Showing results by author "John P. Marquand" in All Categories

A Harvard reunion prompts a Boston Brahmin’s search for meaning in this comedy of manners by the number-one New York Times best-selling author of Point of No Return.

Eager to escape his complicated past, Calvin Gates boards a train bound for Inner Mongolia, where he plans to join an archaeological dig. Also en route to the Gilbreth Expedition is Sylvia Dillaway, a beautiful young artist with a fierce independent streak. The two Americans become unwitting players in a high-stakes game of international intrigue when Sylvia's Australian guide gives her a silver inlaid cigarette case containing a coded message.

Wilson Hitchings is ready to assume his rightful place at Hitchings Brothers, one of the oldest mercantile banks in China. His first task takes him to Hawaii, where he must persuade his cousin Eva to close Hitchings Plantation, a gambling establishment started by her father, the black sheep of the family. The senior members of the bank believe that the casino is tarnishing the venerable Hitchings name. Little do they know how right they are.

Capitalizing on his heroic career as a World War I flying ace, Casey Lee agrees to pilot a plane across the Pacific as a publicity stunt for an American tobacco company. But his future as a goodwill ambassador between East and West takes a nosedive when the flight is abruptly canceled. Stranded in Tokyo, his bank account rapidly dwindling, Casey is approached by Mr. Moto, a secret agent with a job to offer.

When Willis Wayde first lays eyes on the Harcourt mansion near Clyde, Massachusetts, he is fifteen years old. His father is an engineer at Harcourt Mill, and Willis is awestruck by the family's wealth and power. Seeking guidance from Henry Harcourt, Willis meets Bess, the old man's granddaughter. Their friendship eventually blossoms into love as the elder Harcourt takes the young man under his wing, recognizing in Willis a kindred spirit whose instinct for making money matches his own.

Boston, 1806. A decade after abandoning his wife and young son for adventure on the high seas, Captain Shelton has returned home...with a list of French royalist conspirators in his hands and a rather remarkable young lady in his care. He has been commissioned to deliver both the list of names and the lady to safety. A sharp and fiercely intelligent woman, Mademoiselle de Blanzy will do all she can to ensure the captain is true to his word. If he does not deliver the letter, the conspirators may be hunted down themselves or turn on each other.

After serving his country as a paratrooper in World War II, Jack Rhyce takes on an even more dangerous mission when he becomes a secret agent in the early years of the Cold War. Now he and fellow spy Ruth Bogart have been dispatched to Tokyo to foil an assassination attempt on a leading liberal politician. Murder is only the first part of this nefarious Communist plot; the ultimate objective is to stir up anti-American sentiment in a country that has formed close bonds with its former adversary in the West.

November 1940: In Kingston Harbor, ex-navy pilot Bob Bolles lounges aboard his cutter. After months spent drifting from port to port, his only ironclad rule is no alcohol before noon. But when an American businessman named Malcolm Kingman, his gorgeous socialite wife, and their Swedish butler charter the Thistlewood for a trip to the remote Mercator Island, Bob's carefree life takes a dangerous and dramatic turn.

As a young boy, Tom Michael walked with his father, Alfred, along the streets of Michael's Harbor, Massachusetts, and gazed across the water at the stately mansions on Warning Hill. Imagining the lives of the families inside those majestic homes was an enjoyable distraction, a cherished bond between father and son. Years later, after the shocking tragedy of his father's suicide, Tom holds the memory of those walks dear.

Raised in the small town of Clyde, Massachusetts, Charles Gray has worked long and hard to become a vice president at the privately owned Stuyvesant Bank in Manhattan. But at the most crucial moment of his career, when his focus should be on reading his boss's intentions and competing with his chief rival for promotion, Charles finds himself hopelessly distracted by the past.