Christobel Kent
Late Season

Late September in an isolated Tuscan farmhouse, and a group of old university friends, and their families have come there to relax - and to put the tragic events of the past year behind them. Watching them arrive is Anna Viola, who remembers another Englishman arriving to seek shelter at the farmhouse during the war. Before the week is out, past and present will collide, with unexpected and dramatic results ...

About the author
Christobel Kent was born in 1962 and now lives in Cambridge with her husband and five children. In between she has lived in Modena, in northern Italy, and in Florence, and it was her time there and her love of the country and its people that inspired her to write her first novel, A Party in San Niccolo.

Julian Symons
The Players And The Game

The Count and Bonnie played their game of love, lust and power to the very limits of fantasy. When the fantasy became real, however, and the number of players grew, the sedate town of Rawley was shaken to its very roots - because when you lost the Game, you lost everything.

About the author
Julian Symons was born in London in 1912. In 1945 his first crime novel was published, becoming a full-time writer two years later. Besides crime novels, he also wrote poetry, biographies, history and criticism. During his illustrious career he was variously chairman of the CWA, president of the Detection Club, a Grand Master of the Swedish Academy of Detection, and became Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. In 1990 he was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association. He died in 1994.

Acclaim for The Players and the Game
'A brilliant combination of psychological and police-procedural elements, with pure horror at the core'- Ross Macdonald
`Unusual, ingenious, and as fascinating as a poisonous snake' - Sunday Telegraph
`By literary standards and by mounting tensions (this book) is a treat' -The New York Times Book Review

The year is 1859 and Hero Hollis. beautiful and headstrong niece of the American consul, arrives in Zanzibar. Iris an earthly paradise; it is also the last outpost of the Slave Trade.A passionate opponent of slavery, Hero is swept into a turmoil of royal intrigue, abduction, piracy, smuggling and a virulent cholera epidemic.There in Zanzibar, the most cruelly beautiful island of the Southern Seas, she must choose her love and unravel her destiny.

About the author
M. M. Kaye was born in Simla and spent much of her life in India. Following Indian independence her husband joined the British Army, and for the next 19 years she followed him around to far-flung corners of the world, including Kenya, Zanzibar, Egypt,Cyprus and Berlin, many of which found their way into her fiction. She wrote a number of detective novels, but is best-known for her historical novels, The Far Pavilions and Shadow of the Moon. She died in 2004.

Acclaim for Trade Wind
`A wealth of incident against a fascinating background ... a beautiful, almost lyrical style of writing' - Liverpool Daily Post
`Strong narrative ... telling descriptions' - Birmingham Post
'Frangipani, jasmine and cloves ... palace intrigues ... slave trades, cholera, pirates and storms at sea ... a huge book' - Guardian