Death’s Long Shadow is Published Today

Congratulations to R. M. Cullen, whose twisty murder mystery, Death’s Long Shadow, is out now!

Death’s Long Shadow is the second instalment in the Richard Brinsley Sheridan Mystery Series: eighteenth-century crime thrillers set in London at a time of Revolution.

1792

Playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s retreat to the country is interrupted when he stumbles upon a body during a woodland stroll.

The man is identified as Edward Stretton, cousin to Earl Cannock who Sheridan is residing with.

Stretton had a reputation as a scoundrel and seducer and was heavily in debt at the time of his death.

He had been poisoned, and when the Earl’s servants are questioned, unusual evidence puts one man in custody.

But Sheridan is not convinced of his guilt. And one another man is murdered, he suspects there may be a connection.

Can Sheridan uncover the link? Could he save an innocent man from death?

Or will this case prove too complex for this amateur sleuth…?

Congratulations to Simon Michael, whose absorbing courtroom drama, The Fall Guy, is out now!

The Fall Guy is the tenth book in the Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers series.

London, 1969

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who … Tin Pan Alley is the heart of London’s music scene.

It is also the dark heart of a ruthless business tainted by sex, drugs and corruption.

When a young fan is found dead from a heroin overdose at an American rock star’s accommodation and the band’s manager is charged with her murder, Charles Holborne, barrister, must defend him.

But Holborne is getting married in two weeks, and for some reason DS Sean Sloane, his best man, refuses to speak to him.

Has Sloane been turned? What has a select group of corrupt Met officers known as ‘the Team’ to do with the case?

And is Holborne’s client the unscrupulous venal businessman he is portrayed or is he, perhaps, The Fall Guy?

We are delighted to announce that we have signed a new naval fiction novel set during the Second World War by Anthony Palmiotti.

In Anthony’s words:

“When searching for subjects to write about, I look for little-known stories or actions within bigger events that emphasize the strength of character and the contributions made by ordinary people — the individuals that make a difference to the outcome. Invariably, it is the strength of character of the common man or woman that determines the outcome — that makes the difference between winning and losing. It could be a single heroic action or simply a steadfast stubbornness. It might be the will to go on when common sense says this is not a good idea. They are the unknown people who make the seemingly impossible, possible.

“Operation Pedestal was just one convoy in a war that saw hundreds of convoys. Malta was just one island in a sea of islands. What makes these two different is that they faced extreme odds and yet, through a steadfast perseverance, they beat the odds. The citizens of Malta and the common men on the convoys showed an uncommon resolve. They simply did not give up, even when giving up was the smart thing to do.

“My take on Malta during the summer of 1942 and Operation Pedestal is not a history but a novel. A novel allows the writer to get personal. It not only offers the facts, but, hopefully, a feel for what it’s like when ordinary people are asked to do extraordinary things.”

Discover more about Anthony here.

Congratulations to David Field, whose Victorian thriller, The Long Delayed Revenge, is out now!

The Long Delayed Revenge is the tenth instalment in the Esther and Jack Enright Mystery Series – a traditional British detective series set in Victorian London and packed full of suspense.

London, 1899

Jack and Esther Enright, with their four children in tow, have recently moved to a comfortable new home. Esther has settled into her dream job as headmistress of the local private school, owned by her mentor Emily Allsop.

But things are not going so well for Jack. Though he does not mind the commute to his high-ranking desk job at New Scotland Yard, he is disturbed by the level of recent resignations in by uniformed constables in the East End.

Though the police force has always been used to tackling crime in the more impoverished parts of London, a recent influx of Russian immigrants has led to gang warfare and vigilante justice which is proving impossible to control.

And when Esther’s school is vandalised with a disturbing message, he finds his detective skills are needed closer to home as well.

Things escalate when one of the young pupils is abducted and Jack needs all the help he can get in finding the perpetrator before it is too late.

Can Jack and Esther solve another case together? Will they rescue the child in time?

Or will the unrest in London prove too much for even Jack to handle…?

Following the success of The Marwood Family Tudor Saga, we are delighted to announce that we have signed a new Sherlock Holmes-inspired cosy crime series by Amy Licence.

In Amy’s words:

“Tucked away in a sleepy Sussex village, Sherlock Holmes’ great-great niece Charlotte Holmes wants nothing more than to run her antiquarian bookshop in peace and quiet. Divorced, and with her grown-up children having flown the nest, she’s looking forward to reading her way through the shelves, attending quiz nights with best friend Nell, and going out for dinner with handsome lecturer Toby. But then a young woman unexpectedly turns up in answer to an advert she placed for a housemate, whose name just happens to be Scarlet Watson. It seems too much of a coincidence, but when the landlady of the local pub is murdered, the pair team up to solve the crime, and Scarlet’s infectious enthusiasm wins Charlotte over. But is the new arrival all she seems? What secrets is Scarlet hiding?

“A Study in Scarlet is the first book in my new cosy crime series, inspired by the Sherlock Holmes stories. I’ve always loved reading detective fiction and, as an English teacher, I have been reading the Holmes stories with my classes for twenty years. I felt it was a perfect addition to the genre, imagining a modern setting for some familiar devices, swapping the gender of the detective, and keeping a literary twist — my heroine loves reading! Each book is based on one of the original stories and Holmes fans will love spotting the overlap and solving the crime.

“I’m delighted to be branching out with Sapere Books into another genre that I’ve always loved. Books two and three in the series are already planned and ready to be written, with more sleepy village intrigue, plus some local festival glamour, but always remaining true to the Holmes genre.”

Discover more about Amy here.

Congratulations to D. R. Bailey, whose heart-pounding military adventure, The Fire Maidens, is out now!

The Fire Maidens is the third book in the Secret Sirens Aviation Thrillers, set during the Second World War.

Autumn, 1943

Sisters Anna and Jennifer Nightingale have been flying in top missions with the Secret Sirens all-female RAF unit for nearly a year.

Their squadron of twelve Mosquitos stages a raid on Rouen to divert the enemy’s attention from the Lancasters which are coming in to bomb the marshalling yards and port.

But while Jennifer makes it through the mission safely, Anna and her navigator, Maria, are forced to ditch into the Channel.

Luckily they are picked up by a British Destroyer. And on board is none other than Winston Churchill himself.

Impressed by the skill-level and bravery of the female pilots, Churchill is keen to learn more about their training.

He escorts them back to base where they are given a new mission: to attack the Nazi-occupied Mimoyecques Fortress.

The Allies know that the Fortress is being armed with high calibre guns capable of reaching London in a massive, unending bombardment. The Sirens need to drop bombs into the railway tunnel entrance of the Fortress as soon as possible before the unthinkable happens.

But with very little time to train, will the Sirens be able to pull off the task? Can they reach the Fortress unscathed?

Or will these Fire Maidens join the many thousands who have already lost their lives in this brutal war…?

As we celebrate 250 years since the birth of one of England’s most beloved authors, we asked Laura Martin, author of the Jane Austen Investigations series, to tell us what Jane Austen’s work means to her and how it has influenced her own writing.

2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and is the perfect opportunity to reflect on her literary legacy and the influences that shaped her writing.

Jane Austen is one of Britain’s most well-known and influential authors. Over two hundred years after her death her books are still immensely popular and there are numerous film and television adaptations, as well as books inspired by her life and her characters. Much has been theorised about the sort of woman she was, a picture built from the letters she wrote to her sister Cassandra as well as other friends and relatives; she has become immortalised by her work and the people who celebrate it.

One reason Jane Austen’s books are so popular is her ability to build complex and layered characters, a reflection of the people we meet in real life. No two characters are the same, and even the minor players are well defined. It allows the characters and their flaws to linger in the reader’s mind — how often have I met someone and thought how similar they are to anxious Mr Woodhouse or foolish Lydia Bennet.

Undoubtedly there were many influences on Jane Austen and her books. Her main themes revolved around marriage, love, class divisions and morality. Her stories often centred on intelligent and spirited heroines — Elizabeth Bennet, Elinor Dashwood, Anne Elliot — who are forced to navigate societal expectations in the pursuit of happiness. Through these characters Jane Austen explored the roles of women in society, economic dependence and social mobility with a clarity and subtlety that remains impressive to this day.

Although Jane Austen did not live past the age of forty-one, she led a rich and varied life for a woman of her time. Her early life was spent in rural Hampshire, but in 1801 she moved to the city of Bath — a move that her letters suggest she was not overly happy with. However, there is no doubt that her time spent in the city — a place of genteel society and social ambition — offered her the perfect opportunity to observe human behaviour, which she then used to help form the flawed but interesting characters that we have all come to love.

For an author writing about Jane Austen, Bath is the perfect place to immerse yourself in the Georgian era. The streets are lined with beautiful examples of Georgian architecture and when you stroll around the curve of the Royal Crescent, you can almost imagine you might catch a glimpse of Jane Austen herself.

In my Jane Austen Investigations series I have attempted to capture the essence of Jane as an author and a person, especially her unparalleled insight into human nature. It is always daunting, writing a story where the main character once existed, especially when it is someone universally beloved, but I hoped to celebrate her genius and explore the life of the woman behind the books.

I have no doubt that in another two hundred and fifty years Jane Austen’s books will still be as popular as they are today — her wit and wisdom will still be as compelling as they are now.

Discover more about Laura here.

IN THE JANE AUSTEN INVESTIGATIONS SERIES:

Death of a Lady

Last Impressions

A Poisoned Fortune

The Body on the Beach

The Dead Curate

 

Featured image credit: Photo by Dominika Walczak on Unsplash.

Congratulations to Neil Denby, whose action-packed Roman adventure, Scutarius, is out now!

