Fiction 13


ill, but she is too frightened to tell anyone. But it is matters of the heart that really take their toll in Barleybridge - Rhodri is deeply in love with a farmer’s daughter, but doesn’t know how to cope with her invalid father, and the Practice Manager is married but struggling with her feelings for another man. From the author of Country Passions and Whispers in the Village. 280pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


72794 WHISPERS OF


NEMESIS by Anne Zouroudi The inimitable Greek detective, Hermes Diaktoros, returns in a tale of hubris and Homer, dark coffee and even darker secrets. It is winter in the mountains of northern Greece and, as the snow falls in the tiny village of Vrisi, a coffin is unearthed and broken open. But, to the astonishment of the mourners at the graveside, the remains have


been transformed and, as news of the bizarre discovery spreads like forest fire, it sets tongues wagging and heads shaking. Then, in the shadow of St Fanourios - patron saint of lost things - a body is found, buried under the fallen snow - a body whose identity only deepens the mystery around the exhumed remains. There is talk of witchcraft and the devil’s work, but it seems that the truth behind both the body and the coffin may be far stranger than the villagers’ wildest imaginings. Hermes, drawn to the mountains by a wish to see an old and dear friend, finds himself embroiled in the mysteries of Vrisi, as well as the enigmatic last will and testament of Greece’s most admired modern poet. 288 exciting and puzzling paperback pages with dramatis personae and map.


£11.99 NOW £4


73202 ISLAND OF WINGS by Karen Altenberg


The year is 1830 and the pregnant Elizabeth MacKenzie is embarking on a sea voyage with her husband Neil, a handsome Church of Scotland minister who feels he is called to be a pastor to the islanders of St. Kilda. The fight against poverty, disease and high infant mortality almost overwhelm the missionary couple, and the reader gradually realises that Neil is running


away from something terrible in his past. Lizzie struggles to achieve the warmth in their marriage that she longs for, and when a strange foreigner is discovered half- starved, hiding on the island, she nurses him back to health and finds herself attracted to him. Neil exacts a devastating price and it increasingly seems as if her husband has little respect for human life and dignity. Meanwhile Lizzie discovers that her friend Betty has an agonising secret. This gripping novel is based on real-life characters who left records which the author has expanded into a story of great human warmth and insight, set against a vividly realised background of a beautiful place and hard times. 312pp. New title, first time discounted. £20 NOW £7.50


73445 LET IT SHINE by Josephine Cox


Ada Williams was once an ambitious woman who believed money and power would bring her happiness but now she is all alone in the world except for her greedy bitter son Peter who despises her and waits only for the day he will inherit her fortune. Ada however, has a different plan. Just a few miles away in Blackburn, the Bolton


family may be poor, but the love they share and the friendship of their neighbours mean they can overcome almost any adversity. But no one could foresee the shocking events of Christmas night 1932, which split the family asunder, leaving young Larry crippled and the twins in foster home. Events that began many years ago when Ada was young and foolish… A novel described ‘As satisfying as a Lancashire hotpot.’ 436pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


73474 THE GILDED CAGE by Josephine Cox


Powerful, hard-hearted Leonard Mears ruthlessly presides over his wife and children, exiling them from the outside world and punishing any disobedience. But he is also a man with a dark secret - an illegitimate daughter whom he forced his sister to bring up. Now a young woman, the girl unbeknown to him is determined to find the father who abandoned her. James Peterson, a


gifted young man, runs Mears’ factory with more success than Leonard’s own sons. He lives for the day he can have his own business and make his fortune. Only then will he be able to declare his love for the beautiful Isabel Mears who he means to release from the gilded cage her father has created. But then the lonely, lovely Sally comes in to his life, turning his heart and dreams upside down. 437pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £3.50


73464 ROME: The Coming of


the King by M. C. Scott A dramatic new version of history by the author of the Boudica series and The Crystal Skull and three previous titles on Rome. Sebastos Pantera, known to his many enemies as The Leopard, is the spy the Emperor Nero uses only for the most challenging and important of missions. Hunting alone, trusting no one, he must find the most


dangerous man in Rome’s empire and bring him to bloody justice. But his prey is cunning and ruthless.


