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

The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail. To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he's making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.

1950s Dublin, in a lock-up garage in the city, the body of a young woman is discovered, an apparent suicide. But pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford soon suspect foul play. The victim's sister, a newspaper reporter from London, returns to Dublin to join the two men in their quest to uncover the truth. But, as they explore her links to a wealthy German family in County Wicklow, and to investigative work she may have been doing in Israel, they are confronted with an ever-deepening mystery.

Antiquarian bookseller Robin Jessop has acquired a strange medieval volume. What appears to be a book is a cleverly disguised safe, in which she finds a single rolled parchment, written in code. For encryption expert David Mallory, the text is impenetrable. Until an invaluable clue opens the door to a conspiracy, stretching back seven centuries. Now Jessop and Mallory find themselves on a desperate hunt that could change history, topple an empire and bury them both alive. Because soon they’re not only the hunters. They’re also the hunted.

Lennox liked Quiet Tommy Quaid. Perhaps it's odd for a private detective to like - even admire - a career thief, but Quiet Tommy Quaid was the sort of man everyone liked. Amiable, easygoing, well dressed, with no vices to speak of - well, aside from his excessive drinking and womanising, but then, in 1950s Glasgow those were practically virtues. And besides, throughout his many exploits outside the law, Quiet Tommy never once used violence.

Leningrad, 1951. The shadow of war lingers. Revol Rossel - once a virtuoso violinist with a glittering future - is now a humble state militia cop, forced to investigate desperate crimes in this desperate era. But when five frozen corpses are found neatly arranged between railway lines, Rossel is faced with the most puzzling - and most dangerous - case of his career. His hunt for the truth leads him to the dark heart of Leningrad’s musical establishment, and, ultimately, to the highest levels of the Kremlin itself.

AD 265, Gaul—The Roman Empire is on the brink. Emperor Gallienus has amassed a huge army across the Alps to seize back the mountains from the usurper Posthumus. War has come. Ballista and his cavalry are on the frontline, battling in the most brutal of conditions. But if he is to survive the campaign and finally retire to his beloved Sicily, it's not just the battlefield he needs to navigate. As he and Praetorian Prefect Volusianus lay siege to Posthumus' armies, it becomes clear the greatest threat to Ballista's life might just come from within his ranks.

Shortlisted for the British Book Awards, Author of the Year, 2007.
Winner of the British Book Awards, Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year, 2006.
In Carcassonne a young girl is given a mysterious book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the true Grail. Although Alais cannot understand the strange words and symbols hidden within, she knows that her destiny lies in protecting it.

In A Conspiracy of Paper, Weaver investigates a crime of the most personal sort: the mysterious death of his estranged father, a notorious stockjobber. To find the answers, Weaver must contend with a desperate prostitute who knows too much about his past, relatives who remind him of his alienation from the Jewish faith, and a cabal of powerful men in the world of British finance who have hidden their business dealings behind an intricate web of deception and violence. Relying on brains and brawn, Weaver uncovers the beginnings of a strange new economic order.

Nostradamus wrote 1000 prophecies. Only 942 have survived. What happened to the missing verses? This mystery drives two very different men. Adam Sabir is a writer desperate to revive his flagging career; Achor Bale is a member of an ancient secret society dedicated to the "Three Antichrists" foretold by Nostrodamus: Napoleon, Adolf Hitler - and "one still to come". As Sabir is drawn into the hidden world of France's gypsies, Bale is on his trail. A terrifying hunt begins...

By the summer of 1660 the last remnants of the Republic have been swept away and the Stuarts have been restored under their king, Charles II. A list of forty-nine regicides believed to be involved in the death of Charles I is drawn up. Executions of the regicides begin to take place and the hunt intensifies for those who have gone into hiding or have fled. Although not a regicide, staunch Republican Damian Seeker is on a list of traitors to the king. Royalist spy Lady Anne Winter is employed to find evidence of guilt or innocence among the names on this Winter List.

