Tudor Fiction

It's 1980: recession and unemployment have hit Britain, a royal wedding is on the way, and the whole country is wondering Who shot JR? As Jack returns for his fourth year at Ragley-on-the Forest School, there's a definite chill in the air. Village schools are being closed down all over the place - will his be one of them? As school life continues - Vera, the school secretary, has to grapple with a new-fangled electric typewriter, Ruby celebrates 10 years as the school cleaner, and the village panto throws up some unusual problems. Jack wonders what the future holds....

One tiny discovery can have enormous consequences.... Almost 10-year-old Octavia Bloom is looking for adventure, but when it comes, it's in the shape of a tiny fairy door. Dragging her reluctant sister and cousins into the mystery, Octavia discovers her family are hiding not one but two life-changing secrets.

Scotland, summer 1556. Desperation drives Abby Gordon to seek refuge with Iain MacGregor and ask his help, but will he give her something more for her heart, instead? After escaping the clutches of wily Laird Glenorchy, Abby Gordon arrives at the MacGregor stronghold to take part in a chain of events that brings Iain to the brink of banishment and disaster to the clan.

1938: As Hitler sets his sights on the Sudetenland, not everyone in Britain is willing to appease him. Convinced that the fürher’s land hunger is insatiable, the head of the SIS recruits Cal Jardine to help him prove that Czechoslovakia is threatened with invasion. Before heading undercover to Prague, however, Jardine must first extricate himself from France, where his attempts to smuggle guns to Spain have been held up by a group of fanatical fascists. Finally arriving in Czechoslovakia, working undercover for the SIS proves no less dangerous.

Trudi Gerster (1919-2013) war die bekannteste Märchenerzählerin der Schweiz, Schauspielerin und Politikerin. 70 Jahre lang stand sie auf der Bühne und berührte mit ihrer einzigartigen Erzählkunst Hunderttausende von Menschen. Sie sammelte und bearbeite Geschichten aus aller Welt. Trudi Gerster setzte ihre Stimme auch politisch ein und trat 1968 mit den ersten Frauen in den Grossen Rat in Basel Stadt ein. Sie engagierte sich für Frauenrechte, Umweltschutz, Kultur, fairere Bedingungen für Kulturschaffende und Heimatschutz.

It is mid-winter, 1943. Britain is gripped by intense cold and in the darkest days of the war. There is no escape from the conflict - it has snaked into every part of everyone's lives. RAF officer Paget is heading home for Christmas on a train slowly dragging itself west, laden with the tanks and guns that will be taken across the Channel when the invasion begins. Sergeant Harris sits in a freezing hut on Salisbury Plain, wishing he can stop teaching green troops and see some real action.

Som a lany 1553. En Max, un jove tan atractiu com estafador, senamora d una de les dames de companyia de Lady Jane Grey, cosina del rei Eduard VI. La Margaret, la jove dama, sembla correspondrel. Disfressat de noble, en Max assisteix a les noces de Lady Jane per ser a prop de la noia. Un fet inesperat, però, trasbalsa la cerimònia. Una enigmàtica dona apareix de sobte i formula un misteriós presagi a la núvia.

After leading a raid in Afghanistan, elite operative John Stratton is contacted by an old friend in military intelligence with a curious message about being hunted by an assassin. When the officer vanishes, Stratton gets drawn into a desperate race to secure a missing nuclear warhead, stolen from the Pakistan military. Against an unknown enemy, he conducts a terrifying search for the bomb - from a Taliban hideout a few miles outside Bagram Air Base to the crowded streets of Manhattan.

On 3 May 1961, after a trial conducted largely in secret, a man named George Blake was sentenced to an unprecedented 42 years in jail. By his own confession he was a Soviet spy, but the reasons for such a severe punishment were never revealed. To the public, Blake was simply the greatest traitor of the Cold War. Yet his story touches not only the depths of treachery, but also the heights of heroism.

Richard and Robin Mariner are amongst a select group of honoured guests at a reception in the Presidential Palace, in the recently refurbished capital of a powerful West Africa nation. They have been instrumental in helping the president take charge, which he is still fighting to drag into the 21st century.

