Serpent in the Heather

Serpent in the Heather

Kay Kenyon

Fantasy / Historical Fiction / Science Fiction

Now officially working for the Secret Intelligence Service, Kim Tavistock is back to solve another mystery—this time a serial killer with deep Nazi ties—in the sequel to At the Table of Wolves.Summer, 1936. In England, an assassin is loose. Someone is killing young people who possess Talents. As terror overtakes Britain, Kim Tavistock, now officially employed by England's Secret Intelligence Service, is sent on her first mission: to the remote Sulcliffe Castle in Wales, to use her cover as a journalist to infiltrate a spiritualist cult that may have ties to the murders. Meanwhile, Kim's father, trained spy Julian Tavistock runs his own parallel investigation—and discovers the terrifying Nazi plot behind the serial killings. Cut off from civilization, Sulcliffe Castle is perched on a forbidding headland above a circle of standing stones only visible at low tide. There, Kim shadows a ruthless baroness and her enigmatic son, plying her skills of...
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A Brutal Chill in August: A Novel of Polly Nichols, The First Victim of Jack the Ripper

A Brutal Chill in August: A Novel of Polly Nichols, The First Victim of Jack the Ripper

Alan M. Clark

Arts & Photography / Horror & Fantasy / Historical Fiction

We all know about Jack the Ripper, the serial murderer who terrorized Whitechapel and confounded police in 1888, but how much do we really know about his victims? Pursued by one demon into the clutches of another, the ordinary life of Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols is made extraordinary by horrible, inhuman circumstance. Jack the Ripper’s first victim comes to life in this sensitive and intimate fictionalized portrait, from humble beginnings, to building a family with an abusive husband, her escape into poverty and the workhouse, alcoholism, and finally abandoned on the streets of London where the Whitechapel Murderer found her. With A Brutal Chill in August, Alan M. Clark gives readers an uncompromising and terrifying look at the nearly forgotten human story behind one of the most sensational crimes in history. This is horror that happened.
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Salem Street

Salem Street

Anna Jacobs

Historical Fiction / Contemporary / Romance

In 1820 Salem Street is sparkling and new: eight small terraced houses built by a Lancashire mill owner for his best workers. Annie Gibson's family is one of the first to move in - a step up in the world for them. But when her mother dies, Annie's happy childhood ends and she is left to bring up her brother and sister. Red-haired, intelligent and startlingly pretty, Annie soon finds herself banished from home by a jealous stepmother. She finds work in the local doctor's household where she learns about the fascinating world outside Salem Street. And when her adored childhood friend Matt asks her to marry him, Annie thikns her dreams are coming true. But suddenly everything turns upside-down. Abandoned and pregant, Annie returns to Salem Street, where an unexpected offer gives her independence. One day, she vows, she will move into the wider world again. One day...
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The Blue Eyed Witch

The Blue Eyed Witch

Barbara Cartland

Romance / Contemporary / Historical Fiction

Bored with the Social world of London and the constant demands of the lovelorn Prince of Wales, the Marquis of Aldridge takes refuge at his remote country estate, Ridge Castle, deep in the 'Witch Country' of Essex.Riding through a village close to The Castle he comes upon a mob of villagers dragging the unconscious body of a young woman to the duck pond. Convinced she is a witch, they are bent on putting her to the ultimate test. If she drowns she is innocent. If she floats she is evil and must die!Rescuing the young waif and installing her at his castle, the Marquis is convinced that this raven-haired, blue-eyed beauty, whose name is Idylla, is far too lovely – too innocent – to be a witch.Nevertheless, he falls helplessly under her spell – and as he uncovers the murderous plot that brought her to him, he also discovers a love beyond anything he imagined possible.
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The Corridors of Time

The Corridors of Time

Poul Anderson

Science Fiction / Fantasy / Historical Fiction

A young man from the twentieth century is recruited to fight in a war that rages throughout time in a classic science fiction adventure from a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning master College student, ex-marine, and martial artist Malcolm Lockridge is in prison awaiting his trial for murder when he receives an unexpected visit from an extraordinarily beautiful woman named Storm. Claiming to be a representative of the Wardens, a political faction from two thousand years in the future, Storm offers the astonished young man a proposition: freedom in return for his assistance in recovering an unspecified lost treasure. But it is not long before Malcolm realizes that, in truth, he's been recruited as a soldier in the Wardens' ongoing war against their rivals, the Rangers. And this war is different from any that has ever been fought, because the battlefield is not a place but time itself. Traveling backward and forward through corridors connecting...
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Breakaway

