Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Genre Fiction

Cassandra Blake has raised her three motherless sisters. The girls are the pride of their book-loving, impractical father, and not in a hurry to marry. Then the American Civil War cuts off supplies of cotton to Lancashire, the mills fall silent and there is no work. There is a stark choice: stay and risk starvation or pack up and begin again elsewhere. Cassandra has fallen in love with Reece Gregory, but he can't support a wife. When he's given the chance to start a new life in Western Australia, he seizes the opportunity, promising to send for her.

Seventeen-year-old Liza is happy working as a lady's maid - until her employers decide to emigrate and her father makes up his mind that she is to wed an older widower whom she detests. Determined to avoid a loveless marriage, Liza plans to run away. But when the widower rapes her to force her to marry him, she flees back to the family for whom she worked. She feels she has no choice but to go with them to Australia, and they all set out on the long voyage. On board ship, Liza discovers to her horror that she has fallen pregnant.

Keara Michaels doesn't want to leave her family in Ireland, but fate sends her first to Lancashire, then across the sea to Australia, pregnant and penniless. And Theo Mullane, the man who loves her, is married, with an ailing baby son, so cannot follow her as he longs to. Mark Gibson leaves Lancashire to avoid marriage. But gold prospecting is a dangerous pursuit, and when his gentle young wife dies in childbirth, his father-in-law kidnaps the baby. So Mark runs away again, this time to Western Australia, where he employs Keara in his country inn.

In the woodland community of Shady Hollow, you'll discover a secret. Moose and mice, owls and bears live side by side in civilized harmony. Shady Hollow has a coffee shop and a bookshop, a haberdasher and a bank. All is well...until the town's querulous toad shows up dead. It's something this village haven't seen before: a murder.

Newly qualified teacher Tom Dwyer has been given his first post in Risingdale, a sleepy little village at the very top of the Yorkshire Dales. Unsure if he'll ever fit into this close-knit community, Tom joins a motley staff at the village school. With pupils who know more about sheep than they do arithmetic, Tom has his work cut out for him. Add to that an altercation with the beautiful but stand-offish Miss Janette Fairborn and an argument with the local squire's son, and Tom's first term proves a baptism of fire.

The fourth book in Anna Jacobs' beloved Ellindale series. Lancashire, 1934. When Tam Crawford is unexpectedly bequeathed some money, he can finally realise his dream of settling down in the beautiful village of Ellindale. Tam knows he can be impulsive - his nickname isn't Crazy Tam for nothing! - but this time he is determined not to be ruled by his big heart and hot head. Yet somehow, within just one day, he has taken on a fiancée and two children to keep them out of the poorhouse - or worse.

Jane Pyre was once part of the famous rock 'n' roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she's the most hated - and least understood - woman in music. She was never as popular as her bandmate (and soulmate) Elijah Hart, despite writing the songs that catapulted them to fame. But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band's rise to fame came crashing down, public hatred of Jane has risen to new levels and all she wants is to retreat. The last thing she expects is for the teenage girl next door - a Lightning Bottles super fan - to claim that Elijah is still alive.

Former SAS Warrant Officer Joe Gardner has fought the Regiment's deadliest enemies, in some of the most desolate places on earth. And he's always won. Now he's about to face his toughest challenge yet. After losing his hand whilst on a covert operation in Afghanistan, Gardner is forced to stand down from active duty. Now he lives off the grid. But trouble finds him in the shape of a phone call from an old friend.

Master of suspense Jeffery Deaver returns with the latest gripping thriller featuring paraplegic forensic detective Lincoln Rhyme. Amelia Sachs is hot on the trail of a killer. She's chasing him through a department store in Brooklyn when suddenly the escalator malfunctions. The stairs give way, and several people are trapped, with one man horribly mangled by the gears. Sachs is forced to let her quarry escape as she jumps in to try to help save the victims.

The ninth novel in the thrilling Empire sequence leads Centurion Marcus Aquila and the Tungrians to the battlefield that was one of Rome's most disastrous defeats. The Tungrians have no sooner returned to Rome than they find themselves tasked with a very different mission from their desperate exploits in Parthia.

