A wonderfully rich and absorbing historical novel following the fortunes of a struggling artist around the courtly world of Elizabethan London.

Norfolk, the 22nd year of Elizabeth I's reign. An ambitious young painter strikes out from his humble beginnings for the teeming City of London. Haunted by the image of his bride's gruesome death, and fuelled by his desire to portray the splendour of life, he sets his sights on a place at the Queen's glittering court.

Yet talent alone does not open the doors to royal favour, and the artist is thrown into the petty intrigues and...

A delicately balanced novel of childhood secrets, hidden treasure and the lengths people will go to in order to protect - or discover - what they deem valuable.

The Margate Shell Grotto really exists: a serpentine corridor decorated in swirling patterns using 50 varieties of shell, and whoever made it created an enigma that has puzzled historians and speliologists for generations. Though it has been suggested that the cave might be Phoenician in origin, the fact that most of the iconography is Egyptian and Eastern suggests a more recent, 19th century origin.

Fanny Newlove is...