Showing titles in Historical

2002, Quebec. A former schoolteacher is accused of brutally stabbing her husband—a famous university professor—to death. Detective Maxine Grant, who has recently lost her own husband and is parenting a teenager and a new baby single-handedly, takes on the investigation. Under enormous personal pressure, Maxine makes a series of macabre discoveries that link directly to historical cases involving black magic and murder, secret societies and spiritism...and women at breaking point, who will stop at nothing to protect the ones they love.

In 1066, 16-year-old Saxon Cerdic lives with his elder brother, Unferth, and his father, Rothgar, Earl of Ripon, in Swaledale. As the younger brother, he studies for the priesthood while Unferth trains to take on the mantle of earl one day. When news arrives that the King of Norway, Harald Hardraada, is invading northern England with the treacherous Tostig Godwinson, Earl Rothgar joins the northern nobles to repel them.

As they are preparing to return to Ireland, Fidelma and Brother Eadulf receive a mysterious summons. Eadulf's childhood friend, Brother Botulf, has requested their presence at Aldred's Abbey at midnight on the old pagan feast of Yule. Fidelma and Eadulf battle against the harsh winter storms to arrive in time, only to find they are too late. Botulf is dead - killed by an unknown hand. As they struggle to comprehend this staggering news, it soon becomes clear that the murder of this young monk is not the only trouble facing the abbey.

1945. In the waning months of World War II, Japan hid vast quantities of gold and other stolen valuables in boobytrapped underground caches all across the Philippines. By 1947 some of that loot was recovered, not by treasure hunters, but by the United States government, which told no one about the find. Present day. Retired Justice Department operative, Cotton Malone, is in Switzerland doing a favor for a friend. But what was supposed to be a simple operation turns violen.

Windsor, 1942. War rages through Great Britain. Anna Duckworth, former lover of Prince George, Duke of Kent, is found dead after an enemy bomb blast at her country home. When courtier Guy Harford is called to dispose of incriminating love letters between Anna and the Duke, it becomes clear that there’s more to the story than anyone is prepared to reveal. As the court begins to whisper of a lone gunshot heard in the house that day, another gruesome death befalls the royal circle.

The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America's western territories, even as lawless gold-rush towns begin to mark the landscape. Against this backdrop two palaeontologists pillage the Wild West for dinosaur fossils while deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars. Into this treacherous territory plunges William Johnson, a Yale student with more privilege than sense.

A wicked Scottish winter has just begun when pioneering female physician Sophia Jex-Blake calls on Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton to investigate the suspicious death of one of her patients - a railroad lineman who she believes succumbed to the horrific effects of arsenic poisoning. The most provocative aspect of the case doesn’t escape Hamilton: the married victim’s numerous sexual transgressions. Now, for the first time since the unexplained fire that killed his parents, Hamilton enters the Royal Infirmary to gain the insights of brilliant medical student Arthur Conan Doyle.

He stared at the unfamiliar watch on his wrist. Three hours ago, he had stood on English soil. Three hours ago, he had been Martin Hearne, British Intelligence agent. Now he was in Nazi-occupied Brittany, posing as Bertrand Corlay, with the Frenchman’s life reduced to headings in his memory. Hearne looked down at the faded uniform, which had once been Corlay’s, felt once more for the papers in the inside pocket. He was ready. From now on, he was one step away from death.

It's the summer of 1922, and 19-year-old Paulien Mertens finds herself in Paris - broke, disowned, and completely alone. Everyone in Belgium, including her own family, believes she stole millions in a sophisticated con game perpetrated by her then-fiance, George Everard. To protect herself from the law and the wrath of those who lost everything, she creates a new identity, a Frenchwoman named Vivienne Gregsby, and sets out to recover her father's art collection, prove her innocence - and exact revenge on George.

Tudor England. The word treason is on everyone's lips. Arbella Stuart, niece to Mary, Queen of Scots, and presumed successor to Elizabeth I, has spent her youth behind the towering windows of Hardwick Hall. As presumed successor to the throne, her isolation should mean protection - but those close to the crown are never safe. Aemilia Lanyer, writer and poet, enjoys an independence denied to Arbella. Their paths should never cross. But when Arbella enlists Aemilia's help in a bid for freedom, she risks more than her own future.

