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

Left an orphan, five-year-old Rosie Harris is found and raised by Maria, a Romany gypsy. Life on the road is hard, but the little girl soon feels one of the tribe with the travelers. As she grows older, Rosie realises she has 'second sight' and is able to read people's palms and see into their futures. Needing to make a living of her own, she befriends the canal folk, known as the 'cut-rats' traversing the Black Country waterways with their cargo, and so offers readings to anyone who can pay. Pursued by Jake Harding, Rosie instead finds herself falling in love with a married man.

A hidden hoard of Saxon gold. A poisoned priest. A monk skinned alive in Westminster Abbey. Only one thing is certain: whoever comes into possession of the cursed book meets a gruesome and untimely end.

Shrewsbury, 1866. Julian Lockyer is an imposing gentleman in his late fifties. Having reserved a room for the night at the Station Hotel, he asks to be called early in the morning because he has a train to catch. Repeated attempts are made to wake him but there is no response. After forcing the door, the horrified hotel staff discover the bloodied corpse but with the knife still in his hand ... could he have killed himself in such a brutal manner?

December 1940. New Year’s Eve draws closer, but crowds will not be gathering on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral to celebrate. After a quiet Christmas, the area has suffered London’s most devastating air raid since the start of the Blitz and waves of incendiary bombs have burnt the heart of British book publishing to the ground. Detective Inspector John Jago finds a desolate woman sitting among the ruins of her family business and must break the news—her husband’s been found shot dead at their home in Soho.

February, 1944. A bitter winter grips occupied France, where Marc Reece leads a circuit of British agents risking their lives in order to sabotage the German war effort from within. But Reece has a second mission, secret even from his fellow agents - including Charlotte, the woman with whom he has ill-advisedly fallen in love. He must secure a document identifying a German spy at the heart of British intelligence. The fate of the Allied forces on D-Day is in his hands.

Set in London 1929, A Queer Case follows the exploits of Selby Bigge, a gay man who finds himself embroiled in a murder. Selby is a bank clerk by day and a denizen of London’s homosexual underworld by night. He yearns for a more glamorous life and is delighted to receive an invitation to the birthday of the rich banker Sir Lionel Duker.

1949. The Cold War is intensifying and rumours abound that the Russians are close to creating an atomic bomb. Beattie Cavendish, special operative for a covert section of GCHQ is sent to Scotland, to a listening station in the Highlands at Kilbray. Beattie's arrival is greeted with suspicion by the station's staff. She faces an uphill battle to turn things around. When Beattie discovers that her uncle Howard, who lives nearby, has gone missing, she becomes convinced his disappearance is more sinister.

1266. Eleanor of Castile, adored wife of the Crown Prince of England, is still only a princess when she is held hostage in the brutal Baron's Rebellion and her baby daughter dies. Scarred by privation, a bitter Eleanor swears revenge on those who would harm her family - and vows never to let herself be vulnerable again. As she rises to become queen, Eleanor keeps Olwen - a trusted herbalist, who tried to save her daughter - by her side. But it is dangerous to be friendless in a royal household.

April, 1867. A train departs King's Cross station bound for Lincoln. Among the passengers is a man attired in the garb of one in high ecclesiastical office.

Seventeen-year-old Debora Rosenbaum, ambitious and in love with literature, arrives in the capital of the new Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Kharkiv, to make her own fate as a modern woman. The stale and forbidding ways of the past are out; 1930 is a new dawn, the Soviet era, where skyscrapers go up overnight. Debora finds work and meets a dashing young officer named Samuel who is training to become a fighter pilot. They fall in love, and begin to mix with Ukraine's new cultural elite.

Assyria, in the reign of Ashurbanipal. For Aurya and her daydreaming brother, Sharo, every day is a struggle for survival, as they dodge the beatings of their drunken father and scrabble for scraps of food. One violent evening, everything changes. Soon, they are on the barge of King Ashurbanipal, bound for the beautiful, near-mythical city of Nineveh.

January 1901. Abigail and Daniel Wilson, often lauded as "The Museum Detectives," are on their way to the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. Their explorations of the pyramid, including the Robbers' Tunnel, take a very sinister turn when they come upon the dead body of a man who has been brutally garrotted. Investigations by the local police reveal him to be Simeon McGruder, a wealthy American who is financing an excavation of the pyramids.

France, 1943. Forced to flee war ravaged Poland, Sara and her parents are offered refuge in a beautiful but dilapidated house in the French Alps. It seems the perfect hideaway, despite haunting traces of the previous occupants who left in haste. But shadows soon fall over Sara's blissful summer and her blossoming romance with local villager Alain. As the Nazis close in, the family is forced to make a harrowing choice that could drive them apart forever, while Sara's own bid for freedom risks several lives.

Kayla Sinclair knows she's in trouble when she almost bankrupts herself to buy a portrait of a mysterious eighteenth century man. Jago Kerswell, inn-keeper and smuggler, will take any risk to be with Lady Eliza Marcombe. Over two centuries separate Kayla and Jago, but thanks to a gypsy's spell, their lives become inextricably linked. Kayla finds herself on a quest that could heal the past, but will she find heartache or happiness?

In 2000, Sophie Cass, an ambitious journalist, may have finally found her big break. Convinced a celebrated painter in the Hamptons is hiding a dark secret, she sets off to unravel the truth about his past. Her research takes her back decades to 1940, as an international group of artists and intellectuals gather at The House of Dreams, a beautiful villa just outside Marseilles where American journalist Varian Fry and his remarkable team are working to help them escape France.

The Powder of Death opens with a returned envoy to China meeting an English scholar in Oxford in the mid-13th century; their purpose is to share a deadly secret. They vow that the knowledge of gunpowder must die with them. The audiobook tells the story of its rediscovery, one man's obsession with the powder of death, and Edward III's determination to use it to his advantage. The nature of warfare is changed forever, and the world hears the death knell of knightly chivalry.

April, 1941. Detective Chief Inspector Coburg and Sergeant Lampson are called to the former Whitechapel Road tube station when the body of a woman is discovered. Her body was found in an isolated part of the subterranean area away from the platforms currently being used as air raid shelters. She had been strangled and her body eviscerated.

Devon, 1887. Life has not been kind to dairymaid Tresca Ladycott. She can’t rely on her flighty farmhand father, Emmanuel, so she relies on herself. Then comes a devastating blow. Tresca is sacked from the dairy, and the pair lose their home. She and her father seek a new life in bustling Tavistock. More hardship lies ahead. The only work to be found is hard labour on the London and South West Railway. Before long, Emmanual is out of work yet again, and Tresca is faced with keeping them both in their tiny garret home.

Dartmoor, 1914. Twenty-four-year-old Marianne Warrington is in danger of being left on the shelf. That's what her mother says, and that’s precisely how she wants it. She has her future mapped out, and it doesn’t include marriage or babies. Instead, she vows to devote herself to rearing horses on her parents’ farm. Then World War One breaks out, and the Warringtons’ peaceful existence is shattered forever. Amid the chaos, Marianne seizes her chance to prove she’s more than just a spinster.

December, 1939. Having solved the case of the Suffolk Vampire, Inspector Betty Church and her colleagues at Sackwater Police Station have settled back down to business. There's the elderly Mr Fern, who keeps losing his slippers, Sylvia Satin's 13th birthday party to attend and the scintillating case of the missing bookmark to solve. Though peace and quiet are all well and good, Betty soon finds herself longing for some cold-blooded murder.