Before I was a writer, I was a reader. My mother was a primary school teacher, so I was encouraged to read from my earliest years. I wanted to be not only entertained but transported to another place, time, or world. When I finally decided to write my first novel, I settled on historical fiction, but I have since written both science fiction and fantasy. I always endeavour to emulate my literary heroes and create engaging characters, compelling plots, and an interesting, unusual, convincing world.
Roman Syria, 270 A.D.: Queen Zenobia of Palmyra has turned on her Roman masters and unleashed a deadly revolt. Arabia, Palestine, and Egypt have fallen, and now Antioch - Syria’s capital - stands exposed. Cassius Corbulo is a young intelligence agent who unwittingly finds himself in the path of the Palmyran advance. He must take command of a desert fort and hold it until reinforcements arrive.
What Cassius finds at Alauran would daunt the most seasoned veteran, let alone a nineteen-year-old with no experience of war. A mere scattering of demoralized legionaries remains, backed up by some fractious local auxiliaries and a drunken Praetorian Guardsman. Cassius must somehow find the discipline, resourcefulness, and courage to organize the garrison, save Alauran, and secure Rome’s eastern frontier…
I read this when I was in my early teens and I do feel that LeGuin created a remarkably immersive fantasy world – and at a time when far fewer writers had done so.
We follow Sparrowhawk, the young mage, who leaves his home and family behind to train as a wizard. Earthsea itself is a vast, bleak, mysterious archipelago. LeGuin conjures the setting with such authenticity and detail that it has always stayed with me. This is the first part of a landmark series.
The first book of Earthsea in a beautiful hardback edition. Complete the collection with The Tombs of Atuan, The Furthest Shore and Tehanu
With illustrations from Charles Vess
'[This] trilogy made me look at the world in a new way, imbued everything with a magic that was so much deeper than the magic I'd encountered before then. This was a magic of words, a magic of true speaking' Neil Gaiman
'Drink this magic up. Drown in it. Dream it' David Mitchell
Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth.
Forget the film 300. The Battle of Thermopylae has never been described with more power and authenticity than in Pressfield’s 1998 novel.
His immense knowledge and understanding of the era are evident on every page, and any reader will swiftly find themselves alongside Xeones, Leonidas, and the outnumbered Spartans as they defend their homeland against the Persian invaders. This is a bloody, brutal, brilliant classic of the historical fiction genre.
In the Sunday Times bestseller Gates of Fire, Steven Pressfield tells the breathtaking story of the legendary Spartans: the men and women who helped shaped our history and have themselves become as immortal as their gods.
'Breathtakingly brilliant . . . this is a work of rare genius. Savour it!' DAVID GEMMELL
'A tale worthy of Homer, a timeless epic of man and war, exquisitely researched and boldy written. Pressfield has created a new classic' STEPHEN COONTS
'A really impressive book - imaginatively framed, historically detailed and a really gripping narrative' ***** Reader review
McMurtry’s 1985 novel follows two former Texas Rangers as they drive a herd of cattle from Texas to Montana. This is an epic in every sense as McMurtry effortlessly shifts from one character’s point of view to another. All are as captivating and authentic as the landscape and world of the old West.
The story itself is actually quite unconventional but it is impossible not to be caught up in these dramatic lives and this most dramatic of worlds.
Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning novel is a powerful, triumphant portrayal of the American West as it really was. From Texas to Montana, it follows cowboys on a grueling cattle drive through the wilderness.
It begins in the office of The Hat Creek Cattle Company of the Rio Grande. It ends as a journey into the heart of every adventurer who ever lived . . .
More than a love story, more than an adventure, Lonesome Dove is an epic: a monumental novel which embraces the spirit of the last defiant wilderness of America.
Though set less than a century ago, the world of Steinbeck’s novel is so very different from our own. This masterpiece follows the Joad family as they head west to California, escaping the hardship and poverty of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.
Depression-era America is described with such detail and emotion that the reader feels almost like a companion of the Joads, each of whom are rendered with precision and depth. In other hands, this might have been a grim, gloomy tale, but Steinback evokes themes of loyalty, kindness, and pride with peerless power and skill.
'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.'
Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl era Oklahoma in search of the promised land of California. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and powerlessness, yet out of their struggle Steinbeck created a drama that is both intensely human and majestic in its scale and moral vision.
This is the first part of S.D. Skyes’ medieval mystery series, following nobleman and investigator Oswald de Lacy. Sykes always creates an intriguing, compelling plot for each of the five de Lacy novels but it is the fourteenth-century setting that draws the reader in.
This is a land ravaged by the Black Death and the reader is not only entertained but informed by this powerful evocation of a society dealing with a disaster almost beyond comprehension.
Book 1 in the gripping Oswald de Lacy series, which can be read as a standalone, from 'the medieval CJ Sansom' (Jeffery Deaver)
England, 1350: the Black Death has changed the country forever, taking master and servant alike.
Young Oswald de Lacey was never meant to be Lord of Somershill Manor, but when his father and older brothers die of the Plague, he must return home from the monastery and assume responsibility for an estate ravaged by pestilence.
Almost immediately Oswald is confronted with the vicious murder of a young woman, Alison Starvecrow. The village priest claims it is the…
A historical thriller set in south London just after World War II, as Britain returns to civilian life and the men return home from the fight, causing the women to leave their wartime roles. The South London Hospital for Women and Children is a hospital, (based on a real place) run by women for women and must make adjustments of its own. As austerity bites, the coldest Winter then on record makes life grim. Then a young nurse goes missing.
Days later, her body is found behind a locked door, and two women from the hospital, unimpressed by the police response, decide to investigate. Highly atmospheric and evocative of a distinct period and place.
One cold dark night, as a devastated London shivers through the transition to post-war life, a young nurse goes missing from the South London Hospital for Women & Children. Her body is discovered hours later behind a locked door.
Two women from the hospital join forces to investigate the case. Determined not to return to the futures laid out for them before the war, the unlikely sleuths must face their own demons and dilemmas as they pursue - The Midnight Man.
‘A mystery that evokes the period – and a recovering London – in…
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