London, 1812: Treacherous gangs roam the capital, and not even the Palace of Westminster is safe. When Detective Stephen Lavender is called in to investigate a highway robbery and a cold-blooded murder, both the cases take a dangerous and disturbing personal twist.

It was easy for Elizabeth. She married the man she loved, bore him two children and made a home for him which was the envy of their friends. It was harder for Ruth. She married Elizabeth’s son and then found that, somehow, she could never quite measure up. Isolation, deceit and betrayal fill the gaps between the two individual women and between their different worlds. In this complex thriller, Philippa Gregory deploys all her insight into what women want and what women fear, as Ruth confronts the shifting borders of her own sanity.

1950s Dublin: When a body is found in the canal, pathologist Quirke and his detective friend Inspector Hackett must find the truth behind this brutal murder. But in a world where the police are not trusted and secrets often remain buried there is perhaps little hope of bringing the perpetrator to justice. As spring storms descend on Dublin, Quirke and Hackett's investigation will lead them into the dark heart of the organisation that really runs this troubled city: the church.

It is the year 1715, and Thomas True has arrived on old London Bridge with a dangerous secret. One night, lost amongst the squalor of London's hidden back streets, he finds himself drawn into the outrageous underworld of the molly houses. Meanwhile, carpenter Gabriel Griffin struggles to hide his double life as Lotty, the mollies' silent guard. When the queen of all 'he-harlots', Mother Clap, confides in him about a deadly threat, he realises his friends are facing imminent execution. To the horror of all mollies, there is a rat amongst them.

Christopher Templeton is a lawyer whose conscience troubles him. He knows many of the secrets of The Fellowship, the shadowy group profiting from the civil unrest in the nation, and has intimated to the Company of Rogues that he is willing to share them. The problem is, he has vanished. Jonas Flynt – thief, gambler, killer – still recovering from a duel with death upon the frozen Thames, is tasked with finding him. The trail takes him from the dark slums of London to a quiet village in the north of England, where all is not as it seems.

It is 1347 and the French, after a crushing defeat at Crécy, are licking their wounds while their king raises a new army. Locked into a fruitless siege, the English are camped in the marshes around Calais. Among them is foot soldier and archer Martin Kemp, whose dreams of serving his king and reliving the chivalrous adventures of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table are tempered by the gory and brutal reality of siege warfare. Having narrowly escaped death in a surprise attack from the French, Kemp sees a chance for a reprieve when a shaky truce is signed.

1963. In a desolate Russian penal colony, the radio broadcasts news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin's new posting as director of a gulag camp in the middle of the frozen tundra is far from a promotion. This is where disgraced agents, like Vasin, disappear - sent to die forgotten. And quietly. But tensions in the camp are running high and when a violent revolt breaks out, Vasin finds himself on the run. With him is a mysterious prisoner - who holds the key to the most dangerous secret in the world: who ordered Kennedy's murder.

The shadowy chambers of the Knights Templar hold a devastating secret.... Having barely escaped the crosshairs of a deadly cult, Robin Jessop and David Mallory are determined to unlock the truth behind a conspiracy unresolved for 700 years - the mystery of what gives the enigmatic Templars their unwavering power. Infiltrating the group’s archives, they make a startling discovery. An ancient Templar passport hinting at a sacred mission: the transportation of an artefact of incomprehensible value.

Shardlake returns in this atmospheric BBC Radio 4 full-cast adaptation of the fourth novel in C. J. Sansom's bestselling Tudor crime series.Spring, 1543. London's streets are filled with preachers; strange signs and portents are seen everywhere; and young men, maddened by differing interpretations of the Bible, are drawn into dangerous fundamentalism.

Will Britain take him in... or mark him as its enemy? Faustus Valerianus is the son of a Roman father and a British mother, a captive sold among the spoils after Claudius’ invasion. When both parents die within a month of each other, he sells the family farm and enlists, joining legendary general Agricola’s campaign to conquer the entirety of the British Isles. But Faustus will have to contend with more than ferocious British warriors and whip-cracking elements. For the bonds of blood can weigh heavy on one’s soul. The call of his mother’s true people.