Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Historical

Late spring, the year of our Lord 1370. Owen Archer, ex-soldier and spy, is preparing to depart Wales, his work for John of Gaunt completed. But his attempts to arrange safe passage home to York are thwarted by a mysterious suicide. In York Lucie Wilton is disheartened by her husband’s long absence and concerned by allegations against her apothecary. Then Brother Michaelo brings upsetting news, forcing her to journey to her father’s manor outside the city.

A rich tale of power and forbidden love revolving around a young medieval queen In 1002, fifteen­-year-old Emma of Normandy crosses the Narrow Sea to wed the much older King Athelred of England, whom she meets for the first time at the church door. Thrust into an unfamiliar and treacherous...

The year is 1367, and the people of York are suffering. Not only has the harvest failed, but the plague has returned. In the midst of this, scandal threatens St Leonard's Hospital, which is struggling to stay solvent and has suffered thefts. The deaths of several of its aged residents seems timely, for their care has long exceeded the sums they bequeathed. Rumours start to fly that their deaths were no accident.

One powerful family holds a city, a faith, and a woman in its grasp—from the national bestselling author of Daughters of Rome and Mistress of Rome. Rome, 1492. The Holy City is drenched with blood and teeming with secrets. A pope lies dying and the throne of God is left vacant, a prize awarded...

When Tiro, the confidential secretary of a Roman senator, opens the door to a terrified stranger on a cold November morning, he sets in motion a chain of events which will eventually propel his master into one of the most famous courtroom dramas in history.

A woman of limited means and even less experience must confront a vengeful spirit in this haunting novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Broken Girls and The Sun Down Motel. 1920s England. Sarah Piper’s lonely, threadbare existence changes when her temporary agency sends her...

Archangel tells the story of four days in the life of Fluke Kelso, a dissipated, middle-aged former Oxford historian who is in Moscow to attend a conference on newly opened Soviet archives. One night Kelso is visited in his hotel room by an old NKVD officer, a former bodyguard of the secret police chief, Lavrentii Beria. The old man claims to have been at Stalin's dacha on the night Stalin had his fatal stroke, and to have helped Beria steal the dictator's private papers, among them a notebook.

From the national bestselling author of The Serpent and the Pearl comes the continuing saga of the ruthless family that holds all of Rome in its grasp, and the three outsiders thrust into their twisted web of blood and deceit . . . As the cherished concubine of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI...

It is 1552 and the royal galley Dauphine, under the command of Francis Crawford of Lymond, sails the glittering but dangerous Mediterranean looking for a lost son. Yet as the search grows more urgent, Lymond knows he is being drawn deeper into the intricate web of his enemy Gabriel, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St John, who is already weaving a subtle tapestry of revenge. It is a journey that will lead Lymond to Constantinople and the court of Suleiman the Magnificent, where a terrible game will be played with deadly and incalculable consequences....

Winter 1372, York. A man has drowned in the River Ouse after a skirmish with boys from St Peter’s School. It soon becomes clear that his death was not an accident – but why would a humble pilot on the river be killed for possessing a young boy’s purse? Suspicion falls on Father Nicholas Ferriby – Vicar of Weston and master of a small grammar school – who has already offended many with his unpopular beliefs. But is he really a murderer?

"I could not fathom they were going to kill the queen. Nor could I bear to witness Anne Boleyn’s beheading…." As a favour to a doomed queen, Kat Ashley agrees to become governess and confidante to the young Elizabeth Tudor. Together they suffer bitter exile, assassination attempts, and imprisonment, barely escaping with their reputations and their lives intact. But when Elizabeth is eventually crowned, Kat continues to serve her, faithfully guarding all of the queen's secrets, even the one that could bring down the monarchy….

It is the summer of 1961, and the brutal Cold War between East and West is becoming ever more perilous. Two young prodigies from either side of the Iron Curtain, Yulia and Michael, meet at a chess tournament in London. They don't know it, but they are about to compete in the deadliest game ever played. Shadowing them is Greta, a ruthless resistance fighter who grew up the hard way in the forests of Lithuania, but who is now hunting down some of the most dangerous men in the world.

The #1 New York Times bestselling sequel to A Discovery of Witches, book two of the All Souls series. Look for the hit series “A Discovery of Witches,” now streaming on AMC+, Sundance Now, and Shudder! Picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night takes...

England 1371. A solemn procession winds out of York Minster, after the funeral of Sir Ranulf Pagnell, patriarch of a powerful Yorkshire family. William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, escorted the knight's remains north after his death in France, but he is shunned by the family. They hold him responsible for failing to negotiate the Sir Ranulf's ransom.

In a remote castle high up in the Tuscan hills secrets are simmering among its glamorous English residents: The ailing gentleman art-dealer. His dazzling niece. Her handsome Fascist husband. Their neglected young daughter. The housekeeper who knows everything and Connie, the English widow working for them. Every night, Connie hears sinister noises and a terrible wailing inside the walls. Is she losing her grip on reality? Or does someone in the castle want her gone?

Margaret Kerr of Perth is living in Edinburgh with her uncle Murdoch during the summer of 1297. She'd come to search for her long-absent husband who is in the service of Robert the Bruce. Margaret herself is still loyal to the deposed King John Balliol. Then terrifying raids and a brutal murder on the Kerr property bring the wrath of the English down on the heads of Margaret and her uncle.

At first the townspeople of Cherryvale welcome the rising medium Kate Bender and her family. Kate's messages from the Beyond give their tedious dreams hope and her mother's potions cure their little ills—for a price. No one knows about their other business, the shortcut to a better life. And why shouldn't their family prosper? They're careful. It's only from those who are marked, those who travel alone and can easily disappear, that the Benders demand their pound of flesh. But even a gifted seer like Kate can make a misstep.

Orkney, 1940. Five hundred Italian prisoners-of-war arrive to fortify these remote and windswept islands. Resentful islanders are fearful of the enemy in their midst, but not orphaned twin sisters Dorothy and Constance. Already outcasts, they volunteer to nurse all prisoners who are injured or fall sick. Soon Dorothy befriends Cesare, an artist swept up by the machine of war and almost broken by the horrors he has witnessed. She is entranced by his plan to build an Italian chapel from war scrap and sea debris, and something beautiful begins to blossom.

The heroines of Lauren Willig's bestselling Pink Carnation series have engaged in espionage all over nineteenth-century Europe. In the sixth stand-alone volume, our fair English heroine travels to India, where she finds freedom—and risk—more exciting than she ever imagined. Everyone warned...

Ken Follett’s The Key to Rebecca took readers and critics by storm when first published forty years ago. Today, it remains one of the best espionage novels ever written. A brilliant and ruthless Nazi master agent is on the loose in Cairo. His mission is to send Rommel’s advancing army the...