The Lamb Of God

England, the 1460s: the conflict known as the Wars of the Roses, pitting Lancastrian against Yorkist, is at its height. After his terrible experiences at the Battle of Towton and the siege of  Bamburgh Castle, Philip Neville is tasked with finding and escorting the recently deposed Henry VI – a man so pious and kind-hearted that many call him ‘the lamb of God’ – to London. During the period of relative peace that follows, Philip, previously disappointed in love, is at last persuaded to take a wife and make his way at court but finds it difficult to rein in his belligerent and insubordinate nature.
Despite his burning hatred for the ambitious nobles who have profited from the war, Philip remains steadfastly loyal to the new king, Edward IV. However, that loyalty is tested as never before when the alliance between the two most powerful men in the country – King Edward and Richard Neville, known as ‘Warwick the Kingmaker’  – begins to fray…
The Lamb of God is the second book in Philip Photiou’s War of the Roses trilogy. The first, The Wrath of Kings, was praised by best-selling author Philippa Gregory for its ‘intense realism and wealth of period detail’: qualities that The Lamb of God displays on every page.

The King's Fixer

Thomas Crookes, a depraved 15th century priest driven by an insatiable pursuit of power, resorts to murder and blackmail to rise within the medieval Church, itself rife with corruption maintaining its hold over the people by expounding the threat of hell-fire whilst tolerating iniquity and immorality in its own ranks.

Thomas, full of ambition, ingratiates himself with King Edward IV becoming his close confidant and fixer, thus thrusting him into machination and intrigue at the very heart of the kingdom.

This is medieval society in the raw with its bawdiness, brutality and violence brought to life in colourful detail. The bloody battles of Towton and Tewkesbury, the hunting, feasting, whore-houses, public executions, superstition and bustling markets all combine to make a gritty gripping story in an extremely evocative 15th century setting. 

The Journey – Prologue to Hell

The Journey – Prologue to Hell is indeed what the book’s title tells all its readers. It gives exactly the train passengers’ experience to those who’d been gathered up from their homes to be transported on it. To what, those passengers had wondered. Given false knowledge of a wonderful life they were being taken to by Nazis who’d dragged them out onto the road into waiting lorries then onto a train, they soon found that was false. They discovered the train journey didn’t lie, though; it showed its passengers the truth long before it ended.

The Impaler Prince

In fifteenth-century Eastern Europe, Vlad III of Wallachia conducted a reign of terror. He had citizens impaled by the thousands. People were butchered on his merest whim. In his realm, and beyond it, men and women lived in dread of the Impaler Prince. And this Prince revelled in the horror he inspired.

He was a sadist, seen by some as a being of unequalled depravity, even as the Devil’s own spawn. But Vlad was also a man who had the qualities of a great leader: strength, courage, intelligence and commitment to an ideal. He was a crusader against the infidel who considered himself a true warrior of Christ.

Here, his story is told by four men whose lives overlapped with his; men who were influenced by him to the point of obsession. But it is also told by Vlad himself. The inner thoughts of the butcher of Wallachia are exposed. And there is much more to this sinister figure than many would have imagined. 

The Golden Threads

Nellie was brought up by her grandparents and lived in the East End of London. At the age of 19, she was able to start the job she had wanted, in a large J. Lyons & Co. Corner House tea room in London, where she became a ‘Nippy’, as the waitresses were called, where she also met her lifelong friend Connie.

Soon after she also met the love of her life, Tommy Brown, but her idyllic life was soon to change with the outbreak of WW2. The comfortable and safe routine of life was soon turned on its head.

The Folks from Fowlers Bay

History is not always the exact truth but a narrative flavoured by the writer’s passion and background and the time when she or he lived. It is particularly true for southern Australia's history because it was put on paper by the colonialists. It is as if the history of Australia started then, and nothing happened before. Many past stories representing the history of aboriginal Australia are lost because its people died rapidly of infectious diseases, malnutrition and wars. Even these stories may not be the exact truth because they were told and re-told many times. But somewhere within the tales and the stories, there is a truth, and I have tried to find it. Behind the glamorous reports of Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin’s maritime exploits, one can find their humanity, aspirations and failures. The history of the people that lived along the South Australian coast from the Murray River, the Encounter Bay (Ramong to the Ramindjeri people), Kangaroo Island to Port Lincoln (Kallinyalla, the Place of Sweet Water, to the Barngarla people), and along the entire west coast of the Eyre Peninsula, is at best scanty. But there are stories—interesting stories—of whalers, escaped convicts and their lives among the aboriginal people. Here, I meld these stories together in a tale of love, adventure and imagination.

