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Even as a 14-year-old orphan, Simon Beauvallet knows his own mind. Later, friend and foe alike will know better than to cross the flaxen-haired mountain of a man whose exploits in battle have earned him knighthood, lands and gilded armour. After Agincourt, he has no equal save the king himself in generalship - until his legendary prowess is baulked by a woman. In Normandy, the icy rage of Simon the Coldheart must melt - or quench Lady Margaret, spitfire of Belremy.

Black Herran was a dread demonologist, and the most ruthless general in all Essoran. She assembled the six most fearsome warriors to captain her armies: a necromancer, a vampire lord, a demigod, an orcish warleader, a pirate queen, and a twisted alchemist. Together, they brought the whole continent to its knees.... Until the day she abandoned her army, on the eve of total victory.

Johnny Harlow seems to have it all: he's good looking, desired by women, and envied by men; he's also the reigning Formula One world champion, the poster-boy for the world's most thrilling and richly financed sport. But a recent devastating accident has driven him to drink. And now his beloved sport is changing: too many things are going wrong in too many races. And when Johnny is the apparent cause of the latest accident, he decides the time has come to sort things out.

After fourteen years of Tory rule, John Crace has seen it all: a bucket-load of sleaze and scandals, myriad questionable policy decisions, and an ever-revolving door of impressive* candidates trying to get themselves to the top of a sinking ship. With a bumpy start, Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and the Labour Party have taken the reins while Kemi Badenoch and the Tories slink off to regroup in opposition.

Another year, another prime minister - how many have we been through now? In the face of all the nonsense that has spewed forth from Westminster over the past two years, John Crace's brilliantly lacerating political sketches have provided the nation with some desperately needed relief. In Depraved New World, Crace introduces a worryingly funny selection of his finest work.

Night was almost upon her, but the chill in the air wasn’t just a physical one. Although the stones were supposed to protect her family and the village, she’d always found the place creepy. It was as though silently standing among them were a thousand ghosts watching her, waiting for her to join them…

Dr Harrison Lane, Head of the Ritualistic Behavioural Crime unit, is called in to investigate. What he finds makes his blood run cold. A girl has been sculpted by plastic surgery to become the image of a perfect mermaid. Harrison has dedicated his life to tracking down those who hide behind spiritualism and religion to do evil – but this case will test his skills, and his nerve, to the limit. A cold, calculating psychopath is preying on vulnerable women dying to achieve perfection, and instinct tells Harrison that it’s only a matter of time before more mermaids are found.

Harrison Lane, Head of the Ritualistic Behavioural Crime unit, is called to investigate the brutal assault of an African healer. The two attackers are normally law-abiding parishioners from the nearby Catholic church. Behind bars, the men claim they were acting in self-defence after the man used 'voodoo magic' to curse their church, sending a wave of sudden deaths and sickness through the panicked congregation.

When two students at ancient Durham University make a gruesome discovery, Dr Harrison Lane, Head of the Ritualistic Behavioural Crime unit, is summoned to investigate. A young student has been murdered, satanic symbols etched across their chest, and Harrison is disturbed to see the upside-down hangman’s cross, the devil’s symbol of justice. To Harrison, there’s no justice here, and he vows to uncover the truth.

When Head of the Ritualistic Behavioural Crime Unit, Dr Harrison Lane, is called to desolate Wicken Fen to assist with a murder investigation, he can’t believe what he sees. Curved iron horseshoes hold down the body of a young, athletic man, and birch leaves rest delicately upon his torso, but it’s what lies above the leaves that interests Harrison…

Detectives call Dr Harrison Lane to the dark depths of Fenton Woods, where he finds seven-year-old Darren Phillips surrounded by candles and a makeshift cross. A prayer is scrawled on his chest. Papers crammed in his mouth – pages of scripture written in a child’s trembling hand. As head of the Ritualistic Behavioural Crime unit, Harrison reads what others can’t see. The killer kept Darren alive for days, teaching him, forcing him to write. This is a man who believes he’s saving children’s souls from the Devil. Then another boy vanishes.

