James Grant

This story of James Grant, his family and the class they belong to is not of our time. That class still exists and its prosperity is unabated. But its position in the American national psyche is greatly diminished, its glitter dulled by the passage of time – and a change in the mores of society as a whole. But I have written it because I believe the foibles of the human heart and its redeeming strengths possess a universality which overcomes the angst of changing times. I have set the stage in an unfamiliar time to mine. Whether my characters that stride upon that cluttered stage would remain credible in a stark, modern setting, I cannot judge. I had no one in particular in mind in devising them. They are as the ghosts that populate our dreams – a compendium of hints and reflections of those who have crossed our consciousness in the ill-remembered past.

Jack Wolf

You will be brothers, you will see death and destruction, you will be expected to run into fire when every other living thing runs away, you will work long shifts, days, nights, Saturdays, Sundays, high days and holidays, Christmas days and your birthdays. You will be injured and burned, and don’t kid yourself it won’t happen to you, it will. And consider this: On average two firemen are killed each year in service. You are expected to do this job for thirty years. Nobody wants to pay you decent wages, they will tell you that you sit around all day, play snooker and squirt water for a living. You will be like Cinderella… you will live, eat and sleep behind the red engine house doors and when called to serve, when the fire bell rings you will answer their call, their fear and their alarm. You will risk your life for a stranger, someone you never knew or will ever know and when the alarm has passed, when you are exhausted and done, you will return to the fire station, close those red engine house doors behind you and lick your wounds.

We are their insurance; they never want us, until they want us, then briefly, briefly, we are heroes.

Ivanhoe Mill

Ivanhoe Mill is from a long ago period, it has characters of mixed interest, each section of the book has love, tragedy, plots of cruelty and devious problems that affect many of the community.

The Manor House, Cawston Hall, is the hub that controls the everyday life of the surrounding villages. The lord of the Manor is devious and cruel in his manipulation which is his quest to satisfy his selfishness.

There is a wide range of domestic and social activity that I hope gives you a great deal of interest to compliment the characters in the book. The writing and some of the flavour of the slang, I hope fits my interpretation that brings to life my portrayal of the people in the book.

Isabella

Isabella is a novel of its time when life was hard and intimidating, often short and frequently brutal in the cause of making many rich men even richer on both sides of the Atlantic. Even so, there were more people willing to stand up to legislate for the cause in America just as happened in Great Britain 50 years earlier to help the oppressed escape to live a better life.

It is a story of love during the Civil War when unlikely people made individual efforts to play a part in overcoming slavery. The story alternates between gunrunning on the Eastern Seaboard, a rescued slave’s efforts to repay society in Boston and Canada and a wealthy young lady’s adventure up the Mississippi taking a young girl to Canada for safety and her involvement with the underground railway.

Intuition Prevails

American, British, and other fighter pilots operate at the threshold of Artificial Intelligence (AI). They know that their lives depend not only on their skills, but equally on ‘intuition’. This is reinforced when cyber-attacks ‘high jack’ command-and-control systems. To date, the best pilots are superior to AI in tests, including in-flight combat simulations and field test. It is accepted that within a decade, AI will evolve from assisting pilots to replacing them. Meanwhile, pilots of USAF, USN, and the RAF are stretched as the conflicts across the globe draw them into danger. For the first time in history, USAF pilots and their families are threatened in the US. Exciting times!

In the 'Nick' of Time

We follow one man on his journey from uniform constable on the beat into the Vice Squad and then into the CID, gaining confidence and experience on the way. Times in the 1960s were changing and with Britain prospering, the Force began to suffer from a lack of manpower, with officers leaving for better-paid jobs. As a result, new methods of policing were introduced, including personal radios and Panda Cars, which involved massive change for those officers which remained. The book sheds light on a way of policing society which has long since passed.

In Search of a True World View

Will utopian teachings and totalitarian regimes shape the future of humanity? Ronald Fagerfjäll, nestor among Sweden’s financial journalists, does not believe that at all. Religions only reflect a bygone era when men guarded herds of cattle and young women became barter for creating bonds between clans. And totalitarian regimes were formerly the general norm because something better had yet to be invented. An infallible leader quickly stifles the ability of his subjects to solve problems.

The obsolete is cleared out as economic, technological, and cultural evolution continues relentlessly, driven by millions of change projects and billions of free citizens. In knowledge economies, neither feverish fantasies nor feudal structures fit in. We cannot know our future with any certainty, but still, we create it ourselves by solving one concrete problem after another.

What does an evidence-based history of humanity look like? Our biological development was first and foremost a result of a fierce struggle for survival higher up in the food chain, first as scavengers and then as hunters. It required ever better ability to cooperate as well as constant development of weapons and tools. The fact that some 40 ice ages and countless volcanic winters passed during millions of years pushed the early people close to extinction and accelerated cultural development.