Saulos has pledged to bring about the destruction of Rome and her provinces and now fate, good luck and planning have given him the means to do so Pantera has a new ally, a king in the making who could change the future of his people and a man he can finally trust. First they must attempt the impossible, an assault on an invulnerable fortress, where failure means death for both of them. Religious and political tensions, passion and intrigue. With and author’s note on the history of Masada to characters like Seneca the Younger, the Teacher. 492pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


73466 SING AS WE GO by Margaret Dickinson Kathy Burton longs to escape the drudgery of her life as an unpaid labourer on her father’s farm. With only the local church choir and the occasional dance at the village hall for amusement, she yearns for the bright lights. Spurning one proposal of marriage, Kathy goes to live in the city where she finds


employment in a department store and is captivated by the


sophisticated and handsome floor manager. Kathy has fallen deeply in love and when the country is plunged into war, she can see no obstacle to her future. But she has reckoned without the devious mind of her lover’s invalid mother. Kathy plans her wedding regardless, but the day is ruined when Tony is called up before another date can be arranged. Kathy finds solace in a concert party entertaining service men and woman and war workers, but behind the songs and smiles, her heart is breaking. 454pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


73472 SUFFRAGETTE GIRL by Margaret Dickinson By the author of ‘Wish Me Luck’ here is a story of love and honour, loyalty and sacrifice. When Florrie Maltby defies her father by refusing to marry Gervase Richards, she sets off a chain of events that will alter her life. Instead, she goes to London and becomes involved with the suffragette movement. Imprisoned for her militant actions, she goes on hunger strike and with her health


deteriorating, there is one person who can save her - Gervase. After a brief stay in the countryside to recuperate, Florrie returns to London to continue her fight for women’s rights. Only the outbreak of the Great War puts a halt to her activities. It is when James, her younger brother, is shamed by their father into volunteering that Florrie enlists as a nurse and is sent to the Front. Amidst the trenches, she finds love and when her brother is in danger help comes from a very unexpected source. 488pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


73443 KILLIGREW AND THE


GOLDEN DRAGON by Jonathan Lunn


Billed as ‘The Victorian Hornblower’, here is a well researched, action packed rollicking tale set in 1849. Reckless, some would say foolhardy, acts of bravery are not uncharacteristic of HMS Tisiphone’s second lieutenant Kit Killigrew. So when he is instrumental in capturing the infamous Chinese pirate Zhai


jing-mu and releasing his beautiful his hostage Peri Dadabhoy en route to Hong Kong, no one is truly surprised. There, Killigrew is free to enjoy its many pleasures, not least of which is Peri. But then the prisoner escapes and Killigrew becomes embroiled in a dangerous race to stop the pirate exacting his revenge on those responsible for his arrest. The race takes Killigrew deep beneath the opulent surface of polite society and into contact with Triads, opium smugglers and those who would risk the lives of thousands to further their own political and financial ends. 469pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


72663 THE PRAGUE CEMETERY by Umberto Eco


19th century Europe, from Turin to Prague to Paris, abounds with the ghastly and mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian Republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. What if one evil genius created the world’s most infamous document? 444pp with woodcut illus. £20 NOW £7


72944 FUR COAT, NO KNICKERS by Anna King


At the top of Lester Road in the East End stands Paddy’s Castle, a three storey, red brick Georgian house that is home to Grace Donnelly and her family. Grace can only watch as her beloved fiancé Stanley decides to enlist in the fight against Nazi Germany. The sirens signal blitz after blitz of bombers, and the family can only hide in the cellar and hope they will survive. There is more than just the Germans for Grace to worry about - the good-looking Nobby Clarke is keen to do more than just look out for his best friend’s fiancée. And scheming barmaid Beryl Lovesett is determined to worm her way into the family home, seducing Grace’s uncle with her fur coat and no knickers. 376pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


66180 COMPLETE RICHARD HANNAY STORIES by John Buchan


Major General Sir Richard Hannay is the fictional secret agent created by writer and diplomat John Buchan, who was himself an Intelligence officer. Caught up in the first of these five gripping adventures just before the outbreak of war in 1914, he manages to thwart the enemy’s evil plan and solve the mystery of the ‘thirty-


nine steps’. In Greenmantle, he undertakes a vital mission to prevent jihad in the Islamic Near East. Mr Standfast, set in the decisive months of 1917-18, is the novel in which Hannay finally falls in love. In The Three Hostages, he finds himself unravelling a kidnapping mystery with his wife’s help. In the last adventure, The Island of Sheep, he is called upon to honour an old oath. 992 paperback pages. Great value. ONLY £2


