From the ‘Dark Ages’ to a Dark Frontier: Matthew Harffy, author of the Bernicia Chronicles, explains why he’s written a Western — and how it’s not such a big leap after all. I have wanted to write a Western for as long as I can remember. I always enjoyed Western movies and fell in love […]
How Mary Wortley Montagu and other great 18th-century women were forgotten
Diminished, disparaged, derided. That’s how Sean Lusk describes the fate of Mary Wortley Montagu and other great women of the 18th century. He looks at how they came to be forgotten. I had not intended to write a novel about Mary Wortley Montagu. Her Turkish Embassy Letters were the inspiration for the character of Aunt […]
The Cursed Shore by JD Davies
Philippe Kermorvant, unfairly dismissed from the French Revolutionary Navy, accepts command of a privateer from its enigmatic owner. Having ignored his early misgivings, he finds the mission quickly takes a dark turn, endangering the lives of everyone on board. Meanwhile, the British prepare for an assault on the French mainland. Lord Wilden, Philippe’s cousin, is […]
Desert War by Griff Hosker
Jack Roberts is back from the Sudan and, with a crippling wound, no longer an active soldier. When he is sent to Iran to help find oil for British battleships, he has to leave home once more. This time he leaves a son who is about to embark on a military career, too. The Roberts […]
A Divine Fury by DV Bishop
Florence. Autumn, 1539. Where Cesare Aldo was once an officer for the city’s most feared criminal court. Following a period of exile, he is back – but demoted to night patrol, when only the drunk and the dangerous roam the streets. Chasing a suspect in the rain, Aldo discovers a horrifying scene beneath Michelangelo’s statue […]
The Bedlam Cadaver by Robert J Lloyd
It’s 1681, and London cooks in summer heat. Bonfires are lit in protest against the King’s brother, James, heir to the throne but openly Catholic. Rumours abound of a ‘Black Box’, said to conceal proof the King’s illegitimate son is really the rightful heir. When a wealthy merchant’s daughter is kidnapped and murdered — even […]
The Stranger’s Companion by Mary Horlock
October 1933, and with a population of five hundred souls, isolated Sark has a reputation for being ‘the island where nothing ever happens’. Until, one day, the neatly folded clothes of an unknown man and woman are discovered abandoned at a coastal beauty spot. As the search for the missing couple catches the attention of […]
Firebrand by Elizabeth Fremantle
Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded… will she survive? My name is Katherine Parr. I’m 31 years old – already twice widowed. I love a man I can’t have. I’m to wed a man no one would want. He has cast aside two wives and watched another die in childbirth. Two more have had their heads […]