They were granddaughters of Queen Victoria and two of the most beautiful princesses in Europe. Princesses Alix and Ella were destined to wed well and wisely. But while their grandmother wants to join them to the English and German royal families, the sisters fall in love with Russia — and the Romanovs. Defying the Queen’s […]
Blood Roses by Douglas Jackson
Warsaw in September 1939. A city ruled by fear. A population brutalised by restrictions and reprisals. Amid the devastation, another hunter begins to prowl. What are a few more deaths amid scores of daily executions? Former chief investigator Jan Kalisz lives a dangerous double life, forced to work with the occupiers as he gathers information […]
Secrets of Malta by Cecily Blench
Malta, 1943. The war in the air above Malta is over, but the battle for Europe is about to begin. Margarita, a young singer in a Valletta nightclub, has seen her former lover Henry Dunn only once since breaking off their affair. His wife Vera, an enigmatic archaeologist, arrives at the club to tell her […]
The London Bookshop Affair by Louise Fein
London, 1962: The world is teetering on the brink of nuclear war but life must go on. Celia Duchesne longs for a career, but with no means or qualifications, passes her time working at a dusty bookshop. The day a handsome American enters the shop, she thinks she might have found her way out of […]
Queen of Diamonds by Beezy Marsh
London, 1922. Orphan girl Alice dreams there’s more to life than toiling long hours in Pink’s jam factory. Inspired by stories about the legendary Queen of Thieves, Mary Carr, who terrorised the streets of Victorian London, Alice decides to set up her own gang: The Forty Thieves. Sly seamstress Kate Felix from Whitechapel has the […]
Those Absent on the Great Hungarian Plain by Jill Culiner
A Hungarian village on the Great Plain: a microcosm reflecting this country’s history from early tribal invasion to Soviet subordination to European Community membership. Here, peasants, herders, party girls, former Nazis and lapsed communists share gossip as well as love stories; and unscrupulous leaders, totalitarian or freely elected, decide behaviour. Like a fly in amber, […]
Under The Eye by Marilyn Pemberton
Cairo, 1936. Effie, a 10-year-old orphan from London, turns up in a packing case at the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. All her life she has dreamed that her mother is an Egyptian princess, but she is faced with cruelty and crushing disappointment before she finds what she is looking for. Beattie Trevethan is the daughter […]
Sharp Scratch by Martine Bailey
Salford, 1983, and Lorraine Quick is a single mother, a member of a band going nowhere fast, and personnel officer at the grim Memorial Hospital. A new general manager position is being introduced, and Lorraine’s recent training in the cutting-edge science of psychometric testing will be pivotal. As the profiles start to emerge, a chilling […]