The Keys of Hell and Death

Featured Titles, Forthcoming Titles

The Keys of Hell and Death

Charles Cordell

“The ground shudders from cavalry attack and cannon fire. You can smell the sweat of fear.” David Gilman

The West Country, July 1643.
England’s bloody civil war has reached a bloody stalemate, with neither side able to secure a decisive advantage. But now the Royalists have spied an opportunity to seize the precious port of Bristol.

King Charles’s flamboyant nephew, Prince Rupert, leads his army out of Oxford to snatch the prize, supported by his brother, Prince Maurice, attacking from the south. In Bristol, the Parliamentary garrison commander, Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes has to contend with a lack of manpower in a city of divided loyalties as he prepares its defences for the onslaught to come.

The ensuing struggle will harness the enmity between the two Reeve brothers: carefree and dissolute Ralph, now a corporal of dragoons in Prince Maurice’s Regiment, and Francis, the embittered and fanatical Puritan in the Parliamentary horse.

It will also determine the fate of Moussa Dansocko, the West African slave accused of sorcery and witchcraft, Kendall Tremain, the fisherman who fights for Cornwall and its king, Abel Cowans, the impoverished naval gunner from Newcastle who finds himself working in Bristol docks when the assault on the city begins, and others, all with their diverse reasons for siding with one cause or the other in the brutal struggles of the divided kingdom.

“Heart-pounding action, heart-breaking loss as a nation tears itself apart. Day by agonising day. Yard by bloody yard. Men stand shoulder to shoulder to fight and die for their cause. Charles Cordell takes the reader every step of the way. Knife edge sharp scholarly knowledge combined with the skill of a natural storyteller. The depth of insight and research makes The Keys of Hell and Death vividly rich in historical detail. Not to be missed.”
David Gilman, author of the Master of War and The Englishman series

“I have been waiting for this second novel and am not disappointed. Once more, Charles Cordell evokes the experience of the Civil War soldier more vividly than ever before.”
Prof. Ronald Hutton CBE

“Cordell plunges you into the fast-flowing battlefields of 1643, full of fear, tension and the relief of surviving. He brilliantly captures the plight of soldiers in realistic detail in and around battles.”
Lt Gen Richard Nugee CB, CVO, CBE

“Immerses you in the smoke, blood, and smell of burnt powder and death. It’s a remarkable and unique talent for any author to hold his reader transfixed in a book that simply cannot be put down.”
Jeremy Ravenshaw Fowler, Adjutant General of the Sealed Knot Society.

Paperback 384 pages
Paperback ISBN 978-1-910183-33-5
Ebook ISBN 978-1-910183-34-2
Release Date 4th June 2024
Price £8.99

Dust of the Earth

Forthcoming Titles

Dust of the Earth

 Tim Murgatroyd

California, 1877

Frenchwoman Catherine Bourchier flees an abusive husband and risks everything on a vineyard in far-off America.

In the smouldering powder keg of San Francisco, Chi-en Shambles is exiled from his own Chinatown community. Can his extraordinary talents and natural decency win acceptance and love where a man is measured a by dollars, ignorance and prejudice?

An unlikely alliance offers each damaged outcast a final chance in the ‘New Eden’ of Napa Valley. But the past and its ghosts are never truly dead. And the dust of the earth never settles. Sometimes both come knocking at your door.

Hardback 544 pages
ISBN 978-1-910183-35-9
Publication Date 15th October 2024
Price £20.00

God’s Vindictive Wrath by Charles Cordell

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God’s Vindictive Wrath updated book pic

The Vale of the Red Horse, Edgehill, Warwickshire, October, 1642.

Bitter divisions that have grown unchecked in the kingdoms of the Stuart dynasty are about to engulf England in a bloody civil war. 30,000 men have gathered to determine the fate of nations and to pursue their own ideals and enmities through brutal and bloody combat. Many have never handled a weapon or strayed far from their native shire.

