The Dark Tower is a historical novel by award-winning author Christina Koning set in South Africa in 1879. Koning brilliantly analyses a doomed love affair set against the events leading to the defeat of the British army by the Zulus at Isandhlwana.

The Dark Tower

Literature & Fiction

Koning, Christina

Literary

Arbuthnot Books

This is a story of love and astronomy; music and silence; secrets and truth-telling; of world-changing discoveries, and unrequited desire. Moving from York in the 1780s to Regency Bath, and then to Hanover in the 1840s, it concerns the lives of three people-all astronomers. There is Caroline, torn between her passion for music and her passion for the stars; John, deaf from childhood, whose extraordinary mathematical gifts afford him perspectives not available to others; and Edward, friend and mentor to Caroline and to John, who must conceal his innermost feelings from them both. All three find fulfilment in the heavens for the set- backs and disappointments they encounter on earth. All three, in time, come to know the truth about variable stars.

Variable Stars

The Swinging Sixties are coming to an end, but for Constance Reason, living out her twilight years in the Sussex countryside, they have largely passed her by. So she is in for a rude awakening, when her louche nephew, Sandy, turns up out of the blue, with his sinister boyfriend, Ray. Next on the scene is Iseult, Sandy's unworldly cousin (who has rather an ill-judged crush on him) and his melodramatic Aunt Leonora, once a leading light of the West End stage. Quite a crowd - and that's before Nick, a famous pop singer oozing bohemian decadence, appears, entourage in tow. Then all it takes is a whiff of midsummer madness - and marijuana - to unleash some very strange goings on indeed. Suddenly everybody's having the time of their lives. The question is - will they all live to tell the tale?

Fabulous Time

Contemporary

A Mild Suicide

Edinburgh 1977. The end of an era. The end of the postwar boom. The end of the sexual revolution. But for Saul and Catherine, postgraduate students meeting at a departmental party at the university, it seems like a beginning of sorts. Their attraction to one another is instantaneous, and the affair that follows at first seems all-absorbing - a heady mix of sexual desire and literary passions. But then the arrival of Saul's wife, Virginia, from New York, introduces darker notes of guilt and doubt, as the lovers find themselves increasingly enmeshed in their clandestine liaison. As the months pass, and tensions are stretched to breaking-point, it becomes clear that hard choices will have to be made. Other, real life, concerns must take precedence over those of romantic love - but at what a cost?

London, 1927. An 'unreal city', full of fog, and cigarette smoke, and drifting shadows... Or that's how it seems to Frederick Rowlands, who works as a switchboard operator for a firm of City solicitors. With his sight badly damaged by shrapnel during the First World War, Fred is forced to rely on his other senses to understand what's going on. Being a blind man in a sighted world hasn't been easy, but with the stoicism so characteristic of his generation, he's made a life for himself. Then something happens which threatens to destroy the safe, secure world Fred has established with his wife, Edith, and their young children. A call comes into the office from beautiful socialite, Lady Celia West, and - against his better judgement - Fred finds himself beguiled. Soon, he is 'listening-in' to more and more of Celia's calls to her lover, Gerald Willoughby - who is also Fred's boss, and former commanding officer. The illicit nature of what Fred is doing - and the fact that the calls are themselves clandestine - only adds to the excitement of being, however briefly, caught up in a more elegant and sophisticated world. Then a man is murdered, and things grow very much darker. Will Fred confess what he has overheard to the police - or will he risk everything,  to protect the woman he loves...    Line of Sight is the first in a proposed series of detective stories set in late 1920s London and featuring Frederick Rowlands, the 'Blind Detective'. With shades of Hitchcock and overtones of Chandler, this is a story about secrets and lies, and about the way that the past can compromise the present. Employing the mechanisms of the classic detective story, it portrays a society deeply damaged by war, in which all certainties have been lost and nothing is as it seems.

Line of Sight

Koning, A. C.

'A game was in progress: he could see the cards flash down. Ace, King, Queen, Knave. And Hearts were Trumps. He couldn't see their faces. The faces of the players, around the table, that is. But he was used to that...' It is1929. In the years since the Armistice, blind war veteran Frederick Rowlands - now running a small holding in Kent - has done his best to establish a secure existence for himself and his young family. His days of taking risks are over - or so he very much hopes. But then his old friend Chief Inspector Douglas asks for his help in tracking down the killer of a beautiful dancer, and suddenly Fred's quiet, orderly world is under threat. Plunged back into the whirl of London life, he must explore milieu as yet unknown to him, as well as confronting figures from his own past. As the weeks go by and the crime remains unsolved, he finds himself caught up in a murderous game of chance, in which nothing is what it seems, and in which everything - friendships, family loyalties, even his own life - is at stake.

Game Of Chance

Time Of Flight

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Me Neither is a memoir of the years 1974-88.It celebrates a haphazard approach to building a career in the wake of the turbulent economic circumstances generated by the oil crisis of 1973. It also documents what were in effect the first stirrings of the gig economy.Despite the advantage of a privileged education the author's first job on graduating from Cambridge University is as a milkman. This is followed by stints as a bus conductor, stage hand and theatre box office assistant. After a sojourn in the Western Highlands writing a play, the author returns to London and talks his way into a number of jobs in marketing and magazine publishing. This phase is in turn superseded by a move into politics first as a local government officer at the GLC in the Ken Livingstone era and then as a magazine publisher for the Labour Party. Along the way there are glimpses of Cambridge, London and Scotland in the 1970s and Germany and the USA at the start of the 1980s. There is an account of the difficulties of magazine publishing in the pre-digital age and about parliamentary procedure in the House of Lords before it was reformed by Tony Blair's administration. There is inevitably some discussion of Labour politics. There are also plentiful references to the popular music of the era, both live and recorded.Memoir cannot help looking back and in the case of Me Neither with a certain amount of affection at a period whose stock is currently low. As the sorrows emanating from the Pandora's box of digital technology and a multi-polar world order become ever more apparent, the analog, bilateral world of the Cold War era is inevitably bathed in a nostalgic glow. If there is a nascent revisionism towards the 1970s, then this book is a part of that tendency.

Me Neither

Biographies & Memoirs

Vincent, Eamonn

Memoirs

<p><p>It is 1935. Blind war veteran Frederick Rowlands, accompanied by his wife Edith, is attending the end of term festivities at St Gertrude's College, Cambridge, when a research student is found dead in suspicious circumstances. As one of the last to see the young woman alive, Rowlands finds himself caught up in the police investigation-- discovering, in the course of this, a darker side to the university town. Another death ensues, and Rowlands must pit his wits against a formidable and ruthless opponent if he is to prevent further killing--and salvage the reputation of St Gertrude's.</p></p>

End Of Term

Genre Fiction

Out Of Shot

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