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The Last Lancer
An intimate story of a Polish family torn apart by war: of heartbreak, loss, and survival against the odds. Julian Czerkawski was born in 1926 near Lwow, in Polish Galicia, on a farm with fertile grain fields and orchards. He was the son of a Polish lancer—one of the famous cavalrymen who carried forward the legacy of the hussar knights. But there would be no idyllic childhood for young Julian. Soviet annexation and then, in 1941, the German occupation of Lwow changed everything. At the age of eighteen, he was sent to a labour camp. Fortunate to escape after the war with his life, eventually he made his way to the UK. Here, he married and started a family, but an ache remained for the peop...
The Jewel
A luscious historical novel, The Jewel brings to glorious life the dramatic years of Jean Armour and Robert Burns’s courtship, and their tempestuous, passionate married life, against a background simmering with political intrigue and turmoil. Jean, a beautiful young woman with the voice of a nightingale, set young Rab’s heart aflame from the first. Jean’s father tried to protect her from the advances of the mercurial ploughman-poet, whose roving eye was notorious. But she would not be kept from him. Their marriage endured against all odds, its rocky course revealing Jean’s indomitable strength and character. How Jean lived with – and frequently without – her famous husband is surely Scotland’s greatest love story.
A Proper Person to be Detained
The story of a murder and its aftermath. On Christmas Night in 1881, John Manley, a poor son of Irish immigrants living in the slums of Leeds, was fatally stabbed in a drunken quarrel. The frightened murderer went on the run, knowing that capture could see him hang. A few generations later, author Catherine Czerkawska begins to tease out the truth behind her great-great-uncle’s tragic death. But she uncovers far more than she bargained for. In a personal family story that takes us from Ireland to the industrial heartlands of England and Scotland, from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, Catherine gives voice to people often maligned by society and silenced by history – immigrants, women, the working classes. She unearths a tale of injustice and poverty, hope and resilience, and she is both angered and touched by what she finds. Catherine is driven to keep digging, to get to the very heart of life – and death – in the not-so-distant past.
The Curiosity Cabinet
“Moving, poetic and quietly provocative.” – The Independent. A novel sure to appeal to fans of Outlander. When Alys revisits the beautiful Scottish island of Garve after an absence of 25 years, she is captivated by the embroidered casket on display in her hotel. She discovers that it belongs to Donal, her childhood playmate, and soon they resume their old friendship. Interwoven with the story of their growing love is the darker 18th-century tale of Henrietta Dalrymple, kidnapped by the formidable Manus McNeill and held on Garve against her will. Despite the 300 years separating them, the women are strongly connected: their parallel lives are linked by the cabinet and its contents, by the tug of motherhood and by the magic of the Hebridean island itself. But Garve has its secrets, past and present. Donal must learn to trust Alys enough to confide in her and, like Henrietta before her, Alys must earn the right to belong.
Bird of Passage
1960s Scotland. When young Finn O'Malley travels from Ireland to work at the potato harvest, he forms a close friendship with Kirsty Galbreath, the farmer's red-headed grand-daughter. The farm becomes a sanctuary for him, but Finn is damaged by a childhood so traumatic that it will be years before he recovers his memories of that time. What happened at the brutal Industrial School to which he was committed while still a little boy? For the sake of his sanity, Finn must try to find out why he was taken into care and what became of the mother he loved and lost. Many years later, Kirsty's daughter, India, a successful folk musician, tries to unravel the tragic love story that has coloured her whole life. Dealing sensitively with the realities of state sanctioned abuse and its aftermath, Bird of Passage is a powerful story of cruelty, loss and enduring love against all the odds. Catherine Czerkawska is an established and award winning author of novels, short stories and plays.
The Amber Heart
Marianna is a Polish landowner's daughter, born and brought up in the beautiful manor house of Lisko, while Danilo is a poor Ukrainian estate worker. The lives of these two young people from vastly different backgrounds are destined to become hopelessly and tragically entwined from the moment of their first meeting. The Amber Heart is a sweeping and compelling love story, set in rural Poland in the middle years of the 19th century, and loosely based on extraordinary episodes from the author's family history. This epic novel follows the fortunes of an array of characters whose lives are disrupted by the turmoil of the times, but central to the story is the lifelong relationship between Marianna and Danilo, a powerful saga of conflict, loss and enduring love. Catherine Czerkawska is an award winning writer of historical and contemporary novels, short stories and more than 100 plays for the stage, for television and for BBC Radio 4.
The Physic Garden
Moving, poetic and quietly provocative' – The Independent. City life in the early nineteenth century was never short of drama: poverty and pollution preyed on all but the lucky few, and ‘resurrection men’ prowled the streets to procure corpses for anatomists to experiment on. Life is improving, however, for young William Lang, who begins courting Jenny, a fine needlewoman, and forms an unlikely friendship with botanist Dr Thomas Brown while working in the physic garden for a leading professor of surgery.At first, William relishes the opportunity to extend his knowledge of plants and their healing properties while foraging in the countryside in the service of his new friend. The young couple’s relationship blossoms, until seeds of trouble threaten to grow out of control.
The Posy Ring
A beautiful historical romance from the author of The Curiosity Cabinet. When antiques seller Daisy Graham inherits an ancient house on the Hebridean island of Garve, she’s daunted by its size and isolation. But the building, its jumble of contents, its wilderness of a garden and the island itself prove themselves so fascinating that she’s soon captivated. She’s also attracted to Cal Galbraith, who is showing an evident interest in the house and its new owner, yet she’s suspicious of his motives – with good reason, it seems. In parallel with their story runs that of sixteenth-century cousins Mateo and Francisco, survivors from the ill-fated Spanish Armada who find safe passage to the island.There, one of them falls in love with the laird’s daughter. The precious gold posy (poesy) ring he gives her is found centuries later. Are its haunting engraved mottoes, un temps viendra and vous et nul autre, somehow significant now for Daisy and Cal?
Restless
It is 1939. Eva Delectorskaya is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian émigrée living in Paris. As war breaks out she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious Englishman, and under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one, including those she loves most. Since the war, Eva has carefully rebuilt her life as a typically English wife and mother. But once a spy, always a spy. Now she must complete one final assignment, and this time Eva can't do it alone: she needs her daughter's help.
The Way it Was
The island of Gigha is a small gem, the most southerly of the true Hebridean islands, lying just off Tayinloan on Scotland's Kintyre peninsula. Gigha's good harbours, fertile land, mild climate and strategically useful position have given it a fascinating history. Catherine Czerkawska relates the sometimes turbulent story of the people of Gigha, from the settlers of prehistoric times, through successive incomers including the Celts, the Vikings, and the McNeill lords of this island. A few years ago Gigha was the subject of the largest community buyout in British history, and she brings the story up to date, in examining the relationship between a contemporary island community and its own rich past. The author, like so many people, fell helplessly in love at first sight with Gigha and returns to it time and again. This book explores just what it is that makes the island such an enchanting place.
