Andrew Sharp: 12 books

New Zealanders know Samuel Marsden as the founder of the CMS missions that brought Christianity (and perhaps sheep) to New Zealand. Australians know him as ‘the flogging parson' who established large landholdings and was dismissed from his position as magistrate for exceeding his jurisdiction. English...

The greatest diplomatic game ever played on the world’s chessboard was that consummate succession of intrigues which for nearly half a century was carried on by Queen Elizabeth and her ministers with the object of playing off one great Continental power against another for the benefit of England and...

The history of modern Europe takes its start from an event which must have appeared insignificant to a generation that had witnessed the violent end of the English dominion in France, had been dinned by the clash of the Wars of the Roses, and watched with breathless fear the savage hosts of Islam striking...

On the night of Sunday, the 28th of July, 1588, the great Armada was huddled, all demoralised and perplexed, in Calais roads. Only a week before the proudest fleet that ever rode the seas laughed in derision at the puny vessels that alone stood between it and victory over the heretic Queen and her pirate...

Published in 1908, this history recounts the efforts of King Philip of Spain to bring England back into the Catholic fold. The story is of Mary Tudor’s marriage to young Philip, and his subsequent offer of marriage to Elizabeth—Mary’s half-sister and successor. The New York Times hailed the book as "picturesque, dramatic, and vital."

Thus wrote William Camden with reference to his projected life of Lord Burghley, which was never written; and the words may be applied not inappropriately to the present book and its writer. Some years ago I passed many laborious months in archives and libraries at home and abroad, searching and transcribing...

It may be stated as an historical truism that great organic changes in the relationship of human beings towards each other are usually preceded by periods of quiescence and apparent stability, during which unsuspected forces of preparation are at work. When the moment of crisis comes, the unthinking...

FOR three hundred years a bitter controversy has raged around the actions of Philip II. of Spain. Until our own times no attempt even had been made to write his life-history from an impartial point of view. He had been alternately deified and execrated, until through the mists of time and prejudice he...

This 1896 volume on the diplomatic negotiations for the hand of the Virgin Queen is a popular history of the subject. Hume mentions her inappropriate treatment by Thomas Seymour of Sudeley, and her suitors Lord Robert Dudley, Philip II of Spain, Archduke Charles of Austria, and the Duke of Anjou. Full...

Since 2005, Murder & Mayhem in Muskego has welcomed and hosted over 150 authors a thousands of fans of crime fiction to the Milwaukee area. Just in time for the 8th annual benefit, a short story anthology featuring bestselling, Edgar and Shamus award-winning writers who have attended the day-long...

Winner of the 2010 Waverton Good Read Award and shortlisted for the 2011 Rubery International Book Award, The Ghosts of Eden is the story of two men, one black, one white, who fall in love with the same woman. Which man will walk beside her on the shores of the Indian Ocean? Zachye, tending cattle...

Beth Jenkins is a young locum doctor and prides herself on helping her patients reframe the story of their lives – nudging them towards more optimistic narratives – but her own story is stuck. Her husband has had a stroke, disastrously altering his personality, and she’s trapped in a life of...