Showing titles in Historical

England, 1176. Aelred Barling, esteemed clerk to the justices of King Henry II, is dispatched from the royal court with his young assistant, Hugo Stanton, to investigate a brutal murder in a village outside York. The case appears straightforward. A suspect is under lock and key in the local prison, and the angry villagers are demanding swift justice. But when more bodies are discovered, certainty turns to doubt - and amid the chaos it becomes clear that nobody is above suspicion.

Will Bowman, now fully entangled in Richard Lionheart's crusade, has reached the Holy Land. However, just as he and his crew are about to touch down in Acre, they are drawn into an intense battle at sea, where they are faced with the dreaded Byzantine weapon: Greek Fire. Barely escaping with his life, Will gains the trust of Richard Lionheart, moving into his service. But as the siege of Acre continues, and Richard's campaign grows ever more brutal and barbaric, Will begins to wonder just how safe his new position is.

Paris, 1585: Giordano Bruno has come to Paris, a city on the edge of catastrophe. Alone and near destitute, Bruno turns to old friend and zealous preacher Paul Lefevre. But when the priest is murdered, Bruno is pulled into a dangerous world. If Bruno can't uncover the truth, not only is the future of the de Valois monarchy threatened - but his own life will be the forfeit.

Shardlake returns in this atmospheric BBC Radio 4 full-cast adaptation of the fourth novel in C. J. Sansom's bestselling Tudor crime series.Spring, 1543. London's streets are filled with preachers; strange signs and portents are seen everywhere; and young men, maddened by differing interpretations of the Bible, are drawn into dangerous fundamentalism.

The French Riviera, 1956. A world-weary Bernie Gunther is working under a false name as a hotel concierge. His attempts to keep his nose clean go horribly awry when a wartime acquaintance sucks him into a blackmail plot involving one of the most famous British writers of the 20th century and the Cambridge Spies. Bernie is missing his old detective life when his past walks through the door in the shape of Harold Hennig, a former captain in the Nazi security service - the man who, in 1945, was responsible for the deaths of thousands, among them a woman Bernie loved.

Based on true crimes, The Specimen is a mesmerizing story about one woman’s search for truth and vengeance in the darkest of places—where the deadliest secrets lie hidden in plain sight on a freshly dusted shelf.

Three gripping tales from number one best seller S. J. Parris. The Secret Dead: during the summer of 1566, a girl’s body is found within the walls of a Neapolitan monastery. Novice monk Giordano Bruno has a habit of asking difficult questions, but this time his investigations may lose him his place in the Dominican Order - or deliver him into the hands of the Inquisition. Also includes The Academy of Secrets and The Dead of Winter.

Richard has lost everything to Andrew Kineer, even his identity. Whether he will be able to reclaim it remains to be seen. The backdrop to their own struggle is the political tension in England. Mary I, convinced God has given her the task of returning England to the true faith, sends the Protestant reformers a stark and violent message.

In the autumn of 1615, a scandal rocks the Jacobean court when a celebrated couple are imprisoned on suspicion of murder. She is young, captivating and from a notorious family. He is one of the richest and most powerful men in the kingdom. Some believe she is innocent; others think her wicked or insane. He claims no knowledge of the murder. The king suspects them both, though it is his secret at stake.

Easter, 1177. Canterbury Cathedral, home to the tomb of martyr Saint Thomas Becket, bears the wounds of a terrible fire. Benedict, prior of the great church, leads its rebuilding. But horror interrupts the work. One of the stonemasons is found viciously murdered, the dead man’s face disfigured by a shocking wound. When the king’s clerk Aelred Barling and his assistant Hugo Stanton arrive on pilgrimage to the tomb, the prior orders them to investigate the unholy crime.

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.

Munich, 1949, is home to all the backstabbing intrigue that prospers in the aftermath of war. A place where a private eye can find a lot of not-quite-reputable work: cleaning up the Nazi past of well-to-do locals, abetting fugitives in the flight abroad, sorting out rival claims to stolen goods. It's work that fills Bernie with disgust - but it also fills his sorely depleted wallet. Then a woman seeks him out. Her husband has disappeared. She's not looking to get him back - he's a wanted man who ran one of the most vicious concentration camps in Poland.

Someone is preying upon the street children of Regency London. They seem to think no one will notice when urchins go missing—and even if they are noticed, who will care? Daniel needs to do something about the missing children. But with recent revelations about his past and an unexpected, somewhat unwelcome inheritance to deal with, this is a terrible time to dive back into the seedy underbelly of the crime world. Nevertheless, he's still a Bow Street runner, and his partner Lady Juliette is sensitive to the plight of these wayward youngsters.

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.

AD 1041. After successfully avenging the death of his father, Halfdan and the crew of the Sea Wolf seek adventure in strange new lands, far from their Scandinavian home. They join the fleet of Harald Hardrada, the legendary Viking commander, sailing back to Constantinople from the battlefields of Georgia. There they join the Varangians, the personal bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperors populated almost exclusively by Viking warriors. But Constantinople has changed during Hardrada's long absence.

When Joey Peruggia discovers that the dead man was his long-lost uncle, he travels with his girlfriend Marie and his friend Boyce, who works for the French intelligence, to Egypt on a mission to find answers. But once they arrive, they are lured into a trap and become hostages to a crazed man and his gang of thieves. This is a man who will stop at nothing to discover what lies in the last secret chamber. All bets are off, and only the cleverest will survive this deadliest of adventures.

1963. In a desolate Russian penal colony, the radio broadcasts news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin's new posting as director of a gulag camp in the middle of the frozen tundra is far from a promotion. This is where disgraced agents, like Vasin, disappear - sent to die forgotten. And quietly. But tensions in the camp are running high and when a violent revolt breaks out, Vasin finds himself on the run. With him is a mysterious prisoner - who holds the key to the most dangerous secret in the world: who ordered Kennedy's murder.

For Thomas Berrington, torn between two warring civilizations, Ronda is an escape from the madness engulfing Gharnatah. For al-Zagal, the default leader of al-Andalus, it is a return to his mountain stronghold. In the year 1485 this should be a time of recovery and replenishment. Until the Spanish army arrives, spreading across the plain below towering cliffs. And someone is murdering women so subtly the first the deaths go unnoticed. Thomas and Jorge are once more thrown into the pursuit of a killer as the world around them changes, and the end of a once great civilization draws closer. Can they unmask the Incubus before he steals the breath of more victims?

1926 – Christie is a darling of the literary circuit and the most desired guest in London’s glittering social scene. She can often be found at meetings of the Detection Club – where mystery writers come together to share ideas, swap secrets and drink copiously. But then a fellow author's initiation ceremony takes a gruesome turn, and one of the group ends up dead. Now, Agatha is no longer just the creator of great mystery plots – she’s a player in one.

For Inspector Sebastian Bell and nurse Gemma Tate, a night at the theater becomes a deadly spectacle when the two lead actors are found dead on the stage, murdered before a stunned audience. Drawn into a shadowy backstage world, they encounter a cast of suspects, each with desperate secrets to hide…Sebastian is determined to get justice, and to keep Gemma safe from the dangerous killer circling the cobbled streets of Covent Garden. But she is already too deeply involved, and, in a world where everyone wears a mask, could she have trusted the wrong person…?