Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Literary Fiction

Told from the point of view of nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990s Nigeria. When their father has to work away, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbidden nearby river they encounter a madman, who predicts that one of the brothers will kill another. What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact will transcend the lives and imaginations of both its characters and its readers.

The First World War is over, and in a quiet Hampshire village, artist Stanley Spencer is working on the commission of a lifetime, painting an entire chapel in memory of a life lost in the war to end all wars. Combining his own traumatic experiences with moments of everyday redemption, the chapel will become his masterpiece. When Elsie Munday arrives to take up position as housemaid to the Spencer family, her life quickly becomes entwined with the charming and irascible Stanley, his artist wife, Hilda, and their tiny daughter, Shirin. 

At long last, a final reckoning is coming for Frieda Klein... On a north London high street, a runaway vehicle crashes to a halt, but the man in the driving seat was murdered a week earlier. On Hampstead Heath, a bonfire blazes: in the flames lies the next victim. As autumn leaves fall, a serial...

As the Second World War draws to a close, Intelligence Officer Gus Clifton surprises his sisters when he introduces Krista - the German wife whom he has married secretly in Berlin. Krista is clearly devastated by her experiences at the hands of the allies, but Gus's sisters can only see the enemy he has brought under their roof. Haunted by passion and betrayal, these damaged souls are propelled towards a spectacular resolution.

As late summer steals in and the final pearls of barley are gleaned, a village comes under threat. Over the course of seven days, Walter Thirsk sees his hamlet unmade: the manor house set on fire, the harvest blackened, three new arrivals punished, and his neighbours accused of witchcraft. But something even darker is at the heart of his story, and he will be the only man left to tell it…

Scotland, 1860. Reverend Alexander Ferguson takes up his new parish, an isolated patch on the Hebridean island of Harris. His time there will change his life, but the Sea House, on the edge of the dunes keeps its silence long after Alexander departs. More than a century later, Ruth and Michael buy the grand but dilapidated building for the family they hope to have. But their dreams are marred by a shocking discovery.

Frances Shore is a cartographer by trade, a maker of maps, but when her husband's work takes her to Saudi Arabia she finds herself unable to map the Kingdom's areas of internal darkness. The regime is corrupt and harsh, and the streets are not a woman's territory; so she becomes confined in her flat. As her days empty of certainty and purpose, her life becomes a blank – waiting to be filled by violence and disaster.

On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt, but instead she is met by his sharp-tongued sister, Marin. Only later does Johannes appear and present her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. It is to be furnished by an elusive miniaturist, whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in unexpected ways. 

Like every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher and longs to be her pet. However, when a thief begins to target the school, Justine's sense that something isn't quite right grows ever stronger. With each twist of the plot, this gripping story of deception and the corrosive power of guilt takes a yet darker turn. Young as she is, Justine must decide where her loyalties lie.

Episcopal bishop Timothy Archer is haunted by the suicides of his son and mistress, and must cope with the implications of the discovery of a religious artefact. These events drive him into a quest for the identity of Christ. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is Philip K. Dick's last completed novel and a learned, moving investigation of the paradoxes of belief.

Rupert Lavery is a well-known conservationist. When he dies, his son, Kit, returns from 10 years in Australia to inherit a nature reserve in the heart of the British countryside. Kit finds the nature reserve and the two determined women who staff it are more trouble than they are worth. Elizabeth Punch is single, middle-aged, and on a mission to save wildlife from inconsiderate mankind. Jess Wetherby has dyed orange hair, a nose stud, and aspirations to be a hunt saboteur.

1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away. Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another's sight, always on one another's mind, yet rarely together.

Three extraordinary people begin their life together. Henry Irving, the Chief, is the volcanic leading man and impresario; Ellen Terry is the most lauded and desired actress of her generation; and ever following along behind them in the shadows is the unremarkable theatre manager, Bram Stoker. Bram is wrestling with dark demons in a new city, in a new marriage, and with his own literary aspirations. As he walks the London streets at night, streets haunted by the Ripper and the gossip which swirls around his friend Oscar Wilde, he finds new inspiration.

Romilly had worked hard for her stunning house in one of Bristol's most fashionable suburbs. She adored her daughter and handsome husband and, sure, life was sometimes exhausting - but nothing that a large glass of wine couldn't fix. But then, as deep-buried insecurities surfaced, everything...

At college in 1980s, Robbie Goulding, an Irish-born teenager, meets Fran Mulvey, a Vietnamese refugee. Together they form a band. Joined by cellist Sarah-Thérèse Sherlock and her brother Seán on drums, they set out to chase fame. Spanning 25 years, we fast-forward through an evocative soundtrack of struggle and laughter. Infused with blues, New Wave and punk, the tale stretches from the Glastonbury Festival to Long Island, culminating in July 2012, a night that changes everything.

Nine men: each of them at a different stage of life, away from home, and striving - in the suburbs of Prague, in a cheap Cypriot hotel - to understand just what it means to be alive here and now. Tracing an arc from the spring of youth to the winter of old age, All That Man Is brings these separate lives together to show us men as they are - ludicrous and inarticulate, shocking and despicable; vital, pitiable, hilarious, and full of heartfelt longing.

Left an orphan, five-year-old Rosie Harris is found and raised by Maria, a Romany gypsy. Life on the road is hard, but the little girl soon feels one of the tribe with the travelers. As she grows older, Rosie realises she has 'second sight' and is able to read people's palms and see into their futures. Needing to make a living of her own, she befriends the canal folk, known as the 'cut-rats' traversing the Black Country waterways with their cargo, and so offers readings to anyone who can pay. Pursued by Jake Harding, Rosie instead finds herself falling in love with a married man.

Charles O’Brien, Irish bard and giant: The cynical are moved by his flights of romance; the craven stirred by his tales of epic deeds. The Surprising Irish Giant may be the sensation of the season but only his compatriots seem to attend to his mythic powers of invention. John Hunter, celebrated surgeon and anatomist, buys dead men from the gallows and babies’ corpses by the inch. Where is a man as unique as The Giant to hide his bones when he is yet alive?

In Tokyo—one of the world's largest megacities—a stray cat is wending her way through the back alleys. And, with each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways. But the city is changing. As it does, it pushes her to the margins where she chances upon a series of apparent strangers—from a homeless man squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave his house, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits Tokyo's denizens, drawing them ever closer.

In this wry, paranoid vision of the future, overpopulation has turned cities into crammed industrial anthills. For those sick of this dystopian reality, one corporation, Trails of Hoffman, Inc., promises an alternative: Take a teleport to Whale's Mouth, a colonized planet billed as the supreme paradise. The only catch is that you can never come back.