Novels

My Work to Date

The Sorrow Song Trilogy

England’s Saga of 1066 opens with The War Wolf and an account of the Battle of Fulford Gate. King Harold waits in London for the expected Norman invasion, but it is in the north where the first threat to his crown appears. Tostig, the exiled brother of Harold, has joined forces with Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, and launches a surprise attack on the city of York.
Coenred, a huscarl in the service of the brothers, Edwin and Morcar, the Eorls of Mercia and Northumbria, is in York in advance of his lords who plan to winter there. A veteran warrior, he has been schooling the young noblemen, but they are growing weary of a captain who they now see as beneath them. While pondering retirement, Coenred grants protection to Mildryth, a woman made into a young widow by Tostig when he was the Eorl of Northumbria.
When news of the invasion reaches them in York, Coenred cannot abandon his people in a time of danger. He elects to carry his sword once more into battle. Edwin and Morcar crave glory and spurn Coenred’s advice. They choose to meet Tostig and Hardrada at Fulford Gate, before the walls of the city.
King Hardrada has assembled the largest Viking army ever to set foot in England. This will not be a raid for gold as in previous times. He comes for the crown of England itself and Tostig will be the ally to help him achieve his goal. The most famous Viking of his day, undefeated in battle, Hardrada is the War Wolf and the Saxons of York will be his prey.

For Rapture of Ravens follows hard on the heels of The War Wolf. Edwin and Morcar have fled in defeat to Durham. Coenred, their captain, has gathered to him all that remains of their army had retired to Tadcaster. Mildryth, the woman he has come to love, remains in a York now ruled once again by the Vikings. Tadcaster is close enough to York so that Coenred might know what befalls the people there, but it is also on the road north from London. He hopes to meet with King Harold’s army when it marches to recapture the city.
Harold is caught unawares by his brother, Tostig, and the King of Norway. As unseasonal storms bottle the Norman fleet in a channel port, Harold gambles on a forced march north. He meets with Coenred and then forms a plan based on the information that the huscarl can give him. Together, they take to the battlefield once more. At Stamford Bridge the King of England meets both his errant brother, Tostig, and the King of Norway. Coenred fights not just for his king, but also to rid the land of a great enemy. He looks to live in peace with Mildryth after the day is done, but there will be many bodies left on the field for the rapture of ravens.

Duke Guillaume of Normandy is ignorant of the absence from London of King Harold. When he steals across the English Channel at midnight, he finds southern England unprotected. Knowing that winter is approaching and that his position is precarious, Guillaume terrorises the local people, hoping to provoke Harold to a rash act.
News reaches the Saxons in the north and they do respond. King Harold calls for all the able Saxons to follow his banner south. Mildryth wants Coenred to honour his promise not to take up his sword again, but she is conflicted. The sense of honour that marked him out to her is the same compunction that forces him to follow where his king leads. A huscarl is a defender of the people. She cannot hold him back when a great danger threatens everyone.
The Norman expedition has been plagued by setbacks. Duke Guillaume’s allies are far from united. Many are looking to return to their own lands. Seeing King Harold build a formidable shield-wall on the road north from Hastings does not inspire Guillaume with confidence. Others may dismiss the Saxons as a peasant army, but the Duke of Normandy will not make the mistake of underestimating his enemy. When they clash everything is yet to be decided. The outcome is unclear. Only when the sun begins to set will either side feel the bite of The Blade’s Fell Blow.

Eugenica

A dark adventure in a 1930’s where Eugenics in Britain is a reality.

British Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald won the 1931 General Election because of the support given to him by the British Eugenics Society, the cost of that support is the creation of the Ministry of Social Biology (MoSB). Brinley Valentine Husher, the newly appointed Minister for Social Biology, vows to improve the health of the nation along eugenic principles. His new facility at Spring Bank, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, opens to take into care the feeble-minded, the dissolute, the deformed of body and mind, from private and charitable hospitals. Leaving the daily running of Spring Bank to his more than able deputy, Helene Monroe, Husher takes to the skies to hosts an Extraordinary Eugenics Congress aboard the new R102 airship; promoting his new ministry and pushing Britain to the forefront of eugenics.

For Grace Fielding and Thomas Morrow, the reality of Spring Bank and the MoSB is the threat of enforced euthanasia. They are the young disabled, newly arrived in a facility that is already turning inhuman, and they are attracting the vicious attention of the Red Band trustees; if the Red Bands do not kill them then the dysgenic policies of the MoSB surely will!

