read. Great stuff.” - Dros Delnoch, Falcatta Times
‘Another man would have made it an affair and nothing else. Another man would have been more ruthless, more cynical. The naked husband falls in love.’
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About the Author
"I was 18 years old, I'd just left school and got a job in London, working in an insurance company. I was working inside - in an office! My mother thought that was like being CEO of Shell Oil.
"I was late one morning, I took a short cut through the church yard to the station to catch my train. I'd just finished reading The Sun Also Rises the night before; and here I was looking at all these gravestones, I remember thinking: Gee, we're not here very long. Better make it count.
"So I went home, told my mother I was quitting my job and going to Morocco. She damned near fainted."
After travelling through Spain and Africa, Colin hitch-hiked across Europe to Sweden to visit a girlfriend he'd met the year before on a football tour. When he finally got back home, he was still restless. After failing to make the grade as a professional football player, he travelled around Asia; his experiences in Bangkok and India later inspired his thriller VENOM, and his adventures in the jungles of the Golden Triangle of Burma and Laos were also filed away for later, the basis of his OPIUM series about the underworld drug trade.
He emigrated to Australia where he helped a mate establish a new advertising agency. "We could only afford this derelict building for an office. Once we were pitching to a client during a thunderstorm and the roof flooded. A piece of the ceiling fell down and just missed his head. Fortunately he had a sense of humour. We got the account!
"After a couple of years we were doing much better. We could even afford to pay ourselves a wage! But I really wanted to be a writer, not a copywriter. When I told my mate I was leaving to try my luck in the Big Smoke, he offered me 40% of the business. It was 40% of nothing at the time. I saw him a couple of years ago, and he'd just sold the agency for twenty million dollars. I worked out what 40% of that was on a pocket calculator. It's quite a lot of money, apparently."
Colin went to Sydney and worked in TV and radio and freelanced for many of Australia's leading newspapers and magazines. But he got his dream, publishing over a dozen novels in the UK and US and having his work sold into translation in Brazil, Belgium, the Czech republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey.
He lived for many years in the beautiful Margaret River region in WA, and helped raise two beautiful daughters with his late wife, Helen. While writing, he also worked in the volunteer ambulance service. "I'd be at my desk typing, then thirty minutes later I might be crawling into an overturned car or running along a beach with the oxygen for a near drowning. It was an interesting time."
His marriage ended in tragic circumstances, a story he has told in 'The Naked Husband,' and its non-fiction sequel, 'The Year We Seized the Day,' written with a writing partner, Elizabeth Best.
He travels regularly to research his novels and his quest for authenticity has led him to run with the bulls in Pamplona, pursue tornadoes across Oklahoma and black witches across Mexico, go cage shark diving in South Africa and get tear gassed in a riot in La Paz. (He was actually trying to cycle down the Death Road. In the end he had to abandon the attempt and take the bus down.) He also completed a nine hundred kilometre walk of the camino in Spain.
A few years ago he stopped writing. 'I suddenly found I couldn't do it anymore. It was after'The Year We Seized the Day.' I was ridden with guilt and I remember standing on a beach in Thailand late one night, and I said to God: 'Okay I've had enough now.'
A week later I was in a Thai hospital, only time in my whole life I've ever been sick, I'd got some sort of tropical in
fection and I was close to multiple organ failure. I remember praying again (that's twice in one year!): "Hey I didn't know you were listening, Big Guy! I didn't mean it! I have two girls to look out for!"
"I survived but when I got home I started drinking too much and I couldn't find my writing mojo. It got ugly there for a while. Thought I'd never write again."
Then he published SILK ROAD, and got a three book contract in London, and his love affair for life and for writing returned. "For me, the two things are inseparable. My passion for one infects the other."
His fiction comes from dedicated research and what he calls a quest for Hemingway's ghost; characters with a passion for life, for love and the courage to face down their demons.
Istanbul, Bucharest, Colin Falconer'When I was walking through that graveyard I made two promises to my gawky 18 year old self; one - that I would not die feeling that I had not lived, and two - that I would follow my siren call to write, no matter where it lead. I feel like so far I have kept that promise and I intend to see it all the way through.'
You can now find Colin's books on Kindle where his entire list will be available by the end of the year; SILK ROAD was published in hardback and paperback by Corvus-Atlantic in London in 2011 and his new novel STIGMATA has just been released.
Copyright Page
Copyright © 2013 by Colin Falconer
http://coolgus.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance of fictional characters to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author and publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Electronic ISBN 9781621250906
Colin Falconer's blog at: https://colinfalconer.wordpress.comor on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/colin_falconer
Table of Contents
ISABELLA
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Epilogue
Other books by Colin Falconer
About the Author
Copyright Page