September 1938. Spain's Civil War has been raging for two years, the outcome still in the balance. But rebel General Franco is so confident of winning that he has opened up battlefield tourism along the country's north coast. Jack Telford, a left-wing reporter, finds himself with an eccentric group of touristson one of the War Route's yellow Chrysler buses. Driven by his passion for peace, Telford attempts to uncover the hidden truths beneath the conflict. But Jack must contend first with his own gullibility, the tragic death of a fellow passenger, capture by Republican guerrilleros, a final...

1721, and elderly Catherine Yale discovers that second husband Elihu's will has left her no bequest except the slur of branding her a "wicked wife." True, her private journals are filled with intimacies: her inner thoughts about life in Old Madras, where the East India Company's intrigues are as complex as any in the Mughal Emperor's court; and the espionage she has undertaken, despite the danger into which it has thrust both herself and her children. Perhaps it's time for her to read them afresh, to go back before the days when Elihu first betrayed her, before she was betrayed by her...

1689 and the wife of English East India Company Governor Elihu Yale risks the six-month sea voyage from old Madras to her home in London with her youngest children. But after twenty years away, it's a city Catherine now barely recognises - built anew after the Great Fire and occupied by William the Third's soldiers in the wake of the Glorious Revolution. Yet some things never change, and the secrets she thought she'd left behind in Fort St. George soon return to torment her. An old rival, a long-lost friend and a bitter enemy soon draw her back into a world of espionage, revenge and brutal...