Richard Rees

Damaris Moore keeps having a recurring dream of being chased through a dark forest by unseen demons prodding her with pointed sticks as she runs for a large beech tree, seeking the shelter of its overhanging branches that seems to offer her sanctuary. Always at this point, she wakes up. But is it only a dream? Or is it infinitely more frightening: an out-of-body experience in which she is travelling back in time to be someone else, before she was even born? On each succeeding night the dream becomes more and more real. Suddenly, on Thanksgiving Day, she is twice drawn back into it, and realises she is occupying the body of a blood relative she was named after - one of the settlers who arrived from England on board the Mayflower and made their home in the "New World" - who is being chased by the same demons through the same forbidding forest. A young girl in love with the young chief of a neighbouring Native American tribe, except, unlike Damaris, her descendant gives without reserve, even to putting her life at risk for the sake of her lover's...and in so doing reveals to Damaris the meaning of true love. But if her young namesake and her lover escape the dangers facing them, and if Damaris is then returned to her own time, will she still be her old guarded self? Or will the experience be enough to change her when she meets a stranger in similar need?

Richard Machen, a naval officer of American descent serving under Lord Nelson, and heiress Jane Ashford, duel alone in Napoleonic Europe to foil the Illuminati's subversive plot for world power. Passing through London to visit his old home before sailing to Boston, Massachusetts after the defeat of the French at the "Battle of the Nile", Richard is drawn into a fateful chain of events that will affect history, involving Colonel Despard, an Irishman who is masterminding a radical plot to assassinate the King of England and overthrow the government, turning Britain into a republic. But Despard's plot is being manipulated by the Illuminati, a secret society who orchestrated the French Revolution, and are conspiring to regain control of France from the rule of its First Consul, a despotic young General called Napoleon Bonaparte, who is himself planning to invade England in his own desire to conquer all of Europe and then the world. Machen, together with Jane, foil Despard's plan, and he and his secret committee are brought to trial for treason. They are found guilty and due to the non-intervention of Lord Nelson, once a combatant friend of Despard's, are executed and beheaded. But this is not the end of the Illuminati's or Napoleon's greater ambition. It continues, driven on by Conor Macnamara, an Irish revolutionist and a member of the Illuminati, who has sworn to kill Nelson in revenge for the death of his brother, a member of Despard's committee. And Admiral Nelson is the only one standing in the way of France's invasion of England, with a sea battle to be decided between the English and French Fleets in the Bay of Trafalgar off the west coast of Spain. Will Machen and Jane save the day - and also help shape history by discovering the Illuminati's secret code and bringing about their downfall?

Richard and Rachel fell in love as teenagers and married at twenty-one. Both had survived childhoods marred by adversity and early deaths. Richard trained as an accountant, and they had two beautiful children and a lovely home. Then, the ovarian cancer that ran in Rachel's family struck, and she was gone without seeing her children marry or holding her grandchildren. Given the family history, their daughter Carys was advised to have frequent screenings and to marry and have children early, followed by a hysterectomy. Following her marriage and during her pregnancy, she too was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She gave birth to Abigail, but didn't live to see her baby's second birthday. As to little Abigail, it's a story that's all too common: grandparents are usually separated from grandchildren by divorce, but sometimes it's by death and remarriage. And so Richard, husband, father and grandfather, wrote this book so his granddaughter would understand the laughter and joy and closeness of the good times - and he wanted her to know about her real mother and how much she was loved and wanted.

From its prehistory in the biological theories of racial difference formulated in the 1800s to its current position in academic debate, Richard Rees investigates the diverse fields of scholarship from which the multifaceted understanding of the term ethnicity is derived. At the same time, Rees traces the broader historical forces that shaped the needs to which the concept of ethnicity responded and the social purposes to which it was applied. Centrally, he focuses upon the emergence of ethnicity in the early 1940s as a means of resolving contradictions and ambiguities in the racial status of European immigrants and its subsequent legacy and implications on race and caste. Shades of Difference introduces new perspectives on the definition of 'whiteness' in America, and makes an original contribution to the larger discussion of race through a detailed account of ethnicity's original meaning and its revaluation when later appropriated by the discourse of Black Nationalism in the 1960s and 70s. Rees has produced a powerful new analysis of the cultural and political history of ethnicity in America.