Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Historical Fiction

Eva Kershaw thought she would never marry and is happy living a quiet life with her dear friend Alice. But Alice is ill, and her nephew, Gus, has thrust himself into their household. Alice's dearest wish is that Eva should not make the same mistakes she did, and she alters her will so that Eva and Gus are strongly compelled to marry. Eva obliges to fulfil her dead friend's wishes. But Gus is not all he seems to be: he is not Alice's kind nephew but a robber, a confidence trickster, and not even Gus Blake. And Eva is in terrible danger....

Marcus Didius Alexander Postumus is a special boy. He is 12 or perhaps 11. He has two mothers and various possible fathers, so he worries who will take care of him. He is self-confident yet vulnerable, intelligent yet sinister. He knows not many people like him. When his birth mother, Thalia the snake-dancer, takes him to live with her troupe of exotic performers, Postumus sees it as useful experience even though it involves him mucking out menagerie cages. No one anticipates how much havoc he will wreak.

From the author of Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year The House Between Tides comes a sweeping and atmospheric story of family ties, interwoven mysteries, love and redemption, set between Scotland and Newfoundland.

At 18, Cathie longs for more than life as a settler in the Australian bush. So when her uncle offers her the chance to send her to England, she grabs the opportunity with both hands and runs away from her family. But little does she know that he is using her to get revenge on his sister, Liza. Attacked at the docks in Liverpool, Cathie takes refuge with the man who saved her, a man who has his own troubles. But as she slowly regains her memory and meets her Lancashire relatives, she must confront the legacy of her mother's past.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. His third appearance is a story of murder in a most respectable seaside resort. 'No sign of foul play,' says Dr Carr after the post-mortem on Agatha Dawson. The case is closed. But Lord Peter Wimsey is not satisfied . . .With no clues to work on, he begins his own investigation.

In the late August of AD 79, the inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum are going about their normal business in the late summer heat. Two of them have a room share arrangement: Nonius, scrounger, thief and failed pimp works by night and sleeps by day; Larius, the fresco painter with dreams of artistic greatness, does the opposite. When just after midday the summit of Vesuvius disappears in a vast volcanic ash cloud, their lives will change forever.

Victory is in sight for Kivilaz and his Batavi army. The Roman army clings desperately to its remaining fortresses along the Rhine, its legions riven by dissent and mutiny, and once-loyal allies of Rome are beginning to imagine the unimaginable: freedom from the rulers who have dominated them since the time of Caesar. The four centurions - two Batavi and two Roman, men who were once comrades in arms - must find their destiny in a maze of loyalties and threats, as the blood tide of war ebbs and flows across Germania and Gaul.

A political rally ends in tragedy when Persis kills a lone gunman as he attempts to assassinate India's divisive Home Minister, a man calling for war with neighbouring Pakistan. With the Malabar House team tasked to hunt down his co-conspirators, Persis is given a second case when the burned body of an unidentified white man is found on a Bombay beach. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, lies in a hospital fighting for his life, as all around him the country tears itself apart as a prelude to war...

A new civil war has begun: with the emperor Pertinax's murder Marcus and his protector Scaurus have escaped Rome, seeking sanctuary for their familia in the East. But they are soon pressed back into service by Septimius Severus, the ruthless commander who has seized the imperial capital and who holds the military balance of power over his two rivals. Niger, the would-be emperor in the East is on the march with six legions, and Scaurus's legion is ordered to Thrace as a sacrificial advance guard, tasked with delaying them. Whatever the cost.

Autumn, 1728. Life is good for Thomas Hawkins and Kitty Sparks. The Cocked Pistol, Kitty's wickedly disreputable bookshop, is a roaring success. Tom's celebrity as 'Half-Hanged Hawkins', the man who survived the gallows, is also proving useful. Their happiness proves short-lived. When Tom is set upon by a street gang, he discovers there's a price on his head. Who on earth could want him dead - and why?

