Pipistrello

Set in 1908 in a stately home in the lush English countryside, Pipistrello is a gothic tale of murder and mayhem.It follows the fortunes of the Chester family: the Italian countess Eleanora, her husband Sir Peregrine, their daughters Allegra and Elodie, and the loyal staff who serve them.At its heart is a set of tarot cards which divine the future. Full of dark omens, ghosts, lust and tragedy, the story travels to the glittering shores of the Italian Riviera and back as the lives of the inhabitants of Chichester Hall are transformed in unexpected and unimaginable ways.Pipistrello takes a glimpse into the intricacies of motherhood, the different seasons within a marriage and the desire for metamorphosis that lies within us all.

Outwitting the Enemy

Andrew was recruited into the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in 1939 for his linguistic talents and other qualities suitable for working in the Service.

By early July 1940, he had already been sent on four missions including the sabotaging of a train carrying tank engines inside Germany, assisting in the evacuation of BEF soldiers from Dunkirk on one of the ‘small ships’ and surviving a number of life-threatening incidents when bringing King Haakon and the Norwegian cabinet from northern Norway to exile in London.

In November 1940, he is persuaded to help at Camp 020 with the interrogation of German spies captured in England; a few weeks later, he completed his naval officer training in Scotland and southern England.

With the Atlantic convoys being attacked by U-boats operating out of the German-occupied ports of Lorient and St Nazaire with heavy losses, he is sent at the end of March 1941 to spy on the building of the submarine pens for a possible raid by the RAF later in the year. He narrowly avoids being captured by the Wehrmacht and returns to London with vital information.

He undergoes parachute training in May 1941 before being dropped in NE France where he is escorted by a French Resistance group to Koblenz. His mission is to deal with a member of the SIS that had become a senior officer in the German intelligence service (the Abwehr). By some good fortune, he manages to escape by Lysander back to England.

The story is a most compelling, absorbing and attractive read with strong classical elements. It has a clean plot for the time period covered which develops and unfolds through a captivating storyline; the relatable cast of characters will keep the reader enraptured up to the very last page.

One Week in 1952

The story is set in June 1952 and describes one week of action between Tom, 8 years old, and his Aunt Siobhan, 18 years old, who looks after him while his parents are forced to leave home. An unexpected event enables them to holiday in Kent, where exciting adventures befall them both. Throughout the book there is a surprising comparison between the way of life in the 1950s, much of it based on historical fact, and that of the modern-day world.

Of Time and Tide

This is a story of how fate determines the life we lead, but with either kindness or cruelty.

Although deserts, forests and oceans separated Eddie Fraser, an Australian man, and Tina Morris, a Scottish girl, their lives were destined to entwine. Without the least knowledge of each other’s lives or even the wish to know, they were joined together in a marriage that, since Eddie’s work as a sailor on a merchant ship kept them apart for long periods of time, couldn’t possibly work. Or could it?

Against all odds posed by Tina’s poor health, she gave birth to three children, Maggie, Billy and Eve. And then the first world war, the great war devastated many lives, including Eddie and Tina’s. This is the retelling of how envy and greed for another’s life, love and wealth can dictate and corrupt a mind without conscience or pity.

James Coutts, a man of high standing in a community of mill workers, and his obnoxious daughter, Millicent, enter Tina’s life with devastating consequences. From that point onwards, this story becomes one of horror and treachery. The now grown-up Maggie enters into a battle of wits that only one can win.

Not for the Telling

A minor road accident led to a chance meeting of two new undergraduates, whose origins, study paths, and potential employment proved to be so contrasting. War was out of the question at the time, but when it arrived it enabled both women to devote their interests to a common objective. One found her metier in the air. Though discouraged by the exclusion of women from flying in the air force, nevertheless she seized a golden opportunity to fly in the service of her country. Her wartime record was distinguished and record breaking. Meanwhile, the other was recruited into an anti-espionage service designed to curb the activities of those citizens who were bent on crippling the national effort, if and when war actually came. The ensuing wartime enabled both women to excel in their respective duties, one in the physical sense, the other surreptitiously. On leaving university their ways had taken them apart, through unexpected adventures, trials, tribulations and various love matches, but a second sheer chance in their lives brought them together again, after losing each other and forgetting their former friendship.

Nashotah Peak

In this novel the author draws on his interest in the Jewish Faith and also his experience in the field of advertising.

He introduces the reader to Bennie Traumann whose Jewish parents had escaped from persecution in Nazi Germany to find refuge in Chicago where his family had established a business manufacturing optical goods.

The parents were both disturbed as a result of their traumatic experience leading his mother to experience a post natal depression and his father to ‘switch off’.

