Book picks similar to
In Spite of All Terror by V.M. Knox


historical-fiction
mystery
sent-by-publisher
world-war-2

The Christie Affair


Nina de Gramont - 2022
    It’s a particular feeling, the urge to murder. It takes over your body so completely, it’s like a divine force, grabbing hold of your will, your limbs, your psyche. There’s a joy to it. In retrospect, it’s frightening, but I daresay in the moment it feels sweet. The way justice feels sweet.”The greatest mystery wasn’t Agatha Christie’s disappearance in those eleven infamous days, it’s what she discovered.London, 1925: In a world of townhomes and tennis matches, socialites and shooting parties, Miss Nan O’Dea became Archie Christie’s mistress, luring him away from his devoted and well-known wife, Agatha Christie.The question is, why? Why destroy another woman’s marriage, why hatch a plot years in the making, and why murder? How was Nan O’Dea so intricately tied to those eleven mysterious days that Agatha Christie went missing?

A Brilliant Deception


Kathleen Fuller - 2007
    In order to clear her name, she teams up with her best friend Emily's brother, the handsome Colin Dymoke, to find the real thief. To make matters worse, Lily's scheming former fiance keeps turning up and causing trouble while making Lily question her own self-worth. Thankfully, she has Colin by her side to help and protect her. As they work to solve the mystery, Lily fights her growing feelings for Colin, who is considered one of England's most eligible bachelors. Having been hurt in the past, she's reluctant to entrust her heart to someone again. Before long, the two of them are caught up in a web of intrique and deception. They need to clear Lily's name before she and her family are ruined and all hope for romance with Colin is lost.

A Shadowed Livery


Charlie Garratt - 2015
    Warwickshire, England, 1938While Hitler and Chamberlain are preparing to sign the Munich agreement, the murderer of a Jewish shopkeeper is being hanged in Birmingham.After witnessing the execution, Inspector James Given, who brought the killer to justice, is surprised to find he has been taken off the investigation to pursue something completely different.Grovestock House, owned by the wealthy Barleigh family has witnessed a triple death.With the terrible events neatly written off as a murder and a double suicide, Given is supposed to tidy up a few loose ends with the help of local constable, John Sawyer.But Given is sure there is more to the case than meets the eye.What dark secrets were the Barleigh family hiding? Could there be another killer involved?And how will Given react when he is forced to confront the ghosts of his past…?

Lost Autumn


Mary-Rose MacColl - 2019
    Seventeen-year-old Maddie Bright embarks on the voyage of a lifetime when she's chosen to serve on the cross-continent tour of His Royal Highness, the dashing Edward, Prince of Wales. Life on the royal train is luxurious beyond her dreams, and the glamorous, good-hearted friends she makes--with their romantic histories and rivalries--crack open her world. But glamour often hides all manner of sins.Decades later, Maddie lives in a ramshackle house in Brisbane, whiling away the days with television news and her devoted, if drunken, next door neighbor. When a London journalist struggling with her own romantic entanglements begins asking Maddie questions about her relationship to the famous and reclusive author M.A. Bright, she's taken back to the glamorous days of the royal tour--and to the secrets she's kept for all of these years.

Night Soldiers


Alan Furst - 1988
    A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin’s purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night Soldiers masterfully re-creates the European world of 1934–45: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 Paris, and guerrilla operations with the French underground in 1944. Night Soldiers is a scrupulously researched panoramic novel, a work on a grand scale.

The Hangman's Daughter - chapters 1-3


Oliver Pötzsch - 2010
    Exclusive to Kindle: a free sample of The Hangman's Daughter

A Good Death


Elizabeth Ironside - 2000
    . . Ironside's landscapes are rich, if decimated, and her characters extraordinarily intriguing--"Birmingham Post" (UK).

