A Fine Line

A story of the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.

Set between Victorian Liverpool and Dundee and the battlefields of the First World War, three families face the perils of life on the economic cliff-edge, where a single misstep can send lives plunging out of control.

Crossing a century of dramatic change, their journey begins in the aftermath of the slave trade, moving through the era of Empire expansion and Industrial Revolution to a time of religious strife and global conflict.

The world they navigate is one fraught with hazard in which exploitation, zealotry and violence lead to rape, prostitution, fraud, and murder.

At its heart, two indomitable women – lifelong friends – choose very different paths as they strive to hold their worlds together, and to survive.

A Way to Go

An intense romance developed out of an illicit and highly sensual affair of more than 10 years which survived many hurdles.

Freed from the ties of work and family by retirement and bereavement, the couple embark on a trip of a lifetime around the coasts of Europe, with its idyllic beaches, historic cities, fascinating art galleries and ancient sites.

This is a gripping and highly readable novel full of wit, fun and escapist pleasures, but with disturbing happenings which raise serious issues of love, estrangement and loss.

Almost Down to Earth

In this fable for our times, feisty M’bali Hoyle has returned to the town of her youthful disgrace. 

Will tiny, isolated Quimbleton take her to its heart this time?
Two glamorous visitors drop into her world just as she meets ex-rock star Hayes.
Only M’bali sees the dark threat behind their glitzy facades.

How can she convince Hayes and the starstruck locals, a cast of rural eccentrics, that her intuition is right?

Can she draw them all more or less together when danger strikes?

With a dry wit, the narrator observes the foibles of human nature as the reader is launched into a twisting, turning adventure with the future of life on Earth at its core.

An Agony of Flame and the Fury and the Mire

A two-part climax to The Last Vigil, An Agony of Flame and The Fury and the Mire, concludes the story of the fall of Constantinople. Here is an intense evocation, both of the gruelling eight-week siege itself and of the chaotic as well as terrifying aftermath.

In part three, Niccolo and Demetrius serve on the great Roman land walls, enduring bombardment and nocturnal hand-to-hand combat. Nestor-Iskander reappears, a deserter now from the Turkish camp. Niccolo is badly wounded, recovering in Theodora’s house in the suburb of Studion. Then comes the night of the final Ottoman assault when, after a valiant defence, treachery leads to massacre (including the death of Demetrius) and Niccolo finds himself among a scatter of survivors. 

Part four centres on Niccolo’s frantic attempts to find a way through a city, now being systematically sacked. Moreover, he must think of others. Demetrius might be dead but Nestor-Iskander has survived and demands refuge. Then there is Theodora locked up with the faithful in Hagia Sophia. Can Niccolo reach her before the marauding enemy? So, he travels deeper and deeper into his adopted city’s heart of darkness. Nestor finds protectors, loses, then regains them. Theodora is found then lost forever. Mehmet appears once more; Cinnamon never reappears. Finally, after the city has been overwhelmed and pacified, Niccolo sets sail westward across the Mediterranean, not home to Venice but to an Atlantic shore where a new age of exploration is about to dawn.  

Benito's Truth

Amidst Peru’s rebellion against Spanish rule and an impending blockade by the Chilean fleet, the Viceroy of Lima and its priests devise a plan to safeguard the fabled Treasure of Lima. Captain Bennett Grahame, commanding the HMS Devonshire, is entrusted with this crucial task and instructed to return once the coast is clear. However, fate intervenes as Bennett falls deeply in love with Teresa, the enchanting daughter of the Viceroy. Their passionate affair leads to unforeseen consequences – Teresa loses her virginity, thwarting her father’s carefully arranged marriage plans and resulting in her exile to Spain on the galleon Santa Katerina Isabella, destined for a life in a distant monastery.

Driven by his unwavering love, Bennett embarks on a daring pursuit of the Isabella, defying all odds to rescue his beloved Teresa and confronting the Spanish Captain in a fateful showdown that forever alters his path. Cast into the realm of piracy, Bennett embraces his new persona as Benito ‘Bloody Sword’ Bonito, a fearsome figure renowned throughout the Spanish Main.

Compelled by both love and ambition, Benito sets sail from the Caribbean, in possession of the legendary treasure said to be hidden in a Queenscliff cave in colonial Australia. A tale of love, piracy, and insatiable greed unfolds, spanning from the shores of the Iberian Peninsula to the distant reaches of Australia’s colonial past. Revealed through the perspectives of Benito, Teresa, and their son Benjamin, Benito’s Truth offers a breathtaking account of the events that truly transpired—a narrative so incredible, it defies the boundaries of fiction. Prepare to discover that truth can be more astounding than any tale ever told.

Bonecreake: The Strange Tale of Maudy Jiller

December 1878. North Sea gales batter the wash estuary of England’s east coast, covering the desolate marshes and riverbanks under a near impenetrable blanket of snow and ice. Isolated and alone, the impoverished fishing community of Bonecreake faces hardship like never before.

But when the warmth of spring thaws the freezing conditions of a prolonged winter, a terrible secret is revealed: four children of Bonecreake are missing.

