Showing results by author "Susanna" in All Categories

Manchester, December 1940: this winter, the girls boarding at Star House - Betty, Sally and Lorna - are determined to keep a stiff upper lip. But for Lorna - who is dedicated to caring for the wounded with the Women's Voluntary Service - the past is about to come calling. Lorna is heartbroken when the devastating Christmas Blitz reunites her with her ex-fiancé George. . .As air raids and rescue missions throw George and Lorna together time and again, it becomes clear that nothing about his visit to Manchester is what it seems.

Autumn, 1707. Old enemies from the Highlands to the Borders are protesting the new Union with England. As the French prepare an invasion to bring the exiled Jacobite king back to Scotland to reclaim his throne, the streets of Edinburgh are filled with discontent. To calm the situation, Queen Anne’s commissioners are settling the losses and wages owed to those Scots involved in the disastrous Darien expedition eight years earlier.

Driven by the fear of encroaching death, an elderly woman describes to a write a long letter to her granddaughter, in the shape of a diary. Part love letter and part confession, it is most importantly a bequest from an old woman at last brave enough to acknowledge that she has too long repressed her feelings and submitted to convention. Reliving everything that has happened to her she seeks to remind her granddaughter that the one worthwhile journey in life to the centre of oneself.

Having just returned from a clandestine excursion to Spain and Portugal on behalf of the queen, Thomas Chaloner finds London dank and grey under leaden skies. He finds many things changed, including the government slapping a tax on printed newspapers. Handwritten news reports escape the duty, and the rivalry between the producers of the two conduits of news is the talk of the coffee houses with the battle to be first with any sort of intelligence escalating into violent rivalry. And it seems that a number of citizens who have eaten cucumbers have come to untimely deaths.

In 1360 Edward III issues a call to arms, as sporadic attacks by the French threaten to turn into a full-blown invasion. In Cambridge, fear of the enemy is magnified by the belief that foreign agents are lurking in the area. Tension runs ever higher as rumours and ignorance fan the flames of suspicion amid preparations for war. And then the first murder occurs - of a French scholar living in the town.

'No one lives for ever. But the truth survives us all.' Kate Murray is deeply troubled. In front of her lies a dead man, a stranger who only minutes before had approached her wanting to tell her about a mystery, a long-forgotten murder. The crime was old, he'd told her, but still deserving of justice. Soon Kate is caught up in a dangerous whirlwind of events that takes her back into her grandmother's mysterious war-time past and across the Atlantic as she tries to retrace the dead man's footsteps.

When 11-year-old Addie goes to stay with a foster family on a remote Exmoor farm in the midst of a very cold winter, she is full of hurt, anger and a deep mistrust of everyone around her. Until one day, when she rescues a tiny wild foal from the moorland snow and Addie discovers that perhaps she’s not so alone after all. And as adventure and unexpected friendship blossom, Addie is determined that both of them will know what is to be home again soon.

London in the spring of 1665 is a city full of fear. There is plague in the stews of St Giles, the Dutch fleet is preparing to invade, and a banking crisis threatens to leave Charles II's government with no means of paying for the nation's defence. Amid the tension, Thomas Chaloner is ordered to investigate the murder of Dick Wheler, one of the few goldsmith-bankers to have survived the losses that have driven others to bankruptcy - or worse.

Cambridge University is in dire financial straits: the town's landlords are demanding an extortionate rent rise for the students' hostels, and the plague years have left the colleges with scant resources. Tension between town and gown is at boiling point and soon explodes into violence and death. Into this maelstrom comes a charismatic physician whose healing methods owe more to magic than medicine, but his success threatens Matthew Bartholomew's professional reputation - and his life....

In the turbulent late seventies, six-year-old Susanna Crossman moved with her mother and siblings from a suburban terrace to a crumbling mansion deep in the English countryside. They would share their new home with over fifty other residents from all over the world, armed with worn paperbacks on ecology, Marx and radical feminism, drawn together by utopian dreams of remaking the world. They did not leave for fifteen years.

