Showing results by author "Martin Hicks" in All Categories

The box, skillfully fashioned from wood and with a pattern of stars inlaid on its side, was clearly very old. Intrigued by its age and craftsmanship, David Molloy bought it at the car boot sale in a Glasgow school playground, an acquisition that led to a series of nightmares which grew to exert an increasing influence upon relationship with his partner and his life. It would lead him into a quest into his ancestry and, in doing, alter his understandings and attitudes forever.

A Gathering of Soldiers relates the story of Daniel Ryan, an Irish immigrant who has begun a new life in Georgia just as the events leading up to the momentous civil war in America have begun to unfold. The book describes his experiences upon enlisting with a group of his peers, in a north Georgia militia company, following Abraham Lincoln's first summons for troops to invade the southern states.

It is the late summer of 1863 and the third year of the war in North America. In the wake of the defeat at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee has returned, with his Confederate army, to Virginia. But a further crisis to the west, in the Tennessee theatre of the war, compels the general to detach a part of his army, to journey west to north Georgia in order to reinforce the beleaguered southern forces there.

A Deepening Twilight, the sequel to A Season for Killing, continues the story of Daniel Ryan, an Irish immigrant serving in Robert E. Lee's confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War. The novel relates Ryan's experiences in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, and in the trenches around Richmond, during the closing months of the war. As the army and the south sink towards defeat, he, and the remnant of his Georgia company continue the struggle against the odds, experiencing at first-hand how war can reveal the best, as well as the worst, of those on either side.

The box, skillfully fashioned from wood and with a pattern of stars inlaid on its side, was clearly very old. Intrigued by its age and craftsmanship, David Molloy bought it at the car boot sale in a Glasgow school playground, an acquisition that led to a series of nightmares which grew to exert an increasing influence upon relationship with his partner and his life. It would lead him into a quest into his ancestry and, in doing, alter his understandings and attitudes forever.

It is the late autumn of 1854 and the steam gunboat Spartan, commanded by James Rutherford has returned to duty following the repair of her battle damage in Calcutta.

It is the autumn of 1852, and the British warship Spartan, commanded by James Rutherford, continues her mission for the East India Company, to destroy a criminal consortium led by the Scorpion, a Chinese criminal named Liang Ziu, who controls an alliance of ruthless pirates, complicit local rulers and corrupt western traders. Attack is followed by counter-attack, including an attempt on Rutherford’s own life, with treachery, extending to the higher echelons of the company, an additional threat, as the hunt for the Scorpion and his allies ranges across the Far Eastern Seas.

It is May of 1863 and the Civil War in North America has entered its third year. Facing a range of enemy threats, southern commander General Robert E. Lee proposes an invasion of the northern states to supply his army, relieve pressure on other imperilled fronts and to seek decisive victory on enemy territory that could end the war.

It is the summer of 1853 and Commander James Rutherford leaves Calcutta once more to renew his campaign against organised Oriental piracy. The principal pirate leader Liang Ziu is dead, but Rutherford obtains intelligence that his criminal organisation continues to operate from a heavily fortified base, secure from conventional attack. Beset anew by intrigue and treachery, Rutherford must somehow confront and destroy this final stronghold, a task which poses difficulties and trials unlike any he has yet encountered.

HARD PASSAGE NORTH continues the story of Irish immigrant Daniel Ryan, who has left his adopted Georgia home to serve in Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. It is the summer of 1862 and, following the campaign to save their capital city of Richmond, Lee and his men are moving north to confront the threat posed by the Union army of General John Pope.

It is the spring of 1864 and the Confederate raider Palmetto is off the Philippines, pursuing her campaign against US shipping. For her captain, Thomas Grover there is much to consider, for with the ship’s previously sustained engine damage not fully repaired, he learns that these seas are now patrolled by a new Union warship that vastly overmatches his own ship. As the war turns increasingly against the south, Grover must redouble his efforts against the enemy, but the hidden threats facing him are as dangerous as the known ones.

It is 1861 and Thomas Grover has resigned from the US Navy to go with his native state of South Carolina which has left the Union. For two years his career in the new Confederate Navy is tedious and unrewarding. He is posted to Britain as a naval attaché, again denied his wish for active service, until he is transferred to Liverpool where he is offered command of a new warship.

It is early 1854, and war looms with Tsarist Russia. James Rutherford and his ship Spartan are transferred to Royal Navy service and given a role patrolling Oriental waters in search of a powerful enemy warship which seeks to prey upon allied shipping. Reluctant to be confined to such tedium, Rutherford adopts a more proactive approach but this will lead to grave risks for Spartan’s crew.

When Lieutenant James Rutherford of the Honourable East India Company is summoned to Government House in Calcutta, he has no inkling of what awaits him there. To his great surprise, he is offered command of the Spartan, a newly converted steam warship, receiving orders to proceed to sea to hunt a Chinese pirate, but, though those orders appear straightforward enough, they initiate a deadly sequence of events during which the hunter all too often is the quarry.

A Season for Killing is told from the perspective of Daniel Ryan, a corporal in Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Virginia in 1864 during the American Civil War, as the brutal campaign in the spring and summer of that year unfolds.

The Rappahannock Line continues the story of Irish immigrant Daniel Ryan who serves in Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. As the year 1862 draws to its close, the powerful Union army gathers its strength on the Rappahannock River in Virginia to renew its advance on the Confederate capital. Lee's army confronts it there bringing on a further bloody collision.