To Ride a White Horse

Best-selling author Philippa Gregory begins a sweeping new series with the story of a poor, uneducated midwife named Alinor who is tempted by a forbidden love affair - but all too aware of the dangers awaiting a woman who dares to step out of the place society carved for her.

Vivienne Shager has it all. A high-flying job. A beautiful apartment. Friends whose lives are as perfect as her own. But on the afternoon of her 27th birthday, Vivi has a heart attack. Now Vivi’s life shrinks back to how it began, as she moves back to the small seaside town she grew up in. With her time running out, there is one thing she wants to know the truth about.

1399: England’s crown is under threat. King Richard II holds on to his power by an ever-weakening thread, with exiled Henry of Lancaster back to reclaim his place on the throne. For Elizabeth Mortimer, there is only one rightful King - her eight-year-old nephew, Edmund. Only he can guarantee her fortunes and protect her family’s rule over the precious northern lands bordering Scotland.

Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a bookbinder - a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice among their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse. For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born. 

The end is approaching.... Can Jack West unravel the ancient secrets of the Five Greatest Warriors and save the world? With the end of the world fast approaching, Jack West Jnr must rebuild the final pieces of the fabled ancient Machine - the only thing that can prevent global catastrophe. But he is out of clues, out of leads...until he is presented with an ancient text about five unnamed warriors, great historical figures who were all in some way connected to the mysterious Machine.

Fran Morrison, a travelling musician, is summoned home to London after her father suffers a stroke. She finds herself in charge of the family business - a stained glass workshop. When the vicar of the local church asks Fran to restore a shattered window, her research into its origins uncovers a fascinating and moving love story from the Victorian past that resonates in her own life.

Bringing 16th century Languedoc vividly to life, Kate Mosse's The Burning Chambers is a gripping story of love and betrayal, mysteries and secrets; of war and adventure, conspiracies and divided loyalties....   

Considered a troublesome burden, Evelyn Talbot is banished by her family to their remote country house. Tall Chimneys is outmoded and inconvenient, but Evelyn is determined to save it from abandonment or demolition. The woman and the house shore each other up - until love comes calling, threatening to pull them asunder. Her desertion will spell its demise, but saving Tall Chimneys could mean sacrificing her hope for happiness, even sacrificing herself. A century later, a distant relative crosses the globe to find the house of his ancestors. 

Mourning the death of his father and gravely injured at the hands of the English, Jamie Fraser finds himself running with a band of mercenaries in the French countryside, where he reconnects with his old friend, Ian Murray. Both are nursing wounds, both have good reason to stay out of Scotland, and both are still virgins despite several opportunities to remedy that deplorable situation with ladies of easy virtue.

In the Name of the Family - as Blood and Beauty did before - holds up a mirror to a turbulent moment of history, sweeping aside the myths to bring alive the real Borgia family: complicated, brutal, passionate and glorious. Here is a thrilling exploration of the House of Borgia's doomed years, in the company of a young diplomat named Niccolo Machiavelli.

The great city of Troy is under siege as Greek heroes Achilles and Agamemnon wage bloody war over a stolen woman. In the Greek camp, another woman is watching and waiting: Briseis. She was a queen of this land until Achilles sacked her city and murdered her husband and sons. Now she is Achilles' concubine: a prize of battle. Briseis is just one among thousands of women backstage in this war - the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead - all of them voiceless in history. 

As children, Eva Rosselli and Angelo Bianco were raised like family but divided by circumstance and religion. As the years go by, the two find themselves falling in love. But the church calls to Angelo and, despite his deep feelings for Eva, he chooses the priesthood. Now, more than a decade later, Angelo is a Catholic priest and Eva is a woman with nowhere to turn. With the Gestapo closing in, Angelo hides Eva within the walls of a convent.

A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in an elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.

The Center for women's reproductive health offers a last chance at hope - but nobody ends up there by choice. Its very existence is controversial, and to the demonstrators who barricade the building every day, the service it offers is no different from legalised murder. Now life and death decisions are being made horrifyingly real: a lone protester with a gun has taken the staff, patients and visitors hostage.

Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, the couple lose their home and their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset via Devon and Cornwall. They have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky.