Carol McGrath gives us some insights into medieval Queenship. Why Did Women Join the Crusades? Why did women join Crusades? The importance of spiritual health during the medieval period cannot be underestimated. It was a way of cleansing the soul from the taint of sin, a penitential exercise and so there were female pilgrims. Yet, female visits to Holy Sites during menstruation was not acceptable to the Church. Monthly bleeding rendered women spiritually unpure. They were not deterred. One story circulated at the time concerning a woman who set out with her goose on the First Crusade- the goo ..read more

In sixteenth-century Venice, one young noblewoman dares to resist the choices made for her Venice in 1509 is on the brink of war. The displeasure of Pope Julius II is a continuing threat to the republic, as is the barely contained fighting in the countryside. Amid this turmoil, noblewoman Justina Soranzo, just sixteen, hopes to make a rare love marriage with her sweetheart, Luca Cicogna. Her hopes are dashed when her father decides her younger sister, Rosa, will marry in a strategic alliance and Justina will be sent to the San Zaccaria convent, in the tradition of aristocratic daughters. Lord ..read more

Assisi, 1973. On art historian Fabiola Bennett’s first day in Assisi, a local gentleman takes her aside to ask for advice about a painting that has wondrously appeared in the basilica’s bell tower. So much for enjoying relaxing days filled with dining on pasta and gelato. Soon, Fabiola and her besties, Pippa and Cary, are thrown into a shrouded mystery and caught up in a whirlwind of intrigue, theft, lies, and attempted murder, all of which overshadows the postcard-like charm of the small, historic town. Rome, 1511. Life is going well for Teodoro Nicoletti. Since he was a young man in Florenc ..read more

  A thirst for education. Shattered dreams. Fragile relations.   1840s Scotland Being sent to school is the most exhilarating thing that’s ever happened to young Margaret Law. She sharpens her newly-acquired education on her best friend, Jessie Morison, till Jessie is spirited away to become a scullery maid. But how can Margaret fulfil her visions of becoming a schoolteacher when her parents’ tailoring and drapery business suddenly collapses and she must find a job? Salvation from domestic drudgery – or never-ending seamstress work – comes via Jessie whose employer seeks a tutor fo ..read more

About The Skeleton Army Why should the devil have all the best tunes? Themes of inequality, forbidden love and personal responsibility weave through a fast-paced narrative in which the location plays a key part. Nation Cymru The Salvation Army has come prancing and singing from the slums of London to the poorest quarters of Oxford, but along with its red hot gospel preaching and music hall songs it brings a prohibition message which sparks immediate opposition and violence. An Army soldier – an ex-drunk – is brutally killed and a note suggests that the Salvation Army’s shadowy enemy, th ..read more

A Memory of Murder – a new  cosy murder mystery to solve –  along with library assistant Jan Christopher, her fiancé, Detective Sergeant Laurie Walker and her uncle, Detective Chief Inspector Toby Christopher. Set in the 1970s this easy-read cosy mystery series is based around the years when Helen was a north-east London library assistant, using many of her remembered anecdotes, some hilarious – like the boy who wanted a book on Copper Knickers. (You’ll have to read the first book, A Mirror Murder to find our more!) The mysteries alternate between Jan’s home town, and where Laurie’s ..read more

UNITED BY WAR. DIVIDED BY A SECRET. From silent era Hollywood and the nightclubs of pre-war Vienna to the ruins of Soviet Berlin, discover a moving, ambitious story of an enduring love amidst the devastation of war . . . In 1938, English spy Harry Taverner and Jewish photographer Anna Cantrell spend the night dancing at Berlin’s most elegant hotel. Anna is married to another man, the Nazi shadow is rising over Europe and neither expects to ever meet again. But once peace is declared, they reunite in the ruins of Berlin, where Anna is searching for her missing children. With the blockade tighte ..read more

Escape into the dramatic world of London during the Blitz in this sweeping family saga of love, war and betrayal. Northamptonshire: 1980: Wealthy landowner, Hadan Rose, is dying. His daughter, May, rushes to his country estate, Rose Park, with her daughter, Rachel, to nurse him through his final days. In the afternoons, while Hadan sleeps, May tells Rachel about her wartime experiences. In 1940, Three of the four Rose sisters leave Rose Park to serve the war effort. May, the youngest is left behind. But she soon runs away from home to join an ambulance crew in London. She experiences the hor ..read more

I’m delighted to welcome Stella Riley today with an extract from her English Civil War novel, A Splendid Defiance. Visit from a prince Justin spent the afternoon in the Globe Room at the Reindeer Inn. It was a pleasant room but, as far as Justin was concerned, it might as well have been a coal cellar.  He sat broodingly in a corner and found a sardonic enjoyment in the wary glances accorded him by the other customers. He did not, however, get drunk and this was fortunate because, at just past five o’clock, the door was flung wide to admit the King’s nephew.  Silence engulfed the roo ..read more

Today I’m highlighting Try Before You Trust, a novel about the fascinating early Elizabethan poet Isabella Whitney. Try Before You Trust: To All Gentlewomen and Other Maids in Love by Constance Briones What if Taylor Swift found herself penning songs about love in Elizabethan England when women were required to be chaste, obedient, and silent? Isabella Whitney, an ambitious and daring eighteen-year-old maidservant turned poet, sets out to do just that. Having risked reputation and virtue by allowing her passions for her employer’s aristocratic nephew to get the better of her, Isabella Whitney ..read more