Non-Fiction

The Secret Relationship

The Secret Relationship is the true story of Churchill and Roosevelt. Leaders who led an unprecedented endeavor and the men and women who carried out joint intelligence operations on their behalf, as early as 1937.

No one has written about this early period. It is a history of uneasy alliances; family allegiances and betrayals; an exceptional and trusting relationship born of mistrust and differing world views; subversion and subterfuge; espionage and codebreaking; special operations; and how, despite individual foibles, prejudices, and preconceptions, the message to cooperate made its way down the line from the prime minister and the president into intelligence operations until the end of the war.

Fiction

Shakespeare’s Daughter (2023) A Novel

Set in 1615, Susanna Shakespeare Hall, William Shakespeare’s thirty-something ‘other’ daughter, has myriad scores to settle and questions she needs answering, and only one person can be held to account — William Shakespeare. Unknown to her until the action opens, Susanna’s mother, has held William’s original manuscripts in ‘safekeeping’ — read ‘as hostages to fortune’ — and Susanna needs to understand why she was never told. Faced with the reality of her philandering husband at the same time, Susanna’s Shakespearean road trip to London is anything but smooth. She encounters infamous highwaymen, footpads, handsome actors, and her father’s ‘frenemies’ in a world far richer in rapscallions than any of her father’s plays. But when she finally meets up with her famous dad, Susanna slowly realises that things are not as they seem. . . that her anger at Will has blinded her to life and love and only he holds the key to her release. It is a heart-warming story of complex family ties, love, loss, and finding oneself.

More fiction in the works

Private Collections:

Based on my real-life experiences and my non-fiction book, Hitler’s Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures (St. Martin’s Press, 2015), this book is set in England and France, and tells the secret history behind a massive art cache from World War II as it is discovered in the 1990s by a British invalided military intelligence officer and an American museum curator.

The Lioness of Sheba: Set in the Cotswolds in 1937 and based on my non-fiction book, Hitler’s Aristocrats published March 2023 (St. Martin’s Press (Macmillan) and Amberley Publishing (UK). The body of a Norwegian hotel guest is discovered at a rural train station. But was it suicide as the aristocratic family she had come to visit claim, or murder? And how was the victim involved with these aristocratic British fascist sympathisers? After the body is identified, it becomes clear that the fabulous antique jewel reputed to have belonged to the Queen of Sheba is at the heart of this mysterious murder, with a surprising twist at the end of the tale.