Diana Gabaldon: The Fiery Cross, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Description

Crossing the boundaries of genre with its unrivalled storytelling, Diana Gabaldon's new novel is a gift both to her millions of loyal fans and to the lucky readers who have yet to discover her.
In the ten years since her extraordinary debut novel, Outlander , was published, beloved author Diana Gabaldon has entertained scores of readers with her heart-stirring stories and remarkable characters. The four volumes of her bestselling saga, featuring eighteenth-century Scotsman James Fraser and his twentieth-century, time-travelling wife, Claire Randall, boasts nearly 5 million copies in the U. S.
The story of Outlander begins just after the Second World War, when a British field nurse named Claire Randall walks through a cleft stone in the Scottish highlands and is transported back some two hundred years to 1743.
Here, now, is The Fiery Cross , the eagerly awaited fifth volume in this remarkable, award-winning series of historical novels. The year is 1771, and war is approaching. Jamie Fraser's wife has told him so. Little as he wishes to, he must believe it, for hers is a gift of dreadful prophecy - a time-traveller's certain knowledge. To break his oath to the Crown will brand him a traitor; to keep it is certain doom. Jamie Fraser stands in the shadow of the fiery cross - a standard that leads nowhere but to the bloody brink of war.

Review

"Addictive in the extreme." - Toronto Star
"A word-of-mouth cult success and a publishing phenomenon." - Kitchener-Waterloo Record
"Leaving out the history, the time-travel and fantastical subplots, the wit and irony, battles and heroes and villains, what will keep loyal readers and attract new is this fine portrait of two immensely admirable and interesting characters." - London Free Press

Blurb

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The fifth book in Diana Gabaldon's acclaimed Outlander saga, the basis for the Starz original series---season 8 coming in March 2026!

"A grand adventure written on a canvas that probes the heart, weighs the soul and measures the human spirit across [centuries]."---CNN

The year is 1771, and war is coming. Jamie Fraser's wife tells him so. Little as he wishes to, he must believe it, for hers is a gift of dreadful prophecy---a time-traveler's certain knowledge.

Born in the year of Our Lord 1918, Claire Randall served England as a nurse on the battlefields of World War II, and in the aftermath of peace found fresh conflicts when she walked through a cleftstone on the Scottish Highlands and found herself an outlander, an English lady in a place where no lady should be, in a time---1743---when the only English in Scotland were the officers and men of King George's army.

Now wife, mother, and surgeon, Claire is still an outlander, out of place, and out of time, but now, by choice, linked by love to her only anchor---Jamie Fraser. Her unique view of the future has brought him both danger and deliverance in the past; her knowledge of the oncoming revolution is a flickering torch that may light his way through the perilous years ahead---or ignite a conflagration that will leave their lives in ashes.

Excerpt from the book

Happy the Bride the Sun Shines On
Mount Helicon
The Royal Colony of North Carolina
November, 1770
I woke to the patter of rain on canvas, with the feel of my first husband's kiss on my lips. I blinked, disoriented, and by reflex put my fingers to my mouth. To keep the feeling, or to hide it? I wondered, even as I did so.
Jamie stirred and murmured in his sleep next to me, his movement rousing a fresh wave of scent from the cedar branches under our bottom quilt. Perhaps the ghost's passing had disturbed him. I frowned at the empty air outside our lean-to.
Go away, Frank, I thought sternly.
It was still dark outside, but the mist that rose from the damp earth was a pearly gray; dawn wasn't far off. Nothing stirred, inside or out, but I had the distinct sense of an ironic amusement that lay on my skin like the lightest of touches.
Shouldn't I come to see her married?
I couldn't tell whether the words had formed themselves in my thoughts, or whether they - and that kiss - were merely the product of my own subconscious. I had fallen asleep with my mind still busy with wedding preparations; little wonder that I should wake from dreams of weddings. And wedding nights.
I smoothed the rumpled muslin of my shift, uneasily aware that it was rucked up around my waist and that my skin was flushed with more than sleep. I didn't remember anything concrete about the dream that had wakened me; only a confused jumble of image and sensation. I thought perhaps that was a good thing.
I turned over on the rustling branches, nudging close to Jamie. He was warm and smelled pleasantly of woodsmoke and whisky, with a faint tang of sleepy maleness under it, like the deep note of a lingering chord. I stretched myself, very slowly, arching my back so that my pelvis nudged his hip. If he were sound asleep or disinclined, the gesture was slight enough to pass unnoticed; if he were not...
He wasn't. He smiled faintly, eyes still closed, and a big hand ran slowly down my back, settling with a firm grip on my bottom.
"Mmm?" he said. "Hmmmm." He sighed, and relaxed back into sleep, holding on.
I nestled close, reassured. The immediate physicality of Jamie was more than enough to banish the touch of lingering dreams. And Frank - if that was Frank - was right, so far as that went. I was sure that if such a thing were possible, Bree would want both her fathers at her wedding.
I was wide awake now, but much too comfortable to move. It was raining outside; a light rain, but the air was cold and damp enough to make the cozy nest of quilts more inviting than the distant prospect of hot coffee. Particularly since the getting of coffee would involve a trip to the stream for water, making up the campfire - oh, God, the wood would be damp, even if the fire hadn't gone completely out - grinding the coffee in a stone quern and brewing it, while wet leaves blew round my ankles and drips from overhanging tree branches slithered down my neck.
Shivering at the thought, I pulled the top quilt up over my bare shoulder and instead resumed the mental catalogue of preparations with which I had fallen asleep.
Food, drink ... luckily I needn't trouble about that. Jamie's aunt Jocasta would deal with the arrangements; or rather, her black butler, Ulysses, would. Wedding guests - no difficulties there. We were in the middle of the largest Gathering of Scottish Highlanders in the Colonies, and food and drink were being provided. Engraved invitations would not be necessary.
Bree would have a new dress, at least; Jocasta's gift as well. Dark blue wool - silk was both too expensive and too impractical for life in the backwoods. It was a far cry from the white satin and orange blossom I had once envisioned her wearing to be married in - but then, this was scarcely the marriage anyone might have imagined in the 1960s. b

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