Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in War & Military

Pat Simms is reeling from her own role in her abusive husband's death, and the new freedom before her is daunting. Sarah Collingborne is struggling with the absence of her husband, who is stranded in a POW camp abroad, and trying her best to fill his treasured place in the village. Meanwhile, Teresa Lucas is anxious about her future as a parent, and her friend Alison Scotlock is on the verge of starting a new relationship. And Miriam Brindsley's good luck might be about to change.

378 AD: Fritigern's Gothic horde tightens its iron grip on Thracia and only a handful of well-walled cities to the south remain in imperial hands. The few tattered legions pinned in these cities can only watch on from the battlements as smoke rises across their lost lands and the Goths roam at will, pillaging and extorting. Every Roman—legionary or citizen—speaks of only one thing: the Emperors of East and West, Valens and Gratian, who are said to be closing swiftly on this war-stricken land, each bringing with them vast armies capable of vanquishing the horde.

It is 1865: the American Civil War is ending. Eliza Duane Mulvey sets out from Lafayette, Louisiana, the town her mother Mary Duane called home. Alone, she walks across a devastated country in search of a youngster she has not seen in four years. One of the hundred thousand children drawn into the war, his fate has been mysterious and will prove extraordinary.

379 AD: Thracia has fallen to the Gothic horde. With the ashes of Adrianople still swirling in the air, the Eastern Roman Empire is in turmoil. The emperor is dead, the throne lies empty and the remaining fragments of the army are few and scattered. Numerius Vitellius Pavo, now Tribunus of the XI Claudia, tries to hold his patchwork ranks together amidst the storm. One of the few legions to have survived the disaster at Adrianople, the Claudia do what they can to keep alive the dying flame of hope.

376 AD: The Eastern Roman Empire is alone against the tide of barbarians swelling on her borders. Emperor Valens juggles the paltry border defenses to stave off invasion from the Goths north of the Danube. Meanwhile, in Constantinople, a pact between faith and politics spawns a lethal plot that will bring the dark and massive hordes from the east crashing down on these struggling borders.

1941. Dieter Merz is the Reich's most celebrated fighter ace, and his aerial prowess has brought him into close contact with the top echelons of Hitler's regime. But everything in the Nazi state still comes at a price. If Dieter wants help for an injured friend, he must inform on the modest, lifelong confidant always at Hitler's side: Rudolf Hess. Meanwhile, Scotsman and ex-marine Tam Moncrieff is working for MI5, attempting to sound out Germany's intention of withdrawal. With most of Europe already fallen to Hitler's armies, Germany considers the war won.

Belgium, 1917. At a military hospital in Poperinge, close to the horrors of the front line, Sister Helen Chalmers strives tirelessly to save the many injured soldiers brought in from battle. The hardships of war and the need for comfort throws Helen into the arms of the eminent surgeon Captain Richard Carson - although she knows a romance with a married man will never last.It's not long before Helen is swept off her feet by Captain James Havers, a man with whom she can see a future. When James is injured in the fighting, he is sent back to Britain to recover.

Out of the blue, private investigator and ex-soldier Lee Arnold receives a visit from an old army mate, Abbas al'Barri. Now living in Ilford with his family, Abbas is convinced that he's had a message from his estranged son, Fayyaad, who was radicalised and was last thought to be fighting for ISIL in Iraq. Does Fayyaad's message indicate a change of heart? Abbas is desperate for Lee's help in establishing some contact with him.

The prime minister is resisting growing calls for parliamentary reform, provoking scenes of violent unrest. Against this inflammable backdrop, Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey, recently returned from an assignment in the Balkans, takes command of his regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons. His fears that things might be dull are quickly dispelled by the business of vexatious officers and difficult choices over which NCOs to promote, not to mention the incendiarists on the doorstep of the king himself.

In Dieter's hands, the Messerschmitt Bf-109 is as graceful as a matador's killing strike: la estocada. Scotsman and ex-marine Tam Moncrieff is recruited by a nameless intelligence agency in London to go to Germany and sound out Hitler's resolve. Does he really intend to invade Czechoslovakia? Do his generals support him? Can the march to war be stopped?

When widow Millie Sanger finds injured enemy pilot Lukas Schiller on her farm, the distant war is suddenly at her doorstep. Compassionate Millie knows he’ll be killed if discovered and makes the dangerous decision to offer him shelter from the storm. On opposite sides of the inescapable conflict, the two strangers forge an unexpected and passionate bond. But as the snow thaws, the relentless fury of World War Two forces them apart, leaving only the haunting memories of what they shared and an understanding that their secret must never see light.

