Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Historical

Triple is the story of the most successful espionage coup - and best-kept secret - of this century. This taut espionage thriller comes from master of the genre, Ken Follett. It is 1968. Israeli intelligence has learned that Egypt, with Soviet help, will develop atomic bombs within months - an untimely end for the young nation unless a source of uranium for Israeli bombs can be had in complete secrecy. Impossible, of course, unless someone as improbable as the plan can be found to steal it.

In 1919, Kathryn Wombacher finds a lonely-hearts ad placed by one Walter Andrew: "Would be pleased to correspond with a refined young lady or widow. Object, matrimony.” Kathryn and Walter fall in love and marry within weeks. What Kathryn doesn’t know...is that her new husband is really James “Bluebeard” Watson, a notorious West Coast serial killer who catfished and married 22 women, murdering 10.

Detective Isaac Bell's wife has said that he is always in the wrong place at the right time. This is certainly the case when Bell thwarts the attempted assassination of a United States senator shortly after meeting the man. This heroic rescue is just the start of the mystery for Bell, who suspects that the would-be assassins have a much larger and more dangerous agenda - one involving the nearly constructed Panama Canal. While the senator supports the building of the canal, there are many who never want to see the its completion.

Catherine Cook, unclaimed granddaughter of the great explorer James, Cook is on her way to America to re-connect with her mother’s family when fate intervenes and thrusts her into ultimate peril. All of her life, Kate has yearned to go to sea and to command a sailing ship in the Royal navy…an impossible dream for a young woman in 1797.

1911, a thirteen-year-old boy, Billy Williams, begins working down the mines as George V is crowned king. The escalating arms race between the empire nations will put not only the king but this young boy in grave danger.

Sydney, the present: journalist Nick Eatwell has just lost his job, but his day is brightened when a fellow reporter, South African Susan Vidler, comes into his life looking for help with a story. Susan is chasing information about Nick's great-great uncle, Cyril Blake, who fought in the Anglo-Boer War and later joined the struggle for independence across the border in the German colony of South West Africa, now Namibia. A long-lost manuscript proves Nick's forebear was a somewhat reluctant hero.

Italy, 1351. English knight Gerard Fox and the resourceful Willa have come through a death-defying journey across war-torn Europe. Now looking towards their future together, they must first find a way to reconcile with their difficult pasts. In a small village between Florence and Siena, Fox and Willa are caught up in a deadly ambush. After rescuing the enigmatic woman who is the target of the attack, they take refuge in her opulent villa and learn her heartbreaking story—a tale of loss, deception... and a burning desire for freedom.

London, 1749. Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. The Punchbowl and Pineapple, her confectionary shop on Piccadilly, is barely turning a profit. Henry Fielding, the famous author and new magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account, because he believes it might have been illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent.

There's a new arrival at Buckshaw—Flavia de Luce's obnoxious cousin Undine. Flavia reluctantly takes on the mentorship of her fellow orphan, who in her best moments shows some potential for trespassing and trickery. When Major Greyleigh, a former hangman, is found dead from a breakfast of poisonous mushrooms, suspicion falls on the de Luce family's longtime cook, Mrs. Mullet. After all, didn't she pick the mushrooms and serve them to Greyleigh moments before his death? Flavia knows her beloved Mrs. Mullet is innocent.

Winter, 1936. Kitty receives an unexpected telegram just before Christmas saying that her father in New York is seriously ill. She and her husband Matt swiftly set out for America and, after a fraught ocean crossing, they arrive to discover he is much improved. Kitty decides to make the most of her visit by taking in the sights and attending a costume party thrown by her father’s friend, Mrs Dangerfield.

Apprentice Sarah Fisher is helping to fund Dr Will Raven's emerging medical practice in exchange for being secretly trained as a medic, should the rules barring women ever change. Sarah needs no instruction in the inequalities that beset her gender, but even she has her eyes opened to a darker reality when a relative seeks her help in searching for her missing daughter. Annabel Banks was promised a situation in a prestigious household, but there has been no word from her since she left home, and the agency that arranged her position says she never appeared.

In a French village, the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of a fallen tree. A week later a famous art critic is murdered in a nearby house. The deaths occurred more than 70 years apart. Asked by a colleague to inspect the site of the former, forensics expert Enzo Macleod quickly finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the latter. Two extraordinary narratives are set in train - one historical, unfolding in the treacherous wartime years of occupied France, the other contemporary, set in the autumn of 2020 as France re-enters Covid lockdown.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, as America grapples with forces of human and natural violence more powerful than humanity has ever seen, Bessie Holland yearns for the love that she has never known. She finds a soulmate and mentor in a brilliant but tormented suffragette English teacher, who inspires Bessie to fight the forces of evil that permeate her world.

1940: The Spanish Civil War is over, and Madrid lies ruined, its people starving, while the Germans continue their relentless march through Europe. Britain now stands alone while General Franco considers whether to abandon neutrality and enter the war. Into this uncertain world comes Harry Brett: a traumatised veteran of Dunkirk turned reluctant spy for the British Secret Service. Sent to gain the confidence of old school friend Sandy Forsyth, now a shady Madrid businessman, Harry finds himself involved in a dangerous game - and surrounded by memories.

Betrayed by the ruling families of Italy, Ezio Auditore embarks upon an epic quest for vengeance. To eradicate corruption and restore his family's honor, he will learn the art of the Assassins. Along the way, Ezio will call upon the wisdom of such great minds as Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli, knowing that survival is bound to the skills by which he must live.To his allies, he will become a force for change in his fight for freedom and justice.

In 1903, fishermen find a wrecked boat containing a woman, who has been badly beaten, and a young girl. In 1993, All Hallows is now a boarding school. Following his mother’s death and his father’s hasty remarriage, Lewis Tyler is banished to Dartmoor, stripped of his fashionable clothes, shorn of his long hair and left feeling more alone than ever. There he meets Isak, another lost soul, and whilst refurbishment of the dormitories is taking place, the boys are marooned up in the attic, in an old wing of the school.

Prithvi, a twenty-one-year-old, is searching for a mysterious middle-aged aghori (Shiva devotee), Om Shastri, who was traced more than 200 years ago before he was captured and transported to a high-tech facility on an isolated Indian island. When the aghori was drugged and hypnotized for interrogation by a team of specialists, he claimed to have witnessed all four yugas (the epochs in Hinduism) and even participated in both Ramayana and Mahabharata.

Lady Eleanor Swift’s marriage to dashing Chief Inspector Hugh Seldon is just days away. There’s a lot to organise from the dress to the catering, including, of course, the all-important wedding cake. But Eleanor is heartbroken when their chef, apple-cheeked Annie Tibetts, dies of poisoning. And as the doctor confirms her death wasn’t an accident, accusations fly around the whole community.

Edinburgh, 1847. Will Raven is a medical student, apprenticing for the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson. Sarah Fisher is Simpson’s housemaid and has all of Raven’s intelligence, but none of his privileges. As bodies begin to appear across the Old Town, Raven and Sarah find themselves propelled headlong into the darkest shadows of Edinburgh’s underworld. And if either of them are to make it out alive, they will have to work together to find out who’s responsible for the gruesome deaths.

After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drumossie Moor. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades. Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness. One day, after helping several of his regular customers, he notices a stranger lurking in the upper gallery of his shop, poring over his collection. But the man refuses to say what he's searching for.