Sarum

Gaëlle de Barbet is sixteen years old in 1940 when the German army occupies France. In a matter of months, her father and brother are killed, her mother descends into madness, and her closest friend, Rebekah Feldmann, is sent to a detention camp. Taking terrifying risks, Gaëlle becomes a member of the Resistance, fearlessly delivering Jewish children to safety underneath the eyes of the Gestapo and their French collaborators. Conducted in secret, her missions for the Resistance will mark her for years. In the final days of the war, she executes a plan to help save France's art treasures. Bu…

'What kind of circus is only open at night?' The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. The black sign, painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, reads: Opens at Nightfall Closes at Dawn As dusk shifts to twilight, tiny lights begin to flicker all over the tents, as though the whole of the circus is covered in fireflies. When the tents are aglow, sparkling against the night sky, the sign lights up: Le Cirque des Rêves The Circus of Dreams. The gates shudder and unlock, seemingly by their own volition. They swing…

In 1895, sixteen-year-old Juliet LaCompte has a passionate, doomed romance with the married Parisian painter Auguste Marchant. When her mother — a witch — botches a curse on Marchant, she unwittingly binds Juliet to the artist through time, damning her to re-live her affair and die tragically young lifetime after lifetime as the star-crossed lovers reincarnate through history. Luke Varner, the worldly demon tasked with maintaining this badly crafted curse, has been helplessly in love with his charge, in all her reincarnations, since 19th century France. He’s in love with Nora, a silver scre…

In A Foreign Field Ben MacIntyre has found another story from history's margins In two previous books, Forgotten Fatherland and The Napoleon of Crime , he focused on characters from the footnotes of history, creating compelling narratives from the stories of Nietzsche's sister and of a Victorian master criminal, brought it centre stage and constructed a very powerful drama of love, war and death around it. Robert Digby was a well-educated, middle-class private in the British Expeditionary Force at the beginning of World War I. In the very first month of the war, as the British, French and G…

"Gatsby?" asked Daisy urgently. "What Gatsby?" Could it be the same young army lieutnant whom Daisy Fay met five years ago - and who owns a sumptuous house on Long Island ,where New York Society enjoys the best parties on offer? Is it just coincidence that Gatsby lives across the bay from Daisy - now married to wealthy polo-Player Tom Buchanan? As one man's mysterious dream moves towards its ultimately tragic conclusion, Midwesterner Nick Carraway is drawn into the dark world of Gatsby's past and present - a world of hidden frustrations and superficial relationships which perfectly illustra…