A House in Micklegate

Helike is married to a Roman centurion and lives in the military camp at York, far from her original home in the south of France. Aldith is a Saxon blacksmith’s daughter whose peaceful childhood is disrupted by the Viking attack on the city. Johanna is a widow mourning her only son, who died fighting for Richard the Third at the Battle of Bosworth, and Pat is a WAAF officer in the Second World War.

Nine women have lived and died in the same street, Micklegate, that runs from the city walls to the river. This book shows us their lives, their everyday activities that are not very different across the centuries and the dramatic events that change them forever.

Each woman has her own story, a thread that adds to the tapestry of being a woman, then and now.

Francis Fletcher and the Knights of the Golden Gift

It is 1763, and the Seven Year’s War with France has just ended.

Captain Francis Fletcher and his loyal crew are wanted for piracy, and marooned on a mysterious unchartered island. Before being captured by the British navy, Fletcher unknowingly discovers something hidden on the island, which turns out to be secret biblical gold.

Fletcher is ordered to retrieve the gold in order to earn his pardon, but he must sail alongside his old friend-turned-foe, Captain Percy Talbot, who stole away from him his childhood sweetheart, Isabella Norris. Together they must sail through treacherous pirate infested waters while at the same time evading a secret society of assassins who are sworn to protect the secret of the gold’s whereabouts.

Rebellion

Claudius’s invasion of Britannia was achieved almost unopposed. The few pockets of credible resistance were ruthlessly crushed by the machine that was the Roman army. What followed was a tense but relatively peaceful co-existence, even some merging of cultures.

That peaceful life was shattered by greed and oppression, when the new Emperor, Nero, forces a change in hierarchy in the province. Paulinus, a brutal Governor, and Catus, the mercilessly greedy Procurator, badly misjudged the mood of the Britons. A misjudgement that led to something that had never happened before: a uniting of the Britannic tribes. Theft of inheritance, a viciously humiliating beating of Queen Boudica, and the rape of her daughters sets in motion a rebellion that grows into an unstoppable, often uncontrollable army.

Weyland, a Briton and the son of a blacksmith, who as a boy was trained by a Roman soldier to fight as a Roman, becomes an unlikely player in Boudica’s plans to draw the Governor into fulfilling his pledge to eradicate the Druids. Now, with the majority of the Roman army in the west of the country, Boudica sets about gathering together an overwhelming horde, hell-bent on revenge for years of occupation. There can be only one outcome: victory or death.

Deck of Cards

Two best friends believe they are set for the quiet life in rural Norfolk when war breaks out in 1914, and their lives are uprooted when they find themselves heading for war-torn France.

The French fields of war leave the two young men fighting for more than just their lives when a chance encounter tests their friendship as well as their will to survive through the harshest of conditions.

Together, with their band of comrades they meet along the way, they must fight back against the most fearsome brutalities and atrocities man has ever committed if they stand any chance of stepping foot on home soil again.

The ferocious battles and wounds of war force them on different paths, but will their lifelong friendship be strong enough to keep them alive?

Sipho's War

1916. Europe is in the grip of a deadly war, the Battle of the Somme spewing grotesquely mutilated bodies. Into this mayhem come 57 Swazi men from a British Protectorate in southern Africa, most of whom have never worn shoes or seen motorised vehicles.

The biting cold chews at digits used to the heat of an African sun but they are brave these men, they do what they came to do with stoic resilience.

Sipho Vilakazi is the son of a teacher and a nurse, who longs to escape the confines of his mountain village – volunteering for this war is an answer to his prayers. Until a sworn enemy of his family also signs up.

Thembi, the love of his life, is furious that he should leave without her. ‘I will return,’ he says confidently, ‘with enough money to pay the bride price for you.’

For Sipho, his friend Vusi, and Mandla, the headman’s son, their time in Europe awakens a desire to know and understand more of the ways of this world to help their nation progress.

As their time in Europe draws to an end, they are infused with new energy when they are moved to Le Havre and the ships that will take them home. But their return is delayed and one afternoon tragedy strikes.

The shadow that settles over the group reaches beyond the boundaries of Europe, over sea and land, to the tiny village on the slopes of the mountain they call Ngwenya.

The Unknown Warriors

The Unknown Warriors is based on a true story set in the beauty and tragedy of Europe in the years just before the Second World War. Abrienda de Soza, inheritor of a fortune stolen from the coffers of Imperial Russia during the last days of the Russian Civil War, fights to keep her country out of the hands of both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and preserve a culture threatened by both through any means possible. Nika Molnar, an agent working for Hungarian Intelligence’s Special Unit, seeks to exact vengeance on the man who murdered her father when she was a child. Impeccably researched, The Unknown Warriors captures the feel and nuance of a world soon to be destroyed forever—a uniquely told and deeply compelling story of war, intrigue and betrayal, but also of love and sacrifice played out against the backdrop of a world heading inexorably towards war.