Scutarius is the fifth book in the Quintus Roman Thrillers series.

In the high Alpen lands, Tiberius, General, Praetor, son of Caesar Augustus, is incensed by the insolence of the native tribesmen who dare to oppose him.

First Spear Centurion Julius Quintus Quirinius and his depleted cohort are posted behind enemy lines to eliminate them. They are to be irregulars, to act as shield-bearer or ‘scutarius’ to Tiberius’ armies, keeping the way before them clear.

If they succeed, Quintus and his men could win back their rightful ranks and stations in the legions. And might even finally be allowed to return to Rome.

But unfamiliar with the rapid turning of the seasons in the mountains, Quintus finds himself trapped by snow and lost in the vast lands of the enemy.

He needs to find a way forward, to do service to Caesar’s sons, but the task seems increasingly impossible.

Can Quintus find his way back to the battle? Could victory in the Alps be in his grasp?

Or will the fickle gods once more betray him…?

Congratulations to Tim Chant, whose thrilling naval adventure Vengeance at the Falklands, is out now!

Vengeance at the Falklands is the fifth book in the Marcus Baxter Naval Thriller Series: action-packed historical adventures following former Royal Navy officer Marcus Baxter during the early 1900s and through the First World War.

Winter, 1914

Lieutenant Marcus Baxter is working in the supply department at HM Dockyard Devonport, when word arrives that the German East Asia Squadron has destroyed a British squadron at the battle of Coronel.

Baxter seizes an opportunity to impress the First Sea Lord, Jackie Fisher, during a snap inspection of the dockyard and secures an appointment to HMS Astute, a scout cruiser, which is being sent to join the squadron in the South Atlantic.

Surviving a storm in the mid-Atlantic, Astute has a run-in with a mysterious passenger liner sailing under the Stars and Stripes, and duels with a German light cruiser stalking the rich hunting grounds off the South American coast.

After an intense engagement, which sees the Astute fleeing along the coast to Montevideo for emergency repairs, Baxter once again encounters the suspicious liner. And this time he is determined not to let it get away.

Baxter risks everything to sneak aboard, and makes a shocking discovery. He needs to reach the safety of the Falklands before any intelligence falls into the wrong hands.

But with the enemy on his tail, the race along the South Atlantic won’t be an easy one…

Congratulations to Donna Gowland, whose absorbing murder mystery, The Missing Wife, is out now!

The Missing Wife is the first book in the Mary Shelley Investigation series.

1814, London

It isn’t easy being the daughter of the great Mary Wollstonecraft, harder still to navigate life without her. 16-year-old Mary Godwin is desperate for excitement and trapped in a family she feels stifled in, under the watchful, disapproving glare of her stepmother Mary, she is constantly battling for her father’s attention and approval.

So when the young Romantic poet, Percy Shelley, comes blazing into her life, she falls quickly and deeply in love with him. But Percy has plenty of demons. He is already married with a second child on the way, and he turns up to the Godwin family home with a bottle of laudanum, declaring he will end his life if he cannot be with Mary.

William Godwin forbids contact between them, but Mary’s heart aches for the man she believes to be her soulmate. And so she agrees to elope to Paris.

The excitement of the journey soon wears off and they arrive in the city weary, travel-sick and penniless, though luck finally seems to be on their side when they meet a man who offers them money to find his missing wife.

But with Mary becoming increasingly homesick and concerned for her future, will her love affair with Percy be all she had hoped for? Could the search for the missing wife set her on a new course of self-discovery?

Or will her first daring adventure prove to be her downfall…?

Between 1940 and 1944, Donald Macintyre was among the most successful submarine hunters in any Allied navy, transforming the Battle of the Atlantic with his successes against the U-boat menace. To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, Donald’s daughter, Dani, shares a personal memory from her father’s life after the conflict.

In 1960, when Dad was employed by MGM as Nautical Advisor on Mutiny on the Bounty starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard, he left my mother in charge of the pig farm. I can only suppose that she felt annoyed to be left with this responsibility, because she sold all the pigs and demanded a flight to California!

Dad complied, and I was able to join them for a fascinating holiday, mainly spent in Culver City’s MGM Studios every day. I watched the crew film scenes of a half replica of the Bounty on rollers, with wind and water machines simulating a storm on the high seas. To my joy I also spent time with the crew of Rawhide, a Western TV series. They made a fourteen-year-old girl feel very welcome!

If you have ever watched Mutiny on the Bounty, you might have noticed that in one scene Marlon Brando comes out of his cabin wearing a ridiculous red velvet smoking jacket. When Dad was asked to approve this costume change, he said it would never have been acceptable in those days. Hollywood being Hollywood thought it made handsome Marlon irresistible, so they kept it in. This made Dad wonder what he was being paid for, apart from sitting and playing cards with Gordon Jackson in Tahiti!

Congratulations to Raymond Wemmlinger, whose page-turning Elizabethan drama, The Queen’s Cousin, is published today!

Scotland, 1594

Nineteen-year-old Anne of Denmark, Queen of Scotland, is thrilled and triumphant at the birth of a healthy baby boy, destined to reign as King of Scotland and, possibly, England.

But Anne’s enjoyment of maternal glory quickly fades as her husband King James, fearing his son will be politically manipulated against him as he was against his mother, the deceased Mary Queen of Scots, removes the child permanently from her care.

Outraged, Anne tries to regain control of her son, initiating a bitter marital struggle which sours what had been a loving and harmonious marriage.

Anne is haunted by the giant legacies of Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor on the thrones of Scotland and England, and is determined to make her own mark.

And central to that ambition is securing the succession to the English throne from her husband’s cousin, the elderly and childless Queen Elizabeth.

Can Anne regain favour with the Scottish King? Will they join forces to secure the English throne?

Or will this daring Queen of Scotland fade into obscurity…?

Canadian paratrooper Leo Heaps (1923–1995) was seconded to the British Army during the Second World War and participated in the Battle of Arnhem. He was captured by the Germans and upon his escape, his work with the Dutch Resistance to help rescue hundreds of Allied soldiers behind enemy lines resulted in his being awarded the Royal Military Cross for “outstanding gallantry”. To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Leo’s son Adrian reflects on his father’s life in 1945.

In 1945, Leo Heaps was just twenty-two, a young Canadian whose experiences in the Second World War shaped him into the complex figure I knew.

Born in Winnipeg in 1923, growing up as the son of Abraham Albert Heaps, a prominent Parliamentarian, wasn’t easy, but Leo forged his own path. Educated at Queen’s University, the University of California, and McGill, he was restless by 1944, bored with the Canadian Infantry Holding Unit. His commanders underestimated him, calling him “not of officer caliber, no initiative, not aggressive enough.” Sarcastic and defiant, he failed to qualify for the Infantry. His father urged him to work on his aunt’s farm, an exemption from service, but Leo sought action. He volunteered for the CANLOAN program, seconding Canadian officers to the British Army, a choice that plunged him into Operation Market Garden.

In September 1944, Leo joined the British 1st Airborne Division, commanding the 1st Parachute Battalion’s Transport — without ever having jumped before. He described his first drop on 17 September 1944 with vivid clarity: “I floated down gently from heaven at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday… The sun shone, the fields of Wolfheze were bathed in warm light and the green meadow bloomed with large bursts of yellow sunflowers.” That beauty was short-lived. The Battle of Arnhem, part of a failed plan to seize Rhine bridges, ended in defeat. Captured by the Germans, Leo didn’t stay a prisoner for long. With the help of the Dutch Resistance, he escaped, hiding in a chicken coop at Ennyshoeve. There, he met members of the Resistance risking their lives for Allied evaders.

His work with the Dutch Resistance earned him the Military Cross, a rare honour for a Canadian in British service. His brother, David, also received the Military Cross, making them the only Jewish brothers during the Second World War to win the decoration. Leo’s role in Operation Pegasus, the escape of over 100 Allied soldiers across the Rhine, was a triumph he chronicled in his book The Grey Goose of Arnhem. He called it “the most amazing mass escape of World War II.”

But some memories were harder to share. In April 1945, Leo was among the first to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after the Germans fled, leaving behind a typhoid outbreak and unimaginable suffering. As a Jewish soldier, the sight of skeletal survivors, the stench of death, and the chaos of the camp struck him profoundly. In Escape from Arnhem (1945) he described the eerie silence broken by the groans of the starving, the piles of unburied bodies, and the desperate eyes of those clinging to life. The scale of the horror overwhelmed him. He rarely spoke of Belsen, but when he did, his voice was subdued. I can picture him there, a young man of twenty-two, confronting a darkness that no one could fully process.

By May 1945, Leo was no longer the kid who frustrated his commanders, but a decorated veteran, a survivor of capture, combat, and collaborator with the Dutch underground. However, the war left its mark on Leo in what we now recognise as PTSD. The loss of friends killed by the Germans ushered a quiet guilt for those surviving when so many didn’t. Yet Leo channelled his unease into action, as if movement could keep the ghosts at bay. His writing, his adventures, his relentless drive — they were, in part, his way of coping with a war that never fully left him.

In 1994, my son and I accompanied Leo to Arnhem for the fiftieth anniversary, as one of forty Canadian veterans. I often wonder what he felt in those sunflower fields, thinking of his lost comrades and his own life’s pursuits. Some of these feelings can be found in his records and letters in the Ontario (Canada) Jewish Archives, which offer a glimpse of the man and the many moments beyond his stories.

Leo died in 1995, leaving a legacy I’m still unravelling. In 1945, he emerged from the war not just as a survivor but as a storyteller who gave voice to the unsung. His books are a testament to a war that left its scars, but also of the man who became my father.

