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Bright Shadow
This is the story of Katherine Plantagenet, self-proclaimed “daughter, sister and aunt of kings” who endures extraordinarily traumatic reversals of fortune, as her life swings through wealth and adversity. A glittering future as an English princess is swept away by the untimely death of her father, Edward IV, and the usurpation of her brother Edward V's throne. Surrounded by murderous intrigue, conspiracy and ambition, Katherine and her sisters fear what lies in store … The pragmatic marriage of the eldest, Bessy, to the victor of Bosworth, Henry Tudor, brings an uneasy peace to Katherine's young life but the shadows of suspicion and rebellion continue to swirl around her.
Katherine witnesses first hand the events that plague her brother-in-law's reign. As a political expedient, she is given in marriage to William Courtenay, heir to the Earl of Devon, but Henry Tudor's paranoia soon falls upon her beloved young husband who is imprisoned in the Tower. An intelligent and resilient woman, in a world where men hold all the power, Katherine fights her way alone through a tense decade that ends in personal tragedy. With a vow of celibacy as her chosen route of self-preservation, Katherine continues to tread a wary path of survival ... until the charming Benedict Haute enters her life. However, the failure of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to produce a living son changes the way any Plantagenet is viewed by the king; Katherine knows her royal blood could cause trouble for her family.
£14.99 -
Blue Sky
A baby girl is found by travelling Cheyenne. A brave and his wife bring Blue Sky up, as if she were their own, and she is happy to be one of the people, even after being told she was born of the white man.
While only in her teens she performs a coup which gives her all she had hoped for, full acceptance into the tribe and a forthcoming wedding to the brave she loves. But a jealous rival has other ideas. She arranges Blue Sky’s abduction telling her mother and father that she has run away.
Blue Sky is taken by an unscrupulous trader to a white man’s town. She is abused and enslaved but eventually finds help in the sheriff and school teacher.
Despite the risks, she comes to the aid of the Indian residents of a nearby reservation and, in so doing, encounters a brave who plots their escape from the town and reservation.
Then begins a long, dangerous and fateful journey home.
£9.99 -
Blowing Away the Bura
In this novel, by October 1991 war in western Croatia between Croats and Serbs is daily and deadly. Navenka Berik, a wimpy 25-year-old Serb mother of two has had her Serb parents and her Croat husband make decisions for her. During the next few months:
- Her father is taken and presumed killed,
- Navenka is raped,
- Her husband is arrested and probably is killed,
- Her mother becomes crippled,
- From the rape, another child is born,
- Remaining family members are on the run as internally displaced persons in the dissolving Yugoslavia,
- The hassled Navenka has to step up and lead.
Unwelcome anywhere, the family languishes with temporary protection visas in Germany. In 1996, they are accepted as refugees in Australia. Peace, the English language and Australia’s very multicultural society bring many new problems. Navenka’s ongoing memories of her husband keep her wishing that he might be alive. Thoughts of moving back to Croatia or to Bosnia end when, briefly, Navenka attends the trial of those accused of murdering her father. There, poverty and the old ethnic prejudices live on. Back in Australia, her long “lost” husband finds her. However, after the initial joy wears off, the terms of his demand, at gunpoint, that his family go and live in Croatia with him are unacceptable. Navenka’s daughter Srebrenka, too young to be burdened by bad memories of Yugoslavia, cleverly resolves the impasse.
People react differently to war. Some think. Some “just feel”.
£11.99 -
Blood-Eagle Saga
Deep frozen midwinter in a Viking warlord’s longhouse. From the snow emerges a white-haired saga-teller, Snorri, who offers to entertain the drunken warband.
Sven Ravenfeeder agrees – but drops a noose around Snorri’s neck and tells him: “If we like your story, you will live...”
So begins the Blood-Eagle Saga – a tale of greed and betrayal, courage and cowardice, that takes rival Viking longships across the Atlantic to a new world of depravity.
