Showing results by author "James Philip" in All Categories

Hawke first captained Yorkshire in the Championship in 1883. He was also the man who sacked Bobby Peel, the greatest left-arm bowler of his era, and infamously declaimed "Pray God, no professional shall ever captain England", sentiments that very nearly damned him forever. A man of contradictions, strong convictions, more often than not his own worst enemy, this cricketing biography goes behind the myth of the man looking to paint a picture of one of cricket’s great men.

Cricket on the Beach is book one of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62 - Australia. Timeline 10/27/62 is set in a world in which the Cuban Missiles Crisis went wrong and the swinging '60s never happened. The thermonuclear madness might not have reached as far south as Australasia, but in the weeks and months after the Cuban Missiles War, many more people might have succumbed to the "On the Beach" syndrome had it not been for the distraction of a unique sporting odyssey.

New York - July 1976 - in a world in which New England remains the sparkling jewel in the crown of the British Empire. It is the day before Empire Day - July 4 - the day each year when the British Empire marks the brutal crushing of the rebellion dignified by the treachery of the 56 delegates to the Continental Congress who were so foolhardy as to sign the infamous Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on that day of infamy in 1776.

It is November 1963 - 13 months after the Cuban Missile Crisis went horribly wrong. In this timeline the swinging sixties are not going to happen and the survivors, far from counting their blessings are beginning to wonder exactly what sort of world they have created.

Heroes is the second story in the Harry Waters series and the immediate sequel to Islands of No Return. Sometimes, whatever you do, the world conspires against you. In Heroes we find Harry fighting for his freedom, his career, against alcoholism, and to preserve what is left of his nightmare-ravaged sanity. On trial for murdering his best friend, Harry stands condemned by the man who was responsible for leaving his men to die in the deserts of Iraq. And worse, damned by the testimony of the woman he loves.

The Cuban Missiles Crisis didn't end peacefully and the "swinging sixties" didn't happen. On Saturday October 27th, 1962 American and Soviet geopolitical brinkmanship resulted in the most terrible war in human history. The forever changed world that remained when the thermonuclear fires had burned themselves out is the world of Timeline 10/27/62.

It is April 1964 in a world in which the "swinging '60s" never happened. Two Soviet tank armies have fallen on Iran and are pouring down from the Zagros Mountains onto the Iraqi floodplains of the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers like wolves upon the fold. In the United States, the overwhelming popular mood is one of "America first". The "victory" of the October War has never seemed more pyrrhic, or all the death, destruction, and grief more futile, than it does in the second week of April 1964. Only one thing is certain: The world is about to be turned upside down again.

It is January 1965 in a world in which the Cuban Missiles Crisis went horribly wrong and the "swinging sixties" never happened. In the United States, a new president has entered the White House; in Britain, the country will shortly be going to the polls for the first time since the October War. But with the return of "normal" politics, there is no return to the "normality" of the old, now-lost world order.

A decade ago, the challenge was accepted: to send a man to the Moon and to return him safely to the Earth, and now a giant rocket ship designed by Wernher von Braun stands ready on the pad and the clock is counting down. Ten years ago, nobody thought it was possible. But that was then, and this is now. Mankind has chosen to sail the new sea of space, to quest after the knowledge and the dreams of the star-filled abyss, to climb the infinite ladder to the stars.

The Great Society is the third verse of the American story of Armageddon. To its friends and enemies, alike the United States seems to have emerged from the October War battered, bruised, but invincible. However, 13 months after the cataclysm terrible wounds remain unhealed and the nation of liberty is riven by conflict. The United States is a country desperately looking to re-find its way; to re-discover its sense of nationhood and purpose.

Our affable, driven, conflicted hero’s journey through nearly 20 stormy years, where it all went wrong and perhaps, and how redemption came looking for him in an unlikely, lethal guise when actually, he was through with the world. One should be careful for what one wishes for, but with Harry Waters, you never quite know what you are going to get because…neither does he, and after a while, that might just be what grows on one!

It is September 1943, and Bomber Command is gathering itself for what many in the High Command believe will be its final victorious campaign; but even the true believers in the "main aim" know the coming winter battle will be bloodier than anything which has come before. For Adam Chantrey, looking forward to the fifth year of his personal odyssey, duty has become his watchword, and life on the squadrons his only reality. And then one day, while waiting for a train that is late, he encounters a different fate...and afterwards, nothing will ever be the same again.

In Winter's Spy, the Mystery Man is under arrest, suspected of having been an enemy agent for his whole career in the Metropolitan Police and throughout all his years working for MI5. Dammed by the evidence of a German spy whom he encountered in Paris before the war, it seems as if he must literally fight for his life. Then, transported to Camp 020, MI5’s South London interrogation center, and confronted by his accuser, the Mystery Man begins to suspect that nothing is quite what it seemed.

Detective Inspector Frankie Ransom prides herself on being third generation Met - her father was head of the old Flying Squad, her grandfather retired as deputy head of CID at Scotland Yard - but suspects the Force she loves has long since fallen out of love with her.

She'd been promised a "proper" police job in the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, but what she'd got wasn't even close. She'd been promised she'd be working with an elite team of experienced detectives - what she'd got was a squad of malcontents, troublemakers, and time-servers. And worst of all, she discovers she's been appointed London's unofficial "Celebrity Cop." As if to add insult to injury, Professional Standards are on her case. Not because she's done anything wrong.

In The Plains of Waterloo, eight months have passed since the bloodbath at Harald Villas at the end of A Ransom for Two Roses. Frankie has been slowly piecing her life back together and coming to terms with her changed self. When she visits a notorious child killer in prison at Waddon Hall Maximum Security Unit in Dorset, she believes she is testing how far she has come since that terrible winter night.

A little over 20 months have passed since the cataclysm of October 1962. It is a minute before midnight in Philadelphia on July 4, 1964, in a world stumbling inexorably toward a second, even more catastrophic nuclear war. The United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom have stepped to the edge of the thermonuclear abyss; who will blink first? In All Along the Watchtower, the main series and the USA series of Timeline 10/27/72 merge into a single global narrative of the most desperate hours in human history.

Sir Stanley Jackson captained Harrow School, Cambridge University, and England in a golden epoch of English cricket. It is no bad thing to place the man and his age in perspective before the telling of his story. Our subject played his cricket in an age lost to us forever, an age wreathed in legend.

It is April 1964 in a world in which the ‘swinging 60s’ never happened. War is chaos; and chaos is war. The post-October War world is at a bloody crossroads; betrayal and confusion preoccupies and distracts the West to the disasters about to befall newly remade, desperately fragile alliances as long kept secrets surface. The impenetrable fog of war spreads across the Mediterranean. Even while Malta burns and the survivors of the savage naval battle off its coast fight for their lives in the wreckage-strewn iron grey waters....

It is December 1943, and the Lancaster Force has settled into the long, hard slog of razing Berlin from end to end. Raid after raid presses on against the storms of winter and the fury of the gun lines and the fighters guarding the faraway cities on the Saxon plain. The storms that batter the Main Force and the seasonal fog and mist that regularly envelope their bases are enemies as deadly as the Luftwaffe; the time when any man on ops could cling to hope is quickly disappearing.