Kate Furnivall - Under a Blood Red Sky

Under a Blood Red Sky — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Under a Blood Red Sky" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...110

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Joanne Dickinson and all at Little, Brown for their wonderful enthusiasm and beautiful artwork. I am particularly grateful to Emma Stonex for casting her eagle eye over the manuscript with such expertise.

Special thanks to my agent Teresa Chris for wisely curbing my excesses and for her invaluable insight into the heart of the book.

Thanks also to Alla Sashniluc, not only for providing me with the Russian language but also with a greater understanding of the Russian way of life in a Urals village, and for correcting my blunders.

Finally my love and thanks to Norman for his constant encouragement and advice. It means everything to me.

Kate Furnivall was born in Wales and now lives by the sea, with her husband, in the beautiful county of Devon. She has worked in publishing and television advertising. Kates love for all things Russian stems from her family history in pre-Revolution St Petersburg. Her previous book, the bestselling The Russian Concubine, is also published by Sphere.

Visit the authors website at www.katefurnivall.com

Look out for the sequel to Kate Furnivalls breathtakingThe Russian Concubine, out in autumn 2009.

China, 1933. For years Lydia Ivanova believed her father
was killed by the Bolsheviks. But when she learns he is
captive in Stalin-controlled Russia, the fiery-haired girl is
willing to leave everything behind - even her
Chinese lover, Chang An Lo.

Journeying with her half-brother Alexei, Lydia begins a
dangerous search. Tension grows between the two, for while
Alexei is searching for his past, Lydia is looking for her
future. Will that future include Chang An Lo? And will her
father want this intrusion from the past? But when Alexei
disappears, Lydia is left almost penniless in Soviet Russia
and doubting the choices she has made. Surrounded by
dangers, she searches for information and soon finds
herself entangled with a Russian officer.

But Chang An Lo has not forgotten Lydia. He knows things
about her father that she does not. And while he races to
protect her, she is prepared to risk treacherous
consequences to discover the truth...

978-1-84744-170-6

THE RUSSIAN CONCUBINE

Kate Furnivall

Wonderful, a gripping love story... A hugely ambitious and atmospheric epic novel Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth

1928. Exiled from Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, the beautiful and fiery Lydia and her aristocratic mother, Valentina, have taken refuge in Junchow, China. With destitution looming, Lydia realises that she must use her wits to survive and resorts to stealing.

When a valuable ruby necklace goes missing, Chang An Lo, a handsome Chinese youth who is under threat from troops hunting down Communists, saves her from certain death.

Thrust into clashes with the savage triads of Junchow and the strictures of the white colonial settlement, Lydia and Chang fall in love and are swept up in a fierce fight against prejudice and shame. Forced to face opium-running, betrayal and kidnap, their compelling attraction to each other is tested to the limits.

The Russian Concubine is an epic novel of love and loss, secrets and lies, danger and terror.

978-0-7515-4042-0

Davinsky Labour Camp, Siberia February 1933

The Zone. Thats what the compound was called.

A double barrier of dense barbed wire encircled it, backed by a high fence and watchtowers that never slept. In Sofia Morozovas mind it merged with all the other hated lice-ridden camps shed been in. Transit camps were the worst. They ate up your soul, then spat you out into cattle trucks to move you on to the next one. Etap, it was called, this shifting of prisoners from one camp to another until no friends, no possessions and no self remained. You became nothing. Thats what they wanted.

Work is an Act of Honour, Courage and Heroism. Those words were emblazoned in iron letters a metre high over the gates of Davinsky prison labour camp. Every time Sofia was marched in and out to work in the depths of the taiga forest she read Stalins words above her head. Twice a day for the ten years that were her sentence. That would add up to over seven thousand times - that is, if she lived that long, which was unlikely. Would she come to believe that hard labour was an Act of Heroism after reading those words seven thousand times? Would she care any more whether she believed it or not?

