Endurance Proudfoot, the bonesetter’s daughter: clumsy as a carthorse, with a tactless tongue and a face she’s sure only a mother could love. Durie only wants one thing in life – to follow her father and grandfather into the family business of bonesetting. It’s a physically demanding job, requiring strength, nerves of steel and discretion […]
Hawker and the King’s Jewel by by Ethan Bale
August 1485, the eve of the Battle of Bosworth. King Richard III summons his loyal and grizzled retainer, Sir John Hawker, and charges him with one final mission. After the battle, he must return a priceless ruby – one of the mysterious Tears of Byzantium – to its giver, the Doge of Venice. Richard believes […]
The enduring mystery of the Princes in the Tower
The mystery of the fate of the two Princes in the Tower, Edward V and his brother Richard, Duke of York, has fascinated people for over 500 years. Theories come and go. Possible murderers are put forward and knocked down. Richard III is still the favourite culprit, but there are plenty of other views, as […]
The Spirit Engineer by AJ West
Belfast, 1914. Two years after the sinking of the Titanic, high society has become obsessed with spiritualism, attending séances in the hope they might reach their departed loved ones. William Jackson Crawford is a man of science and a sceptic, but one night with everyone sitting around the circle, voices come to him – seemingly […]
The Jane Seymour Conspiracy by Alexandra Walsh
London, 1527, and 19-year-old Jane Seymour arrives at court to take her place with Queen Katherine of Aragon. Discovering a court already beginning to divide into factions between Katherine and Jane’s second cousin, Anne Boleyn, Jane finds herself caught between the old world and the new. Determined to have a son, the king appears to […]
Review: Acts of Love and War by Maggie Brookes
Judith Allnatt reviews Acts of Love and War by Maggie Brookes, a book set during the Spanish Civil War which “cannot fail to move the reader.” Lucy Nicholson has loved the Murray brothers, Tom and Jamie, ever since they moved next door when she was only six years old. Now in their 20s, with the […]
Two Houses, Two Kingdoms by Catherine Hanley
The 12th and 31th centuries were a time of personal monarchy, when the close friendship or petty feuding between kings and queens could determine the course of history. The Capetians of France and the Angevins of England waged war, made peace, and intermarried. The lands under the control of the English king once reached to […]
Agent in Peril by Alex Gerlis
Hiding in the horror of Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto with his family, scientist Roman Loszynski has a secret: a means of making aerial bombing raids frighteningly accurate. Codenamed Tatra, it could change the course of the war. With British agent Jack Miller now in Switzerland, back in Berlin undercover spy Sophia von Naundorf is determined to […]