Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Literature & Fiction

All Hallows Hall, a rambling Tudor mansion on the edge of the bleak, misty moor is not a place many would choose to live. Yet the former governor of Dartmoor Prison did just that. Now he's dead, and his estranged family is set to inherit his estate. But when the dead man's family comes to stay, the atmosphere of the moors seems to drift into every room. Floorboards creak, secret passageways echo and wind whistles in the house's famous priest hole. And then, on the morning the family decides to leave All Hallows Hall once and for all, their young son, Timmy, goes missing.

After the notorious 'Middle Street Massacre' of 1951, when the majority of Brighton's criminals wiped one another out in a vicious battle as the local police force enjoyed a brief stop en route for an ice cream, Inspector Steine rather enjoys life as a policeman. No criminals, no crime, no stress. He just wishes Sergeant Brunswick would stop insisting that perhaps not every criminal was wiped out that fateful day. So it's really rather annoying when an ambitious - not to mention irritating - new Constable shows up to work and starts investigating a series of burglaries.

When Jess Newman married the love of her life Ben she was sure they had what it took to stay together forever. So when Ben falls out of love with her only to promptly fall in the arms of new girlfriend, Naomi, she really doesn't know how to come to terms with their divorce. Thankfully Jess's granddad, Gabe, has the perfect place for Jess and her eight-year-old daughter Lola to start afresh when he hands them the keys to his holiday home in Cornwall, a beautiful albeit rundown farmhouse.

Have you ever wondered about all the people who lived in your house before you? 25 Library Terrace in Edinburgh is a house where lives are changed.

Dottie and Mary forged a friendship over a bag of penny sweets when they were eight years old. They've shared everything together since then. Now, at seventeen, they're both shopgirls working at Woolworths. As they go out in the world in pursuit of love and happiness and life becomes more complicated, the simplicity of their childhood dissolves. The heady excitement of first love will consume them both, but the pain of unintentional betrayal will test their friendship.

1958: In a small town like Athenry, people talk. Everyone’s noticed that the injury which stopped Annie Fagan’s father from working doesn’t prevent him from hitting his wife. But a man’s home is his castle, and no one is going to intervene. Until Annie runs into Arthur ‘Sketch’ Talbot. Sketch is determined to help Annie, and the two soon fall in love. But Annie’s father won’t give his daughter up lightly, and Sketch’s attempts to save her will have devastating consequences....

Dan Starkey is a young journalist in Belfast, who shares with his wife, Patricia, a prodigious appetite for drinking and dancing. Then Dan meets a beautiful and apparently impoverished student. And then, terrifyingly, she is murdered. Is it because she was not exactly who she claimed to be? Is it the IRA? A Protestant extremist group? A jealous lover? Before long, Dan is a target himself.…

In this funny, nightmarish masterpiece of imaginative excess, grotesque characters engage in acts of violent one-upmanship, boundless riches mangle a corner of Africa into a Bacchanalian utopia, and technology, flesh, and violence fuse with and undo each other. A fragmentary, freewheeling novel, it sees wild boys engage in vigorous, ritualistic sex and drug taking, as well as prankster-ish guerrilla warfare and open combat with a confused and outmatched army.

The Victorian gossipmongers called them The Petticoat Men. But to Mattie Stacey, they are Freddie and Ernest, her gentlemen lodgers. She admires their sparkling gowns, and laughs at their stories of attending society balls dressed up as the glamorous 'Fanny' and 'Stella'. But one fateful night Fanny and Stella are arrested. Outraged, Mattie is determined to save her friends and expose the establishment's hypocrisy…

Longlisted for the Audiobook Download of the Year, 2007.
Back in Rome after their dramatic adventures in Venice, Detectives Costa, Peroni, and Leo Falcone are rebuilding their lives. But they team up once again when faced with the sudden appearance of fresh bloodstains on a missing young boy's T-shirt in a small museum exhibit displaying supposed evidence of communication from souls in Purgatory. Soon they find themselves embroiled in a mystery involving both the ancient cult of Mithras and the sinister House of Bones.

In the spring of 1348, tales begin of poisonous clouds fast approaching, which have overwhelmed whole cities, with scarcely a human being left. While some pray earnestly, there are those who hope that God's wrath might be averted by pilgrimage. When a group of pilgrims are forced to shelter at an inn, their host encourages them to tell their stories of sin, so that it might emerge which one is the best. And the worst...

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, 2007.
In this novel, set in Scotland in 1863, Bessy Buckley attempts to escape her past by taking a job as a maid in a big house outside of Edinburgh, where she works for the beautiful Arabella. Bessy is intrigued by her new employer, but puzzled by her increasingly strange requests.

For over 10 years, Sue Townsend has written a monthly column for Sainsbury’s Magazine, which covers everything from hosepipe bans and Spanish restaurants to writer’s block and the posh middle-aged woman she once met who'd never heard of Winnie the Pooh. Collected now for the first time, these columns from one of Britain’s most popular and acclaimed writers are funny, perceptive, and touching.

The name of your first-born. The face of your lover. Your age. Your address... What would happen if your memory of these began to fade? When Claire starts to write her Memory Book, she already knows that this scrapbook of mementoes will soon be all her daughters and husband have of her. But how can she hold onto the past when her future is slipping through her fingers...?

October, 1944: For the 1000 Year Reich, time is running out. Desperate to avoid the humiliation of unconditional surrender, German intelligence launch Operation Finisterre: a last-ditch plan to enable Hitler to deny the savage logic of a war on two fronts.Success depends on two individuals: Stefan Portisch, a German naval officer washed ashore after the loss of his U-boat and Hector Gomez, who was planted at the American atomic bomb complex.

When one evening in December 1948, Jon Heather's mother leaves him at Chapeltown Boys' Home of the Children's Crusade, he is certain she will come back. But just weeks later, he finds himself on a boat set for Australia. Promised paradise, Jon soon realises the reality of the vast Australian outback is very different. So begins an odyssey that will last a lifetime, as Jon and his group of unlikely friends battle to make their way back home.

Few women in Compton Magna could fail to notice the arrival of Luca O'Brien. The village stud's new manager, known internationally as the Horse Maker, brims softly spoken sex appeal from his wild blonde curls to his leather boot soles. Gossipy riding quartet The Saddle Bags are all smitten. Only his old friend Ronnie Percy sees how much Luca's changed from the rising star she met a decade ago, the golden armour masking deep secrets. But as Ronnie soon discovers, Luca's slow smile and sympathetic hands belie a volcanic core.

A media billionaire’s daughter disappears following a massacre at a Belfast student party and nobody knows if she has been kidnapped or caught in the crossfire. A controversial new abortion clinic is firebombed, and a fire-and-brimstone church movement is blamed. Hired to both find the missing daughter, and prove the church’s guilt, Dan Starkey suddenly finds himself struggling to cope with two very different investigations...or could they possibly be connected?

Married Love is a collection of short stories to treasure, a masterful new work from one of the UK's most accomplished storytellers. Lottie announces that she is getting married. The youngest daughter of a large and close-knit family, Lottie is 19 but looks five years younger. Her fiancé is Edgar Lennox, a lecturer at Lottie's university, 45 years her senior. We follow as Lottie's life unfolds; it is a story of romantic dreams and daily reality, family loyalties and the comedy and solace to be found in small moments.

Imprisoned on false pretences, Madeleine Pelligrew, former mistress of Pendenning Hall, has spent the last 14 years shuttled between increasingly destitute and decrepit mad houses. When a strange man appears out of the blue to release her, she can't quite believe that her freedom comes without a price. Hiding her identity, Madeleine determines to discover the truth about what happened all those years ago.