As she trudged out into the snow in the five oclock darkness of an Arctic morning with six hundred other prisoners, two abreast in a long silent shuffling crocodile, she spat as she passed under Stalins words. The spittle froze before it hit the ground.

Theres going to be a white-out, Sofia said.

She had an uncanny knack for smelling out the weather half a day before it arrived. It wasnt something shed been aware of in the days when she lived near Petrograd, but there the skies were nowhere near as high, nor so alarmingly empty. Out here, where the forests swallowed you whole, it came easily to her. She turned to the young woman sitting at her side.

Go on, Anna, youd better go over and tell the guards to get the ropes out.

A good excuse for me to warm my hands on their fire, anyway. Anna smiled. She was a fragile figure, always quick to find a smile, but the shadows under her blue eyes had grown so dark they looked bruised, as though shed been in a fight.

Sofia was more worried about her friend than she was willing to admit, even to herself. Just watching Anna stamping her feet to keep the blood flowing made her anxious.

Make sure the brainless bastards take note of it, grimaced Nina, a wide-hipped Ukrainian who knew how to swing a sledgehammer better than any of them. I dont want our brigade to lose any of you in the white-out. We need every single pair of hands if were ever going to get this blasted road built.

When visibility dropped to absolute zero in blizzard conditions, the prisoners were roped together on the long trek back to camp. Not to stop them escaping, but to prevent them blundering out of line and freezing to death in the snow.

Fuck the ropes, snorted Tasha, the woman on the other side of Sofia. Tasha tucked her greasy dark hair back under her headscarf. She had small narrow features and a prim mouth that was surprisingly adept at swearing. If theyve got any bloody sense, well finish early today and get back to the stinking huts ahead of it.

That would be better for you, Anna, Sofia nodded. A shorter day. You could rest.

Dont worry about me.

But I do worry.

No, Im doing well today. Ill soon be catching up with your work rate, Nina. Youd better watch out.

Anna gave a mischievous smile to the three other women and they laughed outright, but Sofia noticed that her friend didnt miss the quick glance that passed between them. Anna struggled against another spasm of coughing and sipped her midday chai to soothe her raw throat. Not that the drink deserved to be called tea. It was a bitter brew made from pine needles and moss that was said to fight scurvy. Whether that was true or just a rumour spread around to make them drink the brown muck was uncertain, but it fooled the stomach into thinking it was being fed and that was all they cared about.

The four women were seated on a felled pine tree, huddled together for warmth, kicking bald patches in the snow with their lapti, boots shaped from soft birch bark. They were making the most of their half-hour midday break from perpetual labour. Sofia tipped her head back to ease the ache in her shoulders and stared up at the blank white sky - today lying like a lid over them, shutting them in, pressing them down, stealing their freedom away. She felt a familiar ball of anger burn in her chest. This was no life. Not even fit for an animal. But anger was not the answer, because all it did was drain the few pathetic scraps of energy she possessed from her veins. She knew that. Shed struggled to rid herself of it but it wouldnt go away. It trailed in her footsteps like a sick dog.

Next page

1234567...110

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Under a Blood Red Sky»

Look at similar books to Under a Blood Red Sky. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Fran Furnivall

Shack-Ups!

Kate Aitken

Kate Aitkens Cook Book

Martin Springett

Kate and Pippin: An Unlikely Friendship

Kate Biberdorf

Kate the chemist : the big book of experiments

Kate Freuler

Of Blood and Bones: Working with Shadow Magick & the Dark Moon

Dana Stabenow

Blood Will Tell

Kate Carlisle

Homicide in Hardcover

Ilona Andrews

Magic Bleeds (Kate Daniels, Book 4)

Kate Furnivall

The Girl from Junchow The Concubines Secret

Kate Furnivall

The Russian Concubine

Kate Furnivall

The Jewel of St. Petersburg

Kate Furnivall

The Concubines Secret

Discussion, reviews of the book Under a Blood Red Sky and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.