From this eye of the needle came Homo Sapiens, a species which could meet the threat from nature with innovations, stories, and cultures. Fagerfjäll has been working on his history book for four decades, but it is only now, when researchers have been able to take a closer look at both the life itself and the history of the planet, that the tale has been completed.

For anyone who doubts humanity’s ability to deal with today’s problems, this is a vaccination against pessimism.

In Green Pastures

In 1917, war rages on in Belgium and France, and German bombs fall on East London. Two sisters, Florence and Nell, living in Stratford, arrange to leave the city for the tranquillity of the North Essex countryside.

For Florence Mundy, fleeing personal demons and the imminent return of Harry, departure from London cannot come soon enough.

Nell Ashford has the safety of her five children on her mind while George is away at the Front.

In Halstead, lying peacefully in the Colne Valley, they find new challenges, friendship and pain as well as personal fulfilment. Florence discovers salvation and hard work in the newly formed Women’s Land Army while Nell takes on the role of breadwinner to her family.

But they cannot escape the consequences of the Great War and the arrival of German Prisoners of War changes the dynamics of Halstead life and Florence’s future prospects as the armistice approaches.

I, Jandamarra

Jandamarra is an aboriginal warrior of the spiritual Kimberley area of Australia, home to the tribe known as the Bunuba people. Jandamarra is a legendary hero of the 1890s known to his people as a Jalgangurru, a magic man, due to his extraordinary skills and abilities.

He is a cheeky, likeable boy, and a quick learner. At around 12 years of age, Jandamarra, named Pigeon by the whitefellas, begins working on a sheep station, where he learns to shoot, ride horses, and live among the whitefellas. These are skills which will serve him well in his manhood. He is popular among whitefellas and enjoys the excitement and movement of their way of living, but the time comes when he must return to his tribe for initiation into manhood.

Jandamarra is torn between black and white cultures. But how can he belong to two different worlds with each pulling at his loyalties? How can he be accepted by one without rejecting the other?

This powerfully spiritual story of the legendary Jandamarra is based on extensive research of people and events.

I, A Dumb Boy

“‘Oh, Thomas, do you recall the miracle you performed?’

Yes, I did recall the miracle, if that’s what it was. I recalled other things too. Fergus and the secret chamber. Caty and her still-born child. My sister’s treacherous kiss.”

Norfolk, Virginia, 1775. Thomas Starling is fourteen years old but has never found the courage to speak to anyone except his older sister, Bethany. A visit from a stranger one night triggers a series of events that leads them to embark on a journey to the city of New York. There they encounter a community of outcasts and a demoralised army preparing for a British attack. Thomas yearns to be free of his boyhood and his dependence on his sister, but he is haunted by bitter memories of that terrifying night on the Georgian frontier … the girl in blue, the burning barn, the hanging corpse. His past is finally catching up with him.

House of Recovery

Present Day

A young couple buy a dilapidated house at auction to get on the property ladder. As derelict as the old, detached villa looks on the outside, the interior is like a time capsule, and other than years of silent neglect, the house has been preserved, waiting for new occupants. As renovations commence, the house begins to reveal secrets to its gruesome past and why it was abandoned nearly two hundred years ago.

1844

An undertaker and a volunteer nurse at a hospital for contagious diseases become acquainted through the victims of a murderer creating chaos within the medieval walled city of Carlisle. The unlikely couple, a hunchback and a wealthy young lady, learn about each other’s professions, realising the cloak between the living and the dead is a very thin veil. They question why fate has brought them together, yet cruelly keeps them apart.

The tangled web of past, present and future interferes in all their lives, yet all they strive for is happiness. Will fate be kind to those who do the wrong things for the right reasons?

Holes in the Ground: War and Ore

When Thomas Longois Lefoy is sent to Tangiers to investigate a German plot involving Moroccan phosphates, he uncovers a sinister Soviet Union involvement in the Asturias miners’ strike of 1934 and its unforeseen consequences for Andoni Arriola, a Basque metallurgist. As he delves deeper into the case, he finds himself caught in a web of intrigue involving the Spanish Civil War, the injury and death of British intelligence agents, and the protection of Britain’s interests in the iron and copper mining industries. As he travels from Tangiers to Gibraltar, Huelva, and Bilbao, he witnesses the devastating effects of civil war and the destruction of open-cast mining. Along the way, he encounters Heinrich Rathenau, a German industrial chemist seeking refuge, and becomes embroiled in a dangerous game of espionage and political maneuvering that reveals the high stakes of international trade and the human cost of war.