Book picks similar to
Sign of the White Foal by Chris Thorndycroft
historical-fiction
adventure
arthurian
historical
Scrivener of Rome: A tale of the Ancient Republic
Ken Farmer - 2015
A young man is given a new start in life as a result of an impulsive action, beginning a journey that will take him to the far reaches of the known world to watch - and sometimes to partake in - the rise and fall of mighty empires.
A Western Christmas (Old West Wyoming Book 1)
Vivian Sinclair - 2017
After five years of hard work, Elliott Maitland has succeeded to make profitable the ranch he bought on a whim from a gambler who had no interest in working with cattle. A frosty winter day finds Elliott in town, hoping to conclude his business before the blizzard starts in earnest. Sam, the owner of the mercantile, asks him to give shelter to the new schoolteacher, who just arrived in town and has nowhere to stay. Celestine Tillman is in desperate need of a job and a place to live. Being hired as a teacher in Wyoming is a blessing. Discovering that no one is waiting for her at the train depot and no room is available in town so close to Christmas is distressing. Going home with this rancher could be dangerous, but what choice does she have? This adventure packed fictional story is set in Laramie, Wyoming at the end of the nineteen century and presents a true picture of the western town with all the good and the bad, the modern and the old west mixed together. An enduring town moving forward and changing with the times.
Wings Over Persia (British Ace Book 7)
Griff Hosker - 2017
Ordered by the League of Nations to keep the peace, he has just a handful of aeroplanes to control the skies over Mesopotamia. Attacked by rebellious Kurds and then an invading Turkish army, the Royal Air Force is hard pressed to keep the peace. When an old nemesis from Bill’s past emerges, he finds himself fighting for not only peace but his life. Based on true events this is a fast-moving novel about the early days of the Royal Air Force.
The Forsaken Maid's Secret
Faye Godwin - 2019
Discovered by the police, Bincy is taken to an orphanage, where she learns that Mama is not the only person who doesn't want her. In truth, nobody wants her, and Bincy is forced to cling to the orphanage bully Mae for comfort. As the years pass, Mae forces Bincy to do everything she demands, from picking on the younger girls to giving up her meager allotment of food. When Bincy is betrayed by Mae, she's sent to work in a manor house as a scullery maid. That's where Bincy meets two young men: Judd, the street urchin who comes into the cellar to scavenge for food, and Henry, the charismatic young master of the house. Despite Judd's warnings, Bincy finds herself falling for Henry. But when Henry demands more from her than she's willing to give, Bincy has to make a choice: give herself to him or face her greatest fear of being alone and discarded once more.
The Beggar Sisters
Rosie Darling - 2018
When she lost the printing business that was their livelihood soon after they had lost both their mother and father, they also lost the home in which they had both been born. Relegated to a life in a grey tenement, and long hours of Ada working in the Bow match factory and little Emma selling wares on the cold, unaccommodating streets of east London, the sisters had nothing but each other. What they shared now was a life without warmth, a life of disadvantage, a life where roast lamb and gravy was no more than a shared illusion, where Christmas was not a day apart from any other. And then Ada was forced to enter into a contract with a monster. Would he sell her to the highest bidder just as he had done to so many women before? What would become of little Emma if she were taken from her? Everett Floyd was known to be heartless. How was it that two young, vulnerable and innocent girls could melt his icy heart without even trying? In an age of misery where money distinguished people - and separated lives - could two very different worlds come together to heal the pain of the past and bring a new reality?
Legacy: A Justice Belstrang Mystery
John Pilkington - 2020
He locates the youth in Bedlam asylum, silent and starving himself. When he tries to free Jessop, he is warned off the case by a politic lawyer, Anstis. Soon after, Belstrang finds himself drugged, robbed and falsely imprisoned.Once released Belstrang persists in his investigation, but he is thwarted at every turn: unseen forces are at work who seemingly want Thomas Jessop to die. When Belstrang confronts Anstis, even he turns up dead.The trail grows murkier by the hour, drawing Belstrang into the fear-ridden Catholic underworld - until he uncovers a plan with its roots in the Gunpowder Plot of more than a decade ago. Young Thomas, an embittered papist, was being used in a desperate scheme to mark the anniversary of the Plot. The scheme failed – and now the conspirators seem eager to cover up the whole business.But Belstrang’s a stubborn man. With the help of ex-soldier Daniel Oldrigg, he sticks doggedly to his purpose - and stumbles on the real causes of the Anniversary Plot, which stem from the very heart of a corrupt government.Belstrang must uncover the truth, or die trying.
Sons of Africa
Jeffrey Whittam - 2011
Settler wagons in their hundreds left the safety of the Cape Colony; generations on, their descendents are still fighting to keep a land they love...... "For that smallest of moments the two men stared at each other. Between them flew a hundred years, a thousand reasons. Ancient prophecies, the creak of wagons over rough ground and a woman's yearning for infinite horizons, the strengthening of one man's belief and the imminent death of another."From Rhodesia's final years, the clock turns back to the windswept, dusty streets of Kimberley’s infamous diamond fields. For Catherine Goddard and her son, Mathew, their decision to cross the Limpopo as part of a settler wagon train is one borne of desperation and a boy's need to be reunited with his father. For three months their ox-drawn trek wagon stands as their only defence against the African wilderness and the bloodlust of Lobengula Khumalo’s warring impis.Throughout the passage of a hundred years, three racially divided families are fatefully drawn together. Dynasties are shaped and smashed by kings, warrior chiefs and the indomitable lust for power and wealth by men like Cecil Rhodes and the perpetrators of Zimbabwe’s chaotic new order.From the latter part of the nineteenth century, Sons of Africa runs inexorably to the demise of Rhodesia’s white minority rule and the emergence of the new Zimbabwe.
