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The Magpie
It is December 1913 and Detective Constable Frank Bolam has a murder to solve. The victim is found drowned in the River Wear with a vicious knife wound to his lower back. There are no witnesses and no clues.A few months later another body is found with the same vicious knife wound, followed closely by a further two murders with the victims stabbed in a similar manner. This is a clever killer. No clues are found and Bolam cannot find a way to break the deadlock in his most perplexing case.Having risen from a lowly mining family, Bolam has strong moral values and becomes totally obsessed with the killer and the devastating sadness brought to the victims’ relatives. He vows to bring the murderer to justice, whatever the cost.These are turbulent times, with the country in the middle of an attritional war. In his quest to find the murderer, Bolam follows his hunch and enlists in the army, heading for the trenches to track down a cold-blooded killer in the middle of the most mechanised slaughter the world has known.
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The Last Supper
Leonardo da Vinci, Milan's Renaissance ideal, is tasked with painting The Last Supper but struggles to find the perfect person to model as Christ. Vittorio Dessa, a young farmer, is eventually spotted, plucked from farm life and placed at the heart of an alien world of art and science, aristocracy, politics and intrigue.Initially shocked, Vittorio gradually adjusts to the artist's exuberant manner and ambitious ideas, and after some hesitation, resolves to pursue his own ambitions and venture beyond the safety of the city walls.Thus encouraged, Vittorio's fortunes boom, but ill-equipped to deal with the transformation, his life slowly lapses into one of paranoia, jealousy and eventually murder. The strands of the story climax at Leonardo's very public reveal of The Last Supper painting.
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The Land of Three Houses
William Sterner’s story begins in the late 1700s on the Tohickon Creek in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, during the period known as The Rage for Wheat. His quest to build a fortune based on wheat leads him to Livorno, Tuscany, during the Napoleonic wars where he meets the Enlightenment salonniêre, Madame de Staël. Join him on his journey home to The Land of Three Houses.
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The Lady
This is a story set in a turbulent Cornwall at a time of hunger and crime, but out of desperation, there was also love, laughter and a bond, starting with a wilful girl and her adoring father, who left her far too early, leaving a legacy behind.In the care of trusted friends, she grew up happy and spirited, surrounded by her loving and yet vigilant guardians.Despite their vigilance, ‘the lady’ made a poor choice in a husband. They had two beautiful children just before he met an untimely end, which left more questions than answers and again, the lady is alone. A stranger enters her life. Is he a friend or foe?With love, murder, sadness and bravery, the little group get through the hard winter to face another spring.
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The Hounds of Diana - The Romulus and Remus Trilogy - Part I
Alba Longa is the ancient capital of Latium, on the Italian peninsula. The Roman Empire was born from this great city. However, behind the glory of what Rome became is a darker tale of secrecy, betrayal and death. Numitor is a good man and a great diplomat; his brother Amulius an envious plotter and brave conqueror. Their struggle for power will bring out the best of one and the worst of the other. Only one can be king. Rhea Silva (Lillia) is the daughter of Numitor, her first son will become heir to the throne. Her life is thrown into turmoil by events out of her control, putting her and her twin boys in mortal danger. The Hounds of Diana are the secret sect that protects the realm from within. Yet, there are those that would undermine it. Then, there are the Dormienti, the sleepers. Only when the Hounds call, do the Dormienti awaken, and only when death desires it.
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The Hallenbeck Echo
‘To develop and manufacture a devastating and demoralising weapon, deliverable by air, hitherto unknown by mankind.'In 1933 when Nazi Germany was on the rise, this was the brief issued to the secret K1 research facility, to manufacture a weapon so terrifying to foreign nations that it would deter the use of any specialist weapons against the UK. But what if that weapon was too terrifying? What if the exercises, planned for use on animals, were so horrific that some of the researchers balked at the idea and began to rebel?This is the situation in Stephen F. Clegg's The Hallenbeck Echo where the impact of K1's appalling development continues up until 2007 and brings the police into direct conflict with MI5 as they try to uncover a horrific past which is governed by the Official Secrets Act until 2087. In Walmsfield, Lancashire, historic researcher Naomi Wilkes is asked to investigate the disappearance of a young woman. In London a strange bleeping is heard coming from behind the wall of a house that is being renovated.
