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Against All Odds
Liza’s journey in life continues through the eyes of the modern-day writer Ellie Fuller, and this second book of the series follows her return to America with her husband, Patrick, and children but no sooner are they on their way when disaster strikes and Liza’s life is threatened when she is considered a ‘Jonah’ by some members of the crew.
Many adventures occur on her journey but finally she reaches her beloved town of Benson. There are still highs and lows in her life and when she experiences a powerful vision of the future, she risks her marriage, her family and her freedom by acting on what she has seen.
Ellie Fuller also experiences that vision but she has yet to interpret its meaning, although she knows that what Liza saw and acted upon was so important that the risks that she took were justified.
Ellie also realises that Lord Jamie Edgeworth had played an important part in Liza’s life but the current Lord Edgeworth was being particularly uncooperative, as he expressed that he had no desire to delve into the past of someone whom he did not wish to consider as ever having had anything to do with his family. Ellie and her brother, Eddy, knew that they would have to face the wrath of Lord Edgeworth in order to get to the truth.
As the story continues, both Ellie and Eddy are captivated by Liza’s enthusiasm and they look forward to experiencing the next chapter of her life.
£17.99 -
After the Arrow
On August 2nd 1100, King William Rufus was shot by an arrow whilst out hunting and died of the wound. Was it murder?
Here is the story of what happened after that fatal arrow plunged the kingdom into years of disruption and uncertainty when exceptional personalities were playing for high stakes in a country wracked by violent disputes and long-drawn-out controversies.
After the Arrow brings to life the people who struggled with the most divisive issues of their day and the people who bore the cost.
£11.99 -
A.H. Avenue Number Three
This is a story of one family, but it could just as well be the story of any family.
A story with beginnings in different countries, in separate times, narrated by three generations. It moves through three significant historical events, the despair of the 1930s in Germany; the 1940s civil unrest in Ceylon; and the stifling fear of the 1970s in India.
It is a story of the demands of class and caste, education and politics, wealth, and status in the lives of all people. It is symbolic of the pain and grief that all humans endure; the disruption they experience when their best laid plans go awry. But crucially, the innate goodness that lies entrenched in the human heart, causing it to rise above petty prejudices.
£10.99 -
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.
£6.99 -
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.
£15.99 -
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.
£10.99 -
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?
£9.99 -
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.
£11.99 -
A Slaver’s Tide
When George Tyler, captain of the slave ship Charlotte, is becalmed in the middle of the Atlantic, time is not on his side. In the cargo hold are hundreds of thirsty slaves, and water supplies are low. Running out of options Tyler orders the crew to do the unthinkable and throw many of the slaves overboard to drown.
As Tyler sails back into Bristol, the story of the Charlotte ignites a debate about the future of slavery. On one side are the abolitionists, determined to force the government to end slavery; on the other, the traders themselves, uncaring about anything except maintaining the wealth the trade brings. And in the middle, imprisoned and awaiting trial for murder, Tyler must confront his own morality and pick a side – the abolitionists or the traders.
Told from the perspective of the men who ran the trade and the sailors who participated in it, and those who worked to end slavery, A Slaver’s Tide is at times confronting, shocking and moving. It is the story of the best and worst of humanity and one man’s journey through guilt and damnation to what lies beyond.
£9.99 -
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.
£7.99 -
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.
£7.99 -
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?
£8.99