Ancient Sicily. Enter GELON: visionary, dreamer, theatre lover. Enter LAMPO: feckless, jobless, in need of a distraction.

Imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, thousands of defeated Athenians hang on by the thinnest of threads.

They’re fading in the baking heat, but not everything is lost: they can still recite lines from Greek tragedy when tempted by Lampo and Gelon with goatskins of wine and scraps of food.

And so an idea is born. Because, after all, you can hate the invaders but still love their poetry.

It’s audacious. It might even be dangerous. But like all the best things in life – love, friendship, art itself – it will reveal the very worst, and the very best, of what humans are capable of.

What could possibly go wrong?

From the bestselling author of The House at Riverton and The Forgotten Garden, Kate Morton brings us her trademark mix of secrets, lies, and intricately layered mysteries in The Clockmaker's Daughter. My real name, no one remembers. The truth about that summer, no one else knows. In the depths of a nineteenth-century winter, a little girl is abandoned in the narrow streets of London. Adopted by a mysterious stranger, she becomes in turn a thief, a friend, a muse, and a lover. Then, in the summer of 1862, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, she retreats with a group of artists to a beautiful house on a quiet bend of the Upper Thames . . . Tensions simmer and one hot afternoon a gunshot rings out. A woman is killed, another disappears, and the truth of what happened slips through the cracks of time. Over the next century and beyond, Birchwood Manor welcomes many newcomers but guards its secret closely - until another young woman is drawn to visit the house because of a family secret of her own . . . As the mystery begins to unravel, we discover the stories of those who have passed through Birchwood Manor since that fateful day in 1862. Intricately layered and richly atmospheric, it shows that, sometimes, the only way forward is through the past.

In her latest novel, Wendy Louise Bardsley has tackled the horrors of the Crimean war with great empathy and, at the same time, has vividly described the pioneer work of Florence Nightingale, as a nurse in that conflict. Florence Nightingale had a calling that took her away from a comfortable life and a marriage proposal to a barracks hospital in Scutari, where she and her group of chosen nurses, would tend sick, wounded and maimed soldiers in the most foul of conditions. Florence had a great supporter for her mission, Sidney Herbert, the Minister for War, and between them, with steadfast perseverance, they secured the supplies of food, medicines and other essentials, that made life bearable for the hospital's patients and staff. In doing so, Florence Nightingale brought a glimmer of hope and light to the lives of those in darkest despair. As the Crimean war ended Florence Nightingale was honoured to receive commendation for her work from Queen Victoria, which signalled the start of a lifelong campaign to enhance the much-treasured nursing profession. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: A LIGHT IN DARKEST CRIMEA is a stunning novel that will bring to the reader the stark reality of war.