"I'm greeted by the strangest sight. A small dark-haired boy is standing there. It's like he's a human parcel, delivered to my front door. "My name is Luke," he says." When Johnny meets Lauren in a bar in Santa Cruz, there's an instant connection. On an American road trip with best friend Will, Johnny promises to return to the girl who has stolen his heart. Until tragedy strikes, forcing Johnny to fly back home without ever seeing Lauren again. Six years later, Johnny is living his life in London, even if he's never forgotten the girl with the grey eyes and dark hair.

The handsome Virgo, Marquis of Fane, has a reputation as a bit of a ladies' man and doesn't care for the high-society socialites chasing after him and his fortune. His passions are racehorses and art, and he sets his sights on a painting called 'The Virgin of the Lilies'. But while investigating the painting’s dubious provenance the Marquis encounters Cyrilla, the shy and beautiful daughter of the artist and is instantly, utterly bewitched.

A social introvert, Lady Dorinda Burne has always felt uncomfortable around lots of people due to a skin condition which has always marked her as the ‘ugly sister’. She is forced on a trip to Singapore to chaperone her sister Lettice, who is set to marry the intelligent and charming Maximus Kirby. However, Dorinda soon finds herself head over heels for Maximus. lost for words when he’s around. Having to overcome drastic hurdles and more challenges than she could have anticipated, Dorinda is forced to face her fears to find a new life, better than she could ever have hoped for.

The day Rodney Hawkhurst rides onto her father's grand estate, Lizbeth Gillingham is a wild eighteen-year-old, with tangled red hair, dirt on her apron, and an archer's bow in her hand. A chance encounter leads to a clandestine kiss, leaving the tomboy Lizbeth wondering if the life of a sophisticated lady could be so bad if she was on the arm of Rodney Hawkhurst... But Rodney has not come to see Sir Gillingham about Lizbeth. He has come to borrow money for a daring sea voyage, and to ask for the hand of Phillida, Lizbeth's elegant sister.

From internationally renowned medium, spiritual teacher and bestselling author Gordon Smith comes a captivating tale about finding your way through death, grief and loss.'Nothing that lives can truly die,' said the stag, 'but we must all experience a winter in our lives, otherwise we haven't...

Smart, sassy and cynical about men, 21-year-old Syke Standish wants neither a husband nor a life of boring domesticity. She wants freedom, adventure... danger. And in the rugged land of Mariposa, she finds all three when she is kidnapped by the daring South American revolutionary, El Diablo. Imprisoned in his network of secret caves in the mountains, Skye plots an escape. Yet the longer she spends with this Che Guevara -like bandit, the more she learns about his devotion to the local people he fights for.

The year is 1742. Goody Brown, saved from drowning and adopted when just a babe, has grown up happily in the smuggling town of Winchelsea. Then, when Goody turns sixteen, her father is murdered in the night by men he thought were friends. To find justice in a lawless land, Goody must enter the cut-throat world of her father's killers. With her beloved brother Francis, she joins a rival gang of smugglers. Facing high seas and desperate villains, she also discovers something else: an existence without constraints or expectations, a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast.

Throughout another year of bluster and bedlam in Westminster, John Crace's brilliantly acerbic political sketches have once more provided the nation with a much-needed injection of humour. In A Farewell to Calm, Crace introduces an infectiously funny selection of his finest pieces from 2020-21, taking in everything from a summer of unfathomable U-turns to Christmas COVID confusion and from lockdown-lifting to Brexit blithering.

William the Bastard, base-born son of the Duke of Normandy, must fight the king of France to regain his Duchy. Spurned in love by the lovely Princess Matilda, the fighting duke dares to take a whip to her in her own father's palace, before making her his bride. Thwarted by the Saxon Earl Harold of a promise of the throne of England, William the Conqueror sails to Hastings to claim the king's crown and sceptre for his own.