Herefordshire is renowned for its hop-yards & cider-apple orchards threaded by peaceful footpaths lanes & byroads amidst rich pastures & wooded limestone ridges grazed by the famous terracotta-coloured cattle. But the county also has a wild side; the huge sandstone wall of the Black Mountains rises in the west the Forest of Dean & the remarkable Wye Gorge fringe the south & the Malvern Hills offer a dramatic eastern boundary. With walks in & around villages modest strolls to farmyard chapels Wye-side meadows & windswept hilltops & longer walks into the more remote corners of this undiscovered county. ...

A vivid & gripping historical thriller set in Elizabethan England introducing Giordano Bruno philosopher scientist & spy for all fans of C.J. Sansom & The Name of the Rose. In Elizabeths England true faith can mean bloody murder...OXFORD 1583. A PLACE OF LEARNING. & MURDEROUS SCHEMES. England is rife with plots to assassinate Queen Elizabeth & return the country to the Catholic faith. Defending the realm through his network of agents the Queens spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham works tirelessly to hunt down all traitors. His latest recruit is Giordano Bruno a radical thinker fleeing the Inquisition who is sent undercover to Oxford to expose a Catholic conspiracy. But he has his own secret mission at the University
- one that must remain hidden at all costs. When a series of hideous murders ruptures close-knit college life Bruno is compelled to investigate. & what he finds makes it brutally clear that the Tudor throne itself is at stake...
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All talk is of the End-time...and the dead are rising. At the end of the sunless summer of 1560 black rumour shrouds the death of the one woman who stands between Lord Robert Dudley & marriage to the young Queen Elizabeth. Did Dudleys wife Amy die from an accidental fall in a deserted house or was it a calculated murder? Even Dr John Dee astrologer royal adviser on the Hidden & one of Dudleys oldest friends is uncertain. Then a rash promise to the Queen sends him to his familys old home on the Welsh Border in pursuit of the Wigmore Shewstone a crystal credited supernatural properties. With Dee goes Robert Dudley considered the most hated man in Engl&. They travel with the entourage of a London judge sent to try a sinister Welsh brigand with a legacy dating back to the Battle of Brynglas in which close to a thousand Englishmen died at the hands of the Welsh. After the battle many of the bodies were according to legend obscenely mutilated. Now on the same haunted hill another dead man has been found similarly slashed. Devious politics small-town corruption twisted religion & a brooding superstition leave John Dee isolated in the land of his father... ...

The eagerly anticipated follow-up to the number one bestseller Vagabond this is the third instalment in Bernard Cornwell's GRAIL QUEST series in a bright & bold repackage. It is 1347. The Hundred Years War has been suspended. The truce releases English archer Thomas of Hookton to pursue his arch enemy & resume his quest for the most prized relic in Christendom: the Holy Grail. Heading south Thomas & his men-at-arms begin lightning raids to draw out his enemy. But fate takes an unexpected hand when the plague strikes. What had been a landscape of castles monasteries vineyards & villages becomes death's kingdom & the need for the grail as a sign of God's favour is more urgent than ever. ...

When Elizabeth finds a green-tinged creature in the woods shes amazed to discover that its actually a girl of her own age. Isabella has spent the last 300 years in the faery world hiding from persecutors who accused her of being the daughter of a witch. Elizabeth has her own persecutors to face. A catholic priest is hiding in her home
- an act of treason in 1586
- & the net is closing in. As they become friends Elizabeth & Isabella must find a way to protect the family from being torn apart.

