Showing titles in Historical

AD 265, Gaul—The Roman Empire is on the brink. Emperor Gallienus has amassed a huge army across the Alps to seize back the mountains from the usurper Posthumus. War has come. Ballista and his cavalry are on the frontline, battling in the most brutal of conditions. But if he is to survive the campaign and finally retire to his beloved Sicily, it's not just the battlefield he needs to navigate. As he and Praetorian Prefect Volusianus lay siege to Posthumus' armies, it becomes clear the greatest threat to Ballista's life might just come from within his ranks.

A night patrol finds a wealthy merchant hanged and set ablaze in the city’s main square. More than mere murder, this killing is intended to put the fear of God into Florence. Forty years earlier, puritanical monk Girolamo Savonarola was executed the same way. Does this new killing mean his fanatical disciples are reviving the monk’s regime of holy terror? Cesare Aldo is busy hunting thieves in the Tuscan countryside, leaving Constable Carlo Strocchi to investigate the ritual killing.

September 1920. A young bride is discovered dead at a country house on her wedding day. Has she fallen victim to the deadly Withington curse, which strikes down any woman who marries into the family? Forensic Pathologist Dr Bernard Spilsbury doesn't believe in such superstitions, and suspects a more earthly reason for Theodora Tupper's death. But as he and his trusty assistant Violet investigate, they soon discover that there are indeed ghosts at Withington Hall. And they, too, have a story to tell.

The most anticipated spy thriller of 2020, from the Sunday Times best-selling author of Corpus. Autumn 1941. The war is going badly for Britain and its allies. If Hitler is to be stopped, a new weapon is desperately needed. In Cambridge, professor Tom Wilde is approached by an American intelligence officer who claims to know of such a weapon - one so secret even Hitler himself isn't aware of its existence. If Wilde can smuggle the package out of Germany, the Third Reich will surely fall.

A gripping BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation based on the second novel in C. J. Sansom's best-selling Tudor crime series. Summer, 1540. It has been three years since the terrible events at Scarnsea monastery, and lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake is living a quiet life in London - until a summons from Cromwell sees him embarking on another dangerous secret assignment.

Heading south to lands he once considered his home, Beobrand is plunged into a dark world of piracy and slavery when an old friend enlists his help to recover a kidnapped girl. Embarking onto the wind-tossed seas, Beobrand pursues his quarry with single-minded tenacity. But the Whale Road is never calm and his journey is beset with storms, betrayal and violence. As the winds of his wyrd blow him ever further from what he knows, will Beobrand find victory on his quest or has his luck finally abandoned him?

1294 BC: The fragile accord between the Hittite and Egyptian empires is crumbling. The ancient world braces itself for war on an unprecedented scale. Prince Hattu, the greatest of the Hittite generals, suffers dreams of terrible consequences–conjured by the Goddess Ishtar. But Hattu refuses to accept her prophecies, adamant that there is one last chance for peace. This fragile hope lies in the borderlands of the east, where the two rival empires touch. Hattu gathers a chosen band and sets out for this distant, blistering desert land, determined and defiant.

A century apart, Dirk Pitt and Isaac Bell team up to unlock the truth about the most famous maritime disaster of all time. In the present day, Dirk Pitt is must make a daring rescue from inside an antiquated submersible in the waters around New York City. His reward afterwards is a document left behind a century earlier by legendary detective Isaac Bell - a document that re-opens a historical mystery. In 1911 Colorado, Isaac Bell is asked to look into an unexplained tragedy at Little Angel Mine, a disaster in which nine people died.

All Hanna Fischer ever wanted to do was to study physics under the great Albert Einstein. But when, as a teenager in 1919, her life is suddenly turned upside-down, she is catapulted into a new and extraordinary life - as a student, a secretary, a sister and a spy. From racist gangs in Berlin to gangsters in New York City, Nazis in the 1930s and Hitler's inner circle during the Second World War, Hanna will encounter some of history's greatest minds and most terrible moments, all while desperately trying to stay alive.

