Medical Historical Fiction

1830. After a violent storm, a woman is found alone, naked and near death, on the Northumberland moors. She has no memory of who she is or how she got there. But she can remember how to help a woman in labour and how to expertly dress a wound and can speak fluent French. With the odds against her, a penniless single woman, she starts to build her life from scratch, using her skills to help other women around her. She finds a happy place in the world. Until tragedy strikes, and she must run for her life.

An orphan leaves Dark Ages London, taking a dangerous journey and posing as a Jew to study medicine in Persia, in "an adventurous and inspiring tale" (Library Journal). A child holds the hand of his dying mother and is terrified, aware something is taking her. Orphaned and given to an itinerant barber-surgeon, Rob Cole becomes a fast-talking swindler, peddling a worthless medicine. But as he matures, his strange gift - an acute sensitivity to impending death - never leaves him, and he yearns to become a healer.

Los Angeles, 1920s: Socialite Mirielle West's days are crowded with shopping, luncheons, and prepping for the myriad glittering parties she attends with her actor husband, Charlie. She's been too busy to even notice the small patch of pale skin on the back of her hand. Other than an occasional overindulgence in gin and champagne, which helps to numb the pain of recent tragedy, Mirielle is the picture of health. But her doctor insists on more tests, and Mirielle reluctantly agrees. The diagnosis - leprosy - is devastating and unthinkable.

Scholar Richard Sabyn, a particularly obnoxious fellow, was believed to have been struck by lightning. However, Master Wycliffe believes otherwise and calls upon Sir Hugh de Singleton for help. Sir Hugh shares Wycliffe’s suspicions and launches a private investigation, learning that it might indeed be possible to make it look as though a man has died from a lightning strike. But who would go to all that effort, and why?

Anna is over the moon when her sweetheart returns from the front line. As he recovers from his injuries, they make plans to be married, but the horrors of the trenches cast a long shadow. Caring for shell-shocked soldiers brings untold challenges for Grace, and her parents have very different dreams for her future. Meanwhile Dulcie has her sights firmly set on her own happy ending. And yet sometimes we find love where we least expect to. Each of the nurses has her own battle to fight, but they must rally together if they’re to find true happiness.

Matron Kathleen Fox has the job of putting the hospital back together but wonders if she is up to the task. In an attempt to bring some festive cheer, she decides to put on a Christmas show. The idea is greeted with mixed feelings by the nurses, who all have their own problems, and also by the new Assistant Matron and ward sister, who find themselves rivals for the role of organiser. But as rehearsals begin, the performers begin to find the show is not just a tonic for the patients.

On the banks of the River Seine in 1899, a young woman takes her final breath before plunging into the icy water. Although she does not know it, her decision will set in motion an astonishing chain of events. It will lead to 1950s Norway, where a grieving toy-maker is on the cusp of a transformative invention, all the way to present-day Canada where a journalist, battling a terrible disease, risks everything for one last chance to live.

Keeping watch over the Easter Sepulchre, where the Host and crucifix are stored between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, is considered a privilege. So it is shocking when it is discovered that Odo, the priest’s clerk, has abandoned his post. But as the hours pass and Odo is not found, Hugh de Singleton is called upon. It is Hugh that finds the dried blood before the altar, and fear grows for the missing man … Will Hugh be called upon to investigate another murder, or will the man be found hale and hearty? But if so, where has the blood come from?

With her husband, Nick, away fighting, Dora struggles to keep the home fires burning but finds herself in a difficult position when she is put in charge of a ward of injured German POWs. Can she find it in her heart to care for her enemies? Fellow nurse Kitty faces a similar struggle looking after the men who killed her beloved brother. But her life becomes even more complicated when she falls for one of the prisoners. And Helen Denton returns from nursing in Europe with a secret. She has her own reasons for hating the Germans.

The year is 1796, and a trading ship arrives in the vibrant trading town of Newburyport, Massachusetts. But it's a ghost ship - her entire crew has been decimated by a virulent fever which sweeps through the harbor town, and Newburyport's residents start to fall ill and die with alarming haste. Something has to be done to stop the virus from spreading further.