By Leo Heaps:

Escape from Arnhem

The Grey Goose of Arnhem

Operation Morning Light

Hugh Hambleton, Spy

Log of the Centurion

Keith Panter-Brick joined the Territorial Army in March 1939, at the age of eighteen. When war broke out six months later, he was sent to France, where he was entrenched ahead of the Maginot Line in spring 1940. Following the devastating German blitzkrieg, he was captured in May 1940 and spent the next five years as a prisoner of war. To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, Keith’s friend and colleague, Paul Jankowski — Raymond Ginger Professor Emeritus of History at Brandeis University — reflects on Keith’s harrowing wartime memoir, Years Not Wasted, below.

“We were totally outclassed,” Keith Panter-Brick told me in the early 2000s. He was speaking of May 1940, when the German land and air forces overwhelmed the Allied forces in Belgium and northern France. Taken prisoner that month, he spent the next five years — the first half of his twenties — in German prisoner of war camps (Stalags) in occupied Poland. The mental honesty, scrupulous accuracy, and personal humility in his brief comment captured much of the man, the scholar, and the friend I would first meet some fifty years later.

The same qualities would reappear in his memoir, Years Not Wasted. When he returned home to Merseyside, England, in 1945, all he had was his diary, along with the many letters that had somehow reached his family. He would return to them many years later in his memoir, retelling and perhaps reliving the captivity that he and other captured Western soldiers had to endure. They contended with conditions worse than those of the officers, but far better than those of the Soviet and Polish prisoners, most of whom perished in one of the great war crimes of the Second World War. Neither self-pity nor heroics coarsen his narrative. He writes of malnutrition and bitter cold, but also of Red Cross parcels, of boredom but also release, of submission but also resistance and, in his case, attempts at escape — once in 1944 from the camp itself, and again in 1945 from the virtual death-march out of it.

It is a recollection mixing scrupulous honesty with vivid detail, on one level a document about captivity in wartime, on another a spiritual memoir of inner freedom wrested from adversity, before its physical reality was finally restored.

We are thrilled to announce that we have signed the fifth book in The Marwood Family Tudor Saga by Amy Licence.

Set at the court of King Henry VIII, the series follows the drama and intrigue at the heart of the Tudor court.

In Amy’s words:

“I’m really excited to be publishing the next instalment in Thomasin Marwood’s journey with Sapere Books. Readers of the series will recall her turbulent experiences at the court of Henry VIII in the 1520s. The young Thomasin arrived aged seventeen, fresh from her Suffolk childhood, to navigate the various intrigues and romances of court life. She is dazzled by the elegance of Anne Boleyn, before she finds a place in the household of Catherine of Aragon. Watching the royal marriage unravel, Thomasin becomes close to her mistress, who trusts her implicitly, whilst trying to protect her own heart from the handsome Rafe Danvers and other suitors.

“Now, two years later, the eagerly anticipated Legatine Court is about to open at Blackfriars, to test the validity of Henry and Catherine’s marriage and hopefully bring them all some resolution. Not all is as straightforward as it seems, though, as friends and lovers just as quickly turn into enemies, and long-term scandals in the Marwood family threaten to re-surface. Then there is Thomas Cromwell, keen to do Henry’s bidding, leading to some dangerous clashes with Thomasin’s father.

“I love writing the Marwood series, with all the colour, textures and details of life at the Tudor court. It’s the closest we can come to travelling back in time there ourselves. When I was planning this series, I wanted to create a heroine outside the cast of usual characters, a complete outsider with whom the reader could identify, and set her within the dynamic of known individuals like Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon. There must have been many similar silent witnesses to the crucial events of the 1520s who have gone unnamed and unrecorded, so Thomasin also represents them.

“There’ll be some twists and turns in this book, but it’s building towards a mid-series mini-conclusion, with both Thomasin and her cousin Ellen settled by the end. I thought it time to give them both some happiness at last, after everything they’ve been through. After that, I hope to give Thomasin a little breathing space, then bring her back to court in 1532, for Book Six. She will find herself at Anne’s side through the coming years, as a witness to her queenship and downfall.”

 

To keep up to date with Amy’s latest releases, visit her website.

 

The Marwood Family Tudor Saga:

Book One: Dangerous Lady

Book Two: Troubled Queen

Book Three: False Mistress

Book Four: Lady of Misrule

Group Captain Bobby Oxspring, author of Spitfire Command, saw action in many of the most famous battles of the Second World War, including Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain. To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, his great-grandson, Daniel, shares his reflections on Bobby’s life below.

Flying ace Robert (Bobby) Wardlow Oxspring held the rank of squadron leader when World War Two ended in May 1945. Throughout April 1945, he was confident that the war was soon to conclude. His mood on VE Day as an optimistic family man would have no doubt been a mixture of pride and reflection. He would have been proud of his achievements: he’d been made leader of the 141 Wing at Deanland only the year before, and had been awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and Two Bars as a flying ace. He would have been reflecting on his numerous wartime adventures, from the Battle of Britain to his time in North Africa, Italy and many other countries. Bobby’s mood on VE Day likely matched the mood of many of ‘The Few’, and I have no doubt he would have felt joy at the war’s conclusion.

For me, the great-grandson of Bobby Oxspring, my great-grandfather has had a huge influence on my life — not only as a proud figure to look up to, exemplifying courage and bravery, but also through his stories. His career after VE Day did not lose momentum. He received a permanent commission as a flight lieutenant on 1st September 1945 and was promoted further to substantive squadron leader on 1st August 1947. One incredible achievement, however, was his award of an Air Force Cross. This was for leading number 54 Squadron of the RAF Vampires to Canada and the US, the very first jet aircraft to cross the Atlantic.

After VE Day, he never stopped being admirable. He undertook further tours, even across Italy, and eventually became Station Commander of RAF Gatow in Berlin. At Churchill’s funeral, he walked at the very front.

I have been to RAF Cranwell to see some of my great-grandfather’s personal scrapbooks and was even fortunate enough to sit in the cockpit of his recovered plane in the Dumfries and Galloway Museum in Scotland. These are only a few of the moments I have taken to reflect on his life.

On VE Day I am almost certain that one thought would have prevailed in his mind: his admiration and respect for the mighty Spitfire, and his pride at having flown it.

Keith Panter-Brick joined the Territorial Army in March 1939, at the age of eighteen. When war broke out six months later, he was sent to France, where he was entrenched ahead of the Maginot Line in spring 1940. Following the devastating German blitzkrieg, he was captured in May 1940 and spent the next five years as a prisoner of war. To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, Keith’s daughter Catherine — Professor of Anthropology, Health, and Global Affairs at Yale University — shares her memories of her father below.

“Each day life is hanging in the balance.” That was the phrase with which my father ended his book, Years Not Wasted. I think that everyone with a lived experience of war will understand that sentence: the notion that you may or may not live, may or may not be free, may or may not return.

Keith Panter-Brick was a prisoner of war in Poland from 1940 to 1945. He was captured at Isières when he was just nineteen. Under the Geneva Convention, ordinary soldiers were obliged to work — and were put to hard labour in POW camps. If he ever survived the cold, hunger, exhaustion, and brutality of war, Keith promised himself that he would study philosophy and go to university, the first of his family to do so. Admitted to Keble College, Oxford, he joined a postwar student delegation to Heidelberg for cultural exchange and reconciliation. There he met my mother, a student from Alsace-Lorraine on a French delegation to Heidelberg. The two fell in love — my father courted in German, their only common language at the time — and in that short week, they decided to marry. They built a family, rooted in the practice of non-violence and cross-cultural understanding.

My father’s book began decades later, assembled from scraps of his diary, postcards, and letters sent through the Red Cross, all of which he had kept hidden away in a shoebox. On page seven of the first edition, you’ll find his death certificate — the Office of the Cheshire Regiment officially reported him killed in action in May 1940. It took months for news of his survival to reach home. That certificate became for me the most vivid proof that life indeed is hanging in the balance.

Years Not Wasted isn’t a grand officer’s tale. It’s a soldier’s story, grounded in hard labour, frostbitten marches, and everyday endurance. Because he learnt passable German, Keith was once included in an escape attempt with RAF officers, only to be recaptured in Gdansk, at the dockside when attempting to board a Swedish vessel. He survived the Great March out of Poland in the most brutal of winters, thanks to a pair of good boots made in his father’s bootmaker shop. Even years later, my sister Brigitte, now a regular walker in the forests of Lorraine, measures distances in fractions of “Great March kilometres.” In my own teaching and research, I focus on the biological and social signatures of war across generations, and on pathways to peace. My son Jannik chose to study POW trade and barter systems for his Masters’ dissertation at Cambridge. Each of us carries a trace of my father’s war experience.

My father was impetuous. Once, while we were travelling from Nigeria to Cameroon, he filmed a bull elephant that decided to charge us on a dusty road. He stood in front of the car with the hand-held camera, while we huddled in the back. He once flagged down the pilot of a plane by running onto the runway, not wanting to miss his actual flight. But he became, over the years, immensely patient. Whilst a professor at the London School of Economics, he turned to gardening, building stone walls, and restructuring the house we purchased in Lorraine — a house that still has “2 OFF” (“must house two German officers”) carved in the front doorway. My father taught me to value ordinary things in everyday life: raking leaves, washing dishes, being attentive to other people. He never forgot what it meant to be hungry. He told me that being alive is a gift from God, and that good health is a blessing one can only really understand after one has lost it.

