Anyone can read PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and follow the narrative, but it is so much more enjoyable if you can read it on an expanded level understanding it in social, cultural and historical context. Editor Patricia Meyer Spacks has not only added extensive notes on plot, characters, events, history, culture and critical analysis from a vast array of Austen and literary scholars, but added her own personal insights and observations from years of reading Austen and her experience as a college professor. From shoe roses to Fordyces Sermons to military floggings to the 19th-century meaning of condescension, readers will be informed and enlightened on every aspect related to the novel, the author and her times.

Originally published in 1983, when the novel sold thousands of copies in its first printing, The Helmsman is the starting point for Bill Baldwin's epic, eight-part militaristic space opera - The Helmsman Saga. Using actual histories of World Wars I and II as template, the novel chronicles the adventures of StarSailor and extraordinary Helmsman Wilf Brim during an epoch of discord and outright war among various star-nations within our own galaxy.

This special, "Director's Cut" Edition is heavily re-written, a la George Lucas' rewrite of the Star Wars Trilogy, to bring it more in line with later novels in the series, as well as existing "Director's Cut" Editions of Galactic Convoy, The Trophy; the five other "Director's Cut" editions to come; and the continuation novel now in the works: The Turning Tide.

Publication Date: August 18, 2013
Publishers Weekly Book of the Year!
Shamus Award finalist!

"Island of Bones opens like a hurricane and blows you away through the final page. It's a major league thriller that is hard to stop reading." -- Robert B. Parker