Diana Preston

A rip-roaring swashbuckler about a forgotten 17th century English hero who, starting as a poor, piratical buccaneer, became a famed round-the-world explorer. William Dampier (1651-1715), was an English adventurer and pirate who preyed on ships on the Spanish Main. Poor and ill-educated and determined to make his fortune, he nonetheless had a passion for exploration and scientific research. Dampier was...

From the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning historian, the colourful, dramatic story of Charles Darwin's journey on HMS Beagle that inspired the evolutionary theories in his path-breaking books On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. When twenty-two-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles—invited by ship's captain Robert FitzRoy,...

Meticulously researched and vividly written, Eight Days at Yalta is a remarkable work of intense historical drama. In the last winter of the Second World War, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin arrived in the Crimean resort of Yalta. Over eight days of bargaining, bombast, and intermittent bonhomie, they decided on the conduct of the final stages of...

From the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning historian, the colourful, dramatic story of Charles Darwin's journey on HMS Beagle that inspired the evolutionary theories in his path-breaking books On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. When twenty-two-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles—invited by the ship's captain Robert...