Breakaway

Michelle Diener

Historical Fiction / Fantasy / Science Fiction

Sofie lives in the shadow of Felicitos--the tethered way station built to funnel Garmen's mineral wealth to the top of the atmosphere, where it's loaded onto space ships. Because Garmen is a breakaway planet, not part of the Verdant String Coalition, the companies that control it are free to run things as they see fit, and Sofie is part of the resistance that wants to end their rule.Her main goal, though, is to get away from Garmen altogether, and leave the drudgery and violence behind her. That goal is complicated by her involvement with Leo Gaudier, a shadowy crime lord whose ability to cheat the companies that own Garmen is something she admires. And when she stumbles on a terrible new direction the companies are taking, a secret alliance that will endanger everyone she cares about, she sees her chances of escape slipping away.Leo is all too aware he doesn't know enough about Sofie, something his own security detail is not slow to point out, but he can't keep away. When Sofie reveals her links to the resistance, and shows him those in control of Garmen have begun swimming in dangerous waters, he realizes his plan to overthrown them in a careful operation of a thousand cuts is no longer workable.The time has come for a single, lethal strike--and that will not be without consequences . . .
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Three Arched Bridge

Three Arched Bridge

Ismail Kadare

Fiction / Historical Fiction / Poetry

Amazon.co.uk ReviewThe year: 1377. The place: the Balkan peninsula. Here in Ismail Kadare's novel, The Three-Arched Bridge, an Albanian monk chronicles the events surrounding the construction of a bridge across a great river known as Ujana e Keqe, or "Wicked Waters". If successful in their endeavour, the bridge-builders will challenge a monopoly on water transportation known simply as "Boats and Rafts". The story itself parallels developments in modern-day Eastern Europe, with the bridge emblematic of a disintegrating economic and political order: just as mysterious cracks in the span's masonry endanger the structure and cast the local community into a morass of uncertainty, superstition and murder, so the fast-changing conditions in the 14th-century Balkan peninsula threaten to overwhelm the stability of life there. Dark as the story itself is, Mr. Kadare's prose, skilfully translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson, is elegant, witty and deft. And with so many twists and turns in its carefully constructed plot, this political parable keeps the reader's interest to the very end.
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203. Love Wins

203. Love Wins

Barbara Cartland

Romance / Contemporary / Historical Fiction

On his return after six years' fighting with Wellington, Colonel Romney Wood (also known as Lord Heywood) is horrified at the state of the country he left behind –where starving agricultural labourers are being hanged, food shops are bare and Luddites lay waste to the new agricultural machines. Worse still, his own estate is almost bankrupt and he has to find something to sell to save it – and his loyal staff.Scouring the Manor House for anything of value he stumbles across something he's soon to prize beyond price – a beautiful, fawn-like young girl with deep blue eyes in a white diaphanous nightgown.She is an interloper – a runaway, hiding from her wicked uncle, who is forcing her to marry a man she despises. Her name is Lalita. But more than that she will not tell. Yet slowly, she reveals more of herself to him – and with each revelation the bond between grows. And in spite of himself, Lord Heywood is falling in love. They are two people with nothing left to lose, and maybe...
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The Guardians

The Guardians

John Christopher

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Children's Books / Historical Fiction

In a world where two nations rule all, Rob must find a way to live among them both in this futuristic story from the author of the Tripods series.In the future, the world has been divided into two societies. One is the Conurb—a sprawling, modern city where technology rules and people live with only the bare minimum they need to survive. The other is the County—a land of green fields and beautiful mansions, where the people have turned back the clock to a pristine past. Rob has always lived in the Conurb, but after he is sent to a terrible boarding school, he decides his only option is to take a chance and cross the Barrier into the unknown world of the County. There he meets another boy who introduces Rob to the very different society, and all the wondrous things that come with it. But even though Rob wants to believe that the County is a utopia, he begins to learn about the darkness that lurks beneath the smiles of his new family and...
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Murder in Grosvenor Square (Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries Book 9)

Murder in Grosvenor Square (Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries Book 9)

Ashley Gardner

Mystery & Thrillers / Historical Fiction / Romance

Captain Gabriel Lacey begins Spring 1818 preparing for a duel. But while he focuses on the affair of honor, darkness, greed, and death stalk the streets of London and bring tragedy to a family Lacey has grown close to. With the aid of Lucius Grenville, London’s most famous dandy, and Brewster, a ruffian employed by an underworld criminal, Lacey explores the world of molly houses and the double lives some men of society lead. His investigation takes him from the elegant mansions of Grosvenor Square to the squalid lanes of Seven Dials, to taverns that practice a highly illegal trade, spelling ruin and possible hanging for those caught within. Lacey once again comes into the realm of James Denis, a crime lord, when what appears to be a simple crime of hatred becomes far more complex. Book 9 of the Captain Lacey Regency mysteries. This is a full-length novel of 86,000 words.
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