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

1990. Twenty-five-year-old Riya works for Discover Arabia, a tour guide company in the far-flung outpost of Dubai. In the months leading up to the first Gulf War, the city's iconic skyline and global reputation are just a gleam in developers' eyes. For Riya, it's a desert purgatory that spreads out between her family back home in India and her unknown future. As political tensions run high, international arms dealers, American soldiers, CIA consultants, corrupt bosses and wayward vacationers all compete for Discover Arabia's attention.

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

In the course of their investigation into Leonardo da Vinci, Lynn Pickett and Clive Prince found clues about his strangely passionate belief in the importance of John the Baptist. Here, along with a reassessment of the significance of Mary Magdalene and the sacred feminine, the authors reveal that Da Vinci’s apparently peculiar religion was shared by the Knights Templar. And their profoundly heretical belief that the Baptist was superior to Jesus himself still has the power to pose a threat to the very foundations of the Christian Church….

Tommaso is just about making it work: travelling abroad for his job, helping his girlfriend with her two unruly sons, and keeping up with the eccentricities of his Italian grandmother, Alma. But as Alma grows increasingly troubled by strange and unsettling memories, Tommaso realises that there...

It's Saturday evening, 9th March 1566, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is six months pregnant. She's hosting a supper party. Outside, Edinburgh is bustling. It’s full of the great and the good and the idiot sons of the rich, here for a Parliament that will take Scotland by the shoulders and turn it from England to face Europe. Mary doesn't know that her palace is surrounded - that, right now, an army of men is creeping upstairs to her chamber. They're coming to murder David Rizzio, her friend and secretary, the handsome Italian man who is smiling across the table at her. 

London, 1930. A headless corpse; an apparent suicide in a locked room; a man burned alive during an illusionist's show in front of thousands of people. Scotland Yard is baffled by the sequence of ghastly murders unfolding across the city, and at the centre of it all is mysterious heiress Rachel Savernake. Daughter of a grand judge, Rachel is as glamorous as she is elusive. Jacob Flint, a tenacious young journalist eager to cover the gruesome crimes, is drawn into Rachel's glittering world of wealth and power....

Sitting in her Bloomsbury home, with her two birds for company, elderly Harriet Baxter sets out to relate the story of her acquaintance with Ned Gillespie, a talented artist who never achieved the fame he deserved. Back in 1888, after a chance encounter, young Harriet befriends the Gillespie family and soon becomes a fixture in all of their lives. But when tragedy strikes - leading to a notorious criminal trial - the certainties of this world all too rapidly disorientate into mystery and deception.

1752, Midsummer. Following a desperate summons from her mother, Tabitha Hart departs London for her home village of Netherlea - only to discover that her mother has drowned. Determined to discover the truth about the Widow Hart’s death, Tabitha consults her almanack and uncovers a series of cryptic notes describing her mother’s terror of someone she names only as ‘D’. Teaming up with young writer Nat Starling, Tabitha begins a race against time to unmask ‘D’ before more deaths follow. 

It's 1965 and Rosie Churchill has arrives at run-down Castaway House. But when she uncovers a scandal locked away in the old house, she soon realises that secrets never stay buried for long. In 1924 fresh-faced Robert Carver comes to Castaway House to spend the summer with his cousin, Alec Bray. But the Brays are a damaged family. As Rosie begins to learn more about Robert, the more their stories, old and new, entwine.

Summer, 1929. The Hinton Dysart estate is dying from lack of money, and Kit Dysart, the heir, sees no way out. Then, at his sister's wedding, he meets the vibrant Daisy Chudleigh and her cousin, the heiress Matty Verrall. In love with Daisy but troubled by his family's decline, Kit chooses to marry Matty, though neither Kit nor Daisy is able to forget the other. When Matty, growing increasingly unhappy in her troubled, empty marriage, decides to re-create the estate's garden, she discovers solace and a gift of which she never dreamt.

