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  After the Party

  Cressida Connolly

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  It is the summer of 1938 and Phyllis Forrester has returned to England after years abroad. Moving into her sister’s grand country house, she soon finds herself entangled in a new world of idealistic beliefs and seemingly innocent friendships. Fevered talk of another war infiltrates their small, privileged circle, giving way to a thrilling solution: the appointment of a great and charismatic new leader who will restore England to its former glory.At a party hosted by her new friends, Phyllis lets down her guard for a single moment, with devastating consequences. Years later, Phyllis, alone and embittered, recounts the dramatic events which led to her imprisonment and changed the course of her life forever.Powerful, poignant, and exquisitely observed, After the Party is an illuminating portrait of a dark period of British history which has yet to be fully acknowledged.

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  The Windfall - A tale about the...

  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

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  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was born in Valencia, Spain on 29th January 1867.  
   
  At university, he studied law and graduated in 1888 but never felt the urgency to practice - he was more interested in politics, journalism, literature and women.   
   
  Politically he was a militant Republican partisan and, in his youth, founded a newspaper, El Pueblo (The People). The newspaper was taken to court many times and he made many enemies. In one incident he was shot and almost killed. In 1896, Ibáñez was arrested and sentenced to a few months in prison. 
   
  Despite this colourful background he found time to write novels. His first published work was ‘La Araña Negra’ (The Black Spider) in 1892, a work that he later repudiated although at the time it was a useful vehicle for him to express his anti-clerical views. 
   
  In 1894, he published ‘Arroz y Tartana’ (Airs and Graces), about a late 19th Century widow in Valencia trying to keep up appearances in order to marry her daughters well.   
   
  Ibáñez’s next sequence of books studied rural life in the farmlands of Valencia and failed to gain much of an audience.   
   
  His writing now took on a new direction with its now familiar sensational and melodramatic themes in 1908 with ‘Sangre y Arena’ (Blood and Sand), which follows the career of Juan Gallardo from his poor beginnings as a child in Seville, to his rise to becoming a famous matador in Madrid 
   
  However, his greatest success was ‘Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) in 1916, which tells a tangled tale of the French and German sons-in-law of an Argentinian land-owner who find themselves fighting on opposite sides in the First World War.  It was a literary and commercial sensation and became the best-selling book of 1919.  It also propelled Rudolph Valentino to stardom in the 1921 film. 
   
  Ironically his fame in the English-speaking world has come not as a novelist but as the stories behind some of Hollywood’s greatest silent movies. 
   
  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez died in Menton, France on January 28th, 1928, the day before his 61st birthday.

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  Yul The Younger

  Jules Wright

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  The Roman Empire is coming apart at the seams, relying on German recruits and foederati to hold the empire together. The eastern and western empires are ruled by incompetent young men who allow their German warlords to rule for them, but imperial elites conspire against the generals. Yul the Younger is a Saxon boy negotiating life in the empire with strong ties to his family in Germania. His father, Yul the Elder, sends Yul to a monastery school to learn the ways of the empire, with the father serving the empire as a quaestor (treasurer) in the east of Britannia. Yul the elder’s job is to make certain that the mostly German troopers of the Saxon Shore are fed, equipped, and paid, but Romano-British landlords are withholding taxes while enslaving Germans and building lavish country houses. Life in the monastic school at Verulamium (Saint Albans) proves difficult for Yul the Younger with monks insisting he give up his Germanic gods for Christ. He is also harassed by the entitled sons of British elites. Yul dares to make his escape with his best friend, a Pict, named Keaffer. Both enlist in the Brave Companions stationed at Othona as self-declared Emperor Flavius Claudius Constantine opts to invade Gaul to capture the purple and stop the Germanic tribes from crossing the Rhine Frontier to settle in the dying empire. Tall, blond, and broad, Yul joins the invasion of Europa. He also finds love and seeks revenge for the wrongs committed by Britons against his family and companions.

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  The Bear of Byzantium - Wolves...

  S.J.A. Turney

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  The wolves of Odin sail to the centre of the world: Constantinople. 
  AD 1041. After successfully avenging the death of his father, Halfdan and the crew of the Sea Wolf seek adventure in strange new lands, far from their Scandinavian home. 
   
  They join the fleet of Harald Hardrada, the legendary Viking commander, sailing back to Constantinople from the battlefields of Georgia. There they join the Varangians, the personal bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperors populated almost exclusively by Viking warriors. But Constantinople has changed during Hardrada’s long absence. 
   
  The Emperor, Michael IV, is ailing visibly, and powerful factions in his court are setting their plans in motion ahead of his inevitable demise. While courtiers scheme, elements even within the Varangian Guard are picking sides. 
   
  Gunnhild, the seer among the Sea Wolf crew, has struck out on her own in the big city. Unable to join the all-male Guard alongside her friends, she establishes herself in a small side-street near the port as a healer and soothsayer, offering cures to the sick and glimpses of the future to the desperate, or the conspiratorial. But in all her visions she sees a wolf, a boar and a golden bear fighting together to support the Byzantine throne. The Norns aren’t finished with them yet… 
   
  The epic second instalment in the Wolves of Odin series, taking us to the heart of power in Constantinople and the desperate machinations of the Byzantine emperors. Perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Giles Kristian and Angus Donald.

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  Honourable Rebel - The Memoirs...

  Elizabeth Montagu

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  Honourable Rebel tells the remarkable story of The Honourable Elizabeth Montagu, a woman born into the upper echelons of British society who defied expectations to forge a life of fierce independence, artistic brilliance, and covert service. 
    
   Raised in a world of privilege, Elisabeth chose passion over propriety, becoming a celebrated pianist, a gifted librettist, and a powerful presence in British cultural life. She was fluent in four European languages, a skill that not only deepened her creative reach but would later prove vital during wartime intelligence work. 
    
   She moved easily among artistic giants — Toscanini, Horowitz, Edwin Fischer, Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears — not as a mere admirer, but as a creative collaborator and kindred spirit. In theatre and film, she worked both in front of the camera and behind the scenes, collaborating with cinematic legends like Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Graham Greene, and Sir Alexander Korda, as both an actress and respected film dialogue director. 
    
   During the Second World War, Elizabeth turned her intellect and multilingual talents to espionage, serving in British intelligence. She lived many lives — artist, spy, aristocrat, and cultural connector — but was always herself: daring, original, and unapologetically independent. Her story, long hidden in the margins of history, comes vividly to life in this audiobook, wonderfully narrated by Dorothea Myer-Benett who also played Elizabeth in the Drama Documentary based on the book, reminding us that rebels don’t always ride into battle — sometimes they play the piano.

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  Tudor Warrior - Tudor Warrior...

  Griff Hosker

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  Young men who grow without the firm hand of a father can often become wild. James of Ecclestone is one such youth and when he runs away to become a billman fighting the Yorkist pretender, Lambert Simnel, he begins a journey that will shape him from a youth to a man, a wild child to a Tudor Warrior. Set against the backdrop of the early years of King Henry VIIth’s reign this fast-moving novel takes us from the Battle of Bramham Moor to the siege of Boulogne. Beginning with the battle of Bosworth field and ending with the Skirmish of Glastonbury Tor we see an England changing from Yorkist to Lancastrian and James of Ecclestone becoming a warrior of renown.

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