I am sure it is a fine book, but I don't want to see Amazon profiting from it. Do you have an alternative e-book source?
]]>The odd thing there is that I don't much like Frasers 'Flashman' novels - though I have several of them on The Shelves.
As for for Sir Robert Carey? He was also a great Walker.
Walking races started much earlier than their popular origin in
" Wobble To Death (Sergeant Cribb #1) by Peter Lovesey 3.56 of 5 stars 3.56 · rating details · 189 ratings · 32 reviews
In 1879, race walking competitions, known as “wobbles,” were all the rage. The death of a contender, followed by a second murder, introduces Sergeant Cribb, who goes on to investigate sports-related deaths in a series of eight books."
A really good historical crime series and also a spin off TV series that was reasonably true to the books.
Available in both forms from ...oh Great Cluthu save us ..Big American River.
" One of these evolutions involved betting large sums of money on walking contests. One famous example occurred in England in 1589. An English nobleman, Sir Robert Carey, wagered he could walk non-stop for 300 miles. Winning the bet, he set the stage for even greater walking feats. In 1608 he journeyed an amazing 2000 miles across Europe in 41 days.
"
]]>Well I bought the most recent in the series directly from...
http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/surfeit-of-guns/
Ah, Hem...embaressed Cough... here a bit of correspondence by e mail ..
" Arnold -
Thank you for notifying us of the problem. We believe the inclement weather in the midsection of the country where our printing facility is located is responsible for the late arrival of the books to the warehouse. Also, at this moment the book is not in distribution in the UK, but we are working on that. If you would like, you can order directly from me. You can place an order through our website www.poisonedpenpress.com and I will see that a copy is sent to you.
Suzan Baroni
Bookkeeper Poisoned Pen Press--Discover Mystery 6962 E. 1st Ave. #103, Scottsdale, AZ 85251 suzan@poisonedpenpress.com www.poisonedpenpress.com 800-421-3976 x 12 480-945-3375 x 12 Fax 480-949-1707
On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 3:56 PM, ARNOLD AKIEN arnold.akien@btinternet.com wrote:
I congratulate you on your good sense in publishing ".... F. Chisholm - An Air of Treason: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery " the latest in a successful series of historical detective/espionage stories byPatricia Finney ..but deplore the shambolic mess that the publishing process has turned a simplicity ..people want to buy book and log on to sellers of book only to discover that the book is available from obscure bookshops in the US of A but not from the UK ..thus.. ************** and also .. An Air of Treason: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery [Paperback] Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock. Formats Amazon Price New from Used from Hardcover -- £26.04 £26.04 Paperback, Large Print £13.60 £9.06 £13.34 -- -- Would you like to tell the readers who have been awaiting this book for years why you have made such a botch of its publication? "*** represent Big American River links
On, " We believe the inclement weather in the midsection of the country where our printing facility is located is responsible for the late arrival of the books to the warehouse. "
I do remember watching a news reprt on TV in the UK that showed an entire flock of swans swiming about over the car park of a factory in the Midlands ..you don't suppose that My copy of that Book was under water at that time? As if writers didn't have enough to worry about.
]]>" Suzan Baroni Bookkeeper "
" BOOKKEEPER " ... Isn't that a terrific Super Hero Job Title?
]]>“Scottish independence ‘bad for north of England’ "
http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/scottish-independence-bad-for-north-of-england-1-3327716
]]>" Would anyone like a \”Sir Robert Carey trail\”? Posted on October 20, 2013 by patricia
I\’ve been in Northumberland researching my next Carey novels. The latest one \”An Air of Treason\” is coming out in the spring of 2014, published by Poisoned Pen Press and this trip is for the ones after that. Carey and Dodd are finally on their way north at the end of \”An Air of Treason\” and the next three books will take place on the Borders again."
http://www.patriciafinney.com/?p=654
and also
http://www.climbingtreebooks.com/im-still-writing-elizabethan-crime-novels/
]]>Since many readers do now prefer e books to Tree books this does look look like a cartel.