Bennie is brought up by a Jewish carer and eventually he enrols in a school of art and then as a graphic designer with an advertising agency.

The book continues, in Bennie’s own words, to describe his growth into maturity shaped by Jewish Faith.

Napoleon: Guillotine

King Louis is imprisoned. The Republican faction in Paris is growing stronger as the beat of the snare begins to ring in the ears of Europe. To quell the seething discontent of threats inside and outside of France, Napoleon is dragged into supporting a regime that has thrown away any pretence of Liberty in its quest to cover the globe. All the while Napoleon is forced to challenge his own traditions and overcome the pain of betrayal and exile from his home, to continually prove loyalty to a country that spurns him still. As the blade rasps down and the cruelty of those he serves becomes even more difficult to justify, Napoleon must strive to preserve his exiled family and navigate the unconscionable. As France struggles to survive the onslaught of foreign invasion, Napoleon must conquer an inner turmoil so raw and powerful that it drove him to the siege of Toulon and the beginning of greatness.

N'in D'la Owey Innklan: Mi'kmaq Sojourns in England

This is a historical novel, beginning in 1497 and taking us, in a series of vignettes, through five centuries of interconnections between the Mi'kmaq people of Atlantic Canada and London. Each character begins their story in different regions of the Mi'kmaq world of the North American Atlantic Coast; they end up in various regions of London, ranging from the 16th-century Austin Friars monastery to 20th-century Limehouse. The novel encompasses descriptive scenes of London in different eras, alternately addressing the eroticism of lovers, the wide-ranging lives of whalers and sailors, the horrors of nursing during World War I and the overwrought world of heroin users in late 1970s' East London, interspersed with occasional short pages of intellectual commentary. Ultimately, it is a labour of love for homelands lost.

My Son, the Soldier

This book portrays the sacrifice of those who served in the First World War from 1914–1918. A story that honours those who forfeited everything for their king and country, My Son the Soldier is aimed at young adults and older and aims for rigorous historical accuracy. This book includes images which are integral in setting the scene, and which will captivate the attention of the reader. This book is written as if from the perspective of those captured in the pictures and seeks to understand their attempts to come to terms with what they have witnessed and endured.This book asks profound and challenging questions of the reader and, more importantly, seeks to draw out the human side, and the human cost, of the First World War. Drawing on historical scholarship, while approaching these traumatic events from a deeply human perspective, this book will both fascinate and inspire the reader. 

Monsieur Law

LM Shakespeare is the writer of the acclaimed 17th-century historical novel Malice and of three modern financial thrillers. Monsieur Law thrillingly combines these two worlds.  

France, following the death of Louis XIV, was bankrupt, but into the court of the Regent there arrived a Scot called John Law, whose courage combined with a brilliant financial intellect briefly fired the whole country with a wild excitement which very nearly succeeded. This is history in the genre of Munich and Wolf Hall. 

Missing in Action Presumed Dead WW1

Chris Clark, a soldier from Sheffield, is fighting on the Western Front. Siggi Haas, a soldier from Berlin, is also fighting on the Western Front. They were just ordinary young men before the war started and now, their lives have been cast to Fate. Chris worked in a steelworks and was happy with his lot. Siggi was an assistant history teacher and looking forward to becoming a good teacher. They were uprooted from their normal environment and thrust into a world of war, as so many others were. They knew nothing of war and assumed it to be something gallant and adventurous. They even assumed they might enact some heroic deed.

There were so many heroes in the Great War and so many battles that I have not mentioned because this is a story based mainly, but not entirely, on the Western Front. It concentrates on the events surrounding Chris and Siggi, being the British Army and the German Army.

The words of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and leaders have been taken from letters, diaries, memoirs or documents — real people experiencing real events. However, Chris Clark, his family and friends are fictional, as are Siggi Haas, his family and friends. Some of the men in this book died in the Great War, some lived and some endured something in between living and death.

Midnight in Westminster Abbey

The English kings who rise from their graves in Westminster Abbey on All Souls' Eve are in a terrible fix. They want visiting New Yorker Charlie Chancer to use his special IT skills to steal abbey funds and send them off to queens who have already come to life and escaped the abbey. Handsome commodities trader Charlie is also in a bind. He has whisked his young son, Georgie, away to London (amid a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife) to join his teenage daughter, Ginny, who is on a student exchange. Tudor queens show Georgie architectural wonders of the abbey. Plantagenet kings give Ginny picturesque tutorials on their colourful but devastating battles. But what are the kings to do with these visitors who have seen their dazzling coronation ceremony and their daring TV games? Kill them or free them when they may tell what they have seen?