In 2025, we republished Years Not Wasted. It’s more than a memoir — it’s a witness statement. It honours ordinary soldiers who endured extraordinary hardship. It is a uniquely authentic book, told in the way it was recorded in letters and a diary at the time, rather than reconstructed from fallible memory. It was written to share the knowledge “soon acquired once war has started that the cost, in lives, in grief, in suffering, is immeasurable, and unacceptable however much one did accept it at the time.” It’s a call to remember how people like my father built their lives after war, choosing patience over bitterness, solidarity over division, peace over conflict. For my father, it was always about taking one step at a time, drawing from patience and reflection. That is the lesson I carry forward.

Air Commodore Roderick Chisholm, CBE, DSO, DFC & Bar (1911–1994), author of Cover of Darkness, was a night fighter pilot, flying ace and a highly decorated British airman of the Second World War. To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, his son Julian reflects on his father’s life in 1945.

In 1930 Roderick Chisholm joined 604 Squadron of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. He learnt to fly and was commissioned as an officer. He left the squadron in 1935 when his work took him to Iran. Before rejoining his squadron in late June 1940, he took a refresher course to become a night fighter pilot and fly the squadron’s Blenheims. During the war, while flying Beaufighters and Mosquitos, he shot down nine enemy aircraft with the assistance of his airborne observers and the ground controllers, he commanded the Night Fighter Interception Unit at Ford, and was the second-in-command of Bomber Command’s 100 Group, which was charged with defending RAF bombers over enemy territory. He recorded his wartime experiences in Cover of Darkness, which was first published in 1953.

Immediately after hostilities ended, Roderick led a team of twelve charged with gaining as much intelligence as possible about the impact of 100 Group’s radar-assisted night fighters, Mosquitos, and Radio Counter Measures. The team did their work at the final base of the Luftwaffe in Schleswig, just before it was disbanded and its personnel transferred to POW camps. They carried out interrogations of Luftwaffe night fighter commanders and pilots, observers, flight controllers and technicians, held technical discussions, and examined the vast number of German aircraft parked on the airfields. The team gained confirmation of the effectiveness of 100 Group’s efforts, and had the satisfaction that as a  result RAF losses were significantly reduced. The Mosquito had an awesome reputation amongst the German airmen.

Major Schnauffer was one of the pilots whose interrogation Roderick witnessed. Schnauffer was a brave and skilful night fighter pilot who was credited with shooting down no less than 124 bombers in defence of his country. He wore uniform, and on the last day the Germans were allowed to wear medals, he wore the highest order of the Iron Cross around his neck. The exchanges with the Germans were generally civilised and friendly, but my father could not ignore that they were Nazis, and that nearby were camps for Russian prisoners living in ghastly conditions, and mini-Belsens for Jews and other displaced persons.

Roderick’s mission complete, he flew back to Norfolk. While doing so, he envisioned a future Europe in which frontiers would mean no more and individual nationalities were less important, as per the multi-national squadrons of the Battle of Britain. After the collapse of France in 1940, British, French, Belgian, Czech, Polish and other nationalities had flown in harmony in polyglot fighter squadrons. Their aims were identical, and their understanding effective thanks to the basic English of the radio. Sadly, later, as national squadrons were formed, national identities asserted themselves and the unity achieved in the Battle of Britain became compromised.

In September 1939 the twenty-year-old John Wooldridge, then a Sergeant Pilot, took part in the British air raid on Kiel, the first raid of World War Two.  Having brought his damaged aircraft home safely, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal.  Commissioned in August 1940, he rapidly rose to the rank of Flight Commander, flying Lancasters as a Flight Lieutenant.  In the middle of 1942, for his part in the 1,000-bomber raid on Cologne, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.  By the end of the War, he had flown 97 missions over enemy territory.  To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, John’s daughter and son, Susan and Hugh, share their memories of him below.

On 9th and 10th May 1944, our father, Wing Commander John Wooldridge DSO, DFC*, DFM, returning from New York where his music was being performed at Carnegie Hall, flew over the Atlantic in a Mosquito, taking off from Goose Bay, Canada and landing six and a half hours later in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland.  In so doing, he broke the then speed record for crossing the Atlantic.

The Air Ministry, unsure what to do with this daring twenty-five-year-old, told him to lie low but, within a couple of days, they’d been outflanked by the Press and the story was all over the newspapers.  As our father writes in his diary for Sunday 14th May: Ye gods, what a splash! Headlines, pictures…

Meanwhile, on Monday 15th May in a London hairdresser, our mother, the distinguished British actress Margaretta Scott, was having her hair done.  Whilst under the dryer, she read the story in the London Evening Standard of this amazing trans-Atlantic flight.  But what really caught her eye was that the pilot was also a composer of serious music, who had composed a work for Narrator and Orchestra called The Constellations.

‘That’s my boy!’ she cried, as Sir Henry Wood had recently asked her to find a new work for Narrator and Orchestra for his upcoming Promenade Concerts, and she felt that The Constellations might be just the job.

Our mother immediately approached the Air Ministry, but they refused to give out the personal details of the record-breaking flyer.

The story would have ended there if, a couple of days later, at Denham Film Studios where she was making the film Fanny by Gaslight, our mother had not given a lift to a film publicist who, on their journey back to London, had boasted that he’d just been given a camembert cheese flown across the Atlantic by a friend, one John Wooldridge.

‘Bring him to tea!’ she cried.  And the next Sunday, there was our father on her doorstep — and that was it!  For the next fourteen years until our father’s sudden death in a car crash in 1958, our mother and father were as inseparable as their young family and busy work schedules would allow.

In the 1950s, Margaretta Scott continued to star in plays and films whilst John Wooldridge wrote his music and plays and films.  One of his most important films was the 1953 film starring Dirk Bogarde, Appointment in London, about a Royal Air Force Bomber Command squadron, for which he wrote both the screenplay and the music score.  To this day it continues to be screened to great acclaim and serves as a memorial to Bomber Command by one of their own.

By John Wooldridge:

Low Attack

Major-General Hubert Essame, CBE, DSO, MC (1896–1976) was a British Army officer who fought in the First and Second World Wars. Following his retirement from the army, Hubert lectured in military history at King’s College London, and published several books and articles. He was also an advisor to television producers for military programmes. To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, his granddaughter Antonia shares her memories of him below.

Brigadier, later Major-General, Hubert Essame led 214 Independent Infantry Brigade, part of 43rd Wessex Division, in the capture of Mont Pincon, the key to Normandy, as well as of Hill 112, the successful yet most costly single battalion action of the Overlord campaign.

He was a sharp-witted and determined man remembered by the actor and raconteur Dirk Bogarde, his one-time liaison officer, for his “brilliant blue eyes and tongue like a whip”. He had a caustic sense of humour and was a formidable leader from the front.

Soon after the war, Hubert wrote the Division’s official history, The 43rd Wessex Division at War, 1944-45, and later Battle for Normandy, Normandy Bridgehead, The Battle for Germany, and a biography of General Patton. His perspective as a leader of troops into battle, alongside his use of a wide-ranging variety of sources as a historian, makes for a great read even for those who know about Operation Overlord.

His 214 Independent Infantry Brigade, which together with 129 and 130 Brigade and their supporting arms formed Major General Ivor Thomas’s 43rd Wessex Division, were in turn part of the XXX Corps commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Horrocks all the way from Normandy to Bremerhaven.

The Wessex Division story spans the stormy Overlord crossing and later the crucial Battle for Hill 112. This point south-west of Caen was defined by Eberbach, commander of Panzer Group West, as the “pivotal point of the whole position” and it saw the first of the grim battles of attrition immediately following Caen’s fall. The battle involved heavy casualties and tested the 43rd Division against some of the most seasoned German divisions, well dug in and skilfully hidden.

Road and rail lines lay at right angles to the direction of advance. The bocage of tiny, often boggy fields with sunken lanes and thick hedges reduced visibility for artillery and impeded all movement. And it was high summer. Hubert describes vividly how he crawled forward in the August heat to assess Mont Pincon’s southern slopes before its eventual capture by the Division and 8th Armoured Brigade.

Hubert was a writer whose extraordinarily immediate account includes, for example, the information he gained from German prisoners, subsequent revelations about Hitler’s orders to his generals, and his own point of view at the head of 214 Brigade. His perspective sheds light on some of the huge challenges of the campaign, such as that of establishing a key bridgehead over the Seine at Vernon despite the civilian population’s determination to celebrate as though the campaign was already won.

214 Brigade fought on through northern France and the Netherlands, including Operation Market Garden, and were among the first Allied troops to enter Germany. They played a key part in the turning of the tide in the Reichswald. I am proud that ‘Brigadier Twinkletoes’ was my grandfather and attempt to read across from his high standards of resolve and determination to the greyer demands of the here and now.

By Hubert Essame:

Patton the Commander

Normandy Bridgehead

The Battle for Europe, 1918

The Battle for Germany, September 1944-May 1945

Jeremy Howard-Williams DFC (1922–1995), author of Night Intruder, had a distinguished career in the RAF as a night-fighter pilot during the Second World War and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for gallantry. To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Jeremy’s son, Anthony Inglis Howard-Williams, reflects on the arrival of peace in 1945 and how it influenced his father’s life.

When peace came to Europe in May 1945, Flight Lieutenant Jeremy Howard-Williams DFC was stationed at HQ, 11 Group Uxbridge. Three days before Germany’s unconditional surrender, a party was held to celebrate peace. Jeremy and his brother Peter did so by marching a guest — Flight Lieutenant Andrew from RAF Intelligence — between them up and down an anteroom. The junior flight lieutenant just happened to have been their pre-war boarding school housemaster, and the brothers had found it too good an opportunity to miss. When, years later, he was asked how the lieutenant had taken the ribbing, Jeremy replied, “with remarkable good humour!”

