Books with author Harland

Following a devastating attack by the Agroaki Battle Fleet, planet Earth finally agrees to ally itself with the Intergalactic Union and becomes designation Sol.Terra.Pia, a Terran girl, desperate to get off-world, bargains her way onto a Union bounty hunter’s ship to get a ride across the galaxy.Cal, the ship’s pilot, from the planet Lomara, isn’t so keen on rounding up illegal immigrants, as he is on trying to uncover the biological link that connects more than half the Union’s registered species, including humans.Together the pair discover that the secrets of life in the universe go far deeper than either could have imagined.Sol.Terra - The Leap is made up of twelve sequential episodes. These episodes each detail a story or adventure of the two main characters, Cal and Pia, which, when combined, make up a complete novel. The Leap is the complete collection of the first twelve episodes.

Numerous successful reprints of contemporary works on rigging and seamanship indicate the breadth of interest in the lost art of handling square-rigged ships. Model makers, marine painters, and enthusiasts need to know not only how the ships were rigged but how much sail was set in each condition of wind and sea, how the various maneuvers were carried out, and the intricacies of operations like reefing sails or 'catting' an anchor.John Harland has provided what is undeniably the most thorough book on handling square-rigged ships. Because of his facility in a remarkable range of languages, Harland has been able to study virtually every manual published over the past four centuries on the subject. As a result, he is able to present for the first time a proper historical development of seamanship among the major navies of the world.

One of the redeeming features of the small shabby town was that its citizens stood loyally together. It was no surprise therefore to find a group of retired men met regularly each Saturday morning at the little coffee shop.This morning a tall skinny man was holding forth on the virtues of taking a walking holiday. The others scoffed and jeered in good humoured, ribald jesting as he continued to push his point of view. At last he stopped talking and the conversation returned to hip replacements, prostate cancer diagnosis and the selection of the current All Black team.Mike leaned over to the tall skinny man. "If you want to do it, do it now while you can," he confided in a direct tone.The next time they met they sat in almost the same chairs. The tall skinny man looked across to where Mike had sat last time. The chair was empty. Of course the chair was empty - they had all attended his funeral that past week. His last words remained in the skinny man's memory as he looked at the empty chair. The tall skinny man drained his coffee cup, excused himself from the gathering and left the cafe. At home he began to research the walk he planned - the Via Francigena. With excitement he discovered the first part of the walk travelled along the front line of the First World War.In 1916 his grandfather's brother had been killed at Longueval. His grandfather had named his son after his brother. His son had been killed at Malta in the Second World War. As he reflected on the cost of the loss of these two eldest sons to their families, he resolved to make his pilgrimage.The year was 2016. He would walk this journey and he would walk it alone.

Excerpt:It was a Saturday evening in November, the air thick with darkness and a drizzling rain, the streets black and shining where lamplight fell upon the mud on the paths and the pools in the roadway, when I found my way to King's Cross on this small errand of kindness. King's Cross is a most unlovely purlieu at its best, which must be in the first dawn of a summer day, when the innocence of morning smiles along its squalid streets, and the people of the place, who cannot be so wretched as they look, are shut within their poor and furtive homes. On a foul November night nothing can be more miserable, more melancholy. One or two great thoroughfares were crowded with foot-passengers who bustled here and there about their Saturday marketings, under the light that flared from the shops and the stalls that lined the roadway. Spreading on every hand from these thoroughfares, with their noisy trafficking so dreadfully eager and small, was a maze of streets built to be "respectable" but now run down into the forlorn poverty which is all for concealment without any rational hope of success. It was to one of these that I was directed—a narrow silent little street of three-storey houses, with two families at least in every one of them.Arrived at No. 17, I was admitted by a child after long delay, and by her conducted to a room at the top of the house. No voice responded to the knock at the room door, and none to the announcement of the visitor's name; but before I entered I was aware of a sound which, though it was only what may be heard in the grill-room of any coffee-house at luncheon time, made me feel very guilty and ashamed. For the last ten minutes I had been gradually sinking under the fear of intrusion—of intrusion upon grief, and not less upon the wretched little secrets of poverty which pride is so fain to conceal; and now these splutterings of a frying-pan foundered me quite. What worse intrusion could there be than to come prying in upon the cooking of some poor little meal?

"The Signorino will take coffee?" old Marietta asked, as she set the fruit before him. Peter deliberated for a moment; then burned his ships. "Yes," he answered. "But in the garden, perhaps?" the little brown old woman suggested, with a persuasive flourish. "No," he corrected her, gently smiling, and shaking his head, "not perhaps—certainly." Her small, sharp old black Italian eyes twinkled, responsive. "The Signorino will find a rustic table, under the big willow-tree, at the water's edge," she informed him, with a good deal of gesture. "Shall I serve it there?" "Where you will. I leave myself entirely in your hands," he said. So he sat by the rustic table, on a rustic bench, under the willow, sipped his coffee, smoked his cigarette, and gazed in contemplation at the view. Of its kind, it was rather a striking view. In the immediate foreground—at his feet, indeed—there was the river, the narrow Aco, peacock-green, a dark file of poplars on either bank, rushing pell-mell away from the quiet waters of the lake. Then, just across the river, at his left, stretched the smooth lawns of the park of Ventirose, with glimpses of the many-pinnacled castle through the trees; and, beyond, undulating country, flourishing, friendly, a perspective of vineyards, cornfields, groves, and gardens, pointed by numberless white villas. At his right loomed the gaunt mass of the Gnisi, with its black forests, its bare crags, its foaming ascade, and the crenelated range of the Cornobastone; and finally, climax and cynosure, at the valley's end, Monte Sfiorito, its three snow-covered summits almost insubstantial-seeming, floating forms of luminous pink vapour, in the evening sunshine, against the intense blue of the sky. A familiar verse had come into Peter's mind, and kept running there obstinately. "Really," he said to himself, "feature for feature, down to the very 'cataract leaping in glory,' the scene might have been got up, apres coup, to illustrate it." And he began to repeat the beautiful hackneyed words, under his breath.... But about midway of the third line he was interrupted.