71240 HEARTSTONE: Shardlake Goes to War by C. J. Sansom Summer 1545. King Henry VIII’s invasion of France has gone badly wrong and a massive French fleet is preparing to sail across the Channel. Shardlake is invited to investigate claims of ‘monstrous wrongs’ committed against his young ward, which have already involved one mysterious death. The young woman is incarcerated in Bedlam. Events will eventually converge on board one of the King’s great warships, which is waiting to sail out and confront the approaching French fleet. Will Shardlake manage to solve the mystery in time? 631 pages, with maps. £18.99 NOW £5.50


71718 DEADLY SINS by Nicholas Coleridge The Straker family has everything. Miles is the head of a lucrative multinational PR business and has a society wife, four presentable children and they divide their time between a smart mansion in West London and the magnificent Chawbury Manor in Hampshire. When self- made millionaire Ross Clegg buys the land adjoining the Straker estate, Miles is wracked with jealousy. As passions run high, battles rage from boardroom to bedroom where both wives and mistresses are coveted, and old money takes on the new. 563pp, paperback. £6.99 NOW £2.25


71730 FORGOTTEN WALTZ by Anne Enright The novel is a memory of desire, a recollection of the bewildering speed of attraction. In a pleasant suburb of Dublin in the winter of 2009, it had snowed. Gina, girl about town, recalls the trail of lust and happenstance that brought her to fall for ‘the love of her life’, Seán. Gina remembers the days of their affair in one hotel room after another and walks to meet the girl she calls his ‘beautiful mistake’, his 12 year old daughter Evie. With wry observations of brittle middle age. 230pp in paperback. £12.99 NOW £2


72069 THE TESTAMENT by John Grisham It was only a piece of paper, but it could change many lives. Troy Phelen is a self-made billionaire, one of the richest men in the United States. He is also eccentric, reclusive, confined to a wheelchair, and determined to cut his children out of his will. Nate O’Riley is a high- octane Washington litigator who’s lived too hard, too fast, for too long. Rachel Lane is a young woman who chose to give her life to God, who walked away from the modern world with all its trappings and encumbrances, and went to live in the deepest jungles of Brazil. Nate’s job is to find Rachel and tell her of Phelen’s legacy. 473pp, paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


71833 RIVER FOLK by Margaret Dickinson A river folk Lincolnshire saga. The pretty daughter of a wife-beating drunk, 12 year old Mary Ann Clark has had a tough life. That is until ‘Battling Bessie Ruddick’ takes the young girl under her wing and into the heart of her bustling family. Growing into an attractive young woman, Mary Ann yearns to be loved, and when her affection for Bessie’s son Dan is finally returned, she becomes a skipper’s wife. But the arduous life aboard ship is clearly not for her and only the arrival of her daughter Lizzie seems to hold the marriage together. Tragically the family is torn apart. 452pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £2


72041 DEVIL’S ALTERNATIVE by Frederick Forsyth


When the entire Soviet Union wheat crop is destroyed by a devastating string of failures, the population faces starvation. The USA are quick to offer assistance and devise a plan to trade vital food resources with the Russians in exchange for sensitive political information. But the Politburo has other ideas - the invasion of Western Europe to commandeer the food for themselves. As the paths of communication break down. the President of the USA and leaders from around the world face an appalling choice - should they allow the loss of thousands to save the lives of many more? Set in the Cold War. 479pp, paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.75


72045 FOURTH PROTOCOL by Frederick Forsyth


Plan Aurora, hatched in a remote dacha in the forest outside Moscow and initiated with relentless brilliance and skill, is a plan within a plan that in its spine-chilling ingenuity breaches the ultra-secret Fourth Protocol. A crack Soviet agent, placed under cover in a quiet English country town, begins to assemble a jigsaw of devastation. MI5 investigator John Preston, working against the most urgent of deadlines, leads an operation to prevent the act of murderous destruction aimed at tumbling Britain into revolution. 444 page paperback reprint of the 1984 original. £7.99 NOW £3.75


72059 ODESSA FILE by Frederick Forsyth A disquieting and brilliantly entertaining bestseller set in 1963. A young German reporter has been assigned the suicide of a holocaust survivor. The news story seems straightforward - a tragic insight into one man’s suffering, but a long-hidden secret is discovered in the pages of the dead man’s diary. What follows is a life-and-death hunt for a notorious former concentration camp commander who yet unpunished. 422pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


72119 LANDED by Tim Pears


A novel about fatherhood, masculinity and what it is to be a man in a world where your manhood is being constantly undermined. Owen Wood is struggling to come to terms with an increasingly desperate situation. Suffering from unimaginable phantom limb pain after a freak accident, his good hand is amputated. Estranged from his two young children after his marriage fails, to survive the trauma of the accident, he is unable to


She is one of our best saga writers who tells evocative tales of passion, nostalgia and dark secrets.