In the style of Alan Furst, this suspenseful thriller - based on real events - places an idealistic American diplomat in a turbulent, US-hating Tehran in the days leading up to the Iranian Revolution. Backed by the CIA, and trailed by a beautiful and engaging French journalist he suspects is a spy, David Weiseman’s mission is to ease the Shah of Iran out of power and find the best alternative between the military, religious extremists, and the political ruling class - many of whom are simultaneously trying to kill him.

American Colonel Hugh Kelso is washed ashore on German-held Jersey in Spring 1944, with top-secret D-Day plans in his possession. To get him back, the most daring escape of the Second World War must be planned and executed. Harry Martineau, bilingual philosophy professor turned assassin, and Sarah Drayton, a beautiful, half-French Jersey native, are selected to carry out the mission, and set off to steal the most precious Allied asset from under the noses of the Nazis....

Rosalind Lang has encountered the worst possible fate for a national spy: she's been exposed. With the media storm camped outside her apartment for the infamous Lady Fortune, she's barely left her bedroom in weeks, plotting her next course of action after Orion was taken and his memories of Rosalind wiped. Though their marriage might have been a sham, his absence hurts her more than any physical wound. She won't rest until she gets him back. But with her identity in the open, the task is near impossible.

When Camille Divine inherits her late husband's estate, she embarks on a gripping journey that transcends mere inheritance – it's a journey that will reshape her life forever. Supported by her steadfast friends, Cecily and Elsie, Camille endeavors to make sense of her new surroundings in the enigmatic city of Edinburgh. Eager to befriend her late husband's social circle, and perhaps discover the secrets he kept from her, she plans an extravagant soiree to captivate the city's elite.

A Cold War attack by Soviet helicopters on an Afghan village. A knife-edge CIA operation that goes wrong. And a vengeful mujahideen tribesman, armed with Stinger missiles. When CIA officer Joe Johnson is handed the tough task by his boss of capturing a Soviet helicopter and forging better contacts among the mujahideen, he unknowingly finds himself up against a sinister KGB rival who wants him dead.

La nueva dama del misterio histórico. Una intriga entre el San Sebastián de los años 50 y la Florencia de los 30. Florencia, 1938. Para Manuela, una adolescente instruida en la complacencia, conocer a Ava, enigmática e independiente, en un colegio para señoritas en la capital de la Toscana, supone traspasar las puertas de un universo desconocido: atreverse a ser ella misma lejos de los preceptos de su familia. Pero pronto Manuela también descubrirá las sombras de Ava, quien plasma en oscuras pinturas escenas que vislumbra en sueños y que un día desaparecerá sin dejar rastro, como si ella y su obra jamás hubiesen existido.

Brother against brother. Father against son. Friends turned into enemies. No one in England wants a return to the bloody days of the Civil War. But Oliver Cromwell’s son, Richard, has abandoned his exile and slipped back into England. The consequences could be catastrophic. James Marwood, a traitor’s son turned government agent, is tasked with uncovering Cromwell’s motives. But his assignment is complicated by his friend - the regicide’s daughter, Cat Lovett - who knew the Cromwells as a child and who now seems to be hiding a secret of her own about the family.

A night patrol finds a wealthy merchant hanged and set ablaze in the city’s main square. More than mere murder, this killing is intended to put the fear of God into Florence. Forty years earlier, puritanical monk Girolamo Savonarola was executed the same way. Does this new killing mean his fanatical disciples are reviving the monk’s regime of holy terror? Cesare Aldo is busy hunting thieves in the Tuscan countryside, leaving Constable Carlo Strocchi to investigate the ritual killing.

London, May 1665. On a dark road outside London, a simple robbery goes horribly wrong when the gentlemanly highwayman, William Coke, discovers that his intended victims have been brutally slaughtered. Suspected of the murders, Coke is forced into an uneasy alliance with the man who pursues him--the relentless thief-taker, Pitman.

Autumn 1943. Hitler knows he cannot win the war: now he must find a way to make peace. FDR and Stalin are willing to negotiate; only Churchill refuses to listen. The upcoming Allied Tehran conference will be where the next steps - whatever they are - will be decided. Into this nest of double- and triple-dealing steps Willard Mayer, OSS agent and FDR's envoy to the conference. His job is to secure the peace that the USA and Hitler now crave. The stakes couldn't be higher.