Berlin, 1942. For four years, the men in field grey have helped themselves to country after country across Western Europe. For Werner Nehmann, a journalist at the Promi - the Ministry of Propaganda - this dizzying series of victories has felt like a party without end. But now the Reich's attention has turned towards the East, and as winter sets in, the mood is turning. Werner's boss, Joseph Goebbels, can sense it. A small man with a powerful voice and coal black eyes, Goebbels has a deep understanding of the dark arts of manipulation.

Barely half of the Bomber Command's aircrews survive a full tour, but wireless operator Billy Angell has beaten the odds and completed his 30th - and final - mission. Now, Billy is due two-weeks leave, a posting to a training squadron and a six-month exemption from active duty. Except that MI5 need an airman to drop into Nazi-occupied France. MI5 are interested in Hélène Lafosse, a Frenchwoman keeping unusual company in her small family château in the depths of the Touraine.

January 1945. Wherever you look on the map, the Thousand Year Reich is shrinking. Even Goebbels has run out of lies to sweeten the reckoning to come. An Allied victory is inevitable, but who will reap the spoils of war? With the Red Army about to fall on Berlin, Stalin fears his sometime allies are conspiring to deny him his prize. He needs to speak to Goebbels—and who better to broker the contact than Nehmann, Goebbels' one-time confidant?

On Sunday 22nd June 1941, at 03.05, three and a half million Axis troops burst into the Soviet Union along a 1,800-mile front to launch Operation Barbarossa. The southern thrust of the attack was aimed at the Caucuses and the oil fields beyond. Kyiv was the biggest city to stand in their way. Within six weeks, the city was under siege. Surrounded by Panzers, bombed and shelled day and night, Soviet Commissar Nikita Krushchev was amongst the senior Soviet officials co-ordinating the defence.

Emma did not go to war looking for love, but Adam is unlike any other. Under the secret shadow of trauma, Emma decides to leave Iraq and joins Adam to settle in Colorado. But isolation and fear find her, once again, when Adam is redeployed. Torn between a deep fear for Adam’s safety and a desire to be back there herself, Emma copes by throwing herself into a new role mentoring an Iraqi refugee family. But when Adam comes home, he brings the conflict back with him. Emma had considered the possibility that her husband might not come home from war. She had not considered that he might return a stranger.

Some see Britain as an ally; others look to Germany for a hopeful future while some wish to remain as neutral as possible. In this atmosphere of edgy uncertainty, a young lieutenant, Paul Duggan, is drafted into the army's intelligence division, G2, and put on the German desk.

Paul delves into the double-dealing worlds of spies and politics, where ruthlessness, deviousness and occasional violence prevail, before confronting a surprising secret that challenges everything he has grown up believing.

180 AD. North of the Wall, Sarmatian warrior Kai and his adopted tribe, the Votadini, struggle for survival, cast into unfamiliar lands by Roman reprisals. When news arrives that an old enemy is in charge of the Votadini's hated foes, a confederation of tribes known as the Painted People, and has roused them to action, Kai heads south towards the Wall, hoping to ally with the Romans against this resurgent threat. Meanwhile, the Romans have heard tales of butchery and mayhem beyond the Wall.

Summer 1942. Abwehr intelligence officer Wilhelm Schultz is baiting a trap to lure thousands of Allied troops to their deaths. George Hogan is a devout young Canadian journalist who has caught the eye of press baron Lord Beaverbrook. Now he faces an assignment that will test his faith to breaking point. Jackie Wrenne, meanwhile, is working in Lord Louis Mountbatten's cloak-and-dagger Combined Operations headquarters and is privy to the boldest cross-Channel raid yet conceived. Three lives are interlinked by a name and a date that no Canadian will ever forget: Dieppe, 19 August 1942.

In the hard, unforgiving land at the northernmost point of the Roman Empire lies a great wall. Once, the edge had been but a thing of thoughts and dreams, but one day the great Emperor from across the water had grown tired of such borders. So, a wall was raised from the earth at his command. From afar, it looked invincible. Yet every wall has its weaknesses—if one looks close enough. In its shadow gather five thousand fearsome soldiers. Men bred to fight and kill. The Sarmatians have suffered capture and defeat, but under a new command they are prepared to fight again.