73434 FLOWERS ON THE MERSEY by June Francis


When Adam Rhoades tires of the political climate in Ireland and decides to leave for America, his daughter Rebekah’s future happiness is threatened. For Rebekah, against her father’s wishes, has fallen in love with handsome young Republican Daniel O’Neill. Then Daniel too, is forced to flee from his homeland and joins Rebekah on an ocean liner headed for New York. In the enclosed shipboard society their love is impossible to hide. But a cruel twist of fate leaves Rebekah orphaned and living in London, without the man she loves. Reluctantly she agrees to marry her new guardian, Joshua Green, but it is a decision she soon bitterly regrets. It is only when she takes her courage in her hands does she rediscover the happiness she thought was lost to her forever. 478pp in paperback.


£7.99 NOW £3


73435 FRIENDS AND LOVERS by June Francis


Vivien last saw her mother when she was nine years old. When Hilda suddenly reappears after eight years, she stirs up painful memories. Now at last Vivien has the opportunity to find out her father’s identity, but Hilda refuses to reveal his name, so Vivien decides to track him down with the help of her boyfriend Nick. Determination becomes obsession and Nick comes to resent Vivien’s quest. When she travels to America in search of the truth, does she risk losing the love of her life? A compelling love story full of heartbreak, nostalgia and pain. 479pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


73485 WHEN THE CLOUDS GO ROLLING BY by June Francis


As the Great War rolls on towards its end, it takes its toll on the inhabitants of Victoria Crescent in Chester. Alice Bennett’s relief at hearing her husband Sebastian is alive is tempered with concern when she learns he is wounded. And when he finally returns home to his family, it seems nothing will ever be the same again. Meanwhile, Clara O’Toole searches for her aunt, her irascible grandmother Bernie’s long lost daughter, and she is over the moon to find she has relatives she never knew about. But is Clara ready to be drawn into the tragedies, secrets and dangers of the family’s past? 569pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


73744 JUNE FRANCIS: Set of Three by June Francis


Buy all three paperbacks and make further savings. £22.97 NOW £7.50


pursue his passion and livelihood as a gardener. Infused with nostalgia for one rich, enchanting childhood summer spent with his grandparents in rural Wales, Owen resolves to connect with both his past and the natural world. 230pp, paperback. £7.99 NOW £2.50


72148 WHO’S SORRY NOW? by Howard Jacobson


Marvin Kreitman, the luggage baron of South London, lives for sex, or at least he lives for women. At present he lives with four - his mother, his wife Hazel, and his two daughters - and is in love with five more. Charlie Merriweather on the other hand, nice Charlie, loves just one woman, also called Charlie, the wife with whom he has been writing children’s books and having nice sex for 20 years. Once a week the two friends meet for a Chinese lunch, contriving never quite to have the conversation they would like to have - about fidelity and womanising, and which makes you happier. Until today. It is Charlie who takes the dangerous step of asking for a piece of Marvin’s disordered life, but what follows embroils them all, the wives no less than the husbands, and none of them will ever be the same again. Pulsating with sexual desire and frustration. 326pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £3


72247 GOOD BEHAVIOUR by Molly Keane


!


Behind its rich veneer, the estate of Temple Alice is a crumbling fortress from which the aristocratic St Charles family keeps the realities of life at bay. Aroon, the unlovely daughter of the house, silently longs for love and approval, which she certainly doesn’t receive from her elegant, icy mother. And though her handsome father is fond of her, his passion is for the thrill of the chase - high-bred ladies and servants are equally fair game. Sinking into a decaying grave, the family’s adherence to the unyielding codes of ‘good behaviour’ is both their salvation and their downfall. 245pp, paperback. £8.99 NOW £4


72253 THE LAND OF GREEN GINGER by Winifred Holtby


By the author of ‘South Riding’ this is a Virago Modern Classic paperback. Joanna Burton was born in South Africa but sent by her missionary father to be raised in Yorkshire. At 18, tall and flaxen-haired, she meets Teddy Leigh, a young man on his way to the trenches of the First World War. Joanna has been in love before - with Sir Walter Raleigh, with the Scarlet Pimpernel, with


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