unusually. Welcome to the world of THE LYON'S DEN: The Black Widow of Whitehall Connected World, where the underground of Regency London thrives... and loves.Proud Scottish brothers, Cheyne, Matthew, and Lucas are known as the Lyons of Mar. Cheyne and Matthew have fallen in love and married their brides, will Lucas be next?Lucas Lyon thought he could escape the matchmaking schemes of his distant relation, Bessie Dove-Lyon, by waiting for the morning of his departure from London to visit her. But she is ready for him, and he leaves her Lyon’s Den to return to Edinburgh not only with the beautiful Beatrix MacGlory in tow, but her overly perfumed aunt and her aunt’s little yipping dog.Will he survive the ten day journey in a cramped carriage with those three? More important, will he keep his hands off Beatrix? He is falling in love with her, but she is returning to Edinburgh for an arranged betrothal to another man. Since when has that stopped Lucas from claiming what he wants?

    War Department, is thrust into a desperate chase surrounding the world’s deadliest secret…the atomic bomb. Against the steamy Panamanian backdrop, Rollie clashes with a ruthless adversary while negotiating a shadowy assemblage of spies, double agents, and alluring personalities. In a classic race against time, Rollie scrambles to prevent the secret from falling into enemy hands while trying desperately to discern friend from foe. The world, and his life, hangs in the balance. A sexy action thriller rich in espionage, intrigue, passion and romance, DEMON'S BLUFF rides a cracking plot all the way to an explosive climax.

    When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei.Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin’s brutality. Kolya’s revelations and his tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage. After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work. As a past secret comes to light, Sasha’s ambitions converge with Andrei’s duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are truly worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well.

    “Stay out of the affairs of my people,” he warns. “Or face the consequences.” Elsewhere, Cardinal Tosca is slain and robbed of an ancient scroll. What secrets does it hold? And do they run too deep for even the world’s most famous detective to unravel?BOOK 2: SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE FOUR-HANDED GAMEA tormented translator, an assaulted actress, a murder with the hallmarks of Jack the Ripper. Holmes finds himself faced with an unprecedented spate of cases. Yet these crimes are the work of a single deadly adversary. Has London’s most celebrated sleuth finally met his match?BOOK 3: THE ILLUMINATION OF SHERLOCK HOLMESHolmes and Watson journey to Bavaria, through icy mountains and secluded castles, in hot pursuit of their quarry. But their man eludes them. And the duo must return to London, knowing that an old adversary awaits them craving deadly revenge on Holmes. Just how far will they be willing to go to get it?THE LOST FILES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES SERIESBOOK 4: THE LOST FILES OF SHERLOCK HOLMESDr John Watson reopens his tin box of chronicles, offering up seven exhilarating new accounts of Holmes’s extraordinary skills. What is the connection between murderous attacks on a colonel’s wife and the Legend of King Arthur? Why is a disgraced ship captain stalking his neighbour? Who stole the statue of The Dying Gaul? Find the answers in this gripping compendium of adventure stories.BOOK 5: THE CHRONICLES OF SHERLOCK HOLMESDelving into the depths of his memory, Watson reveals a collection of never-before-penned cases brought before the great Sherlock Holmes. Join the beloved British detective, as he is pitted against a selection of seven truly ingenious puzzles.BOOK 6: THE ANNALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMESIn this gratifyingly perplexing anthology, Watson finally discloses the details of mysteries tantalizingly alluded to but never before unravelled. Is a mother really speaking with her drowned daughter from beyond the grave? What connects a politician, a lighthouse and a trained cormorant? Why is the depth to which the parsley has sunk into the butter dish so vital a clue?

    1800s. The family of a young Royal Navy officer killed in action on a mission to capture a French privateer in 1798 install a memorial tablet in their church to commemorate his life and service to King and country. Lieutenant Oliver Anson, a distant relative of the illustrious circumnavigator George Anson and the younger son of a Kent clergyman, led the raid bidding to capture the gun brig Égalité hiding in a small Normandy harbour. But when it all goes wrong, Anson is felled by a musket ball in the head and is among the dead and wounded left ashore after his shipmates seek the refuge of their ship HMS Phryne. Only – and despite official newspaper reports to the contrary – the less-than-god-fearing Anson turns out not to be dead at all but very much alive, and stuns even fellow seamen with his miraculous resurrection. It is, however, far from plain sailing for the prisoners to escape from behind enemy lines and get back across the Channel. And the resourceful and ambitious Anson is then dealt a hammer blow by the admiralty when he is later denied a new sea-going appointment. Instead his future is to be an unattractive-looking, land-based role with the Sea Fencibles – tasked with foiling any potential French invasion attempt along the Kent coastline. Perhaps worse, sea rover Anson finds himself falling into the clutches of a local bigwig’s voluptuous and determined daughter who is desperate to find a husband… The Normandy Privateer charts the ups and downs of Lieutenant Anson and shines a poignant light on the loneliness and responsibilities of command. ‘An enlightening historical thriller.’ – Thomas Waugh David McDine OBE, is a former Deputy Lieutenant of Kent and a former Royal Navy Reserve officer and Admiralty information officer. He is also the author of Unconquered: The Story of Kent and its Lieutenancy. The Five Horseshoes, his debut novel in the Animal Man series, is sure to appeal to fans of Tom Sharpe, Alexander McCall Smith, PG Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh.