After the British military lose an officer to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, a desperate race begins to find his killers. Little do the assailants know that the precious information they have stolen could bring down the entire network of Western intelligence in the Mid-East. But then one of them is captured by US troops and flown to the States for interrogation. And so begins a nail-biting, claustrophobic and explosive thriller that will ultimately lead British operative John Stratton to the Styx penitentiary, America's undersea prison.

Apothecary John Rawlings has travelled to Devon to be by the side of his mistress, Elizabeth di Lorenzi, who is due to give birth to their child. Leaving his shop and his new carbonated water business in good hands, John is presented with a surprise on his arrival at Sidmouth House. While Elizabeth is recuperating, he learns that Lady Sidmouth's daughter, Miranda, is to marry the elderly Earl of St. Austell, who is 54 years her senior and has a cruel reputation.

Apothecary John Rawlings is intrigued when a letter arrives asking him to investigate an impostor claiming to be the long-lost step-son of a wealthy Bristol merchant in possession of his dead wife's diamond inheritance. John Rawlings' father, Sir Gabriel Kent joins him on the trip to take the healing waters at Hotwell where they socialize with the crème of Bristol society. But Rawlings is compelled to try and solve the mystery and so he must trawl through the underbelly of 18th-century society.

Apothecary John Rawlings has been summoned to Devon by Elizabeth di Lorenzi, his beautiful but unpredictable mistress. Leaving his young daughter Rose in the good care of her grandfather Sir Gabriel Kent, Rawlings sets off for Exeter on board the stagecoach. His fellow-passengers are a motley crew, and incelude a large and talkative German lady; Cuthbert Simms, a dance-master; and Jack Beef, the so-called ï¿¿ï¿¿ï¿¿Black Pyramid", a bare-knuckle fighter.

It is England in the time of Henry VII. Two boys meet. They were born on the same day; they look identical but they are not from the same family. Tom Canty is a pauper living in a hovel in the back streets of London, surviving as a beggar. Edward is Prince of Wales and about to become Edward VI. By a sudden twist of fate, they find themselves in each other's circumstances, the pauper raised to royalty and the prince - to the state of a pauper.

The gunners on the Golden Ray were a strangely assorted bunch. There was the professional, Sergeant Willis, in love with his job, Vernon the intellectual, and Miller the tragic communistic misfit who found his Russian Mecca not quite what he expected.

Honeybees, history, and small-town charm are what Honey Hill, North Carolina, is all about. Its mayor, Lunden Pierce, will stop at nothing to protect the town’s historical landmarks and distinctive character. She’s Honey Hill’s greatest champion. But everything changes when Lunden’s childhood sweetheart, Quade Cannon, returns to town. Though Quade has fond memories of his summers in Honey Hill, he has no use for the historic inn he’s inherited - or the honeybees living in its yard. His plan is to sell the inn and reap the rewards.

When successful Sydney lawyer Miranda McIntyre searches for something old to go with her wedding dress, she remembers an antique necklace from her childhood. Her mother’s denial of its existence only deepens Miranda’s curiosity, but the discovery of a faded wedding photo and an old newspaper clipping reveal long-buried family secrets. Who is the woman in the photo? And why are these keepsakes hidden in her mother’s closet? Miranda’s quest for the truth takes her on a road trip, south to the idyllic seaside village of Pelican Point.

1850 Sarah Hallow is orphaned, penniless and alone, with only the skills learned from her midwife mother to guide her. Passage on a ship bound for the new settlement of Brisbane, Australia, is her last option. Though her skills are quickly dismissed by the ship's doctor, Sarah is pleased to find instant friendship with her cabin mate, Bridie, a fiery Irish girl with a sharp tongue and midwifery skills of her own. When the two women come to the aid of a labouring woman onboard, Sarah's dreams of opening her own midwifery practice in Brisbane don't seem so impossible.

When beautiful and successful Susan Harris jumps from the roof of her apartment building, she sets a tremor through her New York City mothers’ group that forces them all to look at one another with new cynicism: How could this have happened right under their noses? To one of them? Between her death and the harrowing private school admission season on the horizon, these women are forced to explore the hard truths about themselves.