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

1944. The Battle of Kohima. James Ash dies leaving behind two families: his ‘wife’ Josmi and two children, Jay and Molly, and his parents and sister in England who know nothing about his Indian family. 2012. Emmie is raising her own daughter, Jasmine, in a world she wants to be very different from the racist England of her childhood. Her father, Jay, doesn’t even have a photograph of the mother he lost and still refuses to discuss his life in India. Emmie finds comfort in the local museum – a treasure trove of another family’s stories and artefacts.

Cheshire. May Day, 1753. Tabitha De Vallory believes her life is perfect: she has an imposing home with all the comforts she has ever desired, and is expecting her first child with doting husband Nathaniel De Vallory. But Tabitha's happiness is shaken when a girl is slaughtered beneath the Mondrem Oak on the family's forest estate. Recognizing the victim from her former scandalous life, Tabitha vows to find the killer.

It's 2006 in the fictional East London borough of Leytonstow. The UK’s pub smoking ban is about to happen, and 38-and-a-half year old John Torrington, a mopper and trolley collector at his local DIY store, is secretly in love with the stylish, beautiful, and middle-class barmaid Lois. John and his hapless, strange, and down-on-their-luck friends, Gabby Longfeather and Glyn Hopkins, live in Clements Markham House - a semi-derelict Edwardian villa divided into unsanitary bedsits, and (mis)managed by the shrewd, Dickensian business man, Mr Kapoor.

July 1540: the shocking news of Cromwell's fall reaches the court of Margaret of Navarre, sister of Francis I of France and arguably the most cultured woman north of the Alps. She sends her courtier and poet, Nicolas Bourbon, an avid reformer with many friends in English court circles, to find out what is happening. What Bourbon discovers from members of Cromwell's family, his proteges and his enemies sets him on what becomes a hazardous quest for the real man behind all the competing versions on offer.

September 1810. Raids across the Straits of Messina to disrupt preparations for the French invasion of the island have been repulsed with heavy casualties. George Warne, a bright young British officer, suspects treachery back in Messina, and is ordered to investigate. Warne uncovers a shadowy underworld of spies, traitors and informers where nothing is quite as it seems and where danger lurks around every corner. If the long-threatened French invasion erupts, will Sicily’s defenders be prepared?

At the start of this dazzlingly inventive novel from Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Abbas, a world-famous photographer and estranged father to a young novelist also named Jonas Hassen Khemiri is standing on a luxurious rooftop terrace in New York City. He is surrounded by rock stars, intellectuals and political luminaries gathered to toast his 50th birthday. And yet how did Abbas, a dirt-poor Tunisian orphan and Swedish emigre, come to enjoy such success?

Scandal, intoxication and lies flourish in the silent film studios of Paris. A silent film, destroyed in a fire in 1914 at the Pathé studio, before it was seen even by its director. A lowly seamstress who makes the costumes she should be wearing but believes her talent - and the secret she keeps, too - will soon get her a dressing room of her own. A famous - and dashing - creator of spectacular cinematic illusions, husband to a beautiful, volatile actress, the most adored icon of the Parisian studios.

Ted wants to be a proper journalist rather than a film critic, but at least the travel is good. He arrives in Bucharest to interview a renowned film director, but suspects the man he sees is an imposter. His guide, Vasile, has involved him in a more interesting story about a missing girl, a puzzled Ted aims to solve while he's in Moscow at the 1975 International Film Festival. In Moscow, though, the mystery deepens and Ted finds himself asked to do more than a few dubious favours.

It begins with a singing and dancing septet in dusty church halls. But it is not the sisters’ dancing that fills the seats: it is the torrents of hair they let loose at the end of each show. And their hair will pull them out of poverty, to the salons of Dublin and the palazzi of Venice. It will bring some of them love and each of them loss. For their fame and fortune will come at a terrible price...

Beautiful, proud Roxana is terrified of being poor. When her husband leaves her penniless with five children, she must choose between being a virtuous beggar or a rich whore. Embarking on a career as a courtesan and kept woman, Roxana passes from man to man in order to maintain her lavish, glamorous lifestyle. But this life comes at a cost; she is torn between sinful prosperity and the respectability she craves.

South Africa, Zimbabwe, China and Britain: In the shadow of the Cold War, a deadly secret connects three continents—and time is running out. When a mild-mannered scientist accidentally uncovers a web of international espionage during a routine visit to Beijing, he's thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse. His only ally? A magnetic anti-apartheid activist who may have secrets of her own.

The brutal murder of Rose Parmiter seems, at first glance, to be a random and senseless act. Rose was the beloved cook at Evergreen House, a place of refuge for women and children, a place from which they can start their lives afresh. Proprietor Rebecca Harris, is profoundly shocked by the death of her dear friend and alarmed at the mysterious events which begin to unfold shortly afterwards. Could the past be casting a shadow on the present? The malign legacy of the Everley family who called Evergreen home, cannot be ignored.

Nur and Abid relearn to love after they escape from war. Marie, who keeps the women of the village from giving birth to children borne of war, finds herself in a situation she hasn't faced before. In a London park, an ageing MI-6 official discovers that the woman he meets every day may not be what she seems. Lyndsey's bouquets of twenty-seven tulips hold the secret of her dark past and a soldier adorns herself in jewels as she prepares for a final mission.

For Nicholas Hawthorne, the Catholic heir to Measham Hall in Derbyshire, subterfuge is part of everyday life. But there are deeper and darker secrets even than his family's outlawed religion: why is his father, Sir William, so reclusive? What became of his mother, and his aunt Alethea? And who fatally betrayed his cousin Matthew?

England, 1665. It is five years since King Charles II returned from exile, the scars of the Civil Wars are yet to heal and now the Great Plague engulfs the land. Alethea Hawthorne is safe inside the walls of the Calverton household as a lady's companion waiting in anticipation of the day she can return to her ancestral home of Measham Hall.

Chicago, 1931. While the Great Depression has tightened its grip on the world, there are still some who have the means to make their dreams a reality. One of these men is Hobart St John, who wants a mansion in the suburb of Oak Park. For young Welsh architect Merlin Richards, the opportunity to work on the house is an answer to his prayer.

Chasing his dream of a glittering architectural career, Merlin Richards has left the Welsh valleys for the Arizona desert, propelled by a handwritten note from the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright. Richards arrives at the Arizona Biltmore hotel, where he meets a beautiful young designer named Rosa Lustig. Like every man in her circle, Merlin is captivated by Rosa but soon finds himself the prime suspect in her murder.

Joyful, defiant and dazzling, this is the story of Rafi Aziz—a Northern boy dreaming of his name up in lights. It's 1981 in the suburbs of Blackburn and, as Rafi's mother reminds him daily, the family moved here from Pakistan to give him the best opportunities. But Rafi longs to follow his own path. Flamboyant, dramatic and musically gifted, he wants to be a Bollywood star.

In 1561, with Elizabeth I on the throne and Catholic plots brewing, a young German prince arrives in England claiming to be the rightful heir–the son of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves. Armed with jewels, letters, and Tudor looks, his claim threatens to upend the dynasty. But as poison spreads and secrets unravel, astrologer John Dee and his companion Margaretta must uncover the truth behind the prince’s origins.

Clova, Scotland, 1942. The midst of the Second World War. Sisters Nell and Effie Anderson live together in the Old Schoolhouse. Effie is a teacher, while Nell works as a postwoman, delivering news – often of the worst – from the frontline to her neighbours. Though they love and care for one another, there are unspoken tensions and mysteries that put distance between them.