Nowhere Man: Another John Pickett Novella


Sheri Cobb South - 2020
    As weeks go by with no responses to his newspaper advertisement, he has taken to spending his days wandering idly about London rather than admit his failure to his beloved wife Julia, the former Lady Fieldhurst.One day, while loitering amidst the crowds thronging the Covent Garden market, he wonders morosely if it might have been better had he not been born at all. Then he sees one of his former colleagues and, in an attempt to make a discreet exit, contrives instead to knock himself unconscious.He awakens to discover that his Bow Street colleague doesn’t seem to remember him, and after staggering back home to Curzon Street, he finds someone else living in the house where he lived with Julia. But still greater surprises are in store for Pickett as he attempts to navigate his way through a world in which he never existed…With a wink and a nod to Frank Capra’s classic film IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, NOWHERE MAN offers an alternate version of many of the earlier entries in the John Pickett mystery series.

Island Reich


Jack Grimwood - 2021
    As Britain braces itself for invasion, ex-Tommy and safecracker Bill O'Hagan is glad to have escaped the battlefield. But when a job goes wrong, he finds himself forced to serve his country once more.A former king.Spurned by his government and fearing for his life, the Duke of Windsor flees to Portugal with the woman for whom he abdicated the throne, Wallis Simpson. As a web of Nazi trickery threatens to ensnare him, his fate and the fate of Britain rest on one man.The fate of a nation in their hands . . .Dropped on an occupied Channel Island without backup, Bill must crack an enemy safe and get its contents to safety. Failure will devastate any hope Britain has of winning the war.But with the layers of deception and intrigue drawing ever more tightly around them, Bill and the Duke both learn they aren't the only players in this game.And Berlin - which has the Duke in its own sights - is plotting its greatest move yet . . .

By Gaslight


Steven Price - 2016
    London, 1885. In a city of fog and darkness, the notorious thief Edward Shade exists only as a ghost, a fabled con, a thief of other men's futures -- a man of smoke. William Pinkerton is already famous, the son of a brutal detective, when he descends into the underworld of Victorian London in pursuit of a new lead. His father died without ever tracing Shade; William, still reeling from his loss, is determined to drag the thief out of the shadows. Adam Foole is a gentleman without a past, haunted by a love affair ten years gone. When he receives a letter from his lost beloved, he returns to London in search of her; what he learns of her fate, and its connection to the man known as Shade, will force him to confront a grief he thought long-buried. What follows is a fog-enshrouded hunt through sewers, opium dens, drawing rooms, and seance halls. Above all, it is the story of the most unlikely of bonds: between William Pinkerton, the greatest detective of his age, and Adam Foole, the one man who may hold the key to finding Edward Shade. Epic in scope, brilliantly conceived, and stunningly written, Steven Price's By Gaslight is a riveting, atmospheric portrait of two men on the brink. Moving from the diamond mines of South Africa to the battlefields of the Civil War, the novel is a journey into a cityscape of grief, trust, and its breaking, where what we share can bind us even against our darker selves.

Garden of Stones


Sophie Littlefield - 2013
    Within weeks, she and her mother, Miyako, are ripped from their home, rounded up along with thousands of other innocent Japanese-Americans and taken to the Manzanar prison camp. Buffeted by blistering heat and choking dust, Lucy and Miyako must endure the harsh living conditions of the camp. Corruption and abuse creep into every corner of Manzanar, eventually ensnaring beautiful, vulnerable Miyako. Ruined and unwilling to surrender her daughter to the same fate, Miyako soon breaks. Her final act of desperation will stay with Lucy forever...and spur her to sins of her own. Bestselling author Sophie Littlefield weaves a powerful tale of stolen innocence and survival that echoes through generations, reverberating between mothers and daughters. It is a moving chronicle of injustice, triumph and the unspeakable acts we commit in the name of love. "Littlefield has a gift for pacing...page-turning action and evocative, sensual, harrowing descriptions." -Publishers Weekly

