Showing titles in Historical Fiction

Oxford, 1583. Giordano Bruno, a radical thinker fleeing the Inquisition, is sent undercover to Oxford to expose a Catholic conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth. But he has his own secret mission at the University, which must remain hidden at all costs. When a series of hideous murders are committed, Bruno is compelled to investigate. What he finds makes it brutally clear that the Tudor throne itself is at stake....

Winter 1924. When Lady Eleanor Swift unexpectedly finds herself a guest of the reclusive Duke of Auldwyke, she’s determined to enjoy Christmas with all the trimmings at his sprawling manor house. And that includes kisses under the mistletoe and cozying up by the fire with her fiancé, dashing detective Hugh Seldon. Instead, the season of goodwill turns frosty as she finds the Duke’s studious secretary, Mr Porritt, dead in the storeroom. Clasped in his chilly hand is a golden pendant in the shape of a rose.

Had it not been for the scent bottles, it is unlikely that Daniel Shelbourne, Viscount Reculver, and Anna Hawthorne of Hawthorne’s Porcelain would ever have met. Daniel’s late father left him an impoverished estate – which he had expected – and unexplained debts, which he hadn’t. Anna inherited a thriving business, along with the knowledge and passion required to run it.

1979. It is the winter of discontent, and reporter Allie Burns is chasing her first big scoop. There are few women in the newsroom, and she needs something explosive for the boys' club to take her seriously. Soon Allie and fellow journalist Danny Sullivan are exposing the criminal underbelly of respectable Scotland. They risk making powerful enemies - and Allie won't stop there.

Persuasion, Jane Austen's last novel, is a tale of love and marriage told with irony and insight. Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth have met and seperated years before. Their reunion, after the passage or irrecoverable years of their youth, forces a recognition of the false values that drove them apart.

A posthumous recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, Marion Zimmer Bradley reinvented - and rejuvenated - the King Arthur mythos with her extraordinary Mists of Avalon series. In this epic work, Bradley follows the arc of the timeless tale from the perspective of its previously marginalized female characters: Celtic priestess Morgaine, Gwenhwyfar, and High Priestess Viviane.

Lillian is distraught - she must register for compulsory war work. Emily is also furious - her dream job as a chef will have to be put on hold, whilst Alice must abandon her plans of college. Staring at an identical letter, Elsie feels a kindling of hope, and down in London Agnes is packing her bags with a smile. Sharing grief and joy, lost dreams and gained opportunities, the five new bomb girls will find friendship and strength that they never before thought possible.

Duty brought them together. Love made them stay. After tragedy strikes, Fitzwilliam Darcy becomes the caretaker of not just one, but two orphaned children of Charles and Jane Bingley, along with their determined and devoted aunt, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Elizabeth is resolved to protect the babies at any cost—even if it means joining forces with Mr. Darcy, the most disagreeable man of her acquaintance.

The work tells the story of Jane's early life, her experience at Lowood School and as a governess. Her refusal to accept Rochester's love on any but her own strictly moral terms is a passionate cry for independence.

The Greek myths are amongst the greatest stories ever told, passed down through millennia and inspiring writers and artists as varied as Shakespeare, Michelangelo, James Joyce and Walt Disney. They are embedded deeply in the traditions, tales and cultural DNA of the West. You'll fall in love with Zeus, marvel at the birth of Athena, wince at Cronus and Gaia's revenge on Ouranos, weep with King Midas and hunt with the beautiful and ferocious Artemis.

Hugh of Singleton, fourth son of a minor knight, has been educated as a clerk, usually a prelude to taking holy orders. However, feeling no certain calling despite a lively faith, he turns to the profession of surgeon, training in Paris and then hanging out his sign in Oxford. A local lord asks him to track the killer of a young woman whose bones have been found in the castle cesspit. She is identified as the impetuous missing daughter of a local blacksmith, and her young man, whom she had provoked very publicly, is in due course arrested and sentenced at the Oxford assizes.

Gower Street, London, 1882: Sidney Grice, London's most famous personal detective, is expecting a visitor. He drains his fifth pot of morning tea, and glances outside, where a young, plain woman picks her way between the piles of horse-dung towards his front door. Sidney Grice shudders. For heaven's sake - she is wearing brown shoes. The Mangle Street Murders is for those who like their crime original, atmospheric, and very, very funny.

His sons were ripped from his arms and he was sold into slavery… Now he has a terrible choice. Cadwal, a widowed Celtic warrior is a dedicated father raising his children in his mountain stronghold. In these uncertain times, the tribe must be vigilant, as caught between the expanding Roman empire and power-hungry neighbours, treachery is rife.

Europe stares into the abyss. Plague and famine stalk the land, monsters lurk in every shadow and greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions. Only one thing is certain: the elves will come again, and they will eat everyone. Sometimes, only the darkest paths lead towards the light. Paths on which the righteous will not dare to tread. And so, buried beneath the sacred splendour of the Celestial Palace, is the secret Chapel of the Holy Expediency.

1348. The Black Death enters England through the port of Melcombe; the people of the county start to die in the thousands. In the demesne of Develish, Lady Anne takes control of her people's future, chooses a bastard slave, Thaddeus Thurkell, to act as her steward, and together they decide to quarantine Develish by bringing the serfs inside the walls. With this sudden overturning of the accepted social order, where serfs exist only to serve their lords, conflicts soon arise....

Alice Lee, middle-aged and unmarried, is the only volunteer when the minister asks his congregation to help young Zebediah Bailey. Zeb is in prison for a ghastly crime, and the townspeople would rather forget than forgive this local lad who lost his way. But Alice dutifully writes to him every week, sending him sweets from the little shop that is her livelihood: Alice Lee's Confectionary. She won't admit she's lonely, but since her parents' deaths, making and selling sweets has become her whole world.

Dalinar Kholin has challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions, and the Knights Radiant and the nations of Roshar have a mere ten days to prepare for the worst. The fate of the entire world - and the Cosmere at large - hangs in the balance.

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army.

In the heyday of the British Raj, 11-year-old Anahita, from a noble but impoverished family, forms a lifelong friendship with the headstrong Princess Indira, the privileged daughter of rich Indian royalty. Becoming the princess's official companion, Anahita accompanies her friend to England just before the outbreak of the Great War. There, she meets the young Donald Astbury - reluctant heir to the magnificent, remote Astbury Estate - and his scheming mother.

France, July 1944: In the Pas de Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British special operations executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London her husband, Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, sets off on a perilous hunt through France in search of his wife. With the help of the Resistance, he finds Nathalie, but then the bitterness of war and its insatiable appetite for revenge catch up with them in a dramatic fashion.