Like so many in 1945, Jeremy was headed for an uncertain future. With peace  came the pressing question: what happens now? For most, life outside of the  forces beckoned. With millions demobilising, the assimilation of those who had been at war back into civilian society became one of the new post-war government’s biggest challenges. For those who did not want to leave the forces came a different challenge. With Jeremy’s father a retired RAF pilot, Peter a Battle of Britain day-fighter pilot and Jeremy a night-fighter pilot with the Fighter Interception Unit — an elite force at the forefront of the RAF’s early experiments with radar equipment — both brothers understandably wished to remain serving.

With the Royal Air Force downsizing, deployment meant less flying — not a very exciting prospect for a twenty-three-year-old war veteran. Jeremy had specifically joined the RAF in order to fly when the Nazis had tried to seize control of Western Europe. However, in the new modern era of the jet engine, aircraft were flying ever faster and higher. Now that was exciting!

In the end, both brothers remained in the RAF. Jeremy was first posted in an admin job to Singapore during the Malayan Emergency, where he met his wife, uniting two distinguished RAF families. He later worked as an assistant air attaché in the Paris and Berlin embassies. He did fly during these postings, but mainly a desk. He resigned in 1957.

Ultimately, Jeremy’s parents divorced and his father remarried into the Ratsey family, where Jeremy became sales manager for the famous sail-making firm Ratsey & Lapthorn in Cowes on the Isle of Wight. After leaving the company, he wrote many authoritative books on sailing, as well as Night Intruder, republished by Sapere Books, a personal account of his wartime service as a pilot and the radar war between the RAF and Luftwaffe night-fighter forces.

Sir Frank Whittle, author of Jet: The Story of a Pioneer, was a Royal Air Force pilot and aviation engineer known as the inventor of the jet engine. He obtained his first patent for a turbo-jet engine in 1930, and in 1936 co-founded Power Jets Ltd. In May 1941, his engine was fitted to a Gloster E.28/39 airframe — the plane’s maiden flight from RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire heralded the beginning of the jet age. Frank retired from the RAF in 1948 with the rank of air commodore, and that same year he was knighted. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1986. To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, his son Ian reflects on Sir Frank’s life in 1945.

My father’s company, Power Jets, was nationalised in 1944. From then until 1946, he was on the board of the government company that emerged under a slightly different name. At the time, he was working on the design for the aft-fan engine that also incorporated the after-burner system he had patented in 1936 — the modified W2/700. This was expected to propel the experimental Miles aircraft (M52) intended to be the first in the world to go supersonic. He was also working on the development of what would have been the world’s first hi-bypass turbo-fan engine — the LR1. Both projects were cancelled by the government in 1946 — as was the M52. These decisions resulted in Frank resigning from the board and putting himself in the hands of the RAF to do whatever they would wish him to do.

1945 was a year of change for my father. He was still a serving officer in the RAF, but Power  Jets had become publicly owned and entirely dependent on government funding. He found himself subject to the needs of the large independent aero-engine manufacturers who objected to a government company in competition. However, on three occasions he briefly got away from it  all and flew the Meteor jet fighter. Apart from the Wright brothers, he was the first person to pilot an aeroplane powered by an engine of his own design. At other times, he found himself sent off to deliver lectures at various venues to describe the impact and differences when changing from piston engine/propeller propulsion to jet propulsion.

As a little boy, I remember him coming home after flying the Meteor along the high-speed run at Herne Bay. “How fast did you go, Daddy?” I asked. “Oh, about 450,” he replied. “Is that all?” I said with some disgust, and turned away to do whatever it was that I was doing. I had  expected him to  tell me 600 miles per hour. When I asked him about this, many years later, he said he was quite crestfallen by my reaction. He also explained that, as he was flying at about 50 feet above the surface of the sea, he really was unable to pay much attention to his airspeed indicator — his attention was focussed on keeping the aeroplane steady and level. And anyway, he would have been speaking of knots, not mph!

Featured image credit: Photo of Gloster Meteor by Alexis Threlfall on Unsplash.

Sir Peter Gretton DSO** OBE DSC (1912–1992) was an officer in the Royal Navy. He was active in the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War, and was a successful convoy escort commander. He eventually rose to become Fifth Sea Lord and retired as a Vice-Admiral before entering university life as a bursar and academic. To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, Sir Peter’s son, Vice-Admiral Mike Gretton, shares his memories of him below.

On 8 May 1945 — Victory in Europe Day — Peter Gretton was thirty-three years old and utterly exhausted. He had been continuously in seagoing appointments since the outbreak of war in September 1939. He had married Wren Judy Du Vivier in 1943 during a short break between convoys, and they had had their first child, Anne, who was not yet one year old. They were renting a flat in Kensington so that he could readily get to work: his job at the time was in the Joint Planning Staff in the Cabinet Office working on strategic plans to end the war in Europe and then in the Far East — not exactly a rest cure.

Peter had served continuously in seagoing ships from September 1939 until he came ashore in March 1944 — still only thirty-one years old. He had served in five ships during that time, starting as a First Lieutenant, including HMS Cossack in which he was mentioned in Dispatches for his performance during the Second Battle of Narvik under the very demanding Captain Philip Vian VC. From February 1941, he was in command of destroyers, starting with HMS Sabre in which he was awarded an OBE, and then HMS Wolverine (March to November 1942) when his ship was an escort for Operation Pedestal, the relief of Malta. He was awarded his first DSO for ramming and sinking an Italian submarine at the expense of wrecking his bows and having to proceed astern to port at Gibraltar.

From there, he was recalled to the UK as a Commander to become the Senior Officer of Escort Group B7, to be based in Derry, and he initially embarked on HMS Duncan. The Escort Group supported Atlantic convoys for two years and five months. He was awarded the two bars to his DSO during that time, the first of which reflected the successful battle for convoy ONS5, which historians regard as the tipping point in Allied fortunes in the Atlantic convoy campaign.

In March 1944, Peter dedicated himself to writing a new book — The Admiralty Convoy Instructions — based on his and others’ experience at war, with a readership in the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and Merchant Navy. This became the bible for convoy protection and the same book, with minor amendments, was the basis of my own training as a naval  officer in the 1970s.

Peter and my mother rejoiced exuberantly at the victory in Europe: he writes that they ‘walked up Picadilly and thence to St James’ Park … remarkable scenes’. They would have reflected proudly on their own contribution to the outcome: my father at sea and my mother as a Wren in the Western Approaches Tactical Unit (WATU), which developed and taught tactics for the Atlantic battle. I was born nine months after VE Day, in March 1946.

By Peter Gretton:

The Battle of the Atlantic

Former Naval Person

Crisis Convoy

Convoy Escort Commander

Following the success of the first three books in J. C. Briggs’ Gothic Mysteries series, we are thrilled to announce that we have signed the fourth instalment.

In Briggs’ words:

“I am delighted that Sapere Books have accepted my newest novel, The Prisoner of Raven’s Gaze Hall. This will be my fifteenth book to be published by Sapere, so many thanks to them for their continuing faith in my work.

“This new book is set in an isolated house in Yorkshire, in the fictional Ravendale, a remote dale surrounded by high fells and with few inhabitants. Nurse Catherine Sisley, not long returned from wartime duties, is engaged to nurse an elderly lady, the grandmother of a former patient, but all is not what it seems. Raven’s Gaze Hall harbours a dreadful secret, and its owner, Bennet Lestrange, has a future planned for Catherine from which only tragedy allows her to escape. When she returns ten years later, the terrible truth about the prisoner of Raven’s Gaze Hall is slowly revealed.”

To keep up with J. C. Briggs’ latest releases, visit her website and sign up to her newsletter.

Sydney Hart, author of Submarine Upholder and Discharged Dead, served as a submariner in the North Sea, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean during World War Two. To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, Sydney’s daughters Lynne and Andrea share their memories of him below.

Our father came across as a somewhat hard man, but underneath there was a soft man with a dry, hilarious sense of humour, which must have been an asset in his seafaring days.

After leaving submarines, Dad decided to emigrate to Australia. He felt unsettled after entering Civvy Street in post-war England. Of course, his family and friends tried to deter him, but to no avail. Sydney made a formal application to emigrate. The £10 ‘Pommie’ fare allowed him a berth on the Empire Brent. Of course, his treasured motorbike had to come as well.

On a May morning, Dad sailed from Liverpool and shared a cabin with seven other fortune-seekers. The ship sailed full of £10 Pommies, seeking a better life in a sunny climate. On leaving England, Dad met his future wife — our mum, Betty — whilst looking over the railings. Upon arrival in Sydney, Australia, Dad travelled regularly on his motorbike to visit her, and their romance flourished. They had a secret wedding in October, with two witnesses who Dad had plucked off the street.

Home was a caravan in the bush. This was a lovely, contented start to married life for our parents, though the caravan lacked any amenities. They loved the friendly, relaxed manner of the people around them. After a very challenging wet season, our parents moved to a park with better facilities. It was in this park that I (Lynne) was born, in February 1951. Dad always wondered what his Australian daughter would think of her ‘Pommie’ parents. After much discussion, they decided to return to England. Whether this would be permanent or a holiday, they didn’t know. When I was nine months old, we sailed on the SS Strathmore back to England as a family.

On arrival at Grandad’s house in Standish, a village in Northwest England, we were greeted with a warm welcome party. Dad joined the crew of the George, bound for the Middle East, after a few weeks in England. Mum and I stayed with my paternal grandad. It was easy to see where Dad got his nature from. Grandad adored me and was quite a character. Everyone wanted to know why Mum and Dad hadn’t unpacked. The truth was, they weren’t sure if they were staying. Of course, a £10 Pommie had a full passage back.