Phoenix Rising: A novel of Anne Boleyn
Hunter S. Jones - 2015
Court intrigue, revenge and all the secrets of the last hour are revealed as one queen falls and another rises to take her place on destiny's stage. A young Anne Boleyn arrives at the court of King Henry VIII. She is to be presented at the Shrovetide pageant, le Château Vert. The young and ambitious Anne has no idea that a chance encounter before the pageant will lead to her capturing the heart of the king. What begins as a distraction becomes his obsession and leads to her destruction. Love, hate, loyalty and betrayal come together in a single dramatic moment... the execution of a queen. The history of England will be changed for ever.
Pendragon
James Wilde - 2017
Long before Camelot rose, a hundred years before the myth of King Arthur was half-formed, at the start of the Red Century, the world was slipping into a Dark Age…It is AD 367. In a frozen forest beyond Hadrian’s Wall, six scouts of the Roman army are found murdered. For Lucanus, known as the Wolf and leader of elite unit called the Arcani, this chilling ritual killing is a sign of a greater threat.But to the Wolf the far north is a foreign land, a place where daemons and witches and the old gods live on. Only when the child of a friend is snatched will he venture alone into this treacherous world - a territory ruled over by a barbarian horde - in order to bring the boy back home. What he finds there beyond the wall will echo down the years.A secret game with hidden factions is unfolding in the shadows: cabals from the edge of Empire to the eternal city of Rome itself, from the great pagan monument of Stonehenge to the warrior kingdoms of Gaul will go to any length to find and possess what is believed to be a source of great power, signified by the mark of the Dragon.A soldier and a thief, a cut-throat, courtesan and a druid, even the Emperor Valentinian himself - each of these has a part to play in the beginnings of this legend…the rise of the House of Pendragon.
Time Pebbles
Jerry Merritt - 2014
Only Tekla cares enough to search for her over the years. As Ka Li survives fierce predators and scarce resources she leaves behind a series of signal cairns to help Tekla find her.Skipping forward 60,000 years, Helen Ryland, a mid-twentieth century archaeologist, unearths one of Ka Li's surviving signal cairns and realizes she has found trace of people who populated the Americas even before the Clovis culture. Helen's detective work tracking Ka Li's timeless signals across the Alaskan wilderness now intertwines with Ka Li's story. As Helen solves the puzzle of the signal cairns she finds universal fame and suffers devastating misfortune. In the end Helen discovers that science in isolation cannot answer all of her questions, for Tekla's devotion to Ka Li had not died even though six hundred centuries had passed.
Ride: A Novella
Octavia Randolph - 2014
No one forced her to do so. Yet she was compelled to this act by an irresistible force, drawing her on...Godgyfu of Mercia was a real woman, living in one of the most tumultuous and dangerous times in England's history. Born into wealth and privilege, she would die the year following the Battle of Hastings, and all her vast holdings be forfeit to the new Norman conquering king. Yet she did something which was never forgotten.Here is Ride, Godiva's own story, imagined by the author of the beloved Circle of Ceridwen Saga.
The Fires of Treason
Michele Quirke - 2020
As she leaves her luxurious lifestyle behind to join him in exile, she must learn to cope with the everyday struggles of the working class, all while keeping her true identity a secret. Facing new hardships and the looming threat of execution, Elizabeth will need to toughen up if she has any chance of surviving outside the palace walls.Prince Gregory spent his entire life trying to prove himself worthy of the crown until his banishment releases him of all the pressures and obligations that have chained him down. Although he has no intention of raising an army to defend his birthright, he soon learns that not everyone is content to let him walk away from the throne. With his sister's safety and well-being to consider, Gregory must make a decision that will change both their lives forever.
Three Novels of Ancient Egypt: River God / The Seventh Scroll / Warlock
Wilbur Smith - 2003
Code Name Camille: A story of trust, love and betrayal
Kathryn Gauci - 2019
Code Name Camille, now a standalone book. 1940: Paris under Nazi occupation. A gripping tale of resistance, suspense and love. When the Germans invade France, twenty-one-year-old Nathalie Fontaine is living a quiet life in rural South-West France. Within months, she heads for Paris and joins the Resistance as a courier helping to organise escape routes. But Paris is fraught with danger. When several escapes are foiled by the Gestapo, the network suspects they are compromised. Nathalie suspects one person, but after a chance encounter with a stranger who provides her with an opportunity to make a little extra money by working as a model for a couturier known to be sympathetic to the Nazi cause, her suspicions are thrown into doubt. Using her work in the fashionable rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, she uncovers information vital to the network, but at the same time steps into a world of treachery and betrayal which threatens to bring them all undone. Time is running out and the Gestapo is closing in. Code Name Camille is a story of courage and resilience that fans of The Nightingale and The Alice Network will love.
Diamonds in the Dust
Beryl Matthews - 2008
The three Bentley children are used to fending for themselves. Their widowed mother has been forced to take a night job at Grant’s clothing factory, and sees them only at breakfast and on Sundays. But at nearly eighteen, and with a job as a housemaid to help make ends meet, Dora is well able to look after her younger siblings Tom and Lily. Then one morning their mother fails to appear for breakfast, and when Dora is told by the gatekeeper at Grant’s factory that no one by the name of Harriet Bentley has ever worked there, the children grow worried. They know their mother loves them, and cannot believe she would deliberately deceive them. With the help of a neighbour, a former policeman who was badly injured during the War, Dora and her siblings start to investigate.