Trapped in an unhappy aristocratic marriage, Elinor Coombes sees only lonely days ahead of her. So a present from her father — tickets for the maiden voyage of a huge, luxurious new ship called the Titanic – offers a welcome escape from the cold, controlling atmosphere of her husband’s ancestral home, and some precious time […]
In search of a Holocaust survivor’s past
2025 marks 80 years since the liberation of the Third Reich’s camps. This significant anniversary will likely be the last in which survivors are still alive to tell their stories. When writer Kate Thompson went to visit 95-year-old Renee Salt in her London home she had no idea of the journey of discovery it would […]
The hidden stories of the First World War
When Lucy Steeds was researching her debut novel, The Artist, she realised that writing about art in the 1920s was impossible without an understanding of how the First World War had left its mark — physical or mental — on everyone who lived through it. One powerful source was nurses’ testimonies. Here she writes about […]
The Bratinsky Affair by Jim Loughran
Wicklow, 1976, and the dramatic death of Countess Irina Bratinsky, a well-connected dealer in Fabergé jewellery, becomes international news. But why are the Irish, French and Russian police so interested in her death? For journalist Tom O’Brien it’s an opportunity to advance his career as he exposes the countess’s secret life of espionage and crime. […]
Murder of an Oxford Scientist by Fiona Veitch Smith
Oxford, 1925, and intrepid reporter Poppy Denby is heading to Oxford, where a young female scientist, Dr June Leighton, has been found dead. Though June’s death is ruled an accident by the authorities, one of her colleagues, Sophie Blackburn, an old associate of Poppy’s, is convinced June was murdered for threatening to expose a male colleague for plagiarism. […]
The Dressmakers of London by Julia Kelly
Isabelle Shelton has always found comfort in the predictable world of her mother’s dressmaking shop, Mrs Shelton’s Fashions, while her sister Sylvia turned her back on the family years ago to marry a wealthy doctor whom Izzie detests. When their mother dies unexpectedly, the sisters are stunned to find they’ve jointly inherited the family business. […]
A Mother’s Promise by Kate Thompson and Renee Salt
From invasion to liberation, September 1939 to April 1945, as Renee was marched from ghetto to camp, there was one constant. One hand that clutched hers – her mother’s. Every day for nearly six years, mother and daughter were bound together in hell. From Auschwitz-Birkenau to Bergen-Belsen, they were a powerful source of solace and […]
The Artist by Lucy Steeds
Provence in 1920. Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle’s artistic genius possible. Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he’ll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe. But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of […]