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Dead Ground, by Graham Hurley

Dead Ground, by Graham Hurley

A World War II thriller of the highest order.

Dead Ground is a World War II thriller of the highest order and continues Graham Hurley’s “non-linear” The Spoils of War series, with each book covering a different aspect of World War II. The last book The Blood of Others was set around the Dieppe Raid in 1942. The...

Love And Marriage In The Age Of Jane Austen, by Rory Muir

Love And Marriage In The Age Of Jane Austen, by Rory Muir

Fascinating, instructive and entertaining.

I was not completely sure, when asked to review this book, whether 300 pages or so on Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen would be my sort of thing. I am interested in Georgian and Regency History but that interest tends more towards the political and the...

Birds of Prey, by Philip W. Blood

Birds of Prey, by Philip W. Blood

A little known history that finally puts to bed the assumption that it was only Nazis who carried out killings during the Holocaust.

Birds of Prey, by Philip W. Blood The Bialowieźa forest, in Poland and Belarus, is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The forest is full of interesting plant life and a wide range of wildlife including wolves, wild boar, deer and European bison. No wonder then, that...

Rising Tide, by Alan Bardos

Rising Tide, by Alan Bardos

Rising Tide, set against the backdrop of the Pearl Harbor attack, perfectly captures the creeping swell of panic.
Alya Magness-Jarvis

Rising Tide, by Alan Bardos, is the first novel in the Daniel Nichols Spy Thriller Series - the author’s second historical fiction series. Bardos’ first book, The Assassins, was received with great acclaim - this trend was then continued throughout the rest of his...

The Fall, by Henry Reece

The Fall, by Henry Reece

A realistic account of very human chaos shaped by individual agency and contingency.

The final months of England’s only republic, from 1658 to 1660, may be the most consequential yet least understood in its past. For a nation obsessed with the long history of its monarchy this is no coincidence. The Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 cast the...

Supremacy at Sea, by Evan Mawdsley

Supremacy at Sea, by Evan Mawdsley

An excellent exposition of the campaign that made the US Navy the extraordinary fighting machine that it remains to this day.

Supremacy at Sea The Second World War can be seen as a succession of phases, or campaign events, each of which in terms of timeline and effect had its own impact on the course and outcome of the war. The two big turning points in the Second World War both occurred in...

The Pirate Menace, by Angus Konstam

The Pirate Menace, by Angus Konstam

Good, bloody, myth-busting history packed with colourful personalities.

Few other outlaw groups in history have left such an enduring legacy as the seafaring pirates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In The Pirate Menace, Angus Konstam explores how, when, why, and where the world’s most infamous (and many lesser known) pirates...

When Henry VIII Came to Dinner, by Paul Wreyford

When Henry VIII Came to Dinner, by Paul Wreyford

Comically memorable examinations of the characters presented.

We are in a modern suburban house occupied by a boy and his father. The boy is a teenager, with an enquiring mind and a predilection for bad jokes. The somewhat inept father is usually the butt of these and the banter adds to the humorous lightness of touch that...

Normandy: The Sailors’ Story by Nick Hewitt

Normandy: The Sailors’ Story by Nick Hewitt

A tour de force and, importantly, thoroughly enjoyable.

When one thinks of D-Day, June 6th 1944, the first images that spring to mind are of brave soldiers disembarking landing craft and rushing onto the beaches to face the machine-guns of the defending Germans. Films, such as Saving Private Ryan and The Longest Day have...

The Legacy of Foulstone Manor, by J.C.Briggs

The Legacy of Foulstone Manor, by J.C.Briggs

A story of manipulation and madness, ghosts and the Gothic.
Ella Beales

The Legacy of Foulstone Manor is a dual timeline Gothic mystery that explores family secrets, lies, and how the past can haunt and trap you. In 1970, we encounter forty-something-year-old Joan, who has inherited Foulstone, the family home she was taken away from at...