Historical fiction

Big Red

Big Red

Jerome Charyn

Narrated by a starry-eyed reporter, Big Red reimagines the tragic career of Rita Hayworth and her indomitable husband, Orson Welles. An insightful, tender portrait of a seemingly halcyon age before blockbusters and film franchises, Big Red promises to consume both Hollywood cinephiles and neophytes alike….

To Become an Outlaw

To Become an Outlaw

Peter Murphy

1964, Apartheid South Africa. Danie is poised to start a glittering academic career when he falls in love with Amy. But there’s a problem: he’s white, she’s not. Facing arrest, the couple flee South Africa and settle in Cambridge, becoming involved in increasingly dangerous schemes to undermine the South African…

The Matchmaker

The Matchmaker

Paul Vidich

In the vein of Graham Greene and John le Carre, The Matchmaker delivers a chilling Cold War spy story set in West Berlin, where an American woman targeted by the Stasi must confront the truth behind her German husband’s mysterious disappearance….

Late City

Late City

Robert Olen Butler

A 115-year-old man lays on his deathbed as the 2016 US election results arrive, and revisits his life in this moving story of love, fatherhood, and the American century from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler…

Where God Does Not Walk

Where God Does Not Walk

Luke McCallin

*LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER* The Western Front, July 1918. Gregor Reinhardt is a young lieutenant in a stormtrooper battalion on the Western Front. One of his subordinates is accused of murdering a group of officers. Not wanting to believe his friend could have done what he is accused of, Reinhardt begins to investigate…

Sergeant Salinger

Sergeant Salinger

Jerome Charyn

Grounded in biographical fact and reimagined as only Charyn could, Sergeant Salinger is an astonishing portrait of a devastated young man on his way to becoming the mythical figure behind The Catcher in the Rye, a novel that has marked generations….

NICK

NICK

Michael Farris Smith

Critically acclaimed novelist Michael Farris Smith pulls Nick Carraway out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this exhilarating imagination of his life before The Great Gatsby…

The Mercenary

The Mercenary

Paul Vidich

From acclaimed spy novelist Paul Vidich comes a taut new thriller following the attempted exfiltration of a KGB officer from the ever-changing – and always dangerous – USSR in the mid-1980s.Moscow, 1985. The Soviet Union and its communist regime are in the last stages of decline, but remain opaque to the rest of the…

Sherlock’s Sisters

Sherlock’s Sisters

Nick Rennison

Sherlock Holmes was the most famous detective to stride through the pages of late Victorian and Edwardian fiction, but he was not the only one. He had plenty of rivals. Some of the most memorable of these were women: they were ‘Sherlock’s Sisters’. This exciting, unusual anthology gathers together stories about 15 of them. They include…

When We Fall

When We Fall

Carolyn Kirby

England, 1943. Lost in fog, pilot Vee Katchatourian is forced to make an emergency landing where she meets enigmatic RAF airman Stefan Bergel, and then can’t get him out of her mind. In occupied Poland, Ewa Hartman hosts German officers in her father’s guest house, while secretly gathering intelligence for the Polish…

The Conviction of Cora Burns

The Conviction of Cora Burns

Carolyn Kirby

Birmingham, 1885. Born in a gaol and raised in a workhouse, Cora Burns has always struggled to control the violence inside her. Haunted by memories of a terrible crime, she seeks a new life working as a servant in the house of scientist Thomas Jerwood. Here, Cora befriends a young girl, Violet, who seems to be the…

Ungentlemanly Warfare

Ungentlemanly Warfare

Howard Linskey

A soldier and a spy, an officer but not quite a gentleman, Captain Harry Walsh is SOE’s secret weapon. Loathed by his own commanding officer, haunted by the death of his closest friend and trapped in a loveless marriage, Harry Walsh is close to burn out when he is ordered to assassinate the man behind the ME 163 Komet, Hitler’s miracle…