The title is taken from a speech by Winston Churchill. “This is a War of Unknown Warriors, but let all strive without failing in faith or duty…”

Endless Mission III

This is a fictional plot, set in the period between the WWI and the WWII, as the third part to the espionage drama “Endless Mission” Trilogy.

Nazar's Journey

Nazar, a boy on the cusp of his 14th birthday, has always enjoyed a peaceful and idyllic life on a simple farm in the Nineveh Plains of Iraq. His days were filled with helping his father with chores, attending the small village school in Karemlesh, and playing soccer with his friends whenever he had a spare moment. However, his quiet world is abruptly shattered when radical militants conquer the city of Mosul and unleash a tsunami of terror across the entire Nineveh Plains region. Faced with the horrifying sight of his own people frantically fleeing the tranquil village he grew up in, desperately seeking safety, Nazar is forced to make challenging decisions that will forever alter the course of his life. Within mere hours, he must leave his boyhood behind and embark on a journey that will forge him into a young man of extraordinary selflessness and courage.Featuring nine expressionist masterpieces by internationally acclaimed Iraqi-American artist Qais Al-Sindy.

Treachery at Bosworth Field 1485

Richard III by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland.England has gone through years of civil wars, strife and unrest during the period of the so-called 'Wars of the Roses'. House against house, family against family, cousin against cousin. The wheel of fortune turning this way and that.On the death of Richard's dear brother Edward IV, Richard becomes Lord Protector of England as Duke of Gloucester, but events overtake him. On finding that both Edward V and Richard of York are declared illegitimate, he has no option but to take the throne of England.Richard III proves to be a good and fair king and is much loved by any that come into contact with him. However, old wounds run deep and very soon, stories are put about attempting to discredit him. Rebellions happen and all the treachery takes place once more, culminating in the invasion of Henry Tudor and the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.Treachery at Bosworth Field 1485 belies a wealth of historical knowledge and enthusiasm for this turbulent period and frequently misunderstood king.

Spitfire Spies

Summer 1940 - Great Britain is in grave peril. With the ‘phoney' war turning into a very real war on the ground and in the air, Hitler's troops storm across an unprepared Europe towards the English Channel. Invasion looms. But the British have a weapon in their arsenal that may be a game changer and bring victory against all odds: the mighty Spitfire.So severe is the threat posed by this remarkable fighter plane that Germany sends two operatives - one a reluctant Englishman, the other a loyal Nazi - on an audacious mission to infiltrate and destroy. Will they achieve their goal or can MI5, with the aid of double agents and a brilliant female pilot, turn the tide of espionage to their advantage? With a literary adroitness reminiscent of an aviator in battle, author John Hughes weaves a tale of intrigue, love and betrayal in a fast-paced thriller of a debut novel which wends its way from the Fatherland via the beaches of Dunkirk to the skies over Southern England.

Leaves in a Holocaust Wind

The Holocaust, the final solution for Jews, is infamous in history. Robert Dawson's Leaves in a Holocaust Wind is the story of another community that suffered in the Holocaust: the Gypsies. Told by Demeter Fox and Zuzzi, Leaves in a Holocaust Wind follows their journey to freedom in the German occupied territory of Slovakia. From the horrors of slaughter in the woods, the lies of a safe future, the concentration camp of Majdanek and the hiding away in the countryside, Fox and Zuzzi must come to terms with what they have witnessed and find the courage to survive until freedom comes. It is a novel of the playful mind-set and culture of the Romanies in the face of a most brutal regime, and in which most of the major events are based on real incidents.

The Cedars of Beckenham

The Mystery of an Antique German Doll reunites members of a family torn apart during The Third Reich of Nazi Germany.

This family saga, starting in the leafy suburb of Beckenham on the borders of Kent and London, begins in 1930 in the comfortable world of four British upper-middle class families blind to the impending changes that are about to threaten not only their world, but everyone else’s world, too.

A doll belonging to the Abuthnott family becomes the catalyst that brings about two sides of the Rubenstein family, who were able to escape from Germany in the late 1930s finding refuge in the United States of America and in the British Mandate of Palestine.

Along the way, the horrors of the Blitz and the British struggle for survival are enacted out against the parallel Germanic horror of holocaust separation. The survivors in the United States, Great Britain and Israel adapt to a new world as it unfolds through the second half of the 20th century, until by the chance sale of a German Biedermeier doll at Sotheby’s in New York, their separate paths are brought together in 2017.

The four Beckenham families adapt to their changing lifestyles witnessing a rich tapestry of 20th century history taking the reader all over the world with its beauty, passion and prejudices.