Blind Descent W. W. Norton and Company It is May 1971 and

It is May 1971 and the Cambridgeshire countryside is bursting into summer

not least the actress Sarah Bernhardt

1786: Captain William Rennie is on the beach and on half pay when he's given a prime commission:HMS Expedient is a 36 gun frigate

Bettina Whitelaw is a grand dame of the English literary scene

What is Topcliffe's interest in a housemaid

Blind Descent W. W. Norton and Company It is May 1971 andLechuguilla Cavern is a man eating cave discovered in New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the mid 1980s. Estimated to extend for more than three hundred miles, only ninety of them mapped, the cave was formed by acid burning away the limestone; corridors, pits, cramped wormholes, cliffs, and splendid rooms the size of football fields tangle together in a maze shrouded in the utter darkness of the underground. When a fellow ranger is injured