Discover your new favourite fantasy series . . . _______________ The city of Darien lies at the heart of a dying empire. Twelve families spoil for a throne soon to be made vacant - by murder or civil war. Into this fevered, hungry city come six strangers: An orphan and an old swordsman. A hunter and a pitiless killer. A young thief and a cynical chancer. As the sun sinks the city will know no slumber. For long dormant passions have awoken. Fortunes will be won and lost. Lives will be staked and claimed. And a story long waiting to be told will catch fire in the telling . . . _______________ What readers think . . . 'One of the best fantasy novels I've read' ***** 'I'm a huge fan of Iggulden, but this takes it to another level' ***** 'A must-read and a very welcome addition to the genre' ***** 'Enough machinations, conspiracies and controversies to rival Game of Thrones' ***** 'If you love David Gemmel, you will love this' ***** _______________ Darien is the first book in the Empire of Salt, THE epic fantasy series of spellbinding imagination . . .

The book explores both the need and the possibilities for conservation of the river and the surrounding forests and wetlands.

The Company of Scotland and its attempts to establish the colony of Caledonia on the inhospitable isthmus of Panama in the late seventeenth century is one of the most tragic moments of Scottish history. Devised by William Paterson, the stratagem was to create a major trading station between Europe and the East. It could have been a triumph, but inadequate preparation and organization ensured it was a catastrophe - of the 3000 settlers who set sail in 1688 and 1699, only a handful returned, the rest having succumbed to disease, and the enormous financial loss was a key factor in ensuring union with England in 1707. Based on archive research in the UK and Panama, as well as extensive travelling in Darien itself, John McKendrick explores this fascinating and seminal moment in Scottish history and uncovers fascinating new information from New World archives about the role of the English and Spanish, and about the identities of the settlers themselves.

The Darien Gap is the ultimate off-road challenge; a two-hundred-mile section of jungle separating Colombia, South America from Panama, Central America.Ride along with Mike Arnold as he shares his five-month experience via a daily journal and pictures as he travels with the group known as the Expedicion de las Americas. His off-road adventure team not only conquered the Darien Gap, they took it further and traveled from the tip of South America to the tip of North America following the Pan-American Highway.

Darien is a creative ten-year-old girl who wishes to escape her dull and predictable life. She loves to read, draw, and daydream, despite her parents' efforts to teach her to be practical. But when a stormy day brings Darien together with her peculiar neighbor, strange things begin to happen. Miss Mildred-or Miss Mildew, as she is called behind her back-lives across the street from Darien. Old-fashioned and stern, Miss Mildred agrees to babysit Darien for the day and shares her secret box of mysterious paints. Using the power of her imagination and her painting skills, Darien creates a doorway to another world; a world full of turmoil and unrest. She unexpectedly finds herself in the other world, caught up in a quest to find justice for dragons and humans alike. Come along with Darien on a magical adventure as she encounters bizarre creatures, confronts a bad-tempered dragon, flees from a wicked king, attempts a daring rescue, and tries to find the courage to believe in something real-herself.

The word Darien is a scar on the memory of the Scots, and the hurt is still felt even where the cause of the wound is dimly understood. Three hundred years ago the Parliament of Scotland, in one of its last acts before the nation lost its political identity, defied the King and the persistent hostility of the English to establish a noble trading company, to settle a colony, and to recover its people from a century of despair, privation, famine and decay.The site of the colony, Darien on the Isthmus of Panama, was the enduring dream of William Paterson, the erratically brilliant Scot who had helped to found the Bank of England. He called it 'the door of the seas, and the key of the universe', and believed that it would become a bridge between East and West, an entrepot through which would pass the richest trade in the world.The first attempt to make the Company a joint Scots and English venture was crushed by the English Parliament. The Scots created it by themselves, in a wave of almost hysterical enthusiasm, subscribing half of the nation's capital. Three years later the 'noble undertaking', crippled by the quarrelsome stupidity of its leaders, deliberately obstructed by the English Government, and opposed in arms by Spain, had ended in stunning disaster. Nine fine ships owned by the Company had been sunk, burnt or abandoned. Over two thousand men, women and children who went to the fever-ridden colony never returned. It was a tragic curtain to the last act of Scotland's independence.John Prebble's book is the first detailed account of the Darien Settlement, drawn from original sources in the records of the Company, the journals, letters and memoirs of those who tried to turn William Paterson's dream into reality.

If you ever plan to travel between North America and South America, you must consider that there is no road. Ten hours southeast of the Panama Canal, the Pan-American Highway penetrates the jungle, shrivels into a footpath and dies. The highway resurrects in Colombia, another continent. But the land between the two countries is a vast and primitive realm. On a map the two ends of the highway appear as two slivers of life, separated by the unknown. Filling this void is a rugged wilderness known as the Darien Rainforest. Because the Darien hinders all contact by land between North America and South America, it has earned the name "the Darien Gap." Yet most travelers never encounter the Darien Gap. When they go to South America they fly or perhaps take a boat. I decided to cross the Darien overland, traversing from Panama to Colombia by foot and riverboat.