Drawing on more than 30 years of therapeutic encounters with people facing hurdles in their love lives, former chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council Susanna Abse takes us deep inside one of the most fascinating realms there is: other people's relationships. From dealing with infidelity to navigating our changing role within a single relationship over the course of a lifetime, Tell Me the Truth About Love sheds vivid light on the human heart and its struggle to both embrace life's greatest gift and protect itself from pain.

With its dark legends and passionate history, the windswept shores of Scotland are an archaeologist's dream. Verity Grey is thrilled by the challenge of uncovering an ancient Roman campsite in a small Scottish village. But as soon as she arrives, she senses danger in the air. Her eccentric boss, Peter Quinnell, has spent his whole life searching for the resting place of the lost Ninth Roman Legion and is convinced he's finally found it....

By January 1666, the plague has almost disappeared from London, leaving its surviving population diminished and in poverty. The resentment against those who had fled to the country turns to outrage as the court and its followers return, their licentiousness undiminished. The death of a well-connected physician, the mysterious sinking of a man-of-war in the Thames and the disappearance of a popular courtier are causing concern to Thomas Chaloner's employer.

Cambridge, 1354. Christmas approaches, and the town is gripped by the worst blizzards in living memory. As the physician Matthew Bartholomew struggles to help the poorer citizens cope with freezing temperatures, his colleagues prepare for the festivities. The weather has trapped many travellers in the town, including Matthew's erstwhile love, Philippa. She and her wealthy husband are invited to Michaelhouse for the main feast, and Matthew is horrified that he does not immediately recognise the overweight, sulky woman who once stole his heart.

It is not long before they learn that the friary in which they are staying is not the safe haven they imagine - one guest has already been murdered. It soon emerges that the dead man was holding the Hugh Chalice, a Lincoln relic with a curiously bloody history. Bartholomew and Michael are soon drawn into a web of murder, lies and suspicion in a city where neither knows who can be trusted.

February 1355: Oxford explodes in one of the most serious riots of its history. Fearing for their lives, the scholars flee, and some choose the University at Cambridge as their temporary refuge. But they don't remain safe for long. Within hours of their arrival, the first of their number dies, followed quickly by a second. When Matthew Bartholomew begins to investigate the deaths, he uncovers evidence that the Oxford riot was not a case of random violence, but part of a carefully orchestrated plot.

1613: King James – sixth of Scotland, first of England, son of Mary, Queen of Scots - has unified both countries under one crown. But the death of his eldest son, Henry, has plunged the nation into mourning, as the rumours rise the prince was poisoned. Andrew Logan’s heard the rumours, but he’s paid them little heed. As one of the King’s Messengers he has enough secrets to guard, including his own. In these perilous times, when the merest suggestion of witchcraft can see someone tortured and hanged, men like Andrew must hide well the fact they were born with the Sight.

When best-selling author Carrie McClelland visits the windswept ruins of Slains Castle, she is enchanted by the stark and beautiful Scottish landscape. The area is strangely familiar to her but she puts aside her faint sense of unease to begin her new novel, using the castle as her setting, and one of her own ancestors, Sophia, as her heroine. Then Carrie realizes her writing is taking on a life of its own and the lines between fact and fiction become increasingly blurred.

When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth. George A. Romero's iconic film and novel terrified generations. Now Dawn of the Dead is back to terrify once more. The world is being devastated by zombies. No one knows how far they have spread, or how to stop them. And as the living fight to save themselves, society collapses. Four people escape the chaos of downtown Philadelphia and find shelter in a shopping mall. As the survivors exhaust their greed and the undead scrape at the doors, the refuge becomes a prison. And soon there will be nowhere left to hide....

Thomas Chaloner, spy for the King's intelligence service, has just returned from thwarting a planned revolt in Dublin, but soon realises that England's capital is no haven of peace. He is ordered to investigate the shooting of a beggar during a royal procession. He soon learns the man is no vagrant, but someone with links to the powerful company of Barber-Surgeons. His master, the earl of Clarendon, is locked in a deadly feud with the earl of Bristol, and an innocent man is about to be hanged in Newgate.