Showing titles in Historical Fiction

A lost civilisation. A curse reborn. Dr Ben Kazin has only a blurred photograph and a gut instinct that there is a lost city to uncover somewhere beneath the Botswana cliffs. Soon, a whispered curse and a chance encounter with a local tribe lead him to discover much more than city foundations. The curse, it seems, is real, and will link Ben, his oldest friend and the woman they both love with a forgotten leader from 2,000 years ago, in a city of glory and honour that subsequently disappeared without a trace.

Laurence and Temeraire made a daring journey across vast and inhospitable continents to bring home a rare Turkish dragon from the treacherous Ottoman Empire. Kazilik dragons are firebreathers, and Britain is in greater need of protection than ever, for while Laurence and Temeraire were away, an epidemic struck British shores and is killing off her greatest defence - her dragon air force is slowly dying. The dreadful truth must be kept from Napoleon at all costs.

Three very different women are recruited to the mysterious Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla has the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses - but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, working to translate decoded enemy secrets. Self-made Mab masters the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and the poverty of her East-End London upbringing. And shy local girl Beth is the outsider who trains as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts.

Ava fell in love the night the Nazis first showed their true nature to the world. A retelling of the Grimms' Beauty and the Beast, set in Nazi Germany. It's August 1939 in Germany, and Ava's world is in turmoil. To save her father, she must marry a young Nazi officer, Leo von Löwenstein, who works for Hitler's spy chief in Berlin. However, she hates and fears the brutal Nazi regime and finds herself compelled to stand against it.

Hunted like an animal by Norman invaders, Bran ap Brychan, heir to the throne of Elfael, has abandoned his father’s kingdom and fled to the greenwood. There, in the primeval forest of the Welsh borders, danger surrounds him - for this woodland is a living, breathing entity with mysterious powers and secrets. Bran must find a way to make it his own if he is to survive and become King Raven. From deep in the forest, Bran, Will Scarlet, and Friar Tuck form a daring plan for deliverance, knowing that failure means death for them all - and the dreams of the oppressed people of Wales.

Too-clever, too honest, Cassandra Pomfret is legendary in London society for her strong opinions, the latest of which has caused yet another uproar. Her exasperated father decrees that If Cassandra won’t conform for her own sake, her younger sister can neither finish her debut season nor wed before Cassandra does.... But fate has thrown a wrench in her father’s well-laid plans, in the person of the Duke of Ashmont, whose angelic swoon-worthy looks are completely eclipsed by his monumentally bad behaviour.

The new novel in Bernard Cornwell's number one bestselling series The Warrior Chronicles, on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. In the battle for power, there can be only one ruler.England is fractured, torn apart more by internal fighting than the threat of Viking invasion. The ruler of Mercia is dying, leaving no legitimate heir. His wife is a formidable fighter and great leader, but no woman has ever ruled over an English kingdom.

The soldiers called her the Angel of Waterloo...Henrietta Bartlett, the esteemed surgeon's daughter who was born on a battlefield, lost her mother on a battlefield, and was widowed on the battlefield, where she worked alongside her father on that fateful day in June 1815. But after the carnage of war, Hen dreams of peace, and her own home, and a society that would allow a woman to practice medicine. The new and faraway colony of New South Wales seems a paradise, where even convicts have a chance of a good life.

Paris, 1939. Elise and Juliette are certain nothing can come between them. So, when war breaks out and Elise is forced to flee, she entrusts Juliette with her daughter, playmate to Juliette's own little girl. More than a year later, with the war finally ending, Elise returns to reunite with her daughter, only to find her friend's bookstore reduced to rubble - and Juliette nowhere to be found. What happened to Mathilde in those last terrible moments?

Hadrian Blackwater, a warrior with nothing to fight for, is paired with Royce Melborn, a thieving assassin with nothing to lose. Hired by an old wizard, they must steal a treasure that no one can reach. The Crown Tower is the impregnable remains of the grandest fortress ever built and home to the realm’s most prized possessions. But it isn’t gold or jewels that the wizard is after, and if he can just keep them from killing each other, they just might succeed.

Lily Valance wants to forget the war. She's determined to enjoy the world of the 1920s, with its music, singing, laughter and pleasure. When she meets Captain Stephen Winters, a decorated hero back from the Front, she's drawn to his wealth and status. The hidden tensions of the respectable facade of the Winters household come to a head. Stephen's nightmares merge ever closer with reality and the truth of what took place in the mud and darkness brings him and all who loves him to a terrible reckoning ...

Turned out of her ancestral home by her vicious half-brother, the orphaned daughter of an English duke and a French noblewoman makes her way to Paris and takes in abused French streetwalkers, transforming them into sought-after courtesans in the city's most exclusive bordello, Le Boudoir. It is only the beginning of her return to the upper reaches of society and ultimate justice.

They say no one from the convict settlement of Sydney Town crossed the steep ranges of the Blue Mountains until 1813. But the quick-witted convict Clancy Fitzgerald did it in 1798, dragging with him the proud - but reluctant - Eliza Philips. Faced with constant danger and wrenching isolation, Clancy and Eliza found themselves pale-skinned strangers in a land of ancient traditions and spiritual beliefs.

Living on her family’s gorgeous lakeside estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, clever, inquisitive, innocent, and precociously talented fourteen-year-old who loves to write stories. But the mysteries she pens are no match for the one her family is about to endure ...One midsummer’s eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest son, Theo, has vanished without a trace.

Late one summer, the town of Monta Clare is shattered by the abduction of local teenager Joseph 'Patch' Macauley. Nobody more so than Saint Brown, who is broken by her best friend's disappearance. Soon, she will eat, sleep, breathe, only to find him. But when she does: it will break her heart. Patch lies in a pitch-black room - all alone - for days or maybe weeks. Until he feels a hand in his. Her name is Grace and, though they cannot see each other, she takes him from the darkness and paints their world with her words.

Will Darling is all right. His business is doing well, and so is his illicit relationship with Kim Secretan - disgraced aristocrat, ex-spy, amateur book-dealer. It's starting to feel like he's got his life under control.

Cairo, 1887. A beautiful September day. Penrod Ballantyne and his fiancée, Amber Benbrook, stroll hand in hand. The future is theirs for the taking. But when Penrod's jealous former lover, Lady Agatha, plants doubt about his character, Amber leaves him and travels to the wilds of Abyssinia with her twin sister, Saffron, and her adventurer husband, Ryder Courtney. On a mission to establish a silver mine, they make the dangerous journey to the new capital of Addis Ababa, where they are welcomed by Menelik, the King of Kings.

In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a truly diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed villager, from an evangelical English opium trader to a mulatto American freedman. As their old family ties are washed away they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races and generations.

Born in the workhouse and adopted by a former suffragette, Frances Brakespeare was encouraged from an early age to be strong, independent and to pursue a career as a doctor. The tragic loss of the love of her life in the Great War propels Frances to commit to her one true vocation. Rebelling against the unfair treatment of female doctors Frances is dismissed from her London post and things continue to take a turn for the worse when Izzy, her benefactress dies and Frances finds herself homeless.

In AD 60, Boudica, war leader of the Eceni, led her people in a final bloody revolt against the occupying armies of Rome. It was the culmination of nearly 20 years of resistance against an occupying force that sought to crush a vibrant, complex civilisation and replace it with the laws, taxes and slavery of the Roman Empire.