A Quiver Full of Arrows

Front Cover
Macmillan, Aug 30, 2005 - Fiction - 288 pages
THE MOST ORDINARY LIVES...
In the auction room at Sotheby's a bidder unlocks the astonishing secrets carved in the ivory of an ancient Chinese statue. A young couple well-versed in the romance of literature resists the cliché of "love at first sight" only to find an unanticipated bond that follows them through life and death. A lavish New York party reacquaints a successful novelist with an enthusiastic female fan and a forgotten, long-ago rendezvous. A stunning beauty fulfills the disparate fantasies of two different men and satisfies an unexpected need of her own...

CAN YIELD THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY SURPRISES...
In this expert collection, "master entertainer" (Time) and bestselling author Jeffrey Archer takes the reader from the backrooms of a curious little shop in Ha Li Chuan to the lavish hotel suites of Manhattan to the ravaged landscape of Budapest to explore the chance encounters and turns of fate that become us all. Here are stories of kind strangers and old friends, of grandiose success and devastating loss, of honor betrayed and redeemed, and of love lost and found-each punctuated with a twist as sharp, as true, and as unexpected as life itself.

"Somerset Maugham never penned anything so swift or urbanely witty as this."
-Publishers Weekly

"Amusing...poignant."-The New York Times

"Exciting...Archer offers versatility, laughter, inventive plotting and a gift for characterization."-Baltimore Sun
 

Selected pages

Contents

The Chinese Statue
1
The Luncheon
21
The Coup
33
Old Love
71
The Perfect Gentleman
107
Broken Routine
125
OneNight Stand
137
Henrys Hiccup
159
A Matter of Principle
187
The Hungarian Professor
213
The First Miracle
229

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About the author (2005)

Jeffrey Archer was educated at Oxford University. He has served five years in Britain's House of Commons and fourteen years in the House of Lords. All of his novels and short story collections--including "And Thereby Hangs a Tale, Kane and Abel, Paths of Glory" and "False Impression"--have been international bestselling books. Archer is married with two sons and lives in London and Cambridge.

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