Mystery at Glennon Hall


R.A. Wallace - 2019
    The Great War. Although the world is at war, Delia Markham is adjusting to her job as a typewriting teacher at the Glennon Normal School in the fall term of 1918. Her new life revolves around teaching future teachers. It isn’t an easy transition from her former assignment as Yeoman (F) in the U. S. Naval Reserve. When the call was made for women to help in the war effort, Delia was one of the first to sign up for a four-year enlistment using a loophole in the language that allowed women to join the service. That loophole relieved men of the clerical duties that kept them from combat. It offered women equal pay and rank for the same work. Thousands rushed forward to fill that gap. To differentiate them from other yeomen, the (f) designation was used. After spending years caring for her parents and ultimately losing them both, joining the service in the spring of 1917 was an exciting opportunity. One she relished for the time she put in as the amanuensis to a high-ranking officer. Her life with the admiral and his wife allowed her to grow, learn new skills, and enjoy new experiences until she was sidelined in the summer of 1918 by an incident that meant the abrupt end of her military career. A career that was as exciting as it was fulfilling. Circumstances and a remaining family connection brought Delia to the Glennon Normal School when other doors were closed to her. She was happy to have the job and her new home with her cousin Hazel, the head chef at the school. But life at the teachers’ training school isn’t quite as exciting as her time in the service. Not until a mystery at Glennon Hall is followed by a murder and Delia finds herself drawn into both. Suddenly, some of the past excitement found its way back into her life.

The Atlantis Papyrus


Jay Penner - 2019
    vivid... gripping. Takes you through a thrilling quest in a violent ancient world." Some secrets are best left unrevealed323 B.C.King Alexander the Great has died without a clear successor and the citizens of a vast empire wait nervously for what comes next. But Captain Deon has other worries—his family will be sold to slavery if he does not clear his debt soon. Desperate, he accepts a mission from Alexander’s wily Royal Secretary in return for a generous reward. All he has to do is steal a papyrus from the King's funeral procession.A papyrus with a stunning secret that can transform the balance of powers that fight for Alexander’s throne.Plunged into the heart of succession wars and thrust between bloody ambitions of greater men, Deon is forced to embark on a dangerous journey and battle those he fears, to decode the ancient clues before time runs out for his family. But the more he learns, the more he realizes that his decisions will decide the life and death of not only his loved ones but also that of millions of innocents.-------- BONUS: Join the newsletter on the author's website to get a free "History behind the book" that sheds light on some of the interesting events after Alexander's death.

The Shadow Land


Elizabeth Kostova - 2017
    A young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, has traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria, hoping that life abroad will salve the wounds left by the loss of her beloved brother. Soon after arriving in this elegant East European city, however, she helps an elderly couple into a taxi and realizes too late that she has accidentally kept one of their bags. Inside she finds an ornately carved wooden box engraved with a name: Stoyan Lazarov. Raising the hinged lid, she discovers that she is holding an urn filled with human ashes. As Alexandra sets out to locate the family and return this precious item, she will first have to uncover the secrets of a talented musician who was shattered by oppression and she will find out all too quickly that this knowledge is fraught with its own danger. Kostova's new novel is a tale of immense scope that delves into the horrors of a century and traverses the culture and landscape of this mysterious country. Suspenseful and beautifully written, it explores the power of stories, the pull of the past, and the hope and meaning that can sometimes be found in the aftermath of loss.

Lawson's Bend


Nicole Hurley-Moore - 2019
    At an end-of-year celebratory campout, several students from the local high school drown and Henrietta Bolton loses her best friend, Georgie, to the murky waters. Unable to accept this as an accident, Henny runs from the small country town vowing never to come back. Stephen Drake has never left. Instead, he's tried to settle down, working with his dad on their small farm. Stephen had dreams of a different life but after the night at the lake, nothing seemed important anymore. Years later, Henny is forced to return to Lawson's Bend when her beloved mother dies. Henny's plan is to finalise her mother's estate, sell the house and get the hell out of town as quickly as possible. But there is Stephen...Ever since they were kids Stephen has had a soft spot for Henny and it was he who saved her life that night amid the panic. Yet he never had the courage to tell her just how he felt. But now she's back in town, Stephen wonders if he has a second chance.