August 1938. British actress Clara Vine is in Paris to film her latest movie, mingling with society and passing snippets of information to her contacts in the British embassy. When Clara is approached by an undercover British operative who asks her to befriend Eva Braun, Hitler's girlfriend, she knows she is putting herself in danger. But Clara will do everything in her power to protect her country.

Though war rages across mainland Europe and London is strafed by German aircraft, the little village of Pipley in Hertfordshire bustles along much as it always has. Adrift since her best friend, George, joined the Royal Air Force, 22-year-old Olive Bright fills her days by helping at her father's veterinary practice and tending to her beloved racing pigeons. Desperate to do her bit, Olive hopes that the National Pigeon Service will enlist Bright Lofts' expertise and use their highly trained birds to deliver critical, coded messages for His Majesty's Forces. 

In the summer of 1932, Maisie Dobbs’s career takes an exciting new turn when she accepts an undercover assignment directed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch. Posing as a junior lecturer, she is sent to a private college in Cambridge to monitor any activities "not in the interests of His Majesty’s Government." When the college's controversial pacifist founder and principal, Greville Liddicote, is murdered, Maisie is directed to stand back from the investigation. But she soon discovers something suspicious....

England, 1919. Verity Kent's grief over the loss of her husband pierces anew when she receives a cryptic letter, suggesting her beloved Sidney may have committed treason before his untimely death. Lured to Umbersea Island to attend the engagement party of one of Sidney's fellow officers, Verity mingles among the men her husband once fought beside, discovering dark secrets and the shattering possibility that her husband may not have been the man she thought he was....

Egypt, 1926. Fiercely independent American Jane Wunderly has made up her mind: she won't be swept off her feet on a trip abroad. Despite her Aunt Millie's best efforts at meddling with her love life, the young widow would rather gaze at the Great Pyramids of Giza than into the eyes of a dashing stranger. Yet Jane's plans to remain cool and indifferent become ancient history in the company of Mr. Redvers, a roguish banker she can't quite figure out.... 

Hetty Heinrich is a young girl growing up under Nazi rule. With an SS Officer father, a brother in the Luftwaffe and a member of the BDM, Hetty is the epitome of a perfect German child. But Walter changes everything. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, perfect-in-every-way Walter. The boy who saved her life. A Jew. As she falls more and more in love with a man who is against all she has been taught, Hetty begins to question everything. Will the steady march of dark forces destroy their world, or can love ultimately triumph?

Childhood is exhilarating and terrifying. For the young Karl Ove, new houses, classes and friends are met with manic excitement and creeping dread. Adults occupy godlike positions of power, benevolent in the case of his doting mother, tyrannical in the case of his cruel father. Knausgaard describes a time in which victories and defeats are felt keenly and every attempt at self-definition is frustrating. This is an audiobook about family, memory and how we never become quite what we set out to be.

In the midst of Sarah and Frank's wedding preparations, Sarah accompanies her mother on a condolence call to the Upper West Side, where the son of family friends has died unexpectedly. The father believes his son was poisoned and would like Sarah and Frank to look into the matter. They soon learn that not everyone wants to know more about Charles' death, and they also discover that they are in the company of a very present danger.

Paris, 1929. For Harris Stuyvesant, his current assignment is a private investigator's dream - he's getting paid to trawl the cafés and bars of Montparnasse, looking for a pretty young woman. The missing person in question is Philippa Crosby, a 22-year-old from Boston, whose family have become alarmed at her lack of communication. As Stuyvesant follows Philippa's trail through Paris, he finds that she is known to many of its famous - and infamous - inhabitants, from Shakespeare and Company's Sylvia Beach to the surrealist photographer Man Ray. But when the evidence leads Stuyvesant to the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Montmartre, his investigation takes a sharp and disturbing turn.

Sweden, 1732. Strong-willed Jess van Sandt knows only too well that it's a man's world. She believes she's being swindled out of her inheritance by her stepfather and she's determined to stop it. When help appears in the unlikely form of handsome Scotsman Killian Kinross, Jess finds herself both intrigued and infuriated by him. In an attempt to recover her fortune, she proposes a marriage of convenience.