Don Roberto Luciano, boss of the Sicilian Mafia, agrees to be chief witness in the trial of Paul Carolla, who murdered Luciano’s firstborn son, Michael, 20 years ago. Despite round-the-clock protection, all the Luciano men are killed the night...

Rome, Italy: “You are looking for love for a long time,” she says. “Your soul needs this. Without this love you are only half alive.” Toscana Blake’s enthusiasm for life has fizzled. Though she dreams of more, the ever-practical...

Continuing Frances Mayes’s account of her love affair with Italy, Bella Tuscany presents the author now truly at home there, meeting the challenges of learning a new language and touring regions outside Tuscany, including castle towns, fishing villages, and...

Belle of the Back Streets is the first of my three novels set in the north-east coal mining village of Ryhope, Sunderland at the end of WW1. ‘Any rag and bone!’ Everyone recognises the cry of Meg Sutcliffe as...

Terrible, unspeakable things happened to Sethe at Sweet Home, the farm where she lived as a slave for so many years until she escaped to Ohio. Her new life is full of hope but eighteen years later she is...

At the stroke of midnight on 20 May 2002, the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste became the first new nation of the 21st century. From that moment, those who fought for independence have faced a challenge even bigger than shaking...

One of Maria Chaudhuri’s early memories growing up in Dhaka was planning to run away with her friend Nadia. Home was not an especially unhappy place, but in Maria’s family, joy was ephemeral. With a mother who yearned for...

When Zak’s plane crash-lands on Outpost Zero, a small Antarctic research base in one of the most isolated places on Earth, he discovers a cold, dark nightmare. The power’s out and the people who live there have disappeared. Worse,...

Investment analyst Dylan MacDonald has been away from Cape Cod so long it no longer feels like home, despite deep roots and a large extended family. After a routine assignment in Africa becomes life or death, the former workaholic...

When Communist Pathet Lao Forces liberated Laos in 1975, Professor Pheng and three other tenured colleagues were dismissed from their teaching positions at the university and sent to work on a communal farm. Pheng had already decided to stay...