Among them are Anthony Sedley the Birmingham iron worker and Leveller, Robbie Needham, an embittered lead miner from Derbyshire who picks up a pike for his king, George Merrick, the young Oxford graduate whose prospects have been blighted by court corruption, Hywel Lloyd, a proud Welsh hill farmer, and William Bennet the struggling merchant who has staked everything to raise a company for the parliamentary cause. Then there are the half-brothers, Ralph and Francis Reeve, sons of a Suffolk farmer. Pious Francis has abandoned his studies at Cambridge to make England a New Jerusalem, cleansed of sin and filth. He despises his carefree brother and the father who seems to favour him. Caught cuckolding a London merchant, Ralph has forfeited his apprenticeship and indenture money. He dreams of restoring his honour and his fortune when he returns to London with the king’s victorious army. But first the brothers must face each other in the Vale of the Red Horse, the horse whose rider is War…

God’s vindictive wrath!

“Stirring. A great read! You can almost hear the roar of cannon, and the thunder of hooves. Do not miss this evocative account of the start of the English Civil War, and the ordinary men caught up in it.”

Ben Kane, author of The Forgotten Legion and Lionheart series.

“As only a soldier could, Charles Cordell does not flinch from drawing attention to the sheer terror of battle … a gripping first book. I am certain there will be many more.”

Jeremy Ravenshaw Fowler, Adjutant General of the Sealed Knot Society.

“A fast-paced read that brilliantly captures the fear, confusion and luck of battle.”

Lt Gen Richard Nugee CB, CVO, CBE

“Fast-paced and authentic … with characters that are colourful and believable. There are not enough tales like this.”

Michael Arnold, author of The Civil War Chronicles and the Highwayman series.

The Lost Sessions

Featured Titles

Lost Sessions Sebastian Beaumont

 

Will could never have predicted how much his life would change when he is knocked from his bicycle by a hit-and-run driver whilst returning home from the London clinic where he works as a psychotherapist. His wife, Lara, takes him to an A&E, where he is diagnosed with concussion. Having cancelled upcoming client appointments, he spends much of the following week in fitful sleep whilst Lara goes out to work.

When he returns to his practice, something is very weird and very wrong. It seems that Will – or a form of Will – held the sessions with his regular clients whilst he was at home asleep. This Will gave out some radical and shocking therapy that was completely out of character for him. What’s more, Will finds himself referring to events in his clients’ histories of which they themselves have no memory. The sessions go badly. Will’s one new client is Guy, who claims to be regularly disturbed in his flat by a sister who has been dead for five years. She simply stands at the foot of his bed in a red sweater and white jeans. Walking home that night, Will passes the London Eye. From one of the gondolas, a young woman smiles at him and takes his picture. She wears a red sweater and white jeans.

When Will takes Lara to a restaurant, the same woman appears at the next table and, to Lara’s consternation smiles at Will. Later, she appears at his studio, having made an appointment. She says her name is Emma, that she is indeed Guy’s sister and is dead. She wants Will to be her therapist. He refuses, telling her to see a doctor. But, dead or not, Emma proves to be not the sort of girl to say no to. Encounters with her simply become more frequent and more bizarre. What’s more, as they start to take a toll on Will’s livelihood, his marriage and even his sense of self, it seems that Emma knows a
lot more about his shadowed past than she should.

The Pincers of Death by Toby Frost

Current Titles, News

For those of you eagerly anticipating the latest instalment of Toby Frost’s Space Captain Smith series – out in October – here’s the fantastic cover illustration, another masterpiece from Angelo Rinaldi.

THE PINCERS OF DEATH

So what’s in store for Smith and the crew of the John Pym? Some hints follow:

The empire of the ant-people is beginning to crumble. As the British Space Navy prepares to invade the Ghast home world, the Secret Service comes up with a daring plan – the assassination of Number One, the small and furious dictator of the Ghasts. Only one man has the qualities needed to take on a job this dangerous –    Captain Isambard Smith.

But Smith has problems of his own. Captured by the ruthless – and gormless – Criminarch of Radishia, Smith and his crew must survive the deadly sport of Hyperbowl, where it’s not whether you win or lose that counts, but how you slay the game.

Now Isambard Smith faces his toughest challenge yet. In order to civilise the galaxy, he will have to win a ball game, topple a dictator and organise a party for a four-year-old. All in a day’s work for a hero of the British Space Empire – although it’s going to be a very busy day indeed.