    Ann would love to stay at school but following the death of her mother she is forced to become a housemaid to support her family. Her employer, Mrs Barrie, couldn't be kinder, but the spiteful housekeeper Miss Hood makes Ann's life a misery. When she meets Maddie, the daughter of a prosperous Dundee solicitor, the only thing they have in common is that they were both born on a Sunday, but they become firm friends, finding fun and laughter in good times and bad.

    As she begins work at The Turnstone Convalescent Home, Rosie finds something she thought she had lost. Friendship. But friendship soon turns to love. Can this new love replace Will?This is not an ordinary love story.It's a story of love, loss, courage, and honour. Of promises that must be kept or risk losing everything you've ever held dear. An excerpt from POPPY FIELDS by Kathleen Harryman: I pray upon the fields of red, Where the poppies grow, That one day, we learn to live, In a world of love, Where weapons are replaced, With kindness, and understanding, That we learn to accept our differences, To truly remember, each and every life lost, Given for peace, given in hope, given for all of us, Given, so we could be free.

    Elizabeth has always suspected her mother harbours a secret from her time as a young woman in Nazi Germany. But her mother, suffering from dementia, is lost to her now.When Elizabeth stumbles across a Nazi certificate amongst her parent’s paperwork, it forces her to question the very foundations of her 1950s childhood and her first love; a childhood, she now realises, was built on lies.Elizabeth’s quest to find the truth leads her to Germany where she’s met with a wall of silence. She knows that beyond this wall, is the truth, a truth that exists deep within the dark and twisted soul of Hitler’s Germany.Germany, 1944. 18-year-old Hannah, beautiful and naive, volunteers to work in a home for evacuated children. But Doctor Heinkel, a loyal Nazi, decrees that there’s a better way for Hannah to serve the Fatherland.Drawn further into the doctor’s distorted world, Hannah only realises what’s expected of her when it’s too late. Confronted with evil, Hannah makes an impossible choice, a choice that will reverberate down the generations…Part of The Love and War Series, novels set during the 20th century's darkest years.20th Century Historical fiction with heart and drama.

    Two years later she walks out again and into the nearest house. The girl, known as Joy in the Cotswold village which adopts her, grows into a young woman at the advent of war and at last the mystery of her past begins to unravel.

    To save his family from financial ruin, he needs the help of his closest childhood friend, Violette. They must work together so he can gain the hand of her wealthy but spoiled heiress cousin and make a mutually beneficial marriage—a sound business arrangement for them both. In return for her help, Lawrence offers Violette the one thing she covets most—freedom. With his help, she can leave England and her cruel family behind. But there is a vital flaw in this near-perfect plan. Violette Pélet de Castelmarou is secretly in love with Lawrence and has hidden it for years. Yet now she finds herself feeding him lines and coaching him through sticky social situations in order to win over her cousin. But when emotions get involved, hearts become inextricably entangled. When the time comes, will Lawrence be able to say goodbye to Violette or will he compromise her virtue and make her his forever? If he cannot have her for his wife, then he’ll make her his mistress…

    Inspired by a true American legend, a Jewish boxer trained by the mafia and FBI fights the rising American Nazi party. During his undercover mission to rid the country of the American Führer, he falls in love with the enemy’s daughter.

    Following the disappearance of his wife, his life and career have fallen apart.A distinctive tiger tattoo is the only clue to her identityOnce a rising star of Singapore CID, Betancourt has been relegated to the Marine Division, with tedious dockyard disputes and goods inspections among his new duties.Who is she? And why are the authorities turning a blind eye?But when a beautiful, unidentified Japanese woman is found murdered in the shadow of a warehouse owned by one of Singapore’s most powerful families, Betancourt defies orders and pursues those responsible. What he discovers will bring him into conflict with powerful enemies, and force him to face his personal demons.

    Elias is a Christian Arab living on the eastern side of the newly divided city, and Lila is a Jew living on the western side. A growing conflict between their cultures casts a heavy shadow over the region and their burgeoning relationship. Between them lie not only a wall of stone and barbed wire but also the bitter enmity of two nations at war.Told in the voice of Elias as he looks back upon the long years of his life, About the Night is a timely story of how hope can nourish us, loss can devastate us, and love can carry us beyond the boundaries that hold human beings apart.

    When we last saw Abigail Sinclair and Ben Whimble at the close of "The Outer Banks House," they'd overcome their differences in life stations and defied convention to begin their new life together.But now it's seven years later, and "Return to the Outer Banks House" finds the couple married and in hard times-riddled by poverty, miscarriages, and weakened family ties. The strong bonds that once held them together have eroded over time, and their marriage threatens to unravel, particularly when relationships from the past and ambitions for the future find their way into the mismatched couple's present predicament.Can their love survive? Or are the challenges they face insurmountable? "Return to the Outer Banks House" carries readers back to 1875 to answer these questions and explore the ebb and flow of a rocky marriage set against the enchanting North Carolina shoreline. Replete with history, intrigue, and plenty of maritime drama, it's an evocative tale of struggle in the Reconstruction-era South.

    This collection of short stories is our gift to bring you something positive and joyful with which to end the year.Soldiers stumbling upon mercy and miracles; children sharing gifts of friendship and love; romance finding its way into lonely, war-weary hearts; resistance fighters; spies; families on the home front—all bringing their own ray of hope in the darkest of times.For this holiday season, we offer you this collection of short stories to lift your spirit, and to remember a time when love and the strength of human spirit prevailed.We hope you will enjoy stepping back into the wartime Christmases in these stories with us.