Home for Christmas is a tale of four very different young women thrown together by war. Finding freedom and independence – as well as love, passion and heartbreak – for the very first time, a unique bond is formed as the hostilities take their toll on Britain. It's September 1940 and the German blitz on London has just begun. The four young girls who live at No. 13 Article Row live under its constant threat. But life must go on…Tilly and Sally both work at Barts Hospital where they witness the cruelty of war first-hand.

Christmas may be the season of goodwill and festive cheer, but not for the poor of 1950s Liverpool. And for St Angelus Hospital in Lovely Lane, it is frantically busy. There are the old, the dying, the children and the emergencies.

The nurses, known locally as the Angels of Lovely Lane, are run off their feet. Dana, Beth, Pammy and Victoria hardly have time to catch their breath, let alone have a Christmas of their own.

When a body is discovered in the harbour town of Axmouth, Sir John de Wolfe, the county coroner, is summoned to investigate. The manner of the young man's death is a matter of some dispute - but, as Sir John soon discovers, it was no accident. The victim did not drown, as the manor reeve alleges, but was strangled. In the ensuing investigation, Sir John is frustrated by what appears to be a conspiracy of silence among the seamen and townsfolk. Just what is the local population trying to hide?

Fans of Patrick Taylor's bestselling Irish Country novels know Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly as the irascible senior partner of a general practice in the colorful Irish village of Ballybucklebo. But there was a time, shortly after arriving in Ballybucklebo, that Dr. O'Reilly was not widely accepted by the villagers. This touching short story tells of how O'Reilly, with a little help, began to overcome their objections.

When Frankie’s mother dies, she is sent to live with her aunt Bet in Worthing, Sussex. Life on their farm is happy - for a while. But when World War Two breaks out, Frankie must help her country by signing up to the women’s branch of the British Army. Soon, she meets Romare, an American Doctor who has come to the UK after facing terrible racism at home. But trouble is stirring in Britain, too, and it falls to Frankie to try to protect him. Can love triumph over a history of hate? Or will Frankie and Romare’s love pay the ultimate sacrifice?

Having shown courage and strength on the battlefield, Will and Grace are back in the UK and working at the cutting edge of modern medicine. At every turn, they see a country in flux. The postwar years are heady and unpredictable. Many of their contemporaries are following serious paths, committing to causes of the day—workers' rights, votes for women, an independent Ireland. Others seek refuge in more earthly and bohemian pleasures. But as young parents and practising medics, they have—more than anything—duties of care and compassion that cannot be ignored.

Una Kelly has grown up to be a rough-and-tumble grifter, able to filch a pocketbook in five seconds flat. But when another con-woman pins her for a murder she didn’t commit, Una is forced to flee. Running from the police, Una lies her way into an unlikely refuge: the nursing school at Bellevue Hospital. Based on Florence Nightingale’s nursing principles, Bellevue is the first school of its kind in the country. Where once nurses were assumed to be ignorant and unskilled, Bellevue prizes discipline, intellect, and moral character, and only young women of good breeding need apply.

Pickpockets, pimps and prostitutes: All in a day’s work for the city constable – until work moves too close to home… When Richard Nottingham, Constable of Leeds, discovers his former housemaid murdered in a particularly sickening manner, his professional and personal lives move perilously close. Circumstances seem to conspire against him, and more murders follow. Soon the city fathers cast doubt on his capability, and he is forced to seek help from an unsavoury source.

12-year-old Isabella, a French princess marries the King of England - only to discover he has a terrible secret. Ten long years later she is in utter despair - does she submit to a lifetime of solitude and a spiritual death - or seize her destiny and take the throne of England for herself? Isabella is just twelve years old when she marries Edward II of England. For the young princess it is love at first sight - but Edward has a terrible secret that threatens to tear their marriage - and England apart.

London, 1628. Nicolaes de Pelgrom, assassin and devoted servant of George Villiers, will do whatever his master asks of him—even if that means enduring the perilous voyage to the Indies to exact a grieving widow's revenge. Making that same journey is Jeronimus Cornelisz, a conniving apothecary determined to escape the backstreets of Amsterdam and become rich beyond imagination. Hired by a criminal mastermind to escort precious cargo to the Indies, he will kill anyone who stands in his way.