They had a ticket confirming a passage back to Australia, but this took a long time to arrive and cost £225. They also declined other offers which would have made their life in England better. Just before the passage came through, Dad accepted a position with a car factory, as he had to support his family. We lived with Grandad for six years. During this time, Dad had three books published. We then moved to a bungalow about a mile away. In 1959, my sister Andrea Davina was born.

Dad stayed in his job until his retirement. Although he did this for his family, he never lost his wanderlust spirit.

Dad died suddenly in 1979. His last request was that he be buried at sea from Portsmouth, as a true submariner.

Congratulations to C. F. Dunn, whose powerful medieval saga, Sun Ascendant, is out now!

Sun Ascendant is the second book in The Tarnished Crown series: historical novels set during the Wars of the Roses.

1470, England

England is in turmoil as the battle between supporters of the Yorkist king, Edward IV and the old Lancastrian king, Henry VI escalates.

And for Isobel Fenton the war is personal. Her father’s sudden death made her an heiress to Beaumoncote Manor, a desirable estate in the midlands. But as conflict threatens England’s unstable peace, Isobel and her lands become the focus of bitter tensions and a long-held feud.

Taken from her manor, Isobel becomes the unwilling mistress of an indomitable Earl. Unable to protect her own lands or herself, she sees her only chance of happiness in the Earl’s brother, Robert Langton, newly sworn to serve Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

Isobel’s life in the castle becomes increasingly difficult as the Countess plots against her rival, and Isobel finds herself trapped and alone in her gilded prison.

She is determined to take her fate into her own hands, but how can she gain her freedom and find her way back to Beaumoncote…?

Congratulations to David Mackenzie, whose wartime aviation thriller, Spitfires Rising, is published today.

Spitfires Rising is the first book in the John Noble Fighter Ace Thrillers: action-packed military adventures following an RAF pilot during the Second World War.

1938

Having been raised on a farm, young New Zealander John Noble longs for an adventure away from his family’s homestead.

Enthralled by the sight of a Tiger Moth flying overhead, he decides to pursue a career as an RAF pilot and travels to the United Kingdom to complete his training.

After receiving his Wings, John is sent to RAF Catterick, where he finds himself flying the formidable Spitfire.

When tensions in Europe reach breaking point and Britain declares war on Germany, John’s training and courage are put to the ultimate test.

As the squadron prepares to face the Luftwaffe, John starts to question the effectiveness of their tactics, leading to clashes with senior officers.

And as his missions grow ever more dangerous, John begins to wonder just how far he will go to survive the war…

Is John ready for battle? Will he be able to follow orders while preserving his life?

Or is he destined to become a casualty of war…?

We’re thrilled to announce that we have signed three new instalments of the Early Casebook of Sherlock Holmes series by Linda Stratmann.

The series follows a young Sherlock Holmes and his acquaintance, medical student Mr Stamford, as they unravel mysteries and unmask devious killers.

In Linda’s words:

“I am delighted to continue the adventures of a youthful Holmes, before he met Dr Watson. A little about what to expect next: in the Halloween-themed Widow’s Key, an unexpected legacy creates a furore, with deadly mysteries to uncover.  In The Aeronauts, murder is sky-high, and escaped balloons cause peril both aloft and below. The Ghost of Lodge Thirteen finds Holmes and Stamford in Brighton. Richard Scarletti has been accused of murder, and his sister Mina (from the Mina Scarletti Mysteries) and Holmes form a powerful detective alliance.”

To keep up to date with Linda’s newest releases, visit her website and sign up to her newsletter.

Congratulations to Richard Kurti, whose absorbing medieval adventure, Carnival of Chaos, is out now!

Carnival of Chaos is the fourth book in the Basilica Diaries Medieval Mysteries series: historical thrillers set in fifteenth-century Rome and featuring a brother and sister investigative duo.

1508, Rome

An abandoned ship is drifting in the mouth of the Tiber and a horrific discovery is found inside.

Nearly three-hundred men were packed together in the hold. All of them are dead.

They were migrant workers shipped over from North Africa, cheap labour to cut the cost of building St Peter’s Basilica, and all have died in the most horrendous circumstances.

The Vatican is desperate to distance itself from this atrocity. The guilty contractor must be found and punished, and the entire illegal trade in people must be stamped out.

The Pope charges his Head of Security, Domenico Falchoni with conducting a full investigation.

Domenico turns to his scholar sister Cristina for help and together they delve into the grudges and rivalries of the old dynastic families who are competing for building contracts for the great basilica.

Cristina and Domenico discover that dirty tricks extend across all aspects of the great construction and corruption is rife. So it is not easy to find out who is responsible for the horrific deaths of the migrant workers.

Can they protect other workers from untimely deaths? Will they expose those responsible?

Or will digging into the dark world of human trafficking put their own lives at risk…?

We are thrilled to announce that we have signed the ninth book in the Master Mercurius Mysteries series by Graham Brack.

Set in seventeenth-century Europe, the series follows the adventures of a gifted cleric-turned-sleuth.

In Graham’s words:

“After eight adventures, Mercurius is very keen that there should not be a ninth. He wants a peaceful life surrounded by his books, and perhaps now that the Stadhouder is King of England he can have it. So long as William III is in England, and Mercurius stays in Leiden, he should be quite safe.

“The long vacation is approaching, and Mercurius decides to make doubly sure by not being in Leiden either. He is planning a tour of great German cathedrals, something that he has long wanted to do. He has even been learning some German in preparation.

“But then comes an invitation he cannot refuse. An old friend would like some advice on buying books for a library. It will take the whole summer, but then those cathedrals will still be there next year, and he has always wanted to spend someone else’s money on books…

“And while he is there, a baffling crime is committed — or is it?

“The Mercurius stories are a delight to write and I am grateful to Sapere Books for showing such faith in them. If he were alive today, I am sure Master Mercurius would love to see his name on the covers. After all, his multi-volume Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics is rarely read these days, but his memoirs continue to find readers, for which I am very grateful.”

We are thrilled to announce that we have signed a new historical mystery series set in eighteenth-century France by Cheryl Sawyer.

In Cheryl’s words:

“It’s 1735 in the remote Champagne province and a cavalier in France’s mounted police force must investigate a murder at the chateau of Cirey, where the scandalous Marquise du Châtelet is sheltering Voltaire. How could a lower-class gendarme solve major crime in a society where aristocrats held all the power?

“That very question sprang to mind when I visited beautiful, secluded Cirey during my research into  Émilie du Châtelet, a brilliant physicist of the Enlightenment. A lone military policeman would struggle to do his duty in this privileged locale, even if Voltaire himself were a likely suspect.

“That is how Victor Constant and his first challenging investigation came to life. I had eight historical novels published in several languages, but this was my first crime story and I sought seasoned opinion. Peter Lovesey wrote to me: ‘Marvellous tensions between the great free-thinker and Victor Constant,  the book’s hero. The story dazzles and beguiles and the setting is pitch-perfect.’ The novel went on to be longlisted for awards by the Historical Novel Society and the American Library in Paris, and readers have since called Victor ‘the Jack Reacher of the eighteenth century’.

“I am delighted that Sapere Books have chosen Murder at Cirey to lead this series and thrilled that Victor Constant persists in battling injustice within the rigid society of the Champagne. The new titles are Death in Champagne and Murder on High. A huge thank you to the Sapere team for launching this adventurous series!”

www.cherylsawyer.com

Congratulations to David Field, whose twisty Victorian thriller, The Retirement Murder, is out now!

The Retirement Murder is the ninth instalment in the Esther and Jack Enright Mystery Series – a traditional British detective series set in Victorian London and packed full of suspense.

London, 1898

The time has finally come for Percy Enright to retire from Scotland Yard. His nephew, Jack, is sad to lose a partner in the force, but Jack’s wife Esther is glad Percy won’t be getting her husband into any further scrapes.

It seems Esther’s relief might be short lived, though, when a senior officer collapses at Percy’s farewell ceremony.

It soon becomes clear that the officer was poisoned, and Percy delays retirement to help Jack track down the culprit.

It’s a daunting task that involves trawling through all the murdered officer’s recent cases in the search for someone who may still bear him a grudge.

But when it becomes clear the dead man may not have been the intended target, the investigation suddenly turns in a new direction.

Why are the police being targeted? Can Percy make one final arrest before he retires?

Or will the murderer outwit the Enrights in their latest case…?

Congratulations to J. C. Briggs, whose atmospheric Gothic mystery, The Secrets of Treasonfield House, is out now!

England, 1952

Marie Beaumont has returned to the ruins of Treasonfield House where she was taken in by her Aunt Giselle as a child.

Marie was always fascinated by the old house, but she had a lonely and unhappy childhood there until she was eventually sent away to boarding school.

Giselle is dead now but Marie’s Uncle Ned is still there and Marie wants to know why Giselle always treated her so coldly as a child.

She finds out that Ned worked with the intelligence services during the First World War and he has far more secrets to share about Treasonfield House than she could ever have imagined.

Ned’s story begins in February 1918; an intricate plot involving German soldiers, English spies and secret identities.

But what does it all mean for Marie? Can Ned give her the answers she craves? Will she finally learn the truth about her family history?

And can she finally put to rest the secrets that still lurk at Treasonfield House?

We are thrilled to announce that we have signed a new military memoir by David Downie. This follows the wartime experiences of David’s father, 2nd Lt. David Livingstone Downie 3rd Negri Sembilan Battalion, Federated States of Malaya Volunteer Force.

In David’s words:

“The book tells the very personal story of my father’s three and a half years as a prisoner of the Japanese in Malaya and Thailand. He wrote letters to my mother in diary format, describing day-to-day life — anecdotes both horrific and sometimes amusing. The book details his time leading up to his capture at the fall of Singapore in February 1942 and ends with his repatriation, his subsequent return to Malaya as a rubber planter and his involvement in the Malayan Emergency in 1948.

