The Bookshelf
Step onto the shelf and explore the collection. Each novel stands alone, and familiar faces cross between them. Every purchase supports local charities.
One Day in May
PAPERBACK
STEP INTO THE WORLD OF 1715.
Robert Downes lives in Eckington, Derbyshire, from 1715 to 1767.
The story and characters are part fact and part fiction. Set around the North East Midlands and South Yorkshire. A reconstruction of the extraordinary life of an ordinary lad who ends up killing a youth from Mansfield. You get to meet many interesting 18th Century characters and finally get left with deciding whether his punishment fitted the crime after all the evidence has been revealed.
Follow his colourful life.
Will he Survive?
*Paperback only.
The Day of the Spider
PAPERBACK
STEP BACK INTO THE WORLD OF 1750.
Helen (Nellie) Chapman, born Mansfield, Nottinghamshire in 1750, became Lady Helen Bollington in 1774.
Set in Mansfield, York and in the Hambleton Hills of North Yorkshire from 1770 to 1773. Most of the action in this novel takes place at Chipwick an estate deep in the Hambleton Hills in North Yorkshire, it contains some mild sexual and violent content and reveals the extraordinary 18th Century world of uninhibited hedonistic, upper class activity which was enjoyed by the rich in some of the remote areas of the country.
Helen was not all she appeared to be as will be revealed.
She also featured as Nellie Chapman in One Day in May. The reader gets to decides whether they like her or not.
*Paperback only.
Six Days in December
PAPERBACK
As 1745 was nearing its end the first six days in December were dramatic for the residents of Derbyshire particularly those in Derby itself. The army of the Young Pretender invaded the town and proclaimed King James the Third its King. In reality he never became King. So what was the reason for this?
Six Days in December recalls the events from the 1st to the 6th the days of occupation. It features two spies from opposing sides each posed as agents for their enemy.
The fictional story is primarily based on facts as far as we know them, from the many reports that have been written by both eyewitnesses and by academics after the event.
Most of the characters actually lived through these turbulent times and events as described but some are figments of the author's imagination to try to highlight the less well recorded individuals who in all conflict can have a significant effect upon the eventual outcomes.
*Paperback only.
Musings from my notebook
PAPERBACK
This little collection is an eclectic mix of ADULT poetry and prose taken from some of my notebooks that are filled with scribbles and more developed ideas in manuscript form, before being refined and typed up for publication. (Please note that you may find some of the works depict the attitudes of the time they were originally written and may offend those of a sensitive nature, further proof that Al has not been consulted)
Some of them have not been published before and some, I doubt, will never reach that stage.
I hope they inform and amuse you.
*Paperback only.