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The Green Gates Story
There are certainly many historical accounts of wars, military experiences, and cultural reactions to politics, but many of these works lack a personal and sentimental touch to what it really feels like to endure a battle. In The Green Gates Story, Bernard Fredericks presents a historically accurate, delightfully moving, and honest tale of a British boy who is evacuated from his Liverpool home in WWII. Told from the perspective of a child, Fredericks narrates his memories of an eight-year-old boy who is snatched from the city and transplanted to the country. He shares the triumphs and struggles of a child required to acquaint himself in a new setting and lifestyle. While he manages the heartache of missing his family and friends, the boy is also thrilled and challenged with new adventures as he acclimates to the pace of country-life. From the beginning of his evacuation to his return to home, the boy relates his feelings and doubts about so many events that crop up not only in wartime, but every child's time of coming of age.
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The German Iscariot
The German Iscariot........... ...............follows RAF pilot Martin Cohen’s escape from Menzenschwand German Prison Camp, taking him to the British Embassy in a neutral Switzerland intent on profit by financing the Wehrmacht war machine. Master of four languages and mentored by MI6, Martin is secreted at the Berne Embassy as an ‘illegal’, charged with investigating the disappearance of operatives from their ‘escape line’. There he uncovers fraud, rivalry and murder, just as the Russian victory at Stalingrad raises doubts on whether Germany will win. Frauleins interfere, brilliant detective work; Martin discovers that a Nazi convoy is to transfer looted gold from a Zurich to a Lucerne bank. He encourages the UK, Russian and US Ambassadors to unite and open a Second Front. The convoy is hi-jacked. Civilians are killed, and the Swiss President declares war on the UK. Colonel-General Strasser, (The German Iscariot) escapes death at the hi-jack; he plans vengeance and death to his enemies within and without the 3rd Reich.
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The Expatriates
It is 1966 and Mike Upjohn is offered a job with the Nassau Telegraph. What seems, at the outset, a wonderful posting soon turns into a complex of Bahamian culture tugging at the tail-end of colonialism. And stuck in the middle is Upjohn's new colleague, Poldi Stein. A budding author, Upjohn decides to put down his journal of the ensuing events in book form, covering Stein's descent from easy-going journalist and property owner to scandal-ridden westerner at odds with the changing balance of power.In The Expatriates, Henry Toledano weaves together a Rum Diary type cultural collision which fizzes along at quite a clip.
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The Diaries Of A Gifted Edwardian Boy
Clarence Smyth is a psychically gifted little boy born in London at the dawn of the 20th Century. He has an extraordinary life meeting and influencing many famous and some infamous people of that era. This book is a rewrite of the classic The Boy Who Saw True, which were actual diaries of a Victorian boy (author unknown).Anyone familiar with that book will remember being frustrated at only reading a part of his story. Although this is set in a slightly later period, it completes the story and weaves in other intrigues as well as Clarence being “watched” because of some of the accurate predictions he makes. There is a dark element to Clarence’s story, but it is told with insight and humour on his part, as we see Clarence go from being a young boy to a man.The Diaries of a Gifted Edwardian Boy is for all ages from young adult to the mature.It is an interesting, amusing and enjoyable read.
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The Collector
Brave, inquisitive, entrepreneurial: Joseph Banks personified the spirit of late 18th century Enlightenment Europe. Banks’ fascination with the plant and animal kingdom began when he was a boy in rural Lincolnshire. A privileged upbringing saw him schooled at the famous institutions Harrow, Eton and Oxford. As a well-connected, independently wealthy adult, Banks developed a particular friendship with Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, who introduced Banks to the pleasures of angling, and the debaucheries of the London club scene.In 1768, 25-year-old Joseph joined a round-the-world voyage led by the great English navigator, James Cook. This introduced Banks to the freedoms of traditional Polynesian society. He became an ardent lover of indigenous women and an assiduous collector of exotic flora and fauna. Following his return to England, Banks became a figure of renown, lionised by English society. But his dreams of a second world voyage with Cook ended before they began. How did this happen? How did Banks’ vision become a chimera? This novel tells all.
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The Broadsword and the Englishman
Growing up in a devout, middle-class English family in China during the Sino–Japanese war leaves its mark on Bill and sets in place a series of events that leads him to join the war effort as a teenager, go down the coal mines of Wales and to eventually migrate to Australia to start afresh. But Bill is tortured by his past. A story set against the backdrop of war, the growth of a nation, the betrayal of a father and the influence of good friends, Bill traverses adulthood as a flawed man. With the support of his loving Welsh wife, Myfanwy, and the influence of his Chinese friends, Bill is forced to face his fears by revisiting the place of his childhood, Shanghai, China. Here, he eventually faces his demons and farewells a good friend, who leaves him with a symbol of peace and strength, his Chinese broadsword.R. G. Harmon has also written The Missionary’s Son and The Prequel to The Broadsword and the Englishman.
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