Showing results by author "D. K. Broster" in All Categories

It is 1745, and the Jacobite rebellion is on the rise. Ewen Cameron, a principled young Scottish Highlander, is destined and honoured to serve Bonnie Prince Charlie, the young Pretender, and to help the 'rightful King' ascend to the British throne. Major Keith Windham is a career soldier with the English Army - seemingly the antithesis of Ewen. He is jaded, worldly and loyal to the Crown but, ultimately, an outsider.

Set six years after the bloody conflict of Culloden, The Gleam in the North sees Ewen Cameron living back in his ancestral home in the Highlands with his beautiful wife, Alison, and their two small sons. They are delighted by a surprise visit from Alison’s brother, Hector, on leave from his regiment in France. But Hector’s visit is not all it seems. He is on a secret mission for the young Pretender Bonnie Prince Charlie, but before he can deliver a vital coded letter to a fellow Jacobite, he is attacked on a lonely Highland road and left for dead. 

Two years have passed since the tragic events of The Gleam in the North and Ewen Cameron’s wife, Alison, is awaiting the birth of their third child in Ardroy while Ewen visits his cousin Ian Stewart at his great uncle Alexander’s home at Ivernacree. Ian is now heir to the estate, having lost his older brother, Alan, at Culloden, where they were betrayed by their archenemy, Campbell of Cairns. Ian is under pressure from his father to marry and secure an heir. 

Raoul des Sablières, a French parole prisoner in England during the Napoleonic Wars, becomes enmeshed in a complicated tangle where his honour conflicts with his parole, and is sent to prison. Juliana Forrest, for whose sake he broke his parole, does her utmost to save him, and in his adventures and misfortunes, Raoul eventually also finds help from an unlikely source. This is a fun adventure story and romance, written in a style similar to Georgette Heyer.

Dorothy Kathleen Broster was born on 2nd September 1877, at Devon Lodge in Grassendale Park, Garston, Liverpool. Her novels, mainly historical fiction, peaked in popularity with ‘The Flight of the Heron’, in 1925, a best-seller followed up by two sequels. As well as poetry and various articles, she also wrote several short stories, the best known of which is a classic of weird fiction ‘The Couching at the Door’, in which an artist appears to be haunted by a mysterious entity.