Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Historical

Award-winning novelist Val McDermid and Geographer Royal Professor Jo Sharp bring Scotland’s greatest historical catastrophe vividly to life. The Darien Venture was the singular event at the end of the seventeenth century that fundamentally altered Scotland's future. It took place on the other...

Oxford, 1583. Giordano Bruno, a radical thinker fleeing the Inquisition, is sent undercover to Oxford to expose a Catholic conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth. But he has his own secret mission at the University, which must remain hidden at all costs. When a series of hideous murders are committed, Bruno is compelled to investigate. What he finds makes it brutally clear that the Tudor throne itself is at stake....

In Venice, the beauty hides secrets that are steeped in darkness. It's August, and the city is melting under the heat. As locals flee for Ferragosto, retired archivist Arnold Clover plans to enjoy the rare silence – until his friend in the Carabinieri asks him to check on an elderly English...

Fear haunts the streets of London after the assassination of a protestant Prince, and the recurrence of the plague. Giordano Bruno suspects someone is following him, but on confronting his stalker, he realizes it is the woman he once loved – she is on the run, accused of murder. Bruno travels to Canterbury to help clear her name, instructed by Sir Francis Walsingham to also search for the assassin in the shadow of England’s holiest shrine…

As twilight descends on the third century AD, the Roman Empire is but a shadow of its former self. Decades of usurping emperors, splinter kingdoms and savage wars have left the people beleaguered, the armies weary and the future uncertain. And into this chaos Emperor Diocletian steps, reforming the succession to allow for not one emperor to rule the world, but four. Meanwhile, two boys share a chance meeting in the great city of Treverorum as Diocletian's dream is announced to the imperial court. 

The follow-up to the best-selling Heresy sees the return of Giordano Bruno, religious exile and renegade monk…Autumn, 1583. As an astrological phenomenon heralds the dawn of a new age and Mary Stuart’s supporters scheme to usurp Elizabeth, a young maid is murdered, occult symbols carved into her flesh. Giordano Bruno is called on to use his cunning to infiltrate the plotters and find evidence against them. In fear for his life, Bruno discovers that the young woman’s murder could point to an even more sinister truth…

Paris, 1585: Giordano Bruno has come to Paris, a city on the edge of catastrophe. Alone and near destitute, Bruno turns to old friend and zealous preacher Paul Lefevre. But when the priest is murdered, Bruno is pulled into a dangerous world. If Bruno can't uncover the truth, not only is the future of the de Valois monarchy threatened - but his own life will be the forfeit.

London, 1888: Susannah rushes into marriage to a young and wealthy surgeon. After a passionate honeymoon, she returns home with her new husband wrapped around her little finger. But then everything changes. Thomas' behaviour becomes increasingly volatile and violent. He stays out all night, returning home bloodied and full of secrets. The gentle caresses she enjoyed on her wedding night are now just a honeyed memory.

World War II is over, and former German intelligence officer Captain Gregor Reinhardt has returned to Berlin, having been hired back onto Berlin's police force. When a man is found slain, Reinhardt embarks on a gruesome investigation. It seems a serial killer is on the loose, and matters only escalate when it's discovered that one of the victims was the brother of a Nazi scientist.

Charles Hayden sets off aboard the ill-fated HMS Themis with orders to destroy a French frigate and to gather intelligence from a royalist spy. On discovering French plans for an imminent invasion of England, Hayden must return to Portsmouth to give warning before it's too late. But the enemy has been lying in wait for him, and so begins a dangerous chase out into the Atlantic and into the clutches of a powerful French squadron…

As the year 1349 approaches, the Black Death continues its devastating course across England. In Dorseteshire, the quarantined people of Develish question whether they are the only survivors. Guided by their beloved young mistress, Lady Anne, they wait, knowing that when their dwindling stores are finally gone they will have no choice but to leave. But where will they find safety in the desolate wasteland outside? One man has the courage to find out. Thaddeus Thurkell, a free-thinking, educated serf, strikes out in search of supplies and news. 

The Palazzo Colombina is home to the Uccello family: three generations of men, trapped together in the dusty palace on Venice's Grand Canal. Awkward 15-year-old Nico. His distant, business-focused father. And his beloved grandfather, Paolo. Paolo is dying. But before he passes, he has secrets he's waited his whole life to share. 

In the depths of winter at an ancient German castle, high up in the mountains, a noble is found dead under mysterious circumstances. Back at Rourell, Arnau is taking on the responsibilities of a full Templar Knight. But when he is tasked with returning Brother LUtolf's papers to settle a legal dispute between his family and the Order, Arnau is unexpectedly drawn into the killing at the castle. Here he enters a dark game of knives and double-crosses.

AD 265, Gaul—The Roman Empire is on the brink. Emperor Gallienus has amassed a huge army across the Alps to seize back the mountains from the usurper Posthumus. War has come. Ballista and his cavalry are on the frontline, battling in the most brutal of conditions. But if he is to survive the campaign and finally retire to his beloved Sicily, it's not just the battlefield he needs to navigate. As he and Praetorian Prefect Volusianus lay siege to Posthumus' armies, it becomes clear the greatest threat to Ballista's life might just come from within his ranks.

For the Dogs, the war has only just begun. Caught up in the siege of Calais, in the midst of a brutal eleven-month blockade of a small port on the French coast, they are no longer blindly walking into the unknown. But the men still have more questions than answers about what faces them–and why. What are they really fighting for? And why does the king care so much about taking such a small French town? The Dogs aren't paid to ask questions but in their work, they have the means to make people talk.

London, 1954. Eva Georgiou has just returned from her shift at the glamorous Café de Paris, when she's summoned to her second job: Greek interpreter for the Metropolitan Police. There, she is tasked with representing Zina Pavlou, a Cypriot woman who has been accused of the brutal murder of her daughter-in-law.

In the fall of 1863, the Union Army is in control of the Mississippi River and much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The retreating Confederate army is being replaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous.

Clete Purcel—private investigator, ex-member of the New Orleans Police Department, and war veteran with a hard shell and just a few soft spots—is Dave Robicheaux's longtime friend and partner in detective work. But he has a troubled past. When Clete leaves his car at the local car wash, only to return to find it ransacked by a group of thugs tied to the drug trade from Mexican cartels to Louisiana, it feels personal—his grandniece died of a fentanyl overdose, and his fists curl when he thinks of the dealers who sold it.

The Western Front, July 1918. Gregor Reinhardt is a young lieutenant in a stormtrooper battalion on the Western Front when one of his subordinates is accused of murdering a group of officers and then subsequently trying to take his own life. Not wanting to believe his friend could have done what he is accused of, Reinhardt begins to investigate. He starts to uncover the outline of a conspiracy at the heart of the German army, a conspiracy aimed at ending the war on the terms of those who have a vested interest in a future for Germany that resembles her past. 

936 AD. Brittany is torn apart by war. Many nobles have sought refuge in King aethelstan's England, including Louis, prospective king of Francia. Einar and the Wolf Coats, disillusioned by events in Norway, are also at aethelstan's court. When Louis decides to take up his throne, aethelstan sees a way to make a crucial ally: a powerful noble whose support Louis needs. And aethelstan has just the men he needs to carry his message... and undertake a secret mission.The Wolf Coats' quest is fraught with danger and foreboding, for the world is changing.