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The Secret Christmas

December, 1653, England. The Puritan parliament has outlawed the celebration of Christmas and while shops must stay open every day, the theatres have been forced to close their doors.

The Hawthorne family have been allowed to return to their ancestral home, Measham Hall, just in time for Christmas. This is only after Sir Nicholas Hawthorne has reluctantly agreed to take an oath of loyalty to the Commonwealth. When a theatre troupe begging alms turn up on their doorstep, the family’s Catholic traditions of hospitality and charity dictate they must welcome the strangers in, despite the risks involved. These magical and exuberant guests transform Christmas at Measham Hall into a secret celebration, filled with theatrical performances, music and bountiful banquets, much to the delight of the children, William and Alethea.

This festive prequel to The Master of Measham Hall is a delightful tale of a small rebellion and sows the seed for decisions William and Alethea will make in years to come.

The Prisoner of Measham Hall

1690. England is in crisis – the new protestant King William III has embarked on wars in France and Ireland, inflation is rampant and the price of corn is causing riots.

At Measham Hall, Sir William Hawthorne faces a predicament of his own: his loyal steward has died, and he must find another. His problems appear to have been solved when the charming Mr Goodwyn arrives with a mysterious letter of recommendation and takes up the post. But soon, to the rest of the household’s dismay, Goodwyn appears to have both Sir William and the estate dancing to his tune.

Meanwhile, Sir William’s heir, Nicholas, is in Ireland fighting against the Williamite troops. But Nicholas is playing a dangerous game as double agent, risking both his love and his life. When one battle is over, he must return to Measham Hall to fight another and defeat an old foe in a new guise or lose Measham Hall forever…

The Messenger of Measham Hall

For Nicholas Hawthorne, the Catholic heir to Measham Hall in Derbyshire, subterfuge is part of everyday life. But there are deeper and darker secrets even than his family’s outlawed religion: why is his father, Sir William, so reclusive? What became of his mother, and his aunt Alethea? And who fatally betrayed his cousin Matthew?

Nicholas is determined to find out, but as England slides towards invasion by the Protestant forces of Prince William of Orange, he becomes entangled in conspiracies within King James’s court – and soon learns that both truth and love come at a high price.

Hester

A dazzlingly inventive tale of troubled legacies, desire and unsung power, inspired by The Scarlet Letter.

Glasgow, 1829: Isobel, a young seamstress, and her husband Edward set sail for New England, in flight from his mounting debts and addictions. But, arriving in Salem, Massachusetts, Edward soon takes off again, and Isobel finds herself penniless and alone.

Then she meets Nathaniel, a fledgling writer, and the two are instantly drawn to each other: he is haunted by his ancestors, who sent innocent women to the gallows during the Salem witch trials – while she is an unusually gifted needleworker, troubled by her own strange talents. Nathaniel and Isobel grow ever closer. Together, they are dark storyteller and muse; enchanter and enchanted. But which is which?

The Complete Fairy Stories of Oscar Wilde

‘Triumphs of the imagination’ Stephen Fry

The treasured fairy tales of Oscar Wilde in a stunning gift edition featuring exquisite illustrations by the celebrated artist Philippe Jullian with an afterword by Wilde’s son, Vyvyan Holland. For nearly 150 years, the classic fairy stories of Oscar Wilde have been cherished by readers of all ages. Rediscover all nine of the stories first published in The Happy Prince and other stories (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891).

The Spirit Engineer

‘A fiendishly clever tale of ambition, deception, and power’ DERREN BROWN

Belfast, 1914. Two years after the sinking of the Titanic, high society has become obsessed with spiritualism, attending séances in the hope they might reach their departed loved ones.

William Jackson Crawford is a man of science and a sceptic, but one night with everyone sitting around the circle, voices come to him – seemingly from beyond the veil – placing doubt in his heart and a seed of obsession in his mind. Could the spirits truly be communicating with him or is this one of Kathleen’s parlour tricks gone too far?

Based on the true story of Professor William Jackson Crawford and famed medium Kathleen Goligher, and with a cast of characters including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini, The Spirit Engineer conjures a haunted, twisted tale of power, paranoia and one ultimate, inescapable truth…

The Master of Measham Hall

1665, London. The scars of the English Civil Wars are yet to heal and now the Black Death engulfs the land. Alethea Hawthorne is a lady’s companion to the Calverton household, but when she suddenly finds herself cast out on the plague-ridden streets of London, a long road to her family home of Measham Hall lies ahead.

How will this determined country girl navigate a perilous new world of religious dissenters, charlatans and a pestilence that afflicts peasants and lords alike?

The Master of Measham Hall is the first book in a page-turning historical series. In lyrical prose, Anna Abney portrays the divides at the heart of Restoration England in a timeless novel about survival, love, and family loyalty.

Arcadian Days

The Greek myths, refined by the great poets and playwrights of Ancient Greece, distil the essence of human life: its brief span, its pride, courage and insecurity, its anxious relationship with the natural world – earth, sea and sky, represented by powerful gods and monsters.

Taking inspiration from the incomparably beautiful and intense poetry of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, Spurling – a lifelong classicist and an award-winning playwright and historical novelist – spins five more myths for contemporary readers. These captivating tales centre on male-female pairs – Prometheus and Pandora, Jason and the sorceress Medea, Oedipus and his daughter Antigone, Achilles and his mother Thetis, Odysseus and Penelope – that destroyed dynasties, raised and felled heroes, and sealed the fates of men.

Beyond the Secret Garden

The definitive and revealing biography of the author of The Secret Garden.

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s favourite theme in her fiction was the reversal of fortune, and she herself knew extremes of poverty and wealth. Born in Manchester in 1849, she emigrated with her family to Tennessee because of the financial problems caused by the cotton famine. From a young age she published her stories to help the family make ends meet. Only after she married did she publish Little Lord Fauntleroy that shot her into literary stardom.

On the surface, Frances’ life was extremely successful: hosting regular literary salons in her home and travelling frequently between properties in the UK and America. But behind the colourful personal and social life, she was a complex and contradictory character. She lost both parents by her twenty-first birthday, Henry James called her "the most heavenly of women" although avoided her; prominent people admired her and there were many friendships as well as an ill-advised marriage to a much younger man that ended in heartache. Her success was punctuated by periods of depression, in one instance brought on by the tragic loss of her eldest son to consumption.

Ann Thwaite creates a sympathetic but balanced and eye-opening biography of the woman who has enchanted numerous generations of children.

I, Hogarth

Hogarth’s epoch-defining paintings and engravings, such as Gin Lane and The Rake’s Progress, are renowned. He was London’s painter par excellence, and supplies the most enduring vision of the eighteenth century’s ebullience, enjoyments and social iniquities. From his lifelong marriage to Jane Thornhill, his inability to have children, his time as one of England’s best portrait painters, his old age and unfortunate dip into politics, and ultimately his death, I, Hogarth is the artist’s life through his very own eyes.

Recommended for readers of Peter Ackroyd and Hilary Mantel, this novel charts Hogarth’s personal story in four parts carefully blending the facts of his life with fiction, beginning with a childhood spent in a debtor’s prison and ending with his death in the arms of his wife.

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