I'm familiar with the general situation ..
http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/focus-criticism-shifts-to-amazon-in-apple-e-book-trial/
but I will admit that I havent given it that much attention and it looks to be far worse than I had supposed.
]]>Wonder if these heroes were actually created by their era's introverted nerds and geeks, whose worst fear was public speaking?
]]>At least this time it's likely to be peaceful, in the short term (in the long term, war is a recurring part of the human condition).
]]>(And for those of you who think magic can't fix a relationship because that didn't work on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", note that Charlie's vampires probably don't turn to dust when dispatched, and none of their exorcisms ended with a heartfelt 'Now piss off.'.)
]]>I have no trouble imagining Bob doing that after a long day at work.
]]>Methinks you've missed the economic drivers in superhero fiction, Charlie. More likely that superhero fiction reappeared in the 1920s and 1930s because that was when economic inequality skyrocketed, taking Euro/American societies back to levels of inequality not seen since the Gilded Age or earlier.
As everyone knows, economic inequality has (if anything) worsened today. The essential paradigm of superhero tales involves paternalist authoritarianism: in a society where only the elites are empowered, only a member of the elites can save you. Bruce Wayne must therefore be a billionaire, just as Lamong Cranston had to be rich. The most odious avatar of today's neofeudal economy is of course the Tony Stark of the movies, who styles himself "billionaire, genius, philanthropist." Instead of a corrupt incompetent crook running Wall Street con jobs and building non-working superweapons while gouging the Pentagon for trillions.
Which of course is what American military contractors actually do.
Auditors said the Defense Department showed few signs of improvement since the GAO began issuing its annual assessments of selected weapons systems six years ago. "It's not getting any better by any means," said Michael Sullivan, director of the GAO's acquisition and sourcing team. "It's taking longer and costing more."
Chris Isleib, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a written statement, "We'd like to look at what GAO has said, and then at the appropriate time make an informed comment."
The Pentagon has doubled the amount it has committed to new systems, from $790 billion in 2000 to $1.6 trillion last year, according to the 205-page GAO report. Total acquisition costs in 2007 for major defense programs increased 26 percent from first estimates. In 2000, 75 programs had cost increases totaling 6 percent. Development costs in 2007 for the systems rose 40 percent from initial projections, compared with 27 percent in 2000. Current programs are delivered 21 months late on average, five months later than in 2000.
"In most cases, programs also failed to deliver capabilities when promised -- often forcing war fighters to spend additional funds on maintaining" existing weapons systems, the report says.
Source: "GAO Blasts Weapons Budget," The Washington Post< April 2008.
In the real world, Tony Stark would deliver Iron Man exoskeleton weapons suits that didn't work, electrocuted the soldiers who used them, and cost trillions more than budgeted -- and Stark would evade indictment while continuing to supply non-working weapons systems to the U.S. military.
The odious stench of paternalist authoritarianism has seeped into the far corners of science fiction, from David Brin's offensive "uplift" series which essentially dredges up 1920s-era eugenics and dusts it off, telling us implicitly that no one can be better than their parents (you can't hope to become a squire if your parents weren't noblemen, you serf, so stop writing down those idiotic equations in the patent office and jabbering about relativity, you nit) to the profoundly depressing Star Wars sagas with their revelation that the hero is a hero not because he has pluck or skill or brains, but because he's the son of a nobleman (Anakin Skywalker) and inherited tons of those wonderful midiclorians in his bloodstream.
Everywhere, the message in today's sci fi is the same: if you're not the scion of the rich and powerful, shove off. You'll get nowhere in life. Only those genetically endowed with those wonderful wonderful genetic traits that make rich better so much better than the common folk can possibly hope to make a differen in this world.
In the process, real heroes like Norman Borlaug conveniently get written out of our superhero movies and sci fi/fantasy sagas.
I'd really like to a three-part fantasy novel or science fiction saga featuring some ordinary schmuck like Norman Borlaug who changes the entire world in radical ways without being wealthy or superpowered or psychic or a mage.
About the last that happened in science fiction was...Samuel R. Delany's Nova. Which of course got stiffed for the big awards.
]]>