The Royal Secret

The first book in the No. 1 Times bestselling series'This is terrific stuff' Daily Telegraph'A breathtakingly ambitious picture of an era' Financial Times'A masterclass in how to weave a well-researched history into a complex plot' The TimesOver 1 Million Andrew Taylor Novels Sold!A CITY IN FLAMESLondon, 1666. As the Great Fire consumes everything in its path, the body of a man is found in the ruins of St Paul's Cathedral - stabbed in the neck, thumbs tied behind his back.A WOMAN ON THE RUNThe son of a traitor, James Marwood is forced to hunt the killer through the city's devastated streets. There he encounters a determined young woman, who will stop at nothing to secure her freedom.A KILLER SEEKING REVENGEWhen a second murder victim is discovered in the Fleet Ditch, Marwood is drawn into the political and religious intrigue of Westminster - and across the path of a killer with nothing to lose...

In Northangerland Andrew Taylor has taken the black sheep of the Brontë family and pushed him centre-stage, repurposing Bronwyn's pseudonym as a title. 'Re-versioning', as Taylor dubs his process, is not so much offering a parallel text or a commentary on the original, but effects a distillation of it, isolating its essence, updating. He resembles Basil Bunting deleting and scribbling his way through Shakespeare's sonnets, as he exchanges Brontë's rhetoric for sculpted lines and deft sound-shapes (the rhymes chiming internally across their precise new line-breaks). Taylor is like an architect decluttering the Brontë Parsonage into a modern minimalist and open plan living space: 'forms refuse the real/ & unreal to confuse phantom/ paths of joy'. For all its careful acknowledgement of sources, this is an assured work for our times. Robert Sheppard

Londra, 1666. Divampato nella bottega di un fornaio di Pudding Lane, il Grande Incendio sta devastando la città, consumando e riducendo in cenere ogni cosa. Perfino la maestosa cattedrale di St Paul, fino a quel momento considerata invulnerabile, brucia come una gigantesca lanterna. Tra la folla che assiste, impotente, all¿agonia della cattedrale c¿è James Marwood, giovane impiegato della London Gazette. Simpatizzante della Quinta Monarchia, suo padre è stato trovato un giorno in possesso di documenti compromettenti e imprigionato nella Torre di Londra. Grazie all¿intercessione di messer Williamson, direttore della London Gazette, è stato scarcerato. Da allora, però, la gratitudine nei confronti di Williamson obbliga James ad accettare qualsiasi incarico gli venga affidato. Domato l¿incendio e fatta la conta dei danni, il giovane viene perciò spedito, senza troppe cerimonie, a indagare sul singolare rinvenimento di un cadavere all¿interno di St Paul. L¿uomo giace nudo nella navata, riverso su un fianco in una goffa posizione e con le braccia dietro la schiena. Tutto porterebbe a pensare a un tragico incidente, se non fosse che i pollici sono legati insieme con un pezzo di corda, e c¿è una piccola ferita proprio all¿attaccatura della testa. Spronato da Williamson, James inizia un¿avventurosa caccia all¿assassino per le strade devastate di Londra. Tra falsi indizi, nuovi omicidi e l¿incontro con Catherine Lovett, una giovane donna in fuga da un matrimonio imposto con la forza e più che mai determinata a rintracciare il padre che non vede da anni, James Marwood navigherà nelle acque agitate e pericolose di una delle più turbolente epoche della storia inglese. Das Urheberrecht an bibliographischen und produktbeschreibenden Daten und an den bereitgestellten Bildern liegt bei Informazioni Editoriali, I.E. S.r.l., oder beim Herausgeber oder demjenigen, der die Genehmigung erteilt hat. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

*A TimesBest Book of the Year*From the author of The Ashes of London, comes a new historical mystery set in the last days of WWII'Ten out of ten' The Times'A grand piece of work - a triumph and one of Taylor's best' MICK HERRON'A wonderfully unique novel from the master of historical crime fiction. Beautiful, haunting, and quite brilliant' LAURA SHEPHERD-ROBINSON'As good as I'd expect from a master of the craft' VAL MCDERMID'A wonderful, subtle novel, set in a strange, enclosed world. Beautiful writing and a gloriously satisfying ending' ANN CLEEVES__________England, May 1945In the last days of World War II, Monkshill Park School for Girls stands far apart from the violence in Europe. Yet a woman has been murdered in its grounds.Annabel Warnock, a teacher with a secretive past, has disappeared. The teachers and girls whisper that she's run away, but in fact she has met a violent end.Replacement tutor and amateur crime writer Alec Shaw arrives to find a school riven with bitter rivalries and dangerous tensions. He begins to suspect there is a real-life mystery waiting to be solved... and these echoing halls hide a killer.