Is the historical fiction author a historian or novelist? Julie Owen Moylan considers her own experience of writing a novel based on the known facts about two iconic women in the 1950s. Writing about real people is a challenging enterprise for both novelist and historian. How can we best sum up a life of many […]
Fury of the King by Donovan Cook
Ragnar Lothbrok is dead, and King Horik of the Danes is hunting down those he believes are plotting against him. Ulf Bear-Slayer Bjornson, unaware of Ragnar’s death, prepares to go raiding with the legendary jarl. But when he returns to Jelling, he finds himself caught in a trap and barely escapes. Now hunted by the […]
Treaty of Blood by Michael Jecks
1359, Northern France. With the ink still drying on the Treaty of Bretigny, an agreement most believed to be nothing more than a stalemate between King Edward III of England and John II of France, the country is left riddled with both English and France armies – exhausted, adrift and directionless. An atmosphere ripe for […]
Turning Welsh history into fiction: the Mynydd Epynt clearances
The Mynydd Epynt clearances of 1940, when a Welsh mountain community was evicted to make way for a military training ground, inspired Luisa A Jones’s latest book, Before the Mountain Falls. Here she talks about turning history into fiction: how she researched, what she kept, the historical novelist’s responsibility to the past. In the spring […]
Before the Mountain Falls by Luisa A Jones
In 1939, Norma knows what the world does to women in her position. Pregnant, unmarried… abandoned. And when the man who promised to marry her is arrested for murder, she has only one option left: run. A borrowed wedding ring. A fake name. A one-way ticket to Wales. Mrs Finch never existed before that train […]
The Boleyn Curse by Alexandra Walsh
The court of young King Henry VIII seethes with secrets and scandals, but every ambition has its price. Elizabeth Boleyn, loyal wife to Thomas Boleyn and devoted mother to Anne, Mary and George, believes she can navigate the shifting tides of court life. But when she catches the eye of the lascivious king, Elizabeth is […]
Elizabeth Boleyn, a woman overshadowed by famous relatives
If we remember Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire, it’s as the mother of Anne, Mary and George, and the wife of Thomas. Yet, as Alexandra Walsh discovered, she was a significant woman in her own right — but one who has disappeared under the shadows of her more famous relatives. Here Alexandra aims to put […]
Soldier’s Stand by Griff Hosker
In the blistering heat of the North African desert, the air crackles with tension as the unrelenting Desert Fox, Erwin Rommel, closes in on the beleaguered forces of the Allied troops. Private John ‘Hawkeye’ Sharratt, a battle-sharpened soldier weathered by loss but fuelled by an indomitable spirit, finds himself once again hunkered down with his […]