“I am delighted that Sapere Books have given me this opportunity, as it will provide my family with a fitting memorial to my father. Sapere’s experience with books with a similar theme is what encouraged me to seek a partnership with them.”

Congratulations to R. M. Cullen, whose absorbing historical thriller, Harlequin is Dead, is out now!

Harlequin is Dead is the first historical murder investigation in the Richard Brinsley Sheridan Mystery Series: eighteenth-century crime thrillers set in London at a time of Revolution.

1791

Revolution in France is causing refugees to flee to England and London is fast becoming a hotbed of spies, government agents and fanatics.

When renowned Irish playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheriden is led to the skeletal remains of a harlequin in his theatre, he is determined to get justice for his employee.

With the aid of Bow Street Runner, Constable Nicholls, Sheridan starts to investigate.

He soon realises two more performers have disappeared. And the discovery of a decorative cross suggests there is a link with a dangerous secret society, the Huguenot Brotherhood.

But why would French political migrants be targeting the theatre?

Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales has received an anonymous letter accusing him of Treason and Sheridan is tasked with hunting out the sender.

Could both mysteries be linked? Is London heading for the same bloodthirsty scenes as Paris?

Or can Sheridan help stop the insurgents from taking hold in England…?

We are delighted to announce that we have signed a new trilogy of Roman mysteries by Jacquie Rogers.

In Jacquie’s words:

“My new series is set in a wealthy but remote part of third-century Roman Britain.

“Otto Cornelius is a garlanded senior officer in Chester’s XXth legion. Forced to take early retirement, he returns to his hometown of Viroconium Cornoviorum (now Wroxeter Roman City in Shropshire).

“He soon discovers that the quiet life of a pensioned-off officer is no sinecure, and Viroconium is no longer the idyll of his childhood. The murder of an itinerant Greek merchant, coupled with the theft of the iconic Wroxeter silver mirror, are just the beginning. Otto is quickly embroiled in a dangerous conspiracy, one in which old friends and new enemies have much to hide. No-one is who they seem, including Otto himself.

“I am so delighted to be working with Sapere Books. Their passion for historical fiction matches my own, and I’ve had the warmest of welcomes into their supportive organisation. I know my pacy Roman thrillers have found a wonderful home.”

Following the success of his many historical series, including the Sandal Castle Medieval Thrillers and Inspector Torquil McKinnon Mystery Series, we are delighted to announce that we have signed a new supernatural series set in Victorian London by Keith Moray.

In Keith’s words:

“The first book in the series is set in London in 1854. Jack Moon is a foundling, brought up in an orphanage and then a workhouse, where he and his best friend Danny are subject to regular beatings. Together they escape, but when Danny dies in tragic circumstances, Jack secretly buries his friend in a cemetery at night.

“Alone and living in a deserted and rat-infested warehouse, Jack starts seeing Danny’s ghost, who warns him that someone is out to kill him and worse, the girl he loves, too. This is Victorian London, with its criminal underworld, body-snatchers, phrenologists, séances, ghosts and ghouls.

“I am delighted to be writing another historical series with Sapere Books, who have permitted me to set my stories in a variety of times and places, from ancient Egypt and medieval England to a contemporary Scottish island. My new mystery series delves into the occult and the psyche of the Victorian mind. It is murky, sinister and just a little bit scary.

“And one of the main characters is a ghost.”

Following the success of his many military thrillers, including the Vietnam Ground Zero Series and Wings Over Nam aviation thrillers, we are delighted to announce that we have signed a new historical military series by Eric Helm.

In Eric’s words:

“At the end of the 1980s and at the beginning of the 1990s, the world moved close to a world war that could easily escalate into a thermonuclear exchange that would end modern civilization. There were those who wished for nothing more because they believed it would thrust them to the top and in control of the world. And there were those who wanted to prevent that. Their purpose wasn’t always altruistic, but that goal matched their own climb to power. It is into this world that the characters in this series move, serving on every continent and sailing all the oceans, dealing with those problems.

“The characters are military and civilian, members of the media, and those with an academic frame of mind. Each brings an interesting take to the problems of trying to prevent a world war, except for one nation whose leaders believe such a conflict would benefit them. These are unique situations that require unique solutions. This is a tale told on the world stage with players at nearly every level of society.

“Sapere Books have been very good to me. The packaging of my Vietnam Ground Zero series has been perfect. The enthusiasm with which the books have been received has been wonderful. Sapere is a great publisher who have looked out for my best interests. Everyone seems to be excited by the various projects that I have suggested and there is no pressure to crank out a book quickly. They let it evolve naturally, which I believe makes the books that much better.”

Congratulations to D. R. Bailey, whose thrilling aviation novel, The Night Angels, is published today!

The Night Angels is the second novel in the Secret Sirens Aviation Thrillers Series, heart-pounding Second World War escapades with strong female leads.

1943

Sisters Anna and Jennifer Nightingale are recruits in the top-secret Siren Squadron: a group of women trained in the RAF to fight against the enemy.

The Sirens are tasked with flying a series of night stealth missions as part of Operation Scorpion. The first mission is successful, and on returning to base they are told that new members will be joining their ranks.

Hopeful that this means the all-female squadron has been deemed a success, the sisters welcome the new recruits and start training them on the Mosquitos.

They head out on another night mission. But this time not everyone returns.

With a downed plane found empty off the English coast, fears grow that one of the Sirens hasn’t survived.

But the show must go on. And Anna Nightingale has to destroy the crashed plane so the Sirens can remain classified.

As their night missions continue, increased skirmishes with enemy pilots suggest someone may be leaking information to the Germans.

Have the Sirens been compromised? Can they find the mole?

Or will these daring female agents be forced out of the war…?

Congratulations to Angela Ranson, whose gripping Tudor mystery, A Glittering Peril, is out now!

A Glittering Peril is the third book in the Catrin Surovell Tudor Mysteries Series: exciting historical thrillers set at the court of Elizabeth I.

1561

Every summer, Queen Elizabeth takes a journey around her kingdom. It is a time of revels and celebration, full of pleasure and extravagance.

But in July 1561, the trip begins badly when the corpse of an unknown man is left in her path.

The nervous queen asks Catrin Surovell, her trusted favourite lady-in-waiting, to find out who is trying to sabotage her journey.

But Catrin soon discovers that the queen’s nervousness stems from something greater than the mysterious death.

Someone has been leaving reminders of the queen’s mother, Anne Boleyn, in strange places. A woman appears in the distance who looks like her; the scent of Anne’s perfume is left in the queen’s chamber, and Anne’s favourite French ballads are sung by a disembodied voice as the queen is travelling.

Worst of all, Anne Boleyn’s famous gold-and-pearl necklace with teardrop pearls hanging from a letter ‘B’ is taken from the queen’s bedchamber. The queen is devastated by the loss, for the necklace was one of very few mementos she had of her mother.

The queen begins to suspect one of her courtiers, so Catrin visits his home to conduct a secret investigation into his actions. And that’s when she discovers this is the most difficult mystery she has ever had to solve.

Is Queen Elizabeth being haunted by her ill-fated mother? Or is someone trying to drive her insane?

And can Catrin find the connection between the missing jewels and the unknown corpse…?

Congratulations to Justin Fox, whose thrilling military adventure, Hell Run Tobruk, is out now!

Hell Run Tobruk is the third book in the Jack Pembroke Naval Thriller series: authentic British Navy war stories set during the Second World War.

December, 1941

Lieutenant Jack Pembroke is ordered to join a convoy and sail his small escort ship, HMSAS Gannet, from the Royal Navy base in Simon’s Town, South Africa, to Egypt.

With the Mediterranean all but closed to maritime traffic, and Rommel’s forces rampaging through North Africa, it seems unlikely that Gannet will survive the coming battles.

Jack arrives in Alexandria and is soon thrust into the action, escorting ships running supplies to the beleaguered town of Tobruk in Libya.

With the pressure building and ships around him being sunk by enemy bombers, Jack must deal with his own PTSD while leading his men to safety.

And with Tobruk surrounded, about to fall to Axis forces, Gannet is still trapped in the port…

Can Jack lead his men to safety? Will he make it out of Tobruk in one piece?

Or will this Hell Run be his last…?

Congratulations to Patrick Larsimont, whose thrilling military adventure, The Wire and the Lines, is published today!

The Wire and the Lines is  fifth instalment of the Jox McNabb Aviation Thrillers series: action-packed historical novels following a young RAF pilot during the Second World War.

Summer, 1943

When fighter pilot Jox McNabb crashes on the wrong side of the straits of Messina, he is captured by the Germans.

It seems that for Jox, the war might be over.

But Jox is never one to give up. Desperate to escape, he quickly familiarises himself with the camp and gets to know his fellow prisoners.

With punishment brutal for those that have attempted to flee previously, morale is low in the camp and there is little motivation to try and break the rules.

The war is still raging on the outside and Jox will do anything to get back to his No. 333 Squadron, the Black Pigs.

On the orders of a cruel Luftwaffe Colonel, Jox is embroiled in a scheme to use high profile POWs as human shields, covering shipments of precious artworks looted from Sicily and Italy.

Could this mission provide Jox with the means to escape? Can he blow the whistle on the stolen loot?

And can he get back in action and rejoin the war in the skies…?

Congratulations to Raymond Wemmlinger, whose page-turning Tudor adventure, The Queen’s Favourite, is out now!

England, 1558

Sixteen-year-old Catherine Seymour has always idolised her elder sister Jane. As a child Jane had been groomed to be queen, to marry her cousin King Edward, and since his death she has been determined to restore her family’s claim to throne.

