Piers Paul Read Books

The Knights of the Temple of Solomon were a military and religious order founded in Jerusalem by two French Knights after the First Crusade. Its original purpose was to protect pilgrims from infidel attack as they journeyed to the Holy Land. St Bernard of Clairvaux drew up the order's rules, which included fighting the enemies of God under vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. The Templars had no difficulty in finding recruits. The promise of salvation through a life of action and adventure attracted men who had no aptitude for the monastic life. Wearing their distinctive white tunics with a red cross over their chain mail, the Templars soon became an expert military force and a powerful, wealthy order. Their wealth would be their downfall. When the crusading forces were driven from Palestine, the Templars' main activity became banking, and their enormous landholdings and financial strength aroused hostility and envy. In 1307 Philip IV of France, in dire need of funds, charg ed the Templars with heresy and immorality. They were arrested, put on trial and confessions were extracted by torture. When the Templars' Grand Master and other leaders of the order retracted their forced c

In October 1972 a plane carrying an amateur team of rugby players from Montevideo to Santiago crashed in the Andes. Ten weeks later only sixteen of the forty-five passengers and crew were found alive. This is the story of their ten week ordeal, clinging to life without food. Rather than die of starvation, the survivors made the difficult decision to use the bodies of their dead companions for food. After 60 days and with no rescue in sight, two of the hardiest were selected to find a way out. They reached help ten days later. Source: jacket copy and introduction

This is the story of a Czech writer who defects to the West and gets involved in an affair with the lady who has taken him under her wing. Piers Paul Reed also wrote "The Professor's Daughter" and "Upstart".

For over a decade they captured the world's imagination. Now, for the first time, history's most audacious hoods tell what really happened and reveal the most riveting aspect of their crime: the sinister worldwide network of fugitives that financed the heist.

On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the forty-five original passengers and crew, only sixteen made it off the mountain alive. For ten excruciating weeks they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, they were forced to do what would have once been unthinkable ... This is their story -- one of the most astonishing true adventures of the twentieth century.

John Strickland is a middle-aged barrister with a wife, Clare, and two children. Staying with his parents-in-law at their house in Norfolk, he reads Leo Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Illych, and this precipitates a mid-life crisis. What has happened to his youthful ideals to do good in the world? What has happened that has made his marriage go stale? It is the period of strikes, political crisis and the `three-day week’: Strickland determines to stand as a Labour MP. His ambition is mocked by his wife and, blaming her for his life’s stagnation, he starts an affair with another woman.

Set between 1931 and 1945, this novel follows the life and loves of the aristocratic Bertrand de Roujay. In this story Bertrand flees to Britain from occupied France where he joins the Free French under De Gaulle. Life in occupied France is illustrated through his career, relationships and family.

Life for the aristocracy was difficult, thier land was falling into the hands ofthe aristocracy.The Kornowski family have to make there ends meat...

A Patriot in Berlin is the dramatic story of Berlin after the fall of the Wall, and Moscow after Gorbachev - of love, faith and patriotism in conflict. Berlin, August 1991. An emigre Russian couple are found murdered. American art historian Francesca McDermott is recruited to organise a major retrospective of 20th century Russian painting. In Moscow, the search begins for a rogue former KGB agent, Andrei Orlov, who disappeared without a trace. Three seemingly unconnected events..