Missouri, 1955. Loretta Davenport has led an isolated life as a young mother and a wife to Pete, an ambitious assistant professor at a Bible college. They’re the picture of domestic tranquility—until a local girl is murdered and Loretta begins receiving messages from beyond. Pete dismisses them as delusions of a fevered female imagination. Loretta knows they’re real—and frightening.

Two candidates are vying to become chancellor of Germany. One is a patriot who has served for many years, the other a usurper, stoking the flames of nationalistic hate. Both harbour secrets, but only one knows the truth about the other. Everything turns on the events of one fateful day - 30th April 1945 - and what happened deep beneath Berlin in the Fürherbunker.

In the ghetto, the last 50,000 Jews await their fate, but, unlike those who preceded them to the death camps, these Jews are prepared to fight. Jan Kalisz, Kripo investigator and Resistance double-agent, has promised to supply them with weapons. But how will he fulfil his vow? The murder of a German officer appears to provide an opportunity.

Britannia, AD 45. Rome's plan to establish a new friendly king over a hostile native tribe is in grave danger. A sinister new Druid sect, led by a charismatic priest, is threatening to destabilise the province and has taken several Roman soldiers prisoner. Now Optio Horatius Figulus faces his most dangerous mission yet. He must venture deep behind enemy lines in search of his captured comrades and the Druids' secret fortress.

The Great Fire has reduced London to smoldering embers. From the ashes, thief taker Charlie Tuesday is drawn to investigate a string of strange murders. Mutilated corpses are washing up at Deptford, each marked with a dire astrological prediction. But only London's best crime-solver realizes the killer's deadly offerings will soon unleash a devastating force on England.

Ghost Station is a tense thriller about espionage, cryptography, and paranoia, set in the earliest days of the Berlin Wall. Can Reed trust Longshore? His boss? His lover? Can he find the truth behind the lies - or will Berlin become ground zero for a world-ending war?

China, 16th century. The Assassins are gone. Zhang Yong, the relentless leader of the Eight Tigers, took advantage of the emperor's death to eliminate all his opponents, and now the Templars hold all the power. Shao Jun, the last representative of her clan, barely escapes death and has no choice but to flee her homeland. Vowing to avenge her former brothers in arms, she travels to Europe to train with the legendary Ezio Auditore. When she returns to the Middle Kingdom, her saber and her determination alone will not be enough to eliminate Zhang Yong.

Winter, 1607. A man is struck down in the grounds of Battle Abbey, Sussex. Before dawn breaks, he is dead. Home to the Montagues, Battle has caught the paranoid eye of King James. The Catholic household is rumoured to shelter those loyal to the Pope, disguising them as servants within the abbey walls. And the last man sent to expose them was silenced before his report could reach London. Daniel Pursglove is summoned to infiltrate Battle and find proof of treachery. He soon discovers that nearly everyone at the abbey has something to hide.

When a mysterious puppet show arrives in Bishop's Lacey, death is not far behind... a grisly murder during a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk in the village hall reaches back to an earlier crime that has cast a shadow over the village for years. Flavia's investigations test her powers of deduction to the limit - and provide a shocking insight into the darker corners of the adult world.

Easter, 1177. Canterbury Cathedral, home to the tomb of martyr Saint Thomas Becket, bears the wounds of a terrible fire. Benedict, prior of the great church, leads its rebuilding. But horror interrupts the work. One of the stonemasons is found viciously murdered, the dead man’s face disfigured by a shocking wound. When the king’s clerk Aelred Barling and his assistant Hugo Stanton arrive on pilgrimage to the tomb, the prior orders them to investigate the unholy crime.

When her father and stepmother are found brutally murdered on a summer morning in 1892, Lizzie Borden - thirty-two years old and still living at home - immediately becomes a suspect. But after a notorious trial, she is found innocent, and no one is ever convicted of the crime. Meanwhile, others in the claustrophobic Borden household have their own motives and their own stories to tell....