Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    King Arthur Returns
    King Arthur Returns
    King Arthur Returns
    Ebook88 pages56 minutes

    King Arthur Returns

    By Terence O'Grady

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    To twelve-year old James and his younger sister Susie, World War II seems as if it will never end. But the sleepy little town of St. Bees on England’s western coast seems an unlikely place for the Nazis to attack, so the children, staying with their Aunt Charlotte, seem safe for now.

    Against the wishes of his aunt, James joins with a group of other boys to visit an old abandoned coalmine on the outskirts of the village. They’re looking for adventure and perhaps even a glimpse of King Arthur’s treasure, which local legend claims is somewhere to be found in St. Bees. The fun ends early when Susie shows up to drag James back home to their aunt. But now a real danger presents itself. The children accidentally come across a Nazi raiding party, seeking to destroy an experimental radar station secretly housed in St. Bees. But when things look bleakest, King Arthur and his Knights, fulfilling a vow to return in England's "hour of greatest need," appear to rescue the children.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTerence O'Grady
    Release dateSep 1, 2011
    ISBN9781465824936
    King Arthur Returns
    Author

    Terence O'Grady

    A musicologist by profession, I've written two music-themed mysteries (The Beethoven Quandary and The Mephisto Mysteries) as well as a handful of children’s books in a variety of genres.

    Read more from Terence O'grady

    Related to King Arthur Returns

    Related ebooks

    Children's For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Gem

      Apr 27, 2020

      Gem
      7 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Sep 21, 2022

      Readers’ Letters
      6 min read

    • Article

      All Hail The King

      Jan 12, 2022

      All Hail The King
      5 min read

    • Article

      Non-stop Drama

      Jul 22, 2022

      By DANYA KUKAFKA HarperCollins Ansel Packer sits on death row. In 12 hours he’s scheduled to die by lethal injection. He knows why he is there – years ago he brutally killed three young girls and later his ex-wife. No question about it, he is guilty

      3 min read

    • Article

      Ein Berlin, Remembering The Wall, And My Own Past

      Feb 26, 2018

      THE FIRST TIME I LEFT BERLIN I WAS A VERY SMALL GERMAN person with an American mother, a German father and a very odd accent in English. I sounded like I’d been raised by 19th century nuns, or Jackie Kennedy. (This is what happens when you learn a la

      3 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Jun 18, 2020

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Feb 17, 2020

      It’s been a while since I’ve been completely blown away by a novel. Ocean Vuong’s devastatingly beautiful first offering is the coming-of-age story of Little Dog, a Vietnamese immigrant in the US. Framed as a letter from a writer in his 20s to his il

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Lonely Grave

      May 8, 2018

      Reuben Louis Goldberg—Rube Goldberg as the world knew him—did it all: He was an engineer, cartoonist, sculptor, author, inventor, and—for just a very brief time in 1919—a war correspondent. Born in San Francisco on July 4, 1883, Goldberg as a child w

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Aug 25, 2021

      ✻ How quickly time flies! It is already ten years since the death, on 22nd September 2011, of the much-loved British comic actor Jonathan Cecil (19392011), once described by the Spectator as ‘one of the finest upper-class-twits of his era’. Upper-cla

      4 min read

    • Article

      Cup Of Tea

      Dec 28, 2016

      What inspired you to write a novel set in World War II? I really made this decision before even writing my first novel Gallipoli Street which is set during World War I. It was an early goal of mine to write a trilogy of war stories in order to encaps

      5 min read

    • Article

      Past IMPERFECT

      Oct 2, 2023

      Past IMPERFECT
      10 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & co

      Jun 12, 2020

      By Mike Wood Dunkirk and D-Day are both iconic dates in history. And they’re also the bookend dates in Mike Wood’s new book – A Soldier’s Story – about his father’s war years. One of the last men to be evacuated from the beaches at Dunkirk, and a wit

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Jun 29, 2022

      The Old Un’s Notes
      6 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Feb 1, 2024

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Feb 22, 2023

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Feb 16, 2023

      Letters
      6 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Feb 16, 2023

      Letters
      6 min read

    • Article

      Summer Books Special!