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Will Storr was in the tropical north of Australia excavating fossils with a celebrity creationist when he asked himself a simple question. Why dont facts work? Why that is did the obviously intelligent man beside him sincerely believe in Adam & Eve the Garden of Eden & a six-thous&-year-old Earth in spite of the evidence against them? It was the start of a journey that would lead Storr all over the world -- from Texas to Warsaw to the Outer Hebrides -- meeting an extraordinary cast of modern heretics whom he tries his best to underst&. He goes on a tour of Holocaust sites with David Irving & a band of neo-Nazis experiences his own murder during past life regression hypnosis discusses the looming One World Government with iconic climate sceptic Lord Monckton & investigates the tragic life & death of a woman who believed her parents were high priests in a baby-eating cult. Using a unique mix of highly personal memoir investigative journalism & the latest research from neuroscience & experimental psychology Storr reveals how the stories we tell ourselves about the world invisibly shape our beliefs & how the neurological hero maker inside us all can so easily lead to self-deception toxic partisanship & science denial. ...

From Rory Clements winner of the Ellis Peters Historical Fiction Award comes THE HERETICS the fifth in his acclaimed John Shakespeare Elizabethan mystery series. ' Does for Elizabeth's reign what C. J. Sansom does for Henry VIII's' Sunday Times England may have survived the Armada threat of 1588 but when Spanish galleys land troops in Cornwall on a lightning raid seven years later is it a dry-run for a new invasion? Or is there perhaps a more sinister motive? The Queen is speechless with rage. But as intelligencer John Shakespeare tries to get a grip on events one by one his network of spies is horribly murdered. What has all this to do with Thomasyn Jade a girl driven to the edge of madness by the foul rituals of exorcism? & what is the link to a group of priests held prisoner in bleak Wisbech Castle? From the pain-wracked torture rooms of the Inquisition in Seville to the marshy wastes of fenland from the wild coasts of Cornwall to the sweat & sawdust of the Elizabethan playhouses & from the condemned cell at Newgate to the devilish fantasies of a fanatic THE HERETICS builds to a terrifying climax that threatens the life of the Queen herself. ...

From Dune to Rakis to Dune the wheel turns full circle. From burning desert to green & fertile land & on again to burning desert.. .the cycle is complete. The people of the Scattering are returning. Amongst them mysterious & threatening are the women who call themselves the Honoured Matres adepts of an ecstatic cult. & on Rakis become Dune an ancient prophecy is fulfilled with the coming of the she-sheer Sheeana.. . ...

1062 a time many fear is the End of Days. With the English King Edward heirless & ailing across the grey seas in Normandy the brutal William the Bastard waits for the moment when he can drown England in a tide of blood. The ravens of war are gathering. But as the king's closest advisors scheme & squabble amongst themselves hopes of resisting the naked ambition of the Norman duke come to rest with just one man: Hereward... To some a brilliant warrior to others a devil in human form Hereward is as adept in the art of slaughter as the enemies that gather to claim England's throne. But in his country's hour of greatest need he has been declared an outlaw. To stay alive
- & a freeman
- he must carve a bloody swathe from the frozen hills of Northumbria to Flanders' fields & the fenlands of East Anglia. The tale of a man whose deeds will become the stuff of legend this is also the story of two mis-matched allies: Hereward the man of war & Alric a monk & a man of peace. One will risk everything to save the land he loves the other to save his friend's soul...

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Its 1067. The battle of Hastings has been lost; Harold Godwinsson is dead. The iron fist of William the Bastard has begun to squeeze the life out of Engl&. Villages are torched & men women & children put to the sword as the Norman king attempts to impose his cruel will upon this unruly nation. But there is one who stands in the way of the invaders savagery. He is called Hereward. He is a warrior & master tactician & as adept at slaughter as the imposter who sits upon the throne. & he is Englands last hope. In a Fenlands fortress of water & wild wood Herewards resistance is simmering. His army of outcasts grows by the day
- a devils army that emerges out of the mists & the night leaving death in its wake. But William is not easily cowed. Under the command of his ruthless deputy Ivo Taillebois
- the man they call the Butcher
- the Norman forces will do whatever it takes to crush the rebels even if it means razing England to the ground. Here then is the tale of the bloodiest rebellion England has ever known
- the beginning of an epic struggle that will echo down the years...



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