last month

Religious conflict in Elizabethan England fuels this gripping spy story

There is no lack of religious conflict in today’s world. Hindus against Muslims. Sunni vs. Shia. Christians and Jews squaring off against Muslims. But it’s hard to find anything today to surpass the sheer complexity of the festering three-way collision of incompatible faiths in sixteenth-century England. Then, barely half a century after Henry VIII pulled […]

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a couple of months ago

A suspenseful World War II espionage thriller set in Paris

England shuddered in terror in the summer of 1940. Following the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in May, Nazi Germany’s U-boat campaign threatened to starve the British people, and an invasion was imminent. Preparations for Operation Sea Lion were underway, revealed by a growing chorus of chatter in German radio communications. In […]

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a couple of months ago

A spellbinding WWII thriller set in neutral Sweden

What most of us in the English-speaking world know about Scandinavia’s role in World War II is largely limited to tales of the Nazi invasions of Norway and Denmark. Less well remembered are the events that unfolded in neutral Sweden, the region’s most populous country. And award-winning Swedish author Cecilia Ekbäck uses those events and […]

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a few months ago

They’re trying to assassinate the queen!

What is it with superheroes? Why have so many of us become obsessed with characters who transcend the boundaries of human ability? And why would an author of what might otherwise be a perfectly good spy thriller set in the Elizabethan era spoil it by endowing his protagonist with superhuman abilities? After all, people are […]

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8 months ago

An historical spy thriller in the Elizabethan Age

Britain during the reign of Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was wracked by turmoil and intrigue rooted in doctrinal differences between the newly independent Church of England and the deeply entrenched forces of Catholicism. To root out the many conspiracies mounted by her foreign and domestic enemies, the Queen’s principal private secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham (1532-90) operated […]

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11 months ago

A murder mystery in the British Raj

In the far northeastern corner of India, on land near a border disputed by China, lies the tribal village of Jatinga. There, every year following the monsoon rains, thousands of birds dazed by high winds descend toward the village’s lights on foggy, dark nights. Local people, convinced they are spirits come to terrorize them, capture […]

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11 months ago

A lawyer is murdered in the Elizabethan Age

The year is 1586, the Spanish Armada two years in the future. A brilliant young English lawyer named Francis Bacon is headed for glory and high office. He was the youngest man yet to have been admitted to the bar and still is only twenty-five. Yet his impulsive nature has landed him in disrepute with […]

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last year

Brother Cadfael stars in a gripping medieval murder mystery

Imagine yourself projected back in time to the High Middle Ages in the west of England. The Benedictine Monastery of Saints Peter and Paul in the town of Shrewsbury, to be exact. It’s less than a century since the Norman Conquest, and the First Crusade had ended just forty years earlier. King Stephen reigns from […]

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