Long Time Dead
by Tony Black

Gus Dury is back on the drink. While in hospital after a hit-and-run accident, his best friend, Hod, asks him to investigate the ritual, on-campus hanging of an Edinburgh University student. The murder victim's mother is a high-profile actress, who has promised a big-money reward. Gus, desperate for money, goes undercover at the university, taking a janitor's job, and soon uncovers a similar ritualistic hanging which took place in the 70s. Few of the students are prepared to talk about it - until another one of their group turns up dead by the same method. But Gus now moves into very dangerous waters as he begins to discover what and who is really behind it all - and he becomes the next target for the executioner.

The Flower Reader
by Elizabeth Loupas

With her dying breath, Mary of Guise entrusts a silver casket containing explosive secret papers to the young Scottish heiress, Rinette Leslie. She makes Rinette promise to keep the casket hidden and only to give it to Mary, Queen of Scots, now on her way home from France to ascend the throne.

But Rinette makes a terrible mistake - she cannot resist showing it to her beloved young husband, before consigning the casket to its hiding place. This fatal decision will lead them into a maze of conspiracy and murder, in which they - and the beautiful castle by the sea, which is Rinette's inheritance - become the targets of ruthless men who seek to possess the casket at all costs.

Unable to tell friend from foe at court, and desperate to protect the queen's secrets, Rinette has one powerful weapon which may save her - the ancient art of floramancy, through which she can interpret the language of flowers and sometimes predict the future. But if the flowers should stay silent, who can she trust then?

Knights of the Hawk
by James Aitcheson

AUTUMN, 1071. The struggle for England has been long and brutal. Now, however, five years after the fateful Battle of Hastings, only a desperate band of rebels in the Fens stand between King William and absolute mastery of his kingdom.

Tancred, a proud and ambitious knight, is among the Normans marching to crush them. Once lauded for his exploits, he is now all but destitute. Embittered by his dwindling fame and by the oath shackling him to his lord, he yearns for the chance to win back his reputation through spilling enemy blood.

But as the Normans’ attempts to assault the rebels’ island stronghold meet with failure, the king grows increasingly desperate. With morale in camp failing, and the prospect of victory seeming ever more distant, Tancred’s loyalty is put to the test as never before.

For his true path, he knows, lies in a different direction. He seeks his love, Oswynn, once presumed dead but now believed to be held captive by a powerful Danish warlord. His journey will take him from the marshes of East Anglia into the wild, storm-tossed seas of the north, as he ventures in pursuit not just of her, but also of vengeance.

Hannibal: Fields of Blood
by Ben Kane

The fields of Cannae provide the setting for one of the bloodiest battles in history. But who will triumph? Hannibal and his warrior army, or the mighty legions of Rome.

By Ben Kane, the Sunday Times bestselling author of Hannibal: Enemy of Rome.

Hannibal's campaign to defeat Rome continues as he marches south to confront his enemy.
With him is a young soldier, Hanno. Like his general, Hanno burns to vanquish Rome. Never has the possibility seemed so likely.
But a stealthy game of cat and mouse is being played as Rome's generals seek to avoid confrontation.
Eventually the two armies meet under a fierce summer sun. The place is Cannae - the fields of blood.
The battle will go down in history as one of the bloodiest ever fought, a battle in which Hanno knows he must fight as never before - just to stay alive.

Operation Crossbow: The Untold Story of Photographic Intelligence and the Search for Hitler's V Weapons
by Allan Williams

The story of the aerial reconnaissance operation at Medmenham in Buckinghamshire, also known as MI4, is one of the great lost stories of World War Two. As the great RV Jones, Chief Scientist, British Government 1945 said, 'We might possibly have won the war without Enigma but we couldn't have won it without the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit.'

During the War nearly 300 million photographs, the majority stereoscopic, were taken by allied reconnaissance aircraft. At Medmenham's peak in 1944, nearly two thousand people were employed to interpret photographs and send out intelligence to front-line commanders in all the European theatres of war. Such was their skill and professionalism that it was said that an aircraft could land, the photographs be developed, plotted, interpreted and a brief be on the front-line commander's desk within two hours.

Their finest hour came in 1943 when a small team headed by the redoubtable Miss Constance Babington Smith found a strange and unknown line of buildings being constructed inland from the French Atlantic coast. She and her team under the code names Operation CROSSBOW and BODYLINE found the first V-1 on imagery, thus revealing the true extent of development of this 'Vengeance' (Strictly translated 'Reprisal') Weapon. Through their skill and dedication and the heroism of the allied pilots 92 of the 96 sites were found and destroyed in 1943, delaying the deployment of these weapons until after D-Day certainly saving many tens of thousands of lives, allowing the invasion of Europe to actually take place and as a consequence contributing significantly to the winning of the war.

This is a wonderful human story of derring-do. With access to hitherto unseen documentary and photographic sources at Medmenham, Allan Williams tells the real story for the first time.