In the scorched city of Rome, in 1636, the cobbled streets hum with gossip and sin. Costanza Piccolomini is a respectable young wife — until she meets Gianlorenzo Bernini, the famed sculptor and star of Roman society, whose jet-black gaze matches his dark temper. From the second they set eyes upon each other, a fatal […]
A Thief’s Blood by Douglas Skelton
A family is found butchered in a dismal room in the Rookery, London’s poorest district. Not even their small children are left alive. Most of the authorities pay scant attention, except for Thieftaker General Jonathan Wild. Intrigued by this development, Colonel Nathaniel Charters tasks his most trusted operative, Jonas Flynt, with discovering why. When another […]
Queen Catherine’s Court by Sophie Shorland
Catherine of Braganza. Boring? Plain? Ineffectual? Think again. Charles II’s wife was a trouser-wearing tastemaker who introduced tea drinking, popularised card games and championed baroque fashion and art. Her salon culture was infamous for its parties, theatricals and frequent trips to the pub. A Catholic queen in a strictly Anglican country, she was the diplomatic […]
Tiberius by Lindsay Powell
History has not been kind to the memory of Tiberius Caesar (42BC to AD37), second emperor of the Romans. His reputation for capable generalship and sensible civic leadership are marred by reports of cruelty, treason trials and sexual depravity. Some historians have described him as a ‘tyrant’ or even a ‘monster’. But does he deserve […]
Prince Rupert of the Rhine by Mark Turnbull
Prince Rupert of the Rhine was an intrinsic part of the civil wars that devastated the three kingdoms of Stuart Britain. A nephew of King Charles I, Rupert was both the archetypical royalist hero and parliamentarian villain. In his lifetime, he accumulated at least nine derogatory pseudonyms – from ‘Duke of Plunderland’ to ‘The Diabolical […]
Blood on the Sand by Michael Jecks
1346 sees Berenger Fripper and the men of his Vintaine stationed near the ancient port of Calais, a French city under English siege. They are here to capture the city and use it as a staging-post for future incursions into France. But with the French army and Genoese mercenaries all about them, and trouble brewing […]
What We Left Behind by Luisa A Jones
When the war with Nazi Germany sends five displaced children to her door, Dodie Fitznorton knows life in her quiet village will never be the same. Her once orderly home is now strewn with odd socks and abandoned toast crusts, and she gasps when she discovers a flea-infested ginger kitten hidden away upstairs. But the […]
Death of an Officer by Mark Ellis
London in the Spring of 1943. While Europe continues to suffer under the iron fist of Nazi occupation, Britain remains battered but unbowed. DCI Frank Merlin, already contending with a booming wartime crime wave in the capital, is confronted with a baffling case: the brutal murder of a respected doctor. Following a puzzling trail that […]