Showing results by publisher "Bloomsbury Publishing Plc" in Historical Fiction

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son, Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles' mother, Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfil his destiny.

What happens when everything you thought you knew about your mother turns out to be an elaborate lie? During the summer of 1976, Ruth Gilmartin discovers that her very English mother, Sally, is really Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigrée and one-time spy.

AD 916. In the Orkney Isles, a young woman flees her home to save the life of her unborn child. Eighteen years later, a witch foretells that evil from her past is reaching out again to threaten her son. Outlawed from his home in Iceland, Einar Unnsson is thrown on the mercy of his Uncle, the infamous Jarl Thorfinn 'Skull Cleaver' of Orkney. He joins forces with a Norse-Irish princess and a company of wolfskin-clad warriors to become a player in a deadly game for control of the Irish sea.

It’s 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, is being transported from the Dutch East Indies to Amsterdam, where he is facing trial and execution for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Travelling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent, while also on board are Sara Wessel, a noble woman with a secret, and her husband, the governor general of Batavia.

Herne - the hunter, mischief-maker, spirit of the forest, leader of the wild hunt - hurtles through the centuries pursued by his creator. A shape-shifter, Herne dons many guises as he slips and ripples through time - at candlelit Twelfth Night revels, at the spectacular burning of the Crystal Palace, at an acid-laced '60s party. Wherever he goes, transgression, debauch and enchantment always follow in his wake. But as the forest is increasingly encroached upon by urban sprawl and gentrification and the world slides into crisis, Herne must find a way to survive.

Everything about life intrigues Alma Whittaker. Her passion for botany leads her far from home, from London to Peru to Tahiti, in pursuit of that rare specimen: knowledge. But as her careful studies draw her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she meets the man who she will come to love - whose perspective, radically different from her own, will transform the way she understands the world.

A masterpiece from the Orange Prize-winning, New York Times number one best-selling author of Commonwealth and Bel Canto: a story of love, family, sacrifice and the power of place. Lose yourself in the story of a lifetime – the unforgettable Sunday Times best seller. A story of two siblings, their childhood home and a past that they can’t let go. Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns.

It’s 1946. The war is over, and Juliet Ashton has writer’s block. But when she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey - a total stranger living halfway across the Channel, who has come across her name written in a second hand book - she enters into a correspondence with him, and in time with all the members of the extraordinary Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Through their letters, the society tell Juliet about life on the island, their love of books - and the long shadow cast by their time living under German occupation.

Orlando King is a trilogy about a beautiful young man, raised in a remote and eccentric wilderness, arriving in 1930s London and setting the world of politics ablaze. In a time of bread riots and hunger marches, with the spectre of fascism casting an ever lengthening shadow over Europe, Orlando glidingly cuts a swathe through the thickets of business, the corridors of politics, the pleasure gardens of the Cliveden set, acquiring wealth, adulation, a beautiful wife and a seat in parliament.

In 1963, in a Siberian gulag, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive. On one ordinary day, Valery’s university mentor steps in and sweeps him from the prison camp to an unnamed town hidden in a forest so damaged it looks like the trees have rusted from within. Here, Valery is Dr. Kolkhanov once more, and he’s expected to serve out his prison term studying the effect of radiation on local animals. As he begins his work, he is struck by the questions his research raises: what, exactly, is being hidden from the thousands who live in the town?

Palestine, 1948. Half a million Palestinians are forced from their homes. A mother clutches her six-month-old son as Israeli soldiers march through the village of Ein Hod. In a split second, her son is snatched from her arms and the fate of the Abulheja family is changed forever. Forced into a refugee camp in Jenin and exiled from the ancient village that is their lifeblood, the family struggles to rebuild their world.

For Thaniel Steepleton, an unexpected posting to Tokyo can’t come at a better moment. The London fog has made him ill and doctor’s orders are to get out. His brief is strange: the staff at the British Legation have been seeing ghosts, and his first task is to find out what’s going on. But staying with his closest friend, Keita Mori, in Yokohama, Thaniel starts to experience ghostly happenings himself. For reasons he won’t say, Mori is frightened. Then he vanishes.

It is the 1960s and Canon Sidney Chambers is enjoying his first year of married life with his German bride Hildegard. But life in Grantchester rarely stays quiet for long. Our favourite clerical detective soon attempts to stop a serial killer who has a grievance against the clergy; investigates the disappearance of a famous painting after a distracting display of nudity by a French girl in an art gallery; uncovers the fact that an ‘accidental’ drowning on a film shoot may not have been so accidental after all; and discovers the reasons behind the theft of a baby from a hospital.

1914. The old standards are going. There is bitterness in politics, talk of civil war in Ireland. But all this means little to Cynthia Weston, attractive wife of cabinet member Aylmer Weston and her nephew by marriage, Philip. They are caught up in the charmed, perilous toils of a mutual passion that will destroy all they hold most dear - while the shadow of war lengthens and darkens, ready to swallow their world whole.

D. H. Lawrence is dying. Exiled in the Mediterranean, he dreams of the past. There are the years early in his marriage during the war where his desperation drives him to commit a terrible betrayal. And there is a woman in an Italian courtyard, her chestnut hair red with summer. Scattered and blown by the winds of history, their stories are bound together and brought before the jury. On both sides of the Atlantic, society is asking and continues to ask: is it obscenity - or is it tenderness?

1963. Saigon. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney working for US Navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. The two women form a wary alliance as they struggle to balance the pressure to be respectable wives for their ambitious husbands, with their own dubious impulses to “do good” for the people of Vietnam. Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam veteran, reaches out to Tricia.

1955. Canon Sidney Chambers, loveable priest and part-time detective, is back. Accompanied by his faithful Labrador, Dickens, and the increasingly exasperated Inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney is called to investigate the unexpected fall of a Cambridge don from the roof of King's College Chapel, a case of arson at a glamour photographer's studio and the poisoning of Zafar Ali, Grantchester's finest spin bowler.

1950s Liverpool. Christmas is one of the most harrowing times of year for the nurses of St Angelus Hospital. The Matron takes on Tilly, a new clerk, to ease the load in the busy festive period. Tilly is bright and hard-working, but she is keeping a secret from her colleagues. Everyday Tilly makes a heartbreaking decision – but she has no other choice. If Matron – with her traditional values and strict discipline – learnt the truth about her new clerk, Tilly's career would be ruined. Could Matron ever forgive the deceit?

When Adelaide Anson-Gravetty finds out her father is not the man who raised her, she is both shocked and intrigued. Determined to find out more about her new family, she travels to the convent of Our Lady of Mercy in France to meet her aunt, the Reverend Mother. But when France falls to the German army, Adelaide and the nuns are soon in the thick of a war that threatens both their beliefs and their lives. Collaborating with the Resistance, sheltering Jewish orphans, defying the rulings of Vichy France: these are dangerous activities in dangerous times.

South Africa, 1901, the height of the second Boer War. Sarah van der Watt and her son are taken from their farm by force to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp where, the English promise, they will be safe. Johannesburg, 2010. Sixteen-year-old outsider Willem just wants to be left alone with his books and his dog. Worried he’s not turning out right, his ma and her boyfriend send him to New Dawn Safari Training Camp. Here they ‘make men out of boys’. Guaranteed.