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A Window on the Past
Sherlock, an egocentric businessman in Los Angeles in 2011, is about to fire his secretary, Sophie. But when he walks into an elevator in the skyscraper he works in, he finds himself travelling back in time to the moment when the first plane is about to hit World Trade Center One on September 9, 2001. His actions during the tragedy in the famous Windows on the World restaurant transform him into a man who is caring and heroic.
This gripping story is about those people who were left to die, and how an interloper from the future succeeded in saving a few. It is, most importantly, about the brave efforts of those who struggled to save the people in the towers, and the challenges they faced on this horrible day in New York City.
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A Walk in "Wild" Wales with George Borrow
In his Welsh classic, Borrow provides an account of his walk from Llangollen to Swansea in 1856, a walk which at the time would have been a pursuit of epic proportions. Borrow’s literary musings, historical anecdotes and experiences along the way, presented in the form of a journal, provide an insight to Welsh life as it was in the middle of the 19th Century.
In a world immersed in the industrial revolution, Borrow was undoubtedly struck by the magnitude and pace of change that was happening around him. But it would not have been evident to him that the world could be anything like it is today. A world without motor cars, no electricity, no telephones, no aeroplanes, no police force anything like we know it today and the wonders of a technological revolution that has turned the world on its head not even a figment of the imagination, that was the world of Borrow.
A Walk in “Wild” Wales with George Borrow compares Borrow’s Wales with Wales today and captures events that have impacted on towns that Borrow passed through and some of the characters they have produced who have helped shape a Welsh culture built on a unique language and a hardiness of spirit descendant from its farming and mining heritage.
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A Time in Paris
In the sweltering Indian summer of 1870, a young Englishman is sent to Paris as Prussian invaders advance on the French capital with the largest siege army ever assembled. The City of Light is cut off from the outside world, the population trapped behind its tall ramparts. As the siege continues for a month, then a second, a hungering third, a frozen fourth and into a starved fifth, the Englishman, a stock young gentleman of his Victorian times, falls in love with a radical French enchantress who by chance saves his hide. The lovers’ fate is entwined with those of a tormented French general appointed to defend Paris and an impatient Prussian grandee (Otto von Bismarck) hell-bent on bringing the ‘capital of civilisation’ to its knees. The unlikely love story turns upon true events that have shaken our world through to the present.
Praise for David Lawday’s recent book Danton: Giant of the French Revolution:
“Spirited and highly readable… Lawday creates some great set pieces and striking turning points… He is able to capture the atmosphere of the early revolution: its inflammable mix of devilment and righteousness, reckless selflessness and flagrant self-promotion. He sees that Danton was more than the sum of his crimes, the sum of his secrets; he celebrates his ‘large heart and violent impulses in an irresolvable conflict’.”
Hilary Mantel, The London Review of Books.
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A Soldier's Conscience
When a soldier has trouble accepting the acts of the regime he serves, how much can his conscience take? What should he do? Could he betray his comrades? These are the questions that faced a young Wehrmacht soldier, after being posted to a top secret base in France. After helping the civilian French resistance, the former soldier must reinvent himself and join the Italian partisans. If these resistance members found out his true identity, he could forfeit his life. With potential enemies all around him, can he betray his fellow countrymen and survive the war unscathed?
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A Small Tale of the Great Circle
While the First World War is regularly depicted by the nature of its horror, it was also a period whereby the excitement of inventions and the suggestion of an exciting time to come churned up the aspirations of some. Add to this the imagining of a treasure hunt in an exotic location and the excitement squashed fear.
All you had to do was survive, to learn how to sail. But there was the small matter of the interloper who could make the enterprise so much easier to accomplish. But that man was self-evidently unscrupulous, not to say demonic; it could all be sunk so easily by antagonism so hard to suppress. They all relied on the other and no one was being completely frank. They all lied, as we do.
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A Senseless Death in a Dying Republic
A young man, Justinian, is setting out to join the Roman army during a period of bitter tensions during the last years of the Roman republic. His enlistment gets off to a bad start when he loses contact with his fellow soldiers while on a march. A chance meeting with a young woman sets off a series of events which lead to criminal charges of desertion and malicious killing.
