Site of a silver mine in late 1900s Town destroyed by fire Today a ghost town

A female spymaster will face mortal danger to protect her husband and her queen. . . Mistress Rosamond Jaffrey is recruited by Queen Elizabeth I's spymaster to be lady-in-waiting to Lady Mary, a cousin of the queen who is being courted by Russia's Ivan the Terrible. However, there are some nobles at court who will do anything they can to thwart such an alliance and Rosamond must put herself in mortal peril to protect her ward . . .

"When Ursula Blanchard's neighbour is murdered, she is once again involved with matters of espionage and affairs of state"
July, 1573. Recently widowed, Ursula Blanchard is living a quiet life on her Surrey estate, caring for her infant son. But her peaceful existence is shattered when Ursula's neighbour Jane Cobbold is found dead in her own flowerbed, stabbed through the heart with a silver dagger - and Ursula's manservant Brockley is arrested for the crime. Determined to prove Brockley's innocence, Ursula seeks help from her old mentor Lord Burghley. But when a second death occurs and the queen's new spymaster, Francis Walsingham, gets involved, once again Ursula is reluctantly drawn into matters of espionage and affairs of state.

Murder and family secrets, a touch of romance and deeply-felt revenge - with the twist of all twists - make up the perfect page-turning thriller, One Good Deed, from one of the world's bestselling thriller writers, David Baldacci. 'One of his finest books. Great character, great story, great portrait of an era' Bill Clinton In 1949, Aloysius Archer arrives in the dusty Southern town of Poca City. He has nothing but a handful of dollars, the clothes he's wearing and an appointment with his new parole officer. After his wartime experiences in Italy and a prison sentence for a crime he didn't commit, Archer is looking for a fresh start and a peaceful life. On his first night of freedom, Archer meets local business tycoon Hank Pittleman, who promises Archer handsome compensation to work as his debt collector. Yet Archer takes on more than he bargains for, as he becomes embroiled in a long-running feud between the drought-struck town's most dangerous residents. When one of them dies, the authorities label Archer as their number one suspect. A bloody game is being played above and below the law. Everybody playing has a deeply buried secret, and Archer must uncover them all - if he's to avoid going back behind bars.

Having been inveigled into standing for the local curia, responsible for the submission of all local tax, Libertus discovers that any shortfall must be made good by the councillors themselves. So when news arrives that a tax-collector from a nearby outpost has committed suicide, having gambled everything away, Libertus is despatched to make enquiries, in the hope of recovering at least some of the missing revenue. He has also been asked to attend a wedding, in place of his patron, who is expecting a visit from an Imperial Legate. But the assignment which should have seen Libertus for once treated as an honoured guest begins to take grisly and unexpected turns. As he pieces together the unlikely truth, Libertus finds himself in mortal danger. Freedom, in all forms, is only relative - but there is a high price for it, sometimes paid in blood .

Richard Nottingham confronts an old enemy in the latest intriguing historical mystery 1734. When a young country lad requests the Constable's help in finding his sister who has run away to Leeds to seek her fortune, Nottingham is not optimistic. Such girls usually end up as prostitutes - or worse. The following day, the young man is found dead, his throat slit. The evening before his death, the victim had been seen in deep conversation with career criminal Tom Finer in the Bell Inn. Could there be a connection to his murder? Why has Finer returned to Leeds after a seventeen-year absence? And what really happened to the young man's sister? Then a second body is discovered floating in the River Aire - and Nottingham finds himself plunged into a murder investigation where nothing is as it seems.

Marcellus Hightower, the young boy in the novel, THIS IS ADAM, returns to his hometown as a grown man in DEVIL'S ELBOW. He seeks answers, turning for help to Adam Atwell, his surrogate father. Adam, a black man in the segregated South, shares with Marcellus the haunting memory of David Ransom's murder on the mighty Ocmulgee River. The memories interweave with a quarter century of Marcellus Hightower's quest for love and redemption, through his developing character, economic calamity and the turmoil of war. With Adam's sage guidance, he finds a way to "cleanse his heart" and face life anew. "DEVIL'S ELBOW is a powerful novel indeed. The old verities-a man's troubles with women, with himself, with love and guilt-are all treated as freshly as if Cheney had discovered them." Walker Percy (1969)

A baby is kidnapped - and the repercussions reach the highest levels of government in this absorbing historical mystery London, April, 1912. The third Irish Home Rule Bill is passing through Parliament and the situation is growing ever more tense. Closely involved in the negotiations, cabinet minister Edmund Latimer finds himself under growing pressure - which only intensifies when his seventh-month-old niece Lucy is snatched away in her pram in Regent's Park. Could there be a connection between Lucy's kidnapping and the Irish talks? With her husband under intolerable strain, Edmund's wife Alice makes it her business to find out. But the more she discovers, the more she realizes how little she really knows the man she married five years before.