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

Sir Alec Guiness was one of the greatest actors of the twentieth centuries. With a talent recognised by discerning critics from his very first appearance on the stage, he gained a world-wide reputation. After his death in August 2000, his widow Merula asked the author Piers Paul Read, who had been a friend of her husband, to write his biography. Given full co-operation by the Guinness family and free access to Sir Alec's papers, including his private and unpublished diaries, Read has produced the definitive portrait: a highly entertaining and penetrating account of an intriguing and complex man

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.

'This is a superb debut... gritty, disturbing and pacy.' -- Alex LakeThe Art Teacher is for anyone who is living life plan B whilst dreaming of plan A. A gritty, harrowing page-turner. Perfect for fans of Linwood Barclay and Peter James

"Piers Paul Read is one of England's most accomplished novelists, and Scarpia is among his finest novels." --The Wall Street Journal It is the late eighteenth century and Sicilian nobleman Vitellio Scarpia finds himself penniless and in disgrace on the streets of Rome. After leaving his home in pursuit of a military career, his fiery passion has seen him expelled from the Spanish royal guard and left to seek his fortune in Italy; a fortune inseparably bound to the Pope, whose rule is put in question by the French Revolution. Scarpia enrolls in the papal army and is soon taken up by a countess eager to have a handsome young officer at her side. She introduces Scarpia into Roman society, and he is both enthralled and agitated by its mix of religiosity, sophistication, decadence, and intrigue. Then, on a mission to Venice, he meets the gifted, beautiful singer Floria Tosca. And as the armies of revolutionary France advance into Italy, and war and revolution engulf the whole peninsula, these two lives become entwined. Steeped in factual detail and exploring the lives--part historical, part fictional--of figures from Puccini's famous opera Tosca, Scarpia shines a light into dusty corridors of history and dark corners of the human soul.

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.

When his estranged father dies in perplexing circumstances, the discovery of a long-forgotten diary soon plunges a pharmaceutical worker back into the events which lead to his family's collapse.