Set during the turbulent times of the Marian and Sulla civil war, A Senseless Death in a Dying Republic is a gripping story of lost dreams and a disregard for human life. The novel features historical characters such as Sulla, Marius, Pompey, Cicero and Catalina.
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A Rough Wooing
Henry VIII could barely control his anger. How dare those wretched Scots refuse his offer to marry off his own dear son, Edward, to their Princess Mary? Where do they think they will get a better offer. No doubt it is her mother, Marie de Guise, who is behind their refusal. A French woman at the head of the Scottish Court! This calls for a firm hand. “Send the army north and let them wreak havoc.”
But it was a chastened English army that returned to Berwick in 1549. Over a thousand of their number would never return. Eighteen months they had endured behind fortress walls. They had found they were fighting not only the Scots but the French army in their thousands as well. Nor had they achieved their objective of capturing Mary. Instead she was safely landed in France, poised to marry the Dauphin.
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A Raven's Calling
This story begins in the small village of Louisbourg, Nova-Scotia and finds its way to the village of Perce, Quebec, where Celine brings the truth to light.
We have a man, Tomas, found dead, washed up on a lonely beach and a woman, Celine, who comes from afar to begin a new life miles away in the historical village of Louisbourg. What do these two lives have in common? When Celine leaves her life of over fifty years in Ontario, to start a new chapter for herself she finds the truth about Tomas and how and why he was found, dead, on a beach many miles away from Louisbourg where he worked as a night watchman at the fortress of Louisbourg. Celine, his replacement, finishes what Tomas had begun until his mysterious death. Now the truth is in the hands of two countries. What will come from this new truth? Will history be rewritten? Was a life given up for love or truth?
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A Quest to Get Home Bound
It is the midst of the Second World War and rationing is tightening everyone’s belts. Yet down the dark alleyways of the French capital Paris, you would find a man who could get you anything on the underground market.
When a captured American ranger receives news from home, he knows he must escape from the Nazi prison camp in East Germany and embark on a quest to get to a neutral land, so he may return to his wife in America. Unexpectedly the ranger finds himself becoming mixed up in the Paris black-market syndicate. Can he survive long enough to afford his escape? Can he be homebound once again?
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A Mind Behind
Embark on an extraordinary journey alongside Laura as she ventures from the shores of England to the vibrant landscapes of Italy.
Set against the backdrop of Italy’s struggle for independence, A Mind Behind unravels the compelling story of one woman’s courageous odyssey.
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A Mere Shepherd Boy – Book 1
The year was 1,000 BC. Life was fraught with danger. Drought, famine, and sickness were a constant threat. At any moment an enemy could invade.In a little hilltop village, a child was born, the youngest of a tribe of brothers. He was destined to become one of the best-known names in human history. As a child he knew nothing of this. Yet he dreamed! And as he led his father’s sheep through the wild pastures he looked to the heavens, played his harp, and lifted his voice in spontaneous song. There were predators in those hills, but he was unafraid and full of courage, as if protected from all harm.A natural leader, he won the loyalty and admiration of the other boys in town. He drilled them in war-games, and they shared many adventures. These childhood companions remained faithful to him throughout all the seasons of his life. Through thick and thin they followed him, because of... that special something... that capacity to inspire and to lead, which seemed to come so naturally to him.This is the story of his early years. It lays the foundation - culturally, socially and geographically - for the epic life-journey which lay ahead. His legacy would last forever.
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A Life of Breath
Jamie is a respiratory doctor working on the front line. After 12 months without catching the illness himself, he finally gets infected from an unlikely source.
He struggles to come to terms with his own first experiences of the breathlessness that has been the focus of his working life. He also has to reflect on his own potential mortality. Neither are a comfortable ride.
He has had a hugely successful 35-year career, which has taken him to the very top of his specialist field. At the same time, we meet the shy, gauche, and naïve first year doctor, who could never imagine, the achievements ahead. We read the disastrous, humorous, and unbelievable escapades, which mould his career, whilst realising that a successful personal life does not necessarily match, that of the career
The author believes the public has fallen out of love with their medical professionals and in writing this part biography, part fictional account of one doctor’s story, he hopes to put this right. You should laugh, cry and cringe in approximately equal doses, but you might not be able to look your own doctor squarely in the eye, with quite the same perspective, again.
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