Investigating their disappearance falls on the youthful shoulders of Constable Hollins. With both the inhabitants of Bonecreake and his superiors demanding answers, is the inexperienced Constable Hollins capable of solving the macabre puzzle of the children’s disappearance?

What part does the widowed mother, Maudy Jiller, have to play in an investigation exposing the hypocrisy at the heart of the social and moral values of Victorian England?

As disturbing as it is engaging, Bonecreake: The Strange Tale of Maudy Jiller is every parent’s fear, and every mother’s nightmare.

Bright Shadow

This is the story of Katherine Plantagenet, self-proclaimed “daughter, sister and aunt of kings” who endures extraordinarily traumatic reversals of fortune, as her life swings through wealth and adversity.  A glittering future as an English princess is swept away by the untimely death of her father, Edward IV, and the usurpation of her brother Edward V's throne. Surrounded by murderous intrigue, conspiracy and ambition, Katherine and her sisters fear what lies in store … The pragmatic marriage of the eldest, Bessy, to the victor of Bosworth, Henry Tudor, brings an uneasy peace to Katherine's young life but the shadows of suspicion and rebellion continue to swirl around her.  

Katherine witnesses first hand the events that plague her brother-in-law's reign. As a political expedient, she is given in marriage to William Courtenay, heir to the Earl of Devon, but Henry Tudor's paranoia soon falls upon her beloved young husband who is imprisoned in the Tower. An intelligent and resilient woman, in a world where men hold all the power, Katherine fights her way alone through a tense decade that ends in personal tragedy. With a vow of celibacy as her chosen route of self-preservation, Katherine continues to tread a wary path of survival ... until the charming Benedict Haute enters her life. However, the failure of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to produce a living son changes the way any Plantagenet is viewed by the king; Katherine knows her royal blood could cause trouble for her family.

Brushstrokes

And for a brief moment, we finally set aside

The shield that we don, beneath which our hearts hide

Brushstrokes is an exploration of the nuances of love, the ebb and flow of hope, as well as the search for meaning, clarity and purpose.

A moving composition of poems and prose, it recounts the tale of an electric encounter and ensuing, all-consuming love – with its irresistible highs and perilous lows – that sets into motion a cascade of events. What unfolds is a transformative story of self-discovery, unveiling one’s deepest fears, longings and dreams.

Timeless and universal in message, Brushstrokes invites us on an intimate journey steeped in passion and wonder.

Champions of Circumstance

Let me ask you this question: what does an exiled king, a thief with morals, a young sorcerer off on his own, a high elven wizard with secrets, an unlucky sell-sword, a somewhat clueless child, a man with gambling issues and a sewer needing cleaning have in common?

The answer is: not a whole lot.

But when the king is a three-meter-tall polar bear man, the thief one of the capital’s most wanted, the sorcerer unlucky, the wizard too prideful, the sell-sword cursed with the body of a snailman, the child eons old and made from rock, the gambler a blessed priest and the sewers filled with monsters, then things start getting interesting.

Now five hundred years after the defeat of Molthos the Enslaver, demon emperor and thousand years tyrant of the Almira continent, civilisation has flourished, and the annual Purge Festival is just around the corner in the human capital, Kivar.

Follow a group of less-than-compatible people as their chanced meeting and later enforced companionship get them caught in a deadly popularity contest in which they are forced to participate under the threat of prison. Follow our…not heroes…but champions brought together by circumstance as they battle slavers, oozes, giant insects, blood mages, living plants, nightmarish terrors and more.

Follow along in this book the opening act of an epic tale, depicting the story of those who go from strangers to comrades, to friends and to champions.

Class Act

Biggsy is an idealistic 50-year-old English teacher in a West London boys’ secondary school. A maverick head of department who battled against the educational establishment for twenty-five years, he’s beginning to crack. His departmental colleagues love him, but he suspects that the school’s management team is out to get rid of him.His wife, Myra, a medical secretary, is his mainstay. She patiently endures his total commitment to his calling without complaint. However, when she realises that his work is taking an inordinate emotional toll on his personality, her patience wears thin.Through his exchanges with teenage Ella, their only child, Biggsy reveals his beliefs about the connections between literary theory and the lives we all lead. But a violent assault on one of his students, an unexpected sexual encounter and professional betrayal expose the flaws in his philosophy. He discovers that trying to think one’s way through life is all very well, but the time comes when one has to act. 

Conduit

A woman's quest to rescue the child victims of human trafficking leads her on a perilous journey fraught with danger. Will her faith and the gift of "sight" inherited from her beloved grandmother be enough to sustain her on an epic voyage of self-discovery and good conquering evil?

Dead Plague

Warning: do not read this book if you are of a sensitive disposition!

Within this book lies a collection of short stories each different from the other but all connect with aspects of horror, suspense and survival, set within a post-apocalyptic world, where the dead have risen from an unknown viral outbreak, that abidingly seek the flesh of the remaining survivors.

The remaining humans attempt to find some semblance of a life on a reformed earth created by the dead. Each story depicts how the dead have reshaped the lives of the survivors and illustrates how they struggle to conform to the change while trying to hold onto some sanity and attempt to continue with life while pondering how long that life will be.