      Dec 28, 2023

      Summer Books Special!
      9 min read

    • Article

      Quotients

      May 7, 2020

      Quotients
      8 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Apr 3, 2024

      Books
      16 min read

    • Article

      Putting On An Act

      Mar 13, 2022

      ‘You should be tryin’ to write some historical stuff,” the marvellous and much-missed John McIntyre of Kilbirnie’s Children’s Bookshop told me a couple of decades ago. When I protested that I knew nothing about 19th-century New Zealand, John grunted

      2 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Jul 16, 2020

      Book Club
      4 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Simpson Learns A Lesson

      Jul 29, 2021

      Mrs Simpson Learns A Lesson
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for King Arthur Returns

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      King Arthur Returns - Terence O'Grady

      King Arthur Returns

      Terence O’Grady

      Copyright 2011 Terence O’Grady

      Cover by Joleene Naylor

      Cover Images by Joleene Naylor and Vectorvault.com

      Smashwords Edition

      Smashword Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

      Table of Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter 1: The War in St. Bees

      Chapter 2: Nothing to Do

      Chapter 3: Looking for Adventure

      Chapter 4: Lieutenant Waterford’s Warning

      Chapter 5: Tragedy

      Chapter 6: The War Comes to St. Bees

      Chapter 7: Patrolling the Cliffs

      Chapter 8: The Legend of King Arthur

      Chapter 9: Jeremy’s Catastrophe

      Chapter 10: U-Boat!

      Chapter 11: On Alert

      Chapter 12: To the Coal Mines

      Chapter 13: Landing!

      Chapter 14: Nazis!

      Chapter 15: Run for Your Lives!

      Chapter 16: The King Returns

      Chapter 17: The Nazis Strike

      Chapter 18: The Day Saved

      Prologue

      While the historical evidence for King Arthur of Camelot is sketchy at best, this has not prevented the Arthurian stories from becoming among the most beloved in all the world. Few legends or stories have equaled them in their ability to inspire nobility and bravery, particularly in situations that seemed all but lost.

      And if one of the most endearing aspects of the Arthur legends is the idea that Arthur and his Knights will rise again to come to England’s aid at its time of greatest need, there is little dispute that England’s greatest need in the 20th century came when, in World War II, Hitler and Nazism threatened to destroy everything that England held dear. This story, then, is yet another evocation of the Arthur legend, this time set in the context of the very real and appalling dangers represented by World War II as England fought for its very existence.

      Chapter 1: The War in St. Bees

      James Waterford shielded his eyes and scanned the horizon. No planes. No RAF fighters of the sort that occasionally flew along the coast to scout for suspicious activity. No German planes. He had never actually seen a German plane, but he and his friends had learned to tell the difference between the British planes—the Royal Air Force—and the German planes in school. Always be alert, he had been told. You never know what you might see. James figured he would never really see a German plane. There would never be any suspicious activity around here. Why would the Germans bother to come around here, to St. Bees, a little village on the western English coast? There was nothing here to bomb. No big army installations. No large airport. Nothing really important at all. No, the Germans would never come to St. Bees. They were after the big cities—London, even Manchester, where he and his sister had been born and where his parents still lived.

      He hated that fact that he and his little sister, Susie, had been sent away from their parents. But they said that both children had to go somewhere where it was safe, just for a while. Many children had been sent from the cities to the countryside since the German Blitz had begun. It just wasn’t safe in the cities any longer, not with the bombs raining down destruction and death on almost a nightly basis. Manchester wasn’t as bad as London, but it was bad enough. And everyone feared it would get worse. So they had to leave Manchester. Almost all the kids did, but that didn’t make it any easier. Their mother had cried when he and his sister had climbed on the bus to take them to St. Bees to stay with his Aunt Charlotte, his father’s older sister. Their father, Lieutenant Waterford, had pretended to be cheerful—too cheerful—and James thought he could see his father’s chin wobble as he and Susie waved from the windows of the bus.

      Twelve-year old James was desperately sick of the war. It was getting harder for him to remember what things had been like before it started. A little over two years ago, according to his aunt. That’s when it started, at least for England. Several countries had already fallen to the Nazis when Hitler turned his eye toward England. And when would it be over? No one would say.

      James usually saw

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1