In the menacing forests and on the vast bison-rich plains, Viking enemies Grim and his former right-hand man Asgeir battle over honour and treasure. Along the way, they find themselves in another equally proud and brutal warrior culture, that of the native Americans.
Throughout Asgeir is helped by his muse, Mary, a shape-shifting former Irish slave who has every reason to hate Grim.
At the heart of the saga is one burning question that sends Sven and his men into a frenzy – who will be the victim of the Vikings’ favourite torture – The Blood-Eagle?
£11.99 -
Blood on Their Hands
Algy Foster and Graham Murrell grew up in the diverse and vibrant community of Tiger Bay, a world-renowned neighbourhood in Cardiff. Algy’s parents were part of the Windrush generation, immigrants from the Caribbean who made their home in the Docks area of Cardiff. Graham’s grandfather, who also immigrated from Barbados in order to fight in the First World War, married a Welsh woman who owned a boarding house in Tiger Bay. Both men, who are of black and mixed-race heritage, respectively, have faced racism and prejudice throughout their lives. As they near the end of their careers in education, they set out on a journey to uncover the root causes of prejudice in society.
Blood on Their Hands is a fictionalized account inspired by the real-life experiences of Algy and Graham, offering a unique and thought-provoking perspective on contemporary political debates around race and inequality.
£11.99 -
Blessed is He
Towards the end of the American Civil War in 1863, Sergeant Zack Jackson, a black Confederate soldier, wakes up after a battle in Virginia, in a field full of his dead comrades, and he sees a hand held up in the middle of all the dead bodies. On further investigation, a dying soldier hands him a wallet, with both monies, his home address, and the deeds of a map of his claim to a gold mine. He requests, with his dying wish, that Zack takes the contents to his wife and family and to eventually go and find the gold mine. He then dies of his wounds. Zack, also gravely wounded, sets off to find the dead soldier’s home but collapses along the way. Isaac, a young 11-year-old Jewish boy, finds him and manages to take him back to his parents’ home where they look after him until he is fully recovered. Zack, fully refreshed, goes to find the dead soldier’s wife and hands her the wallet. She thanks him for his courage and honesty and agrees for him to search for the mine. Together with Isaac and his dog, they begin their journey through the dangerous terrain of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Unknown to them, they were being followed by an outlawed gang of Chinese immigrants, who had overheard their plans. They eventually manage to find the mine, but it is not what they expected. Ancient settlers from various Red Indian tribes appear and create havoc, and the two heroes are tasked with unbelievable struggles to save their own lives.
£7.99 -
Black Hearts and Blue Devils
A tale of six country orphans uprooted and transplanted into a dark world of soot and smoke. They have no choice but to adapt, none more successfully than big brother Abe, now a respected police sergeant in confident control of the rough streets of the Black Country in the 1880s, ready for anything the world can throw at him. Or so he believes. Because something else comes his way, something extraordinary, and not of this world, and he is certainly not ready for that.
Abraham Lively’s world is turned inside out, as he battles the forces aligned against him: black-hearted villains marshalled by non-human entities. He is sure that there are devils at work. He knows so because the locals have seen them. And they are blue. Blue Devils.
If that was not enough to contend with, he has made an enemy of a little man who will prove to be the greatest adversary of them all: a criminal yes, but pleasant enough, as sociopaths go; but dangerous, as sociopaths also often go. And Abe, tying himself up in mental knots, with his own devils, does not appreciate that danger until it is too late.
Will events conspire to destroy him? Or will he banish the darkness within himself, to return to the light, his true self, his family, his sanity?
Sons and Lovers meets Ripper Street meets Dennis Wheatley – you will not want to miss this!
