Showing results by publisher "Oakhill Publishing" in Historical Fiction

London, 1956. A generation of British Spies are haunted by the ghost of friends turned traitors. Henry Bone, a Mandarin spymaster, is convinced that a man code-named Butterfly is an aristocratic pervert whose political tastes are as ugly as his sexual preferences. Worst of all, Butterfly has the ability to identify each traitor!

The wedding of Thomas, an idealistic German architect, and Irene, an English artist, brings together the Curtius and Benson families. But their peace is soon shattered by the outbreak of war in Europe. While Irene struggles to survive in a country where she is the enemy, her sister, Sophia, faces the war as a nurse on the Western Front. For their brother, Mark, diplomatic service sees him moving between London, Washington and Copenahagen, all the while struggling to confront his own identity.

Autumn, 1210: A year ago, King John was excommunicated - and now his men have come to take over Hawkenlye Abbey. Abbess Caliste, Helewise’s successor, worries how she is to feed the nuns under her care, let alone conduct her good works. Meanwhile, Helewise has moved into Hawkenlye Manor with Josse, and their lives are full of family and warmth. But after a visit to St Edmund’s Chapel, Helewise’s 11-year-old granddaughter, Rosamund, goes missing - and soon all that they hold dear is threatened....

Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, has lived through Henry II’s reign and has witnessed the terrifying civil war between Henry II’s mother, the Empress Matilda, and her cousin, Stephen; a time so traumatic that it becomes known as the Anarchy. The greatest letter writer of the 12th Century, Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, gives an intimate account of one of England’s most troubled eras. Central to his account is the life of a knight he first met over 50 years earlier, Harold of Hereford.

It's 1952. More than a decade since humiliation at Dunkirk brought an end to Britain's war and the beginning of an uneasy peace with Hitler.

In Africa, the swastika flies from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. The brutal presence of the SS is visible everywhere. Now, however, the demonic plans of Walter Hochburg - architect of Nazi Africa - threaten Britain's ailing colonies.

In England, ex-mercenary Burton Cole is offered one last contract. He jumps at the chance to settle an old score with Hochburg.

Summer 1914: Europe is on the brink. As Britain’s enemies grow stronger, the Comptroller- General must confront the man with whom he has struggled for a generation - a man he knows only as the Spider. In a desperate gamble, he sends four agents out across the continent, on a mission they do not understand ... The future of British intelligence - of the British Empire.

July 1942, and 23-year-old nightclub singer Kate Watson has made a home for herself in bomb-blitzed London. A motley crew of friends has replaced the family she's not spoken to in years. Until Kate's sister Sarah walks back into her life, asking her to return home to Dorset for one month to look after her daughter, Lizzie. Reluctantly Kate agrees, though it means facing the troubled past she hoped she'd escaped.

Courtney Stone - sassy, smart and suddenly single - has always felt she might have been better suited to life in Jane Austen’s England. Then one evening, having drifted off to sleep after self-medicating with pizza, Absolut, and Elizabeth and Darcy, Courtney wakes up in 19th-century England, in the body and bed of a girl called Jane Mansfield.... A laugh-out-loud romp with a Regency heart, this delightful debut is a truly modern comedy of manners.

The Chasebridge Killer is out, racial tension is rising and the mutilated body of a young Muslim man is found in the stairwell of a tower block in Doncaster. As he gets drawn into the case, Sean Denton's family life and his police job become dangerously entwined. Meanwhile a young woman is trying to piece her life back together, but someone is out there - someone who will never let her forget what she's done.

Spring 1941: After 10 years spying for the Americans, Wolfgang Stahl disappears during a Berlin air raid. The Germans think he's dead. The British know he's not. But where is he? MI6 convince US Intelligence that Stahl will head for London, and so Captain Cal Cormack, a shy American 'aristocrat', is teamed with Chief Inspector Stilton, fat, 50, and convivial, and between them they scour London.

