Showing results by publisher "HarperCollins Publishers Limited" in Historical Fiction

A dark power known as the Talisman has risen in the land. Born of ignorance and persecution, it is led by a man known only as the One-Eyed Preacher. A superstitious patriarchy, cruel and terrifying, the Talisman suppresses knowledge and subjugates women. And it is growing. But there are those who seek to stop the oppressive spread of the Talisman.

A tense and brilliantly dramatic short story from the best-selling author of The Throne of the Caesars Series. This thrilling short story opens at the end of Blood & Steel and is the perfect trailer for Harry Sidebottom's new novel, Fire & Sword. AD 238. When Gordian the Younger is brutally cut down at the battle of Carthage, his ally, Phillyrio, and a centurion from his army must make for the hills of Northern Africa to escape Maximinus' army.

David Swain is two years into his life sentence for murdering the lover of his ex-girlfriend, Katya Osman. In the dead of night, he escapes from prison. Hours later, Katya is found murdered in her uncle's home, Blackwater Hall. Having first brought Swain to justice two years earlier, Inspector Trave of the Oxford police heads the manhunt. Once Swain is recaptured and put on trial for his life, a guilty verdict seems guaranteed.

As the freedom of the Jazz Age transforms New York City, the iridescent Mrs Theresa Marshall of Fifth Avenue - a beautiful socialite of a certain age - has done the unthinkable: she's fallen in love with her young lover, Captain Octavian Rofrano, a handsome aviator and hero of the Great War. But though times are changing, divorce for a woman of Theresa's wealth and social standing is out of the question.

The number one New York Times best-selling author returns with a compelling story of love and family from the present day to Second World War France. An accomplished photographer, widow and mother, Camille Palmer is content with the blessings she's enjoyed. When her ageing father asks her to go with him to his native France, she has no idea that she's embarking on an adventure that will utterly transform her.

Set in the 12th century, during the reign of Richard the Lionheart, Ivanhoe tells of the love of Wilfred of Ivanhoe for the Lady Rowena, his father Cedric's ward. Cedric, who is dedicated to the liberation of the Saxon people from Norman oppression and to the revival of the Saxon royal line, intends Rowena, a descendant of King Alfred, for the oafish Athelstane, and he banishes his son. Ivanhoe joins King Richard on his crusade in the Holy Land, and eventually the two men return secretly to England.

In the 17th century, a wall is built around the deer park of a great house. Wychwood is a world in itself, its ornamental lakes and majestic avenues planned by Mr Norris, a master of the new art of landscaping. A world where, after decades of civil war, everyone has something to hide or something to fear, where dissidents hide in the forest and Londoners fleeing the plague are at the gate.

In war time, the rules of love change…1854. Britain is fighting a gruesome war. There has been no news of Lucy Gray since she eloped with handsome and impetuous Captain Charlie Harvington and embarked with him to the Crimea. Dorothea Gray will risk anything to heal the rift with her little sister and bring her home safe. She determines to join Florence Nightingale and the other courageous women travelling to the battlefield hospitals as nurses.

Mark Sanderson does for the 30s what Jake Arnott did for 60s London – vividly revealing its hidden underworld in this follow up to Snow Hill. On a sweltering day in July 1937, reporter John Steadman is in London’s St Paul’s Cathedral waiting for his girlfriend … But romance is pushed aside when he witnesses a man falling to his death from the Whispering Gallery, killing a priest in the process. Did he jump or was he pushed?

A collection of short stories celebrating Charlotte Brontë, published in the year of her bicentenary and stemming from the now immortal words from her great work Jane Eyre. The 21 stories in Reader, I Married Him - one of the most celebrated lines in fiction - are inspired by Jane Eyre and shaped by its perennially fascinating themes of love, compromise and self-determination.

To battle the cruel and controlling patriarchal force named the Talisman, members of a resistance group, the Companions of Hira, risked their lives to procure the Bloodprint....

Sunday Times best-selling author Freda Lightfoot is back with a heartwarming story of life after the war. The war is over, and Evie Talbert eagerly awaits the return of her three children from their evacuated homes. But her carefree daughters and son are barely recognisable - their education has been disrupted, the siblings have been split up, and the effect on them has been life-changing. Evie's husband also has problems. Having returned from being in action, he suffers nightmares and fits of rage.

For a dashing duke and the proprietress of a secret, sensual club, passion could lead to love. Thomas Powell, the new Duke of Northfield, knows he should be proper and principled, like his father. No more duelling, or carousing, or frequenting masked balls. But he’s not ready to give up his freedom just yet. Lucia - known as Amina - manages the Orchid Club, a secret society where fantasies become reality. Yet no member of the club has ever intrigued her...until him, the masked stranger whose heated looks sear her skin.

From the best-selling author of The Weird Sisters comes an enchanting tale of self-discovery that will strike a chord with anyone who has ever felt they've lost their way. Chicago, 1999. Madeleine is trapped - by her family's expectations, by her controlling husband - in an unhappy marriage and a life she never wanted. But when she finds a diary detailing her grandmother Margie's trip to Jazz Age Paris, she meets a woman she never knew: a dreamer who defied her strict family and spent a summer living on her own.

In the small town of Amagansett, perched on Long Island's windswept coast, generations have followed the same calling as their forefathers, fishing the dangerous Atlantic waters. Little has changed in the three centuries since white settlers drove the Montaukett Indians from the land. But for Conrad Labarde, a second-generation Basque immigrant recently returned from the Second World War, and his fellow fisherman Rollo Kemp, this stability is shattered when a beautiful New York socialite turns up dead in their nets.

Hidden in a soldier's tin box are a painting, a pocket watch, and a dance card - keepsakes of three lives. It is 1914. George Farrell cycles through the tranquil Cumberland fells to deliver a letter, unaware that it will change his life. George has fallen for the rich and beautiful daughter at the Manor House, Miss Violet, but when she lets slip the contents of the letter George is heartbroken to find that she is already promised to another man. George escapes his heartbreak by joining the patriotic rush to war, but his past is not so easily avoided.

Former MP Francis Morahan swore never to return to politics. But when he’s asked to chair a government inquiry into the intelligence agencies’ record against terror, it’s clear that it’s an order from the top - not a request. Sara Shah once teetered on the edge of a dangerous circle. Now a lawyer in a prestigious London firm, she’s put her past behind her. Until a letter delivered by hand summons her to join the Morahan Inquiry. Duty-bound, Sara accepts.

Kit Parry is reluctant to take the job shoring up the ancient quarries beneath her hometown of Bath - a place as riddled with memories she'd rather forget as it is with Roman ruins. The miners certainly don't want her there, and her burgeoning romance with lanky foreman Gary looks likely to complicate matters even further. But when dark developments threaten the spa town's placid façade, Kit must face up to the past she's tried so desperately to bury.

The fourth in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins involves a tragic accident during a shooting party. As the story switches between Paris and Hampshire, the possibility of it not being an accident seems to grow more likely. The Detective Story Club, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts.

London, 1938. With a world war on the horizon, a shocking crime begins to unfold - and one reporter knows too much to be allowed to survive. An absorbing and gripping mystery from the critically acclaimed author of Snow Hill. November, 1938. Europe is teetering on the edge of war…Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Britain, and a serial killer is at work in London.