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.

The Dance of Darkness

Time had not died.

It was still flowing like her blood.

Her mind had become what it had endured and more; for now, with the dust, she saw butterflies floating in her room – here, there, everywhere.

Infused with lyricism and the romantic aura of pre-colonial India, The Dance of Darkness is a story about a bewildered town with only women, girls and hijras. Raised as dancers and lovers, the girls Surma, Parveen, and Dilchasp traverse through their usual routines until the presence of one man triggers all that the town has ever wished for – love and freedom. 

The Dagger and the Rosary

Sicily in 1693 is recovering from a devastating earthquake and struggling under the oppression of the Spanish Inquisition. Raids from Barbary pirates menace the coastline, while European Princes plot against each other. Meanwhile, the sixteen-year-old Bernardo has been brought up in an isolated Benedictine Abbey since being orphaned seven-years before. Now an unexpected journey will introduce him to this chaotic and often cruel world, where his faith will be tested.

Rescuing a young girl, Agata, from Barbary pirates will reveal his presence to an old family enemy, as well as introducing him to a secret brotherhood, and to the confusion of adolescent love. However, as love deepens, the petite Agata does not remain a victim for long, growing into a beautiful woman and determined avenger. Family secrets and desperate journeys threaten to tear them apart but will ultimately lead them both to find out what is most important in life.

The Caledonians

Scottish history master Mr Petrie has the gift of eternal life. Working for a group of mystical superior beings, his time-travelling missions land him in all sorts of death-defying scrapes and encounters, sometimes with famous and ruthless people. To help him in his dangerous work, he's told to find a young apprentice. Duncan Dewar could be a candidate but has his own secrets too, and without realising it, their lives are indelibly linked.

The Blighted Road

The Blighted Road is a 17^th-century story of two women’s harrowing journeys through plague and a brutal witch-hunt. Orla, renowned healer and mid-wife in rural England, confronts stillbirths and a mysterious, deadly sickness afflicting her community. The local superstitious people suspect these sinister events are the actions of the Devil. Desperate for answers, Orla’s investigation into past plague outbreaks reveal a shocking correlation with the harvesting of blighted grain. Her revolutionary findings lead to accusations of witchcraft. Meanwhile, Abigail, a young Londoner faces the horror of life in the plague-ridden city. After losing her family to the Black Death, Abigail escapes the locked gates of London. She flees on the plague road to Salisbury, which is fraught with danger and despair.

The separate tales of these women weave in and out as they reach a time and place where they are united by grief, loss and an uncanny will to survive.

The Apricot Tree

The flames crept up the curtains like a swarm of tongues. They curled and stretched into the rafters, and like a marauding army, the flames swept across the roof.

Outside the Van Vuuren sisters watched this cruel act of war. The roof collapsed along with the Van Vuuren heritage and the Van Vuuren dreams.

In 1899 the mighty British Empire declared war on two small Boer Republics in South Africa. The war was expected to last a matter of months, but it took almost three years for the Empire to claim its victory. It changed lives, challenged loyalties and divided families. 28,000 women and children were to die in the British concentration camps.

Tales Of The Hove Amber Cup

During roadworks in Hove, a Bronze Age tomb of exceptional size was unearthed. Inside was an oak tree coffin containing the skeleton of a tall male, and accoutrements showing him to have been of high social status. There was a bronze dagger, an axe and a whetstone. Resting on his breastbone he held a cup, shaped like a modern item of breakfast crockery but with a rounded base. It was made of Baltic amber. Who was this person? Why was the cup made of amber so dear to him? Amber, that offspring of sunshine and trees, has the Baltic Sea as a godmother. How did he come by it? Was he a trader? How far did he travel? Did he bring home new ideas together with exciting spices and artefacts no one there had seen before? All answers can only be speculative conjectures. The cup having been found in Hove does prove though, that Albion had contact with the Baltic Sea. Tales of the Hove Amber Cup is a celebration of this 3000-year-old British treasure.

Stretto

Before she can be drowned as a witch, Elizabeth Robinson is swept away by the tide and the devil wind of Boston, Lincolnshire. She issues a curse on those responsible and declares that it will only end ‘when the birdman falls from the sky and into the mire’. Then, and only then will the evil in her descendants that is ever present will be finally defeated ‘and love will again prosper’.

The story traces the fate of the Robinson and Williston families through their time during the English Civil War and their uniting together in Boston, Massachusetts, two hundred years later. There is action aboard the Lusitania and Southern Ireland followed by a return to England and then the battlefields of France in WWI. The climax of the story occurs back in the USA after two heroes, Stephen Robinson and Bobby Williston, return at the end of hostilities only to be involved in a trial followed by an aerial combat.