Falco: the new generation - Introducing Flavia Albia.Flavia Albia is the adopted daughter of a famous investigating family. In defiance of tradition, she lives alone on the colourful Aventine Hill, and battles out a solo career in a male-dominated world. As a woman and an outsider, Albia has special insight into the best, and worst, of life in ancient Rome.A female client dies in mysterious circumstances. Albia investigates and discovers there have been many other strange deaths all over the city, yet she is warned off by the authorities.

1948, Berlin. World War II has ended and there is supposed to be peace; but Russian troops have closed all access to the city. Roads, railway lines and waterways are blocked and two million people are trapped, relying on airlifts of food, water and medicine to survive. The sharp eyes of the Russian state police watch everything. Anna and Ingrid are both searching for answers - and revenge - in the messy aftermath of war. Both are living in the shadows of a city where the line between right and wrong has become dangerously blurred. But they cannot give up in the search for a lost child.

It's 1848, and preparations are underway for Annie Gibson's wedding to Bilsden's wealthy millowner, Frederick Hallam. But not everyone is as pleased as they are. Frederick's daughter, Beatrice, is horrified at the prospect of a new attractive stepmother arriving at the house on Ridge Hill. Even Annie's own family feels threatened. The only person who seems pleased is Tom, Annie's brother. Soon, however, real troubles begin to pile up for the Gibsons.

Flavia Albia's day-old marriage is in trouble - her new husband may be permanently disabled, and they have no funds. So when Palace officials ask her to help expose a plotter in their midst, she is obliged to accept their commission. The plot could not be bigger. Ever since he died in AD 68, apparently by his own hand, Rome has been haunted by reports that Emperor Nero is in fact very much alive and about to return to claim his throne.

From the creator of Falco comes Falco: The New Generation, featuring her unforgettable heroine, Flavia Albia, in her third novel. In the blazing July heat of imperial Rome, Flavia Albia inspects a decomposing corpse. It has been discovered in lots to be auctioned by her family business, so she's determined to identify the dead man and learn how he met his gruesome end. The investigation will give her a chance to work with the magistrate, Manlius Faustus, the friend she sadly knows to be the last chaste man in Rome.

It is AD 81. The Roman emperor Domitian seizes power. Afflicted by classic paranoia, the self-styled Master and God sees enemies everywhere - and he is right. The Senate loathes him, his advisers are terrified, he cannot trust his wife, and barbarians menace the frontiers. As he vents his suspicions, no one is safe.

1809. After his heroic actions during the retreat to Corunna, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd is the toast of London society. Here he falls in with the legendary frigate captain Lord Thomas Cochrane. So begins a relationship, professional and personal, that will be unlike any that Kydd has known: a relationship that will lead him, almost simultaneously, to first glory, then ruin.

Little Billy, Polly's son, is the light of her life. It's for his sake that she puts up with an unkind mother-in-law and life on an isolated farm. When Billy is knocked down by a car, his father is killed attempting to save his life, and Polly, cast off by her husband's family, is left with a child who may never walk or talk again. Polly turns to her own family for support, but they are unable to outmanoeuvre the malicious Dr Browning-Baker, who is determined to have Billy taken away from his mother, depriving him of the exercises and stimulation that are his only hope.

The pioneer of romantic suspense, Mary Stewart leads her listeners on an unforgettable ride across the Isle of Skye in this tale perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and Barbara Pym. Following a heartbreaking divorce, Gianetta retreats to the Isle of Skye hoping to find tranquillity in the island's savage beauty. But shortly before her arrival a girl's body is found on the craggy slopes of the looming Blue Mountain, and with the murderer still on the loose, there's nothing to stop him from setting his sights on Gianetta next....

A provocative thriller posing a dangerous question: what if federal income tax is illegal? The 16th Amendment to the Constitution legalized federal income tax, but what if there were problems with the 1913 ratification of that amendment? Problems that call into question decades of tax collecting and could even bring down the US economy?