The Double Edged Sword

Rhia Bryant’s partnership with Jimmy Grant is an explosive affair. Considering their union to be the key to everything her adolescent heart had desired she was mortified when her lover told her he was moving to Germany to unearth a stolen painting. Unhappy with Jimmy’s wish to seek her father’s aid in his search Rhia looks to the past to help with the future.

As the pathway to uncovering the painting grows darker, and her father’s own past comes to light, danger stalks her journey. To keep one step ahead of the challenges she faces, Rhia once more brings deception into the equation.

The twists and turns of her personal life, forged by one Hans Parker, lead her into a year of deceit, lies, and a secret that threatens her very existence.

A rollercoaster of a read that questions the fabric of life.

Can a deceiver be deceived?

When is the moral high ground destroyed?

The Dream Institute

Leif Hjernø, a psychologist of Argentine and Danish descent and the son of Danish immigrants, and his secretary, Olga Tretkova, share a common passion for exploring the mysteries of the subconscious mind through their membership in IASD (The International Association for the Study of Dreams). When Olga is tasked with writing a biography of Leif and his institute, she turns to his renowned dream archive for inspiration. As they collaborate on the project, an unspoken attraction between them grows.

However, their peaceful work environment is shattered when a man is found murdered in one of the dream cabins in the institutes cellar. The victim is none other than the person Leif despises the most, and the evidence points to Leif as the prime suspect. With his fingerprints found on the murder weapon, one of his own kitchen knives, Leif’s reputation and career are at risk. Olga must use her expertise to help clear his name, but the deeper they delve, the more they uncover secrets that threaten to tear them apart. 

The Dutch Institute

Survive long enough and you become the problem.

Dr. Marten Keyser has incurable cancer. With nothing to lose he survives by pursuing a drug regime of his own devising. Already unpopular with the powerbrokers in the dystopian healthcare system, he then develops a light-based therapy, but his low-cost innovation threatens the power balance and a cat-and-mouse game of survival ensues. In the face of mounting intrigue aggravated by the Coronavirus pandemic, Marten and his wife delve into high-level corruption, struggle to save their relationship, and build new alliances that might offer them a safe future. 

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 Early Departure

These are selected poems of the eminent modern Iraqi poet Badre Shākir Al-Sayyāb (1926–1964) who developed a modern style in writing Arabic poetry, which soon became popular in modern Iraqi and, by extension, Arabic poetry. Though a couple of his poems were translated into English and French, this is the first time that such a collection of his poetry has been translated and published.

The Earthenseers

Sam Brayshaw leads a mundane life in a grimy London suburb, with a job that doesn't suit him. As his affinity with nature leads to abilities he never knew he possessed, he gets drawn unwittingly into a power struggle between two ancient and powerful cults. Meanwhile, a dark threat is watching and waiting from a billion light years away, and it will only be satisfied with the total obliteration of all life on Earth.

The Egyptian Series: Green Treasure

Are there emeralds still to be found at Sikait in the Mountains of the Eastern, Red Desert of Egypt bordering the Red Sea?

Donald Phipps, archaeologist, is fairly confident there must be some good stones left there although, since the time of Cleopatra two thousand years ago, nobody has really bothered to search for them. His ‘patron’, Solomon Hunter III, is arriving from New York, to see the stones. Where is Donald? He has vanished.

Donald’s rogue brother, Alistair, comes to Egypt hoping to cash in on Don’s fortune. He steals the stones that have already been found, bolts and is found dead. His brother tries to report him dead, but gets locked up himself. For 6 weeks nobody knows where he is; is he dead or what?

Don’s daughter and nephew travel to Egypt searching for him. Nobody knows anything.

This story ranges from the Red Sea, East of the Nile, to the West Bank and the Valley of the Kings.

The el Toro Problem and Other Stories

Larry Carmody, private investigator, lives in a nighttime world of 1930s crime noir, a world of bottomless cynicism, triple standards, and scathingly black humor. There is no doing good in the world of Larry Carmody. There is only the cynicism and black humor needed to stay alive in the midst of convoluted plots and the nighttime world of crime. For some, that is. The accomplished and lucky ones. The rest perish.
In the world of Larry Carmody, you have to get the low-down. And you have to find a way out. Otherwise someone will show you the foolproof way out, by means of force-feeding you lead with an equalizer.
Larry Carmody himself says: “A case can sometimes be opened and shut in no time. It doesn’t often go down that way, but when it does, you can most often exchange the word ‘shut’ for the word ‘shot’. And I am not speaking of a shot of whisky in an instance such as this. I am using the word ‘shot’ in the sense of the main player in the case having been shot to death. Usually my client.”

The Elementals: Awakening

In the town of Sysmith, something has awoken, a mysterious power that has revealed itself through four average college students, whose lives will now be changed forever.

Fire, water, electricity and rock, these are the abilities of the group who will become known as The Elementals, as they are brought together to contend with an enemy who threatens not only the team and their town, but the future of civilisation as we know it.

This is the story of The Elementals, and this is their awakening.

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 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 Enemy at Home

After the funeral, as Jack Brown stood by the grave of his father, Bill, his eyes displayed different feelings, true feelings, of anger and disgust towards his father as he muttered, “Rot in hell you old bastard.”

Jack couldn’t forgive his father for the misery he had caused him and his friend, Harold, for their arrest as deserters during World War One, when he would have known full well the penalty for desertion was the firing squad. The same went for the death of their mothers, and his sister’s escape to Canada.

Will his feelings ever get resolved?