Showing results by publisher "Zaffre" in Literature & Fiction

Nuri is a beekeeper, his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo - until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain.

Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of legendary horror author Vincent Taylor, famous not only for his novels, but for being the prime suspect in the brutal slaying of his siblings. On the brink of financial ruin, Olivia reluctantly agrees to ghostwrite her father's last book, not realising that she will be forced to reckon with the ghosts that live at the centre of her family. Because after fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk. But is he ready to tell the truth?

Cilka was only 16 years old when she was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, in 1942. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, noticed her long beautiful hair, and forced her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka did what she had to in order to survive Auschwitz. And yet after Russian soldiers liberated Auschwitz in 1945, Cilka was charged as a collaborator and sentenced to serve a 15-year sentence for 'sleeping with the enemy'. Once again, she found herself on a brutal train journey, crammed into a carriage with many desperate women and children.

For some people, trouble just finds them. Thirty years ago, Vincent King became a killer. Now, he's been released from prison and is back in his hometown of Cape Haven, California. Not everyone is pleased to see him. Like Star Radley, his ex-girlfriend and sister of the girl he killed. Duchess Radley, Star's 13-year-old daughter, is part-carer, part-protector to her younger brother, Robin - and to her deeply troubled mother.

When they are girls, Cibi, Magda and Livia make a promise to their father - that they will stay together, no matter what. Years later, at just 15 years old, Livia is ordered to Auschwitz by the Nazis. Cibi, only 19 herself, remembers their promise and follows Livia, determined to protect her sister or die with her. In their hometown in Slovakia, 17-year-old Magda hides, desperate to evade the barbaric Nazi forces. But it is not long before she is captured and condemned to Auschwitz.

Camden mortuary assistant Cassie Raven has pretty much seen it all. But this is the first time she's come face to face with someone she knew on the slab. Someone she cared about. Geraldine Edwards, the teacher responsible for her returning to education after she got ensnared in a life of drugs. The woman who acted as a second mother to the orphaned Cassie. Deeply intuitive and convinced that she can pick up the last thoughts of the dead, Cassie senses that there must be more to the ruling of an accidental death.

The morning after a dinner party at Windsor Castle, 89-year-old Queen Elizabeth is shocked to discover that one of her guests has been found murdered in his room, with a rope around his neck. When the police begin to suspect her loyal servants, Her Majesty knows they are looking in the wrong place. For the queen has been living an extraordinary double life ever since her coronation. Away from the public eye, she has a brilliant knack for solving crimes.

Meddy has spent her whole life as a footnote in someone else's story. Out of place next to her beautiful, immortal sisters and her parents-both gods, albeit minor ones-she dreams of leaving her family's island for a life of adventure. So when she catches the eye of the goddess Athena, who invites her to train as an esteemed priestess in her temple, Meddy leaps at the chance to see the world beyond her home.

Cayden Veles, renowned Demon Commander of Vareveth, overthrew the throne to save Elowen Atarah, the woman he searched for since childhood. Now he's determined to fulfil his quest for revenge against her father, even if it means forcing the only person he's ever wanted into a marriage of political convenience. Elowen Atarah has everything she thought she'd ever want. Finally reunited with her dragons, she now has an army to enact vengeance, but as events transpire, she begins contemplating if she wants more.

When a group of friends rent a converted farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales, they have little idea that this one weekend may change the course of their lives forever. While out on a walk, a storm descends and the friends take shelter in the mouth of an old lead mine. Inside, they discover a backpack filled with more money than they've ever seen. Of course, they agree, they will hand the money to the police at the first opportunity. But as the storm continues and time passes, some of the party begin to think again.

Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool's errand: to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. He knows it's a long shot, but Jay feels it's the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad's death the previous year. The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid's tentacles and drawn into the whale's mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs.

When Nicola's husband, Dominic, retires they decide not to spend their days finding hobbies to fill the time until Countdown is on. Instead, they fulfil their life-long fantasy of buying a country house and filling it with their dearest friends. Reliving their youth and spending their children's inheritance. Joined by seven of their friends they club together to invest in a château in Normandy. Group dinners, fine wine, beautiful scenery - they're living the dream!

Saffy Huntley-Oliver is beautiful, charming, rich, and in her spare time she's a serial killer. For the past fifteen years she's been hunting down and killing bad men: rapists, murderers, domestic abusers. As a hobby, it's not as Instagrammable as baking, but at least it's better for your thighs. The problem is, that it's hard to sustain a healthy, balanced heterosexual relationship when you're expecting to have to kill your boyfriend at any moment. She's lost her faith in mankind. That's why she's decided to look for a good man instead, preferably one who shares her interests.

Years of Hyksos rule have seen the ruin and suffering of a once-mighty Egypt. Though Pharaoh is now restored to his rightful throne, his power fragile as some seek to take advantage of the ensuing chaos following the overthrowing of the Hyksos. Desperate to unite the two divided kingdoms of Egypt under Pharaoh's rule, great mage Taita sends his protégé, Piay, to discover the answer to a millennia-old riddle which has the power to secure the fate of Egypt forever. But in the chaos of war, a dark evil has thrived.

1957 - A young woman is found dead in a mews house a mile from Buckingham Palace, wearing only silk underwear and a a diamond tiara. An older man is discovered nearby, garrotted and pierced through the eye with a long, sharp implement. According to the police, a high society card game was going on downstairs that night. One of the players surely committed the murders, but each of them can give the others an alibi.

Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married and pregnant for the fourth time. But as the mistress at Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband, Richard, is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn't supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy. Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby and to prove the physician wrong.

In the city of Lahun, Hui lives an enchanted life. The favoured son of a doting father, and ruler-in-waiting of the great city, his fate is set. But behind the beautiful façades a sinister evil is plotting. Craving power and embittered by jealousy, Hui's stepmother, the great sorceress Isetnofret, and Hui's own brother Qen, orchestrate the downfall of Hui's father, condemning Hui and seizing power in the city.

Flora is a new mum enamored of her baby girl, Iris, even if she arrived a few weeks early. With her husband on deployment, Flora navigates the newborn stage alone. But as the sleepless nights pass in the loneliness of their half-empty home, the edges of her reality begin to blur. Just as Flora becomes convinced she is losing her mind, a surprising guest shows up to help: Flora's own mother, to whom she hasn't spoken in years. Can they mend their fraught relationship? Or is there more Flora's mother isn't telling her about the events that led to their estrangement?

New York City, 2075. Filipino-American Nick Carraway has just moved to the heart of the fractured New Americas, where he's struck by the city's contradictions - shining corporate towers casting bleak shadows over the slums of a crumbling middle class. When Nick meets alluring new-money Jay Gatsby, he falls for Gatsby's frank charm and confident aura. But in a city where the wealthy flaunt tech-enhanced bodies to cheat death, surfaces aren't all they seem - and as a corporate-sanctioned cyberspace hacker, Nick knows that no secret can stay buried forever.

Since his appointment as Nomarch of Memphis, by the God-Pharaoh Rameses, Piay has thrown himself into pulling the city back from the brink. The famous white city walls have been rebuilt, the once starving inhabitants fed and every day caravans have arrived from the desert wastes, filled with the many riches looted and hidden by the Hyksos. But when the body of a murdered scribe is found sealed inside the newly constructed city vault - the mark of Anubis, god of death, scrawled next to him in his own blood - panic sweeps the city.