The Fallen

My name is Sath… My name is Sathariel, actually. I am one of those who people call ha-Satan. Yes, it means “adversary” in Aramaic and yes, it is “adversary of God”. But for some reason, everyone has forgotten that those who you nicknamed like this, were first and foremost the defenders of people, who stand by you before a Heavenly court. It was providence we didn’t choose. It was decided instead for us.

You, people, have given us many names, but none of them was correct, and you people, have given us functions completely unfamiliar to us. We were deities to you at first, then we became the outcasts. And we were Iyrin, the Watchers, who guard and protect you. And who decides if we’ve done our jobs well?

It would be foolish to make excuses now. Who am I to do this?

My name is Sathariel and it means “the one who is on the other side of God”. But I’m just an archivist who writes time. Every moment of time, from the beginning of time.

Who am I? I’m just one of the Brethren, one among two hundred of “the fallen”. But now... now I want to tell you our real story.

The Emperor's Marble Pavement

The Emperor’s Marble Pavement, the second of four novels about the fall of Constantinople, finds Niccolo Gritti and Demetrius Alexandrou plunged in the turmoil of a city on war’s brink, their friendship complicated by the presence of Theodora, Demetrius’ pious sister and the prostitute Cinnamon. Now in the Emperor’s service, Niccolo must make accommodation with an embattled Venetian merchant colony. The struggle between Constantine’s supporters and those who would appease the Ottomans climaxes in the infamous Service of Union in Hagia Sophia. Then Demetrius disappears, a victim of his peace-party enemies. Niccolo goes in pursuit and the friends are reunited in the Turkish court, under the cynical eye of Mehmet II. Here, courtesy of Nestor-Iskander, a Christian fanatic in the Sultan’s service, they witness the Ottoman siege train’s ominous preparations before fleeing back to Constantinople. In The Emperor’s Marble Pavement, the cross-currents of personal and historical destiny take on new turbulence.

The Emergence of Malaterre

In 2006, following successive years of low rainfall, the dark and mysterious Malaterre Estate begins to resurface from the depths of a bleak northern reservoir. Within weeks a human bone is found; a bone that defies all logic...
Historic researcher Naomi Wilkes is looking forward to a well overdue rest. Her marriage is good, she has a child on the way, and things have never looked brighter, but when she is called in to investigate the unusual occurrences at Malaterre, she has no idea that within weeks her life will be devastated by the tragic events that will unfold...

The Eagle and The Dove

Titus Flavius Vespasianus was a Roman emperor who reigned from 69 to 79 AD. The fourth and last in the ‘Year of the 4 Emperors’, he founded the Flavian dynasty that ruled the Empire for 27 years.

The empire was starting to enjoy 10 years of peace since Nero and, during this period, Rome had ambition. One of those ambitions was to return to the land of druids and blue painted warriors after years of complete oblivion. Britain was a ripe fruit ready to be easily harvested. Or was it?

Octavius Andreasius Salvinius, Praefectus Castrorum and third in command of Legion XX Valeria Victrix, embarked on an epic journey all around the Roman Empire, hoping to obtain his last victory laurels before leaving the army after more than 20 years of service fighting the enemies of Rome.

He recalls past disasters, overcoming appalling weather conditions, defeating feared tribes coming from the hills of Caledonia, avoiding falling into the trap of imperial politics, had been led by the most prestigious Roman generals whose names became legendary, who belong to history, and finally found unexpectedly love at the tender age of 50 years old.

The Darkness

Northern Ireland in 1971-72 is a time of extreme violence that tests the people and the security forces to their limits. A soldier turned terrorist sworn to kill his former comrades. Slaughter on the streets as bombs shatter the lives of the innocents.

Bomber Brown finds himself in the thick of the action. Sometimes with his elite recce platoon but often on his own, relying on his training and initiative to survive when faced with the man determined to kill him! Face to face, gun to gun! The survivor will be the one with the steady hand, deadliest aim, and the will to win!

“The dream was back and no matter how many times Bomber shot the man he couldn’t kill him. He just had to watch the man's mouth uttering words that he couldn’t hear!”

There was no escape from the dream, so Bomber screamed at God to help him!

The Dark Trilogy

A book that follows one man’s life might be an autobiography, but what is a book that traces the lives of two men?

The autobiography which makes up the longest book of the trilogy holds the two histories of one man displaced by several hundred years, histories which interweave and come together in the Welsh mountains in the present day. And a part of one of those lives is traced further in the play for voices which makes up the second volume. Book three brings our characters to a resolution of kinds.

Chris Armstrong has blended fact and fiction to create a complex story with many strands... a story of the sea, a story of passionate love, a story about a writer and poet, a story about his friend and editor, and a story about the past: a past that the writer only understands completely at the very end of his anabasis – his journey away from the sea.