Showing results by author "Paul Collins" in All Categories

The tenth century dawned in violence and disorder. Charlemagne’s empire was in ruins, most of Spain had been claimed by Moorish invaders, and even the papacy in Rome was embroiled in petty, provincial conflicts. To many historians, it was a prime example of the ignorance and uncertainty of the Dark Ages. Yet according to historian Paul Collins, the story of the tenth century is the story of our culture’s birth, of the emergence of our civilization into the light of day.

Tehran was well known to American businessman Jack Devlin until the day everything changed. When radical Islamic students stormed the US embassy on November 4, 1979, Jack narrowly escaped the revolutionary chaos, leaving behind 80 percent of his business and 100 percent of his heart. To get his beautiful girlfriend, Farideh, out of Iran, Jack accepts a devil’s bargain with the CIA and MI6. He must slip back into Tehran, where the militant students are holding dozens of Americans hostage in their own embassy. 

On November 23, 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city's richest men vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston's West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor - some leads put Parkman at sea or in Manhattan - but a Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never even left the Medical School building. His shocking discovery engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials.

In 1799, the papacy was at rock bottom: The Papal States had been swept away, and Rome seized by the revolutionary French armies. With cardinals scattered across Europe and the next papal election uncertain, even if Catholicism survived, it seemed the papacy was finished. In this gripping narrative of religious and political history, Paul Collins tells the improbable success story of the last 220 years of the papacy, from the unexalted death of Pope Pius VI in 1799 to the celebrity of Pope Francis today.

A view into the tumultuous and creative life of Edgar Allan Poe. Today the name Edgar Allan Poe invokes a tragic genius whose mastery of horror seems inexorably tied to his tormented life. But in his own time, Poe was above all a craftsman-an editor and reviewer desperately trying to earn a living by transmuting the wild ephemera of early Victorianism into innovations in science fiction, horror, and detective literature.

In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic, its uncertain future contested by the two major political parties of the day: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached - with Manhattan likely to be the swing district on which the presidency would hinge - their animosity reached a fever pitch.

Rad de La'rel is a street urchin who yearns to be a guide to adventurers in the rift caves of Quentaris. But before he can claim his birthright, he must escape the Thieves' Guild and the notorious Vindon Nibhelline with the help of his friend Tulcia. Only then will he be proclaimed the greatest guide since his ancestor, the legendary Nathine de La'rel.

Yukin and his mate, Yulen, flee their campsite when Akcarum slave-traders attack. Unable to escape the Akcarum hunter birds, they are caught and transported to Quentaris. On their journey through the rift caves, Yukin discovers a power that taps into the senses of insects and animals. But can it save them in time?

When 15-year-old Jack Sligo runs away from his loving Boston-Irish family, he hopes to get a summer job on a cruise ship. His dream becomes a nightmare when two strangers give him mysterious drinks in a waterfront saloon. Jack wakes up, far at sea, shanghaied aboard an African freighter. The ship’s first call is a remote jungle port in Venezuela where there’s plenty of thieves, rum and women, but no opportunity for escape. 

In Long Island, a farmer found a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discovered a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumbled upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime were turning up all over New York, but the police were baffled: There were no witnesses, no motives, no suspects. The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives headlong into the era's most perplexing murder.

When Paul Collins’s son Morgan was two years old, he could read, spell, and perform multiplication tables in his head … but not answer to his own name. A casual conversation—or any social interaction that the rest of us take for granted—will, for Morgan, always be a cryptogram that must be painstakingly decoded. He lives in a world of his own: an autistic world. In Not Even Wrong, Paul Collins melds a memoir of his son’s autism with a journey into this realm of permanent outsiders. 

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Here are thirteen unforgettable portraits of forgotten people: men and women who might have claimed their share of renown but who, whether from ill timing, skullduggery, monomania, the tinge of madness, or plain bad luck—or some combination of them all—leapt straight from life into thankless obscurity. Among their number are scientists, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and adventurers, from across the centuries and around the world. They hold in common the silenced aftermath of failure, the name that rings no bells.

Roddy Collins is a football man—now in the sixth decade of a career as a player (at 16 clubs), manager (12 clubs) and commentator. And he is a funny man: an unequalled raconteur with a sharp eye for the absurdities of the professional game and spectacular recall. He has made friends wherever he has gone, along with some high-quality enemies. When John Delaney said he could get Roddy a job if he'd just stop criticising him, Roddy replied that he'd 'rather dig holes in the road'.

One book above all others has transfixed connoisseurs for four centuries—a book sold for shillings in the streets of London, whisked to Manhattan for millions, and stored deep within the vaults of Tokyo. The book: William Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623. Paul Collins, lover of odd books and author of the national bestseller Sixpence House, takes up the strange quest for this white whale of precious books. 

A typical book about an American founding father doesn’t start at a gay piano bar and end in a sewage ditch. But then, Tom Paine isn’t your typical founding father. A firebrand rebel and a radical on the run, Paine alone claims a key role in the development of three modern democracies. In death, his story turns truly bizarre. Shunned as an infidel by every church, he had to be interred in an open field on a New York farm. Ten years later, a former enemy converting to Paine’s cause dug up the bones and carried them back to Britain.

Join me on the rollercoaster of challenges and successes as told by my guests on the sunny Gold Coast. Their challenges range from mild to truly unthinkable, but their mindset, strength, and ultimate successes, leave me, and I hope you, in awe.