Turner Raines is Mr Heartbreak. Everybody leaves him. They walk out, they run away...they die. When his oldest friend, Mel Kissing, dies with an ice pick through his skull, Raines picks up the thread and sets out to ask 'who?' and 'why?' But this is America in 1969, and one death is just a drop in the ocean. The Vietnam War is ripping the country to pieces, the Woodstock Festival is in full swing and Norman Mailer is standing as candidate for mayor of New York.

Northumberland, winter 1937. In a remote moorland cottage, Steven Coulter, a young history teacher, is filled with grief at the death of his wife. Through a charismatic colleague, Frank Embleton, and Frank's sister, Diana, he is drawn into the beguiling world of a group of musicians and falls under their spell. But as war approaches a decision is made which calls all their lives shockingly into question.

It’s the summer of 1984, and there is a sense of unease on the troubled Sweetmeadows estate. The residents are in shock after the suspicious death of a baby. Journalist Clare Jackson follows the story as police bungle the inquiry and struggle to contain the escalating violence. Haunted by a personal trauma, Clare is shadowed by nine-year-old Amy, a bright but neglected little girl who seems to know more about the incident than she's letting on.

The setting is 1950s London, at the height of the Cold War. Kit Fournier is ostensibly a senior diplomat at the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, but is actually CIA bureau chief in London. The Arms Race informs much of the action in this fast-paced story which sees Kit go undercover to meet a dissident KGB agent, lose a loved one, have a crisis of soul and get blackmailed into becoming a double agent for M16....

England, 1087. On her sister’s wedding day, Lassair meets an attractive and enigmatic stranger who brings a breath of the fascinating outside world to her backwater Fenland village. When he asks Lassair to use her unique talents to help locate a mysterious treasure, she accepts despite the dangers. But this is no ordinary treasure hunt; the object of the perilous search is 500 years old and has a terrifying power of its own….

The Western Front is a wasteland of barbed wire, shell craters and mud-filled trenches. Winston Churchill, searching for a solution to the stalemate, commits the Allies to a disastrous Gallipoli campaign. As men on both sides die in droves, miners and mill-workers work tirelessly for the war effort while families confront the broken bodies of returning soldiers. Nurses, soldiers, politicians, factory-workers and children - all are torn apart by war, and for husbands and sons, mothers and wives, the old way of life is vanishing.

A hundred years ago, the true story of the brutal murder of Miss Jean Milne in a small seaside town captured the imagination of the whole country. A wealthy spinster who lived alone in a crumbling mansion, Miss Milne appeared to be the very model of respectability. But behind the facade, Miss Milne was living a secret life. Why was this quiet spinster tied up in her own home, tortured and brutally murdered?

Agatha Christie, in London to visit her agent, boards a train preoccupied with the knowledge that her husband Archie is having an affair. She feels a touch on her back, loses her balance but is pulled to safety from the rush of the incoming train. So begins a sequence of terrifying events. Her rescuer is no guardian angel but a blackmailer, and Agatha must use every ounce of her cleverness to thwart an adversary determined to exploit her genius for murder to kill on his behalf.

Bath, 1761. Lizzie Yeo has had a hard life but fortunately secures a position as wet nurse for the young son of vicar Jonathan Harding. When the boy starts school, Harding finds her a job with local apothecary Mr. Leslie, delivering the curing waters of Bath to invalids. But when a body shows up in the river and her friend Nancy disappears, Lizzie is determined to find answers.

Kate Lawrence can sense the shadow of violent death. In her struggle to cope with her unwelcome gift, she has frozen people out of her life. Her marriage is on the rocks, her career in chaos. So she decides to start again, joining her cousin Sylvia and partner Michael in their mission to restore Llys y Garn, an old mansion in deepest Pembrokeshire. The house and grounds are full of mysteries that only she can sense, but she is determined to face them - so determined that she fails to notice that ancient energies are not the only shadows threatening Llys y Garn....