Eva Kershaw thought she would never marry and is happy living a quiet life with her dear friend Alice. But Alice is ill, and her nephew, Gus, has thrust himself into their household. Alice's dearest wish is that Eva should not make the same mistakes she did, and she alters her will so that Eva and Gus are strongly compelled to marry. Eva obliges to fulfil her dead friend's wishes. But Gus is not all he seems to be: he is not Alice's kind nephew but a robber, a confidence trickster, and not even Gus Blake. And Eva is in terrible danger....

Can you ever re-create that first great love? Victoria Bradshaw fell in love with London playwright Oliver Dobbs when she was just 18. But he left her and disappeared from her life. Now, years later, he is a widower standing on her doorstep with his two-year-old son in his arms. And Victoria is foolish enough to want to take him back. Their early spring journey to a castle in Scotland becomes an odyssey of emotional discovery....

Rome, AD 68. Nero has committed suicide. One hundred years of imperial rule by the descendants of Julius Caesar has ended, and chaos rules. His successor, Galba, dismisses the incorruptible Germans of the Imperial Bodyguard for the crime of loyalty to the dead emperor. Ordering them back to their homeland, he releases a Batavi officer from a Roman prison to be their prefect. But Julius Civilis is not the loyal servant of empire that he seems.

Victory is in sight for Kivilaz and his Batavi army. The Roman army clings desperately to its remaining fortresses along the Rhine, its legions riven by dissent and mutiny, and once-loyal allies of Rome are beginning to imagine the unimaginable: freedom from the rulers who have dominated them since the time of Caesar. The four centurions - two Batavi and two Roman, men who were once comrades in arms - must find their destiny in a maze of loyalties and threats, as the blood tide of war ebbs and flows across Germania and Gaul.

Islamic State is here, all around us. There is no defence. Only attack. On the Syria/Iraq border, a British hostage is beheaded by IS terrorists. When the executioner breaks down, he is led into a nearby tent, where a masked figure is waiting for him. This mysterious person is treated with a mixture of respect and terror. They call him the Caliph.

A year ago, Irene Steele had the shock of her life: her loving husband, father to their grown sons and successful businessman, was killed in a plane crash. But that wasn't Irene's only shattering news: he'd also been leading a double life on the island of St. John, where another woman loved him, too. Now Irene and her sons are back on St. John, determined to learn the truth about the mysterious life - and death - of a man they thought they knew. Along the way, they're about to learn some surprising truths about their own lives, and their futures.

For women of Penny's generation, being on hand for elderly parents is just part of life. But for Penny, things have become a little more serious. When she receives a frantic phone call from her parents one night, with express instructions NOT to call the police, Penny rushes over at once. But they haven't had a fall. They haven't forgotten their computer passwords. They've killed someone. And his body is lying in the garden, right next to the rose bushes.

A new civil war has begun: with the emperor Pertinax's murder Marcus and his protector Scaurus have escaped Rome, seeking sanctuary for their familia in the East. But they are soon pressed back into service by Septimius Severus, the ruthless commander who has seized the imperial capital and who holds the military balance of power over his two rivals. Niger, the would-be emperor in the East is on the march with six legions, and Scaurus's legion is ordered to Thrace as a sacrificial advance guard, tasked with delaying them. Whatever the cost.

With the Peninsula in turmoil, Napoleon Bonaparte signs a treaty to dismember Portugal and put his brother, Joseph, on the throne of Spain. Meanwhile, Nicholas Renzi, the Lord Farndon, undertakes a deadly mission to stir up partisan unrest to disrupt this Napoleonic alliance with Spain. Thrust into the crucible of the uprising, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd is dismayed to come up against an old foe from his past - now his superior and commander - who is determined to break him. Kydd will soon face the greatest decision of his professional career.

Set in the near-distant future, Spaceman of Bohemia follows a Czech astronaut as he launches into space to investigate a mysterious dust cloud covering Venus, a suicide mission sponsored by a proud nation. Suddenly a world celebrity, Jakub's marriage starts to fail as the weeks go by, and his sanity comes into question. After his mission is derailed, he must make a violent decision that will force him to come to terms with his family's dark political past.