Fatal Illusions

Gillian Thayer's calligraphy business helps to keep her mind off two small headstones in the cemetery. Still healing from the death of her twins during birth, Gillian absorbs another emotional blow when she finds a love letter addressed to her husband Marc, a pastor and counselor. But before Gillian can confront him, a gunshot shatters her already fragile world. Gillian's family is forced to leave Chicago to escape the eye of the media. Together they seek refuge in Whistler's Point, a historic lighthouse on Lake Superior near the tiny town of Newberry, Michigan. But they are not the only new arrivals looking for a place to lay low. Haydon Owens, an amateur magician and accomplished killer, has also come to Newberry hoping to start a new life, but he isn't there long before he spots another potential victim. - Author website.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858. Excerpt: ... XI. THE LOSS OF THE "CONCEPTION." N the sixteenth century Portugal was a great naval power. Her flag was to be seen flying in every port in the world, and her colonies and possessions were very numerous and extensive. She had a flourishing settlement in India, upon the Malabar coast, the affairs of which were administered by a governor, who bore the title of Viceroy, and whose seat of government was at Goa. From this point missionaries proceeded into the interior, to spread, amid the swamps and jungles and sands of that vast country, the holy religion of Jesus. At that period the art of navigation was very imperfectly known; and not the least perilous portion of a missionary's enterprise was the voyage he must undertake before he could reach the scene of his labours. The records of the age are full of heroic actions performed by priests on their way to distant lands: of endurance under famine; of devotion during pestilence; of courage in shipwreck; of patience amid the thousand disasters with which their ocean course was beset. But few narratives of this class are more touching than the accounts we have received of the loss of the Portuguese ship "Conceptiou" in the year 1555, on board of which three Fathers of the Indian Mission had taken their passage. It is the duration of suffering, far more than its intensity, that tries the heart and courage of a man; and it is far more affecting, if it be less thrilling, to hear of calm and generous fortitude under lingering torture from starvation, thirst, heat, and disease, than of unshrinking boldness in the most terrible shipwreck that ever cost the lives of a crew. On the 22d of August, 1555, the " Conception," Captain Noluc, bound from Lisbon to Cochin, a port on the coast of Malabar, ran aground, at three o'...

An obsessive woman, a serial killer on the loose, and a sudden winter storm turn a sabbatical in the North Woods into a nightmare that the Thayer family may not escape alive.

“The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium in the fifteenth century. The six volumes cover the history, from 98 to 1590, of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and then of the Roman State Church, and the history of Europe, and discusses the decline of the Roman Empire among other things. Gibbon offers an explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire, a task made difficult by a lack of comprehensive written sources, though he was not the only historian to attempt it. According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions in large part due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens. He began an ongoing controversy about the role of Christianity, but he gave great weight to other causes of internal decline and to attacks from outside the Empire.

This collection includes classic works on the history of Rome from its foundation to the collapse of the empire into Western and Eastern: Julius Caesar: The Gallic Wars The Civil War Tacitus: The Histories The Annals Appian: Roman History The Civil Wars Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Theodor Mommsen: The History of Rome