£15.99 -
Atticus, Fighter of Rome Series: A Hero is Born
Rome had a new Emperor, Augustus. He began his rule with an iron fist. Many client kings and rulers throughout the Roman Empire were plotting to retake their lands from Roman rule. And looked for any sign of weakness. The legions of Rome fought to quell several uprisings on the outer edges of the Roman Empire. Rome needed a warrior, a true leader of men, and the Roman Gods answered. In the death of night, a thunderstorm raged. The screams of a woman giving birth rang out, followed by the cry of a new born child entering the world. Atticus was born. Destined to walk in the shadows of the Gods, Mars and Jupiter. They gave him the heart of a Lion and the will to succeed against all adversaries. The Gods would not make Atticus’ path in life easy, born to the lowest of the low, hardship would befall him from a very young age. But one day he would be strong enough to defend the weak and fight with honour.... but make no mistake, Atticus would kill the enemies of Rome without mercy. One day he would become Rome’s greatest ever warrior. His name would be known in all four corners of the Roman Empire and beyond.
£9.99 -
Approach by Stealth
It’s 1942 and a fleet of German mini-submarines are loose in the Mediterranean wreaking havoc on Allied shipping, sinking urgently required supplies destined for Malta and Alexandria and the new invasion beachhead in Algeria, thus jeopardising the squeezing of Rommel out of North Africa.
Awaiting an ETA regarding a large American convoy, they are re-arming and refuelling at their base in Vichy France near the Spanish border.
Can the British commandos en route in motor gunboats reach the port in time to destroy the vessels or will they fall foul from information supplied by a suspected spy at the War Office in London and die like so many Special Operations Executives, agents and resistance fighters in various recent missions?
Perhaps the best chance of success lies with S.O.E.’s secretly arranged mission involving their French agent Pierre Duvalle, seconded to a special boat section of the Royal Marines and transferred by submarine to within striking distance with five experienced and lethally efficient men of that elite force. Three two-man folboat canoes would see them to their target.
But what does the informer in London know? Will Duvalle, who has a very sad and personal reason to see him exposed, find a chink in the spy’s armour?
£9.99 -
Angel
In Angel, the life of a slave owner and his family, as well as their slaves, is explored through the story of a genius slave named Angel. Appointed as overseer of the plantation in her teenage years, Angel’s ideas bring great success to the slave owner and turn him into a multimillionaire. However, when the Civil War sweeps through the plantation, the owner and his family are killed. After the war, Angel uses the owner’s gold to support 116 former slave families until law and order is restored in Mississippi. She builds a school for the slaves and attends to their medical and dental needs, eventually purchasing land for them to become sharecroppers. Follow Angel’s journey as she works to create a thriving utopia at the plantation, called Richmond Crest, and see what the future holds for her and the community she has built.
£9.99 -
An Impossible Quest
In this story set in the ‘Dark Ages’ of British history, two brothers – twins Alfred and Leofric – help win a tribal conflict, but faced with ‘a fate worse than death’, they take to the road. They are seeking adventure and fame and are faced with opposition when Alfred falls in love with a beautiful (aren’t they all?) princess. He is challenged to complete a quest to prove he is worthy of her. That’s when the difficulties begin.
£8.99 -
An Age of War and Tea
2021 HFC Gold Medal Winner for Historical Fiction
An epic tale of intrigue, betrayal, and revenge, set in the turbulent era of sixteenth-century Japan. Sakichi is a provincial Samurai boy who reluctantly becomes ensnared in a conspiracy by a Shogun determined to reclaim his power. It is within this developing turmoil that events emerge to forever shape Sakichi’s life. With his life now shattered, Sakichi discovers that he is adopted, and his biological mother is a ruthless assassin, who is determined to prevent him from discovering the true identity of his father.
With such high stakes at play, Sakichi’s life is placed in grave danger. Rival factions compete with each other to assassinate him and his mother before he discovers the truth. Should the identity of Sakichi’s father become common knowledge it would not only threaten the rule of a powerful war lord but plunge the nation into greater turmoil and bloodshed.
Acclaim for An Age of War and Tea
“This book is one for the ages and ranks right up there with Shogun by James Clavell. For anyone who loves an immersive story, full of power struggles, life-changing secrets, and the full richness of the ancient exotic history of Japan, then this is must-read.”
-HFC Awards/Book Reviews
£11.99