Historical fiction

  • The Loch of the Bees

    £10.99

    From the author of the prizewinning As the Women Lay Dreaming comes an evocative and deeply original novel that reimagines the lives of Hebrideans across the centuries, sweeping from the eighth century to the present day.

  • The Tribe

    £12.99

    The Tribe chronicles a powerful Sephardic dynasty in the cosmopolitan city of Salonica during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, through the Nazi Occupation of France, to the early 1960s, when the survivors and their children confront their past, with long hidden secrets uncovered and deep-seated conflicts exposed.

  • Intelligence

    £16.99

    Oxford, 1938. Ida and Medora are two brilliant young philosophers at the heart of a group who gather in storied rooms to dance, drink and debate theories of right and wrong. But as the world spins towards war, theoretical questions of life and death become all too real. While her friends are called up to do intelligence work, Ida, the irrepressible Texan outsider, seeks academic distraction. Then she stumbles across secret Nazi information that could radically change the direction of the war. Can she and Medora capture the attention of the spymasters and mandarins in London in time to save thousands of lives?

  • Brawler

    £18.99

    Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region – from New England to Florida to California – these nine stories reflect and expand upon a single shared theme: the ceaseless battle between the dark and light in all of us. Among those caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling; a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult; a mother blinded by the loss of her family; and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by human fallibility, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.

  • New Boy

    £10.99

    She noticed him before anyone else. Arriving at his fourth school in six years, diplomat’s son Osei Kokote knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day – so he’s lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can’t stand to witness this budding relationship: Ian decides to destroy the friendship between the black boy and the golden girl. By the end of the day, the school and its key players – teachers and pupils alike – will never be the same again.

  • A Short Road to Longbrook

    £18.99

    It’s the mid-1960s and Lillian Wells is a clever teenager with a daring pixie cut, tangerine mini-dress and new boyfriend, Jim, who works at the brewery. Even better, he lives across the road, so she’s never far from her bee-hived, high-heeled single mother Winnie, who is prone to attacks of the nerves. But Lillian harbours secret dreams of going to art school in London. When she gets in, how will she tell her mother – and Jim – that she’s leaving Abingdon – and them? Forty years later, Lillian’s own daughter Rachel is heading off to university, but Lillian is not sure either of them are ready. She sees herself and Winnie in Rachel, who is ambitious and intelligent, but also prone to nervous habits. As Lillian tries to bite her tongue about Rachel’s symptoms, she is reminded of what everyone in Abingdon used to say: It’s a short road to Longbrook – the local institution for the mentally ill.

  • The Other Bennet Sister

    £10.99

    The Other Bennet Sister presents Mary Bennet in a whole new light as she becomes Austen’s newest leading lady. Soon to be a major BBC One TV series.

  • Land

    £25.00
    Pre order price: £25.00

    On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster. The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

  • A Schooling in Murder

    £9.99

    *A Times Best Book of the Year*

    From the author of The Ashes of London, comes a new historical mystery set in the last days of WWII

  • Flashlight

    £10.99

    One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town while her father Serk, a Korean émigré, completes an academic secondment from his American university. When Louisa wakes up hours later, she has washed up on the beach and her father is missing, likely drowned. The disappearance of Louisa’s father shatters their small family unit, and she and her American mother Anne return to the US profoundly changed. This traumatic event reverberates across time and space, as we follow mother and daughter trying to go on with their lives, while the mystery of what really happened to Serk that night slowly unravels.

  • The Impossible Thing

    £9.99

    1926. On the towering cliffs of Yorkshire, men are lowered on ropes to steal the eggs of the sea birds who nest there. The most beautiful are sold for large sums. But when small and hungry Celie Sheppard finds an ‘impossible’ red egg, it will forever alter the course of her life – and the lives of others. One hundred years later in a remote cottage in Wales, Patrick Fort discovers his friend, Nick, and his mother tied up and robbed. The only thing missing: a carved case containing an incredible scarlet egg. Doggedly attempting to retrieve it, Patrick and Nick discover the cruel world of egg trafficking, and soon find themselves on the trail of a priceless collection of eggs lost to history. Until now.

  • The Paris Express

    £9.99

    From Emma Donoghue, the bestselling author of Room, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set at the end of the nineteenth century about a high-speed steam train journey, the people on board and the secrets and dangers they carry with them.