Shortlisted for the 2003 RNA Novel of the Year Award

BUY   ISBN 0-7278-5891-2

A fatherless girl grows up a virtual prisoner in the shabby backwater of Kensington Palace, despised by her relations, bullied and insulted by her foolish mother’s evil genius. Only the core of stubbornness in her nature sustains her as she waits for the day of deliverance – the day she will become Queen of England.

She is Victoria; this is her story, recorded in her own words in the last troubled year of her life. 

With humanity and humour the Queen Empress of half the world looks back over eighty crowded years, remembering domestic crisis and public triumph, war, revolution and the fall of dynasties; remembering most of all the great and abiding love that illuminated every aspect of her life.

This is the autobiography Queen Victoria might have written, and reveals the private woman behind the public mask – quick tempered, proud and incurably honest; shy, vulnerable – and always, indefatigably, amused.

As Paris reels under the turbulent political events of 1803, young English governess Anne Peters finds herself penniless, homeless and alone.

But while France prepares for war she seizes the chance of escape, to a new life in the service of dashing Count Nikolai Kirov,and a new home in the glittering Russian city of St Petersburg.

Thrown into the flamboyant and demanding circle of her new employer and his family, Anne moves between the city’s splendour and the wild, untamed beauty of the Caucasus Mountains, and begins her transformation from Anne Peters into Anna Petrovna.

But as Napoleon gathers his army for the final attack on Imperial Russia, Anna must prepare for a battle of the heart – her forbidden love for a man and a country she may never call her own…

Shortlisted for the 1991 RNA Novel of the Year Award.

Fleur Hamilton , intelligent, independent, sensible, is much courted but never won. She believes herself to be completely level-headed, but as an unmarried Victorian female she is utterly innocent about love and the ways of men. 

Visiting St Petersburg with her father, she meets Count Sergei Kirov. He puzzles as much as he excites her – a vibrant, attractive, yet enigmatic man, with a tragic secret in his past. In the gilded splendour of this loveliest of cities, she falls in love with him, and with the mystical and barbaric beauty of his country. But England and Russia are on the brink of war with each other – and Kirov is on the brink of a marriage of convenience with the daughter of Fleur’s host. 

From the sophistication of Imperial Petersburg to the rustic simplicity of the Crimea; from elegant house parties to the agony and squalor of besieged Sebastopol; Fleur follows her heart. Through passion, betrayal and suffering, she seeks to unravel the mystery of Kirov, and to understand what it is that binds the threads of her life so closely to his.

Emily Paget, poor relation of an earl, shocks her family with her determination to earn her own living, rather than submit to a ‘respectable’ marriage. The adventure brings her to the notice of her eccentric Russian grandmother, who whisks her off to St Petersburg, There Emily finds the freedom she craves amongst the drawing-room revolutionaries; and falls passionately in love, never dreaming how close they are to real revolution.

When it comes, bloody and brutal, Emily’s courage is tested to the full. Only she can save something from the wreck and bring the last of her family safe out of Russia. But she must leave behind the man she loves, not knowing even if he is alive or dead…

Winner of the 1993 RNA Novel of the Year Award

Eugenie, cherished only child of the Comte de Talcy, is brought up amid the splendours and luxuries of the Ancien Regime. But in 1789 Paris erupts into revolution and terror. Her father’s untimely death alone cheats the guillotine and nineteen-year-old Eugenie is forced to flee for her life. 

Set down homeless and destitute by a small boat on the coast of England, Eugenie and  her maid Marie set off on the long and weary walk to London. And when an arrogant gentleman in a sporting curricle heartlessly splashes them as he drives by, it is almost too much to bear. 

In London Eugenie is taken in by Lady Mary Berrington, an old family friend - only to discover that Lady Mary’s adored nephew and most eligible bachelor in England, the Earl of St Osyth, is that same heartless gentleman whom Eugenie has sworn never to forgive. 

Her new life is further disturbed when one of Robespierre’s agents in London recognises her. A plot is afoot to kidnap her and take her back to Paris and the guillotine. St Osyth might save her, but she will not ask him, and turns elsewhere for help. Not one, but two counter plots develop, with potentially disastrous results…