Jane had spent time at Queen Mary’s court but she has now returned home to Hanworth Park to the delight of Catherine and their brother Ned.

To their surprise, Jane brings with her Lady Catherine Grey, sister of Jane Grey, the ill-fated nine-day queen, and heiress to the throne after Princess Elizabeth.

Jane confides in Catherine that she aims to bring about a betrothal between Lady Grey and Ned, so that their brother and his children have a chance to lay claim to the throne.

But everything changes when Mary suddenly dies, and Elizabeth succeeds as queen. Now the sisters must seek favour with a new monarch.

Luckily, Elizabeth’s succession proves advantageous for the Seymour family. Jane is chosen as a lady in waiting and immediately becomes a favourite.

Can Jane still bring her plan to fruition? Will it mean betraying the new queen?

Or will rumours of a romance between Queen Elizabeth and one of her courtiers change everything for the Seymour sisters…?

Congratulations to Adele Jordan, whose page-turning Tudor mystery, The Body in the Chamber, is published today!

The Body in the Chamber is the third book in the Shadow Cutpurses Tudor Thriller Series.

1536, London

With two queens already removed from King Henry VIII’s side, the Tudor court fears for his new wife, Jane Seymour.

Thief turned espionage agent, Gwynnie Wightham is tasked by her employer Elric Tombstone to watch over the new queen.

And it soon becomes clear that her task will not be an easy one when a dead body is found in the queen’s chambers.

It seems there is a murderer hiding in the palace walls, and a clear suspect has already been named.

Convicted killer, Connal Devlin, escaped the noose at Tyburn and vowed to seek revenge on King Henry for turning his back on the ‘true’ Catholic faith.

Gwynnie is tasked with finding Devlin, but something doesn’t seem right.

Is it possible Devlin isn’t as evil as he was made out to be? Could someone else be behind the murder at the palace?

And can Gwynnie stop them before another Tudor queen’s life comes to an untimely end…?

In this behind-the-scenes blog series, Sapere Books authors offer an intriguing insight into how, where and why they write.

Today, we are delighted to spotlight Angela Ranson, author of the Catrin Surovell Tudor Mysteries.

I write in my study, which doubles as a playroom for my two cats. I love having their energy and curiosity as the backdrop for my writing. This is especially true because I write about a world long dead — Tudor England — and try with every scene to bring it back to life.

My books centre around the early years in the reign of Elizabeth I (the 1560s), which I studied when I earned my doctorate in sixteenth-century English history. I live in York, within a stone’s throw of King’s Manor. This was the building where Henry VIII stayed in 1536, and his suite of rooms is now one of the University of York’s libraries. If you stand at the back of the building, you can see a tiny window that leads to nowhere: it originally let some light into Henry’s specially-made toilet, or garderobe.

I love that York has these little historical treasures; I go looking for them whenever I have the opportunity. That isn’t as often as I would like, because I write between the hours dedicated to two jobs at the university. Writing is what I do to relax, to escape from the trials of daily life. Thus, you’ll often see me writing while I eat my supper, or early on a Saturday morning when I’m still in my pyjamas. Turns out, those are the hours when dreams come true.

Congratulations to Natalie Kleinman, whose heart-warming contemporary romance, A Walk in the Park, is out now!

Ever since she was a teenager, twenty-nine-year-old Daisy Shepherd has been thrilled to be able to walk dogs for a living. And with a supportive mother and stepfather, she thinks she has everything she needs.

But when her birth father, James, asks to meet her, her idyllic lifestyle is turned upside down.

Having been abandoned by James as a baby, Daisy has no desire to get to know him. However, she is delighted to learn that she has two half-siblings, Charlie and Kirsty, with whom she forms a warm friendship.

With a newly expanded family, Daisy’s happiness should be complete. But as she spends more and more time with Charlie and Kirsty, her feelings grow more complex.

And with her heart pulling her in one direction and her head in another, she begins to wonder how she can protect her relationship with her siblings while preserving her peace of mind…

Will Daisy be able to work through her feelings? Can she keep her newfound family in her life?

Or are they destined to be pulled apart?

A few weeks ago, I was standing outside St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, gazing at the ancient Egyptian obelisk that sits in the middle of the square. (It’s also on the front cover of Omens of Death — the first book in The Basilica Diaries series.)

The guide who was showing me round said, “There’s an interesting story about this obelisk. When Moses was a young man, he was educated in Heliopolis (modern Cairo), where this obelisk originally stood. As he hurried back and forth to school, Moses would have seen this very stone every day. Even then it was a thousand years old. He would have walked past it, used it as a meeting point for friends, maybe even sat in its shade.

“Now, cut forward across time. The Romans have stolen the obelisk and brought it to Italy, where the Emperor Caligula ordered it to be set up at the Circus of Nero just outside the city walls. And that is the same place where St Peter was executed. Which means the very last thing St Peter saw before he died would have been this obelisk. And now you are gazing at the exact same stone.”

I could feel my brain jolt. Moses, Caligula, St Peter and myself, all connected across 4,500 years by a single object. These were no longer remote characters from the pages of the Bible — if I reached out my hand, I could touch them through this granite obelisk.

What the guide did was a brilliant demonstration of the power of narrative. He could have bombarded me with facts and figures about the height and weight of the obelisk, about where the stone was quarried and when it was carved, and how it was moved from the Circus of Nero to its current site and erected in a single day.

But he didn’t, because he knew that those facts would have gone in and out of my mind in seconds. Instead, he told a story that organised the truth in such a way that it connected me to the distant past.

That’s what I’ve been attempting to do on every page of The Basilica Diaries historical thrillers. I have spent countless hours researching the novels, but rather than bombard the reader with details, I have tried to organise the truth into narratives that will resonate with the modern world whilst also transporting us back across the centuries.

I hope you enjoy the latest adventure in the series, Carnival of Chaos, which will be published in April.

Congratulations to C. F. Dunn, whose thrilling War of the Roses saga, Wheel of Fortune, is out now!

Wheel of Fortune is the first book in the Tarnished Crown series: historical novels set in medieval Europe.

1469, England

For almost ten years, attractive and charismatic Edward IV has ruled with the Earl of Warwick’s support, but now rebellion threatens England’s fragile peace.

With the Midlands in uproar, King Edward wants peace in the shires and the last thing he needs is potential trouble in the form of an unwed heiress.

But, strong-willed and single-minded, Isobel Fenton is determined that nothing will separate her from her beloved manor of Beaumancote, even if she does have to marry to stay there.

Isobel is unaware of the importance she and her land represent, nor of the agenda of the formidable Earl in whose care she finds herself.

And as unrest boils into war, she is drawn into the very heart of the conflict.

Can Isobel escape from the web in which she is trapped? Will she find a way to decide her own fate?

Or will the Wheel of Fortune fail to turn in her favour…?

Congratulations to Graham Ley, whose compelling historical saga, Moonlight at Cuckmere Haven, is published today!

England and Brittany, 1796

In London on business, aristocrat and father-to-be Justin Wentworth chases a thief only to be confronted by a face from the past — Coline — and the news that he already has a daughter.

Amelia Wentworth is in Sussex enjoying the delights of sea-bathing with her companion Caroline North. When Caroline catches sight of a dangerous adversary in the crowd at the Brighton races — the villain Tregothen — she writes to her brother, Colonel North, who swiftly rides to their aid.

At Chittesleigh Manor in Devonshire, pregnant Arabella Wentworth is disturbed by a brief note from Justin extending his absence from her. She decides to write to Justin’s friend Eugene Picaud to ask him to inquire after Justin in London. Justin’s mother, Sempronie, comes to stay at Chittesleigh, and is drawn to Justin’s writing bureau, discovering letters from Coline from their time together.

Meanwhile at Kergohan Manor in Brittany, the villagers celebrate as bread is baked for the first time in the large oven. The gathering is interrupted by the arrival of Laurent Guèvremont, owner of the manor, who explains to Héloïse Argoubet that he has an obligation to look after her, and prepare her for life in society.

Eugene, unsure of his future, enlists as a marine aboard HMS Amphion. Justin and Amelia visit as the ship prepares to leave Plymouth. After a sudden and terrifying explosion at the dock, Justin rushes back to find that the Amphion has been blown apart, with horrendous loss of life. As he searches for Eugene amongst the bodies, he eventually sees a figure in the water…

Will Eugene survive the disaster? Will Tregothen escape justice? And is the child the result of Coline’s affair with Justin?

And when love blossoms, will it finally unite the Wentworth family once and for all?

Congratulations to David Field, whose absorbing historical thriller, Death By Gunpowder, is out now!

Death By Gunpowder is the sixth instalment of the Bailiff Mountsorrel Tudor Mystery Series – private investigation crime novels set during the reign of Elizabeth I and beyond.

Nottingham, England, 1605

Frustrated in their two previous attempts to restore the Catholic faith to England, a group of heretics plan to assassinate King James in Parliament in a massive explosion timed for November 5th, 1605.

But when that plot also fails and Guy Fawkes starts revealing the names of accomplices under torture in the Tower, those who had been complicit in the plot run for cover.

Not long after, Nottinghamshire bailiff, Edward Mountsorrel is called to investigate a mysterious explosion in a row of houses that has left four people dead.

And he soon unearths evidence that suggests this crime is linked to the larger plot on the king’s life.

His suspicions are confirmed when an official from London, acting with royal authority, orders Edward and fellow bailiff Francis Barton to hunt down the gunpowder fugitives who are believed to be hiding out in the local area.

But the men won’t go down without a fight. And Edward could find himself in the firing line…