In Lovesong, three-time Whitbread Prize winner Geraldine McCaughrean has written what Philippa Gregory called “Probably the best historical novel I have ever read.”

At the centre of the story is a talented troubadour, Peter Oriole, and his daughter, ‘Princess’ Ouallada. The opening sections of the book trace Oriole’s journey from France to the Holy Land in the service of two very different crusader Knights, one a saintly aesthete, the other a cynical opportunist. The twelfth century was a time when men and women were inventing – or perhaps reinventing – the nature of love itself, and it was the troubadour’s task to express that love in song – their fate either glory or scandalous ruin.

What does love mean to Oriole? As he discovers both romance and passion in his own life we are introduced to an extraordinary cast of characters – rogues, mountebanks, villains, heroes, damsels both in and out of distress, soldiers and holy men, all working out their own destiny, each compellingly and convincingly drawn. This is the story of one man’s wreck on the sea of passion – and his daughter’s stormy voyage in his wake. With strikingly detailed imagery and characterisation that is totally convincing and compassionate, Geraldine McCaughrean has written a novel of ideas which is also storytelling at full pelt.

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Vainglory begins in France in 1429, the year of the Siege of Orléans, as Victoire de Gloriole regains possession of the family castle from the English following the Battle of Agincourt. Having consolidated his position by marrying a beautiful Englishwoman, Victoire sets out to rebuild a dynasty and a castle. However some years on, he finds himself without a legitimate heir, and at war with a family of scheming cousins. From Joan of Arc and the 15th century wars with the English through to Catherine de Medici and the slaughter of the Huguenots, Vainglory tells the story of a power-hungry family who will let nothing and no one get in their way. Cleverly plotted and beautifully written, it is a historical novel of rare class.

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Life for the newly widowed Harriet Capel is not expected to hold any surprises. It will be spent watching over the vicissitudes of her children’s marriages and relationships, and looking after the grandchildren. That is, until she sees Oliver Gaunt again. He is her daughter-in-law’s father. The relationship between the parents-in-law has always been difficult since their children’s wedding day and few words have been spoken. When they meet, they do not at first recognise one another, but the physical attraction between them is powerful and instantaneous. As their love affair gathers intensity and pace, so do its consequences for the family as a whole. In Kiss and Kin, two generations walk a dangerous tightrope between fidelity and parenthood, each guarding past and present secrets, the revelation of which, in the white heat of passion, may destroy the carefully erected boundaries of tradition and propriety.

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Every Sunday the men met at the bridge. Felix Campbell was there with a couple dozen men. They were all shapes and sizes, ages and wits. What they shared was history, what they knew was their place. Farmers all, some creating the impression that they lived a more urgent and passionate existence in the fighting fields of France, than in the potato fields of reality. Felix was smoking and talking when the bridge-gatherers spotted a figure moving over the brae. The walker was a woman, most certainly, but who? Women’s strict observance of the day of rest left little time for gallivanting. And where could a stranger be heading when there was nowhere she could go that the men wouldn’t have known about? Then the woman appeared. She was all colour and sway, and as far away as imaginable from the local women. Pale, pale skin and strong dark auburn hair falling free to large wide hips. She wore a purple shawl. That night Felix, a bachelor, aged 43, living in the house he was born in, dreamt of purple. Purple in the shape of a woman.

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For Anne Neville, a timid and delicate child, ignored by her mother, patronised by her elder sister and bullied by her formidable father Warwick the Kingmaker, her childhood friend Richard Plantagenet becomes a source of strength throughout her life. As she moves abruptly from castle to castle, from England to France, with Warwick’s changing fortunes in the turbulent Wars of the Roses, Anne is a pawn in the dangerous games of political intrigue that she struggles to understand. The third son of the ambitious Duke of York, later King Richard III, is a hero in the eyes of the shy and bewildered Anne, and the key to her understanding of the great events happening around her. Their love, almost wrecked by the feud of York and Lancaster, culminates in great happiness and the last Plantagenet reign in England. The White Queen of Middleham is the first book in the Sprigs of Broom series, following the lives of Yorkist Plantagenet off-spring including “The Princes in the Tower” and Perkin Warbeck.

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To William Rufus’ corrupt and opulent court comes the young Norman Ralph des Aix – Eager to win his knight’s fee from the new English king. But although fortune – and King Rufus – seems to smile on him, Ralph rapidly discovers that to be King’s favourite is bewildering – and not always pleasant. And many feel that the rundown holding of Chenna’s Tun, deep in the heart of the New Forest, is a poor reward for his services. In the remote heart of the great wood, Ralph and his passionate young wife, Sybil of Fallowdene, are relentlessly drawn into the growing conflict between the greedy sophistication of the Norman court and the dark world of the Saxon forest with all its hidden rites. A net of danger closes round Ralph, Sybil and the glittering, lonely figure of King Rufus. And to be truly lord of his own manor, Ralph learns that he must bear the ancient title, King of the Wood, with all its mysterious and barbaric responsibilities…

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Twelfth-century Europe: Walter, a brilliant young singer, leaves his home in the forests of Germany in search of love and fame. He joins the Crusades and while wandering between monasteries and castles, clashes with a mysterious Brotherhood of Watchers. His struggle leads him to Constantinople, and a meeting with the Doge of Venice – which will change him utterly. Who is Walter though? What really is his role in the great affairs of his time? Present-day Oxford: G, an exceptional and slightly sinister don, dies in the most bizarre circumstances while working on a medieval manuscript. The manuscript, based upon an occult system, is about Walter. How does the past reach out to the present? This is a powerful and compelling tale about personal and political catastrophe in a time of uncertainty and danger. It is also a daring and brilliant contemplation of the Middle Ages with an unforgettable hero whose music weaves magic, and a certain mayhem, throughout the tale. ‘An intriguing adventure of the hermetic imagination across time, T.J. Armstrong’s first novel compels attention throughout its twinned story-lines and leaves a strange afterglow in the mind’

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