There is a secret war being fought in Britain, however. It is being waged between the Verdure, a shadowy cabal of wealth and political power, and the Indivisibles, a disparate group of individuals opposed to eugenics. Grace, Tom, and their friends become unwitting pawns in this unknown war, racing by car, by train, and by aeroplane across the country to keep one step ahead of their enemies. For Tom, it is a fight for life but for Grace, it is a struggle to discover who she really is and why she is being pursued so resolutely by the beautiful face of the MoSB; Helene Monroe.

As the R102 airship crosses and re-crosses the Atlantic, flying from Britain to America to Germany and back to Britain again, a shadowy war erupts in the English countryside. Doc Hunter, a eugenic superman, challenges the Indivisibles. Dr Mardling uses the unfortunates incarcerated in Spring Bank to conduct human experiments in an attempt to create a Titan Soldier. Grace Fielding, born with only one hand and one leg, abandoned at birth and alone in the world finds herself pitted against a government ministry and the agents of the Verdure. All she has to call upon is her one true friend, a blind boy born of mixed parents.

Eugenica is the nightmare inspired by the principles of a false science.

Mesozoic

Scientists from the future travel back to the time of the dinosaurs to discover how life survives mass extinction events. The Earth itself has gone through just such an event, known to the survivors as the Collapse. The civilisation that we know has gone. A new civilisation is emerging. One based on science and reason, built on a technology that efficiently exploits resources in a manner that does not destroy the environment or the ecologies it supports.

On this particular visit they bring with them, by special request, Dr Eva Kiesler, the next Leader of the Assembly-Elect. Seen as being both the most beautiful and one of the most intelligent women of her day. She will lead the government of what remains of the free peoples of the world. Little do they know that her presence will provoke a murderer to claim their first victim and plunge them all into a terrifying survival ordeal.

What begins as a pleasant walk through the Triassic Period admiring the ancient life there becomes a mission to stop a determined killer. The members of the Palaeontological Field Time Unit (PFTU) find themselves trapped 200 million years in the past. They must pass through all three time periods of the Mesozoic Era to catch the one responsible for killing their colleague. They must also do this before the last time machine is destroyed and their escape route back to their own time is closed forever.

Travelling on foot the PFTU hazard all manner of prehistoric life in their quest to catch the killer. All the time they are unaware that one of their members is a traitor planning an assassination. Racing against time, escaping animal attacks, fighting hidden enemies, Mesozoic is a fast-paced Science Fiction Thriller. A time travelling dinosaur adventure. A window on the past and on a possible future.

The Queen of the Mountain Kingdom

On the Holy Mountain of Oroson the ancient Mountain Kingdom has existed for 5,000 years. The last King of the Pareb Dynasty is dying and his only child is the Princess Saran, but women cannot rule on the Holy Mountain.
Saran is not like most women of Oroson, however. She has determined to take her father’s crown and safeguard his legacy of peace and reconciliation. After the years of cruelty from her uncle, the Mad King Vitor, it is what the people want and need.
Enemies oppose Saran on every side. The Old People, armed with an arcane magick, want their Holy Mountain back and they are willing to kill to do it.
The Heir Presumptive wants to see his noble House on the throne.
The Kingdom of Apidacea plots to conquer Oroson.
The High Church of Oroson will never allow a woman to hold a position of authority over men.
Her allies are few but they include a veteran mercenary soldier returned to Oroson, a secret but outlawed Order of Priestesses, and, perhaps the most powerful and dangerous of all, a Sorceress steeped in ancient magick.
Before peace can return to the Holy Mountain of Oroson many fights are to be won, not all of them with musket and cannon.

The Devil Within Us

A fast paced thriller set in 1933. The shadow of World War One is receding, but the fear of another global conflict is growing. On a mountain that sits on the border between the United States and Canada a man calling himself Mephistopheles threatens world peace with an arsenal of advanced weaponry never before seen. A group of foreign agents form an alliance of expediency to answer the threat of the mad man on the mountain, but nothing and no one is exactly as they seem.

Behind the threat of Mephistopheles lies a deeper mystery. A man known as the Philosopher walks the Earth and everywhere he goes people disappear. Their wealth and possessions along with them. In his wake comes a shadowy group called Argus who kidnap and kill anyone who threatens either the Philosopher or the enigmatic Ann Winn.

Artemisia Montessori, an assassin working for Italian Military Intelligence, joins forces with the British Agent, Doc Hunter, and the American Navel Intelligence Officer, Frasier, to discover the truth hiding behind the mask of Mephistopheles. Each has their own agenda. Neither has an objective that is entirely clear.

From the cold of the Canadian mountains to the heat of the jungle, The Devil Within Us races across the world to answer a mystery that might just include the saving of the human race!