E V Thompson: 27 books

1915: Ben Retallick is asked by a War Office friend to provide two traction engines for a secret expedition attempting to take two gunboats overland from Cape Town to Lake Tanganyika - more than 3,000 miles - to wrest control of the lake from the Germans. He sends engines with young Ruddlemoor as...

Cornish farmer Joseph Moyle's loyalty to the crown goes well rewarded - his stepson Ralf is appointed page to the future Charles II. And when Ralf takes up his post, Britain is in the midst of its most tumultuous period ever - the war between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians and the dawning...

Daniel Retallick has grown to manhood during the years of flood tide in the chronicles of Africa. The son of Josh and Miriam Retallick, he settles with his wife and children on a homestead in a valley of Matabeleland. But the years are the 1880s, and the Matabele impis are advancing with their...

Cornwall, the 1870s. Emily Boyce, daughter of a pretentious parson, incurs her father's wrath by falling in love with young Sam Hooper, a copper miner on Bodmin Moor. So when the moorland mines fail, Emily's father seizes the opportunity to ensure that Sam goes to seek a new life in the copper mines...

Josh Retallick, hardy son of a respected Cornish family, and the wild Miriam, daughter of a drink-sodden copper miner, explore together the secret places and wild creatures of Bodmin Moor, unaware that fate will soon sweep them apart. Yet destiny brings them together again and again through...

In the tin mines of Cornwall during the first decades of the nineteenth century, death is the constant companion of the working man. Ben Retallick has grown to sturdy manhood among the miners and fisherfolk, through the hard and hungry years when blood was often the price of bread. When cruel fate...

Cornwall, 1914 - Perys Tremayne arrives at St Austell to stay with relatives at the ancient family home of Heligan House. But this is not a social visit: Perys is hoping to use his family connections to start a military career with the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry. Perys is a Tremayne, but...

South-West England, 1812. England is at war with America and when two hundred and fifty American prisoners-of-war arrive at Dartmoor prison, it is already overcrowded with French prisoners. Among the newcomers is Lieutenant Pilgrim Penn, an American merchant seaman, who soon falls in love with a local...

For Alan Carter the greatest personal sacrifice of the Great War of 1914-18 is being called-up after only one week of marriage. Leaving his new bride is even more painful than the wound that, months later, interrupts his war at sea and sends him to Cornwall to convalesce. For, there, he has time to...

Josh and Miriam Retallick and their grandson Ben seem almost part of the wild and rugged Cornish landscape of 1913. Yet a revolutionary spirit of change is sweeping across the country - and the whole of Europe - with terrifying haste. Even before the outbreak of the Great War, with strike action...

On a wild stormy night in 1813, Nathan Jago, drift fisherman, ex-prizefighter and lord of the manor of Polrudden, rescues a young boy from a drowning mother's arms as a French ship founders on the jagged Cornish rocks. It is an act that will profoundly affect his destiny. Despite hard times, Nathan...

Cornwall, 1854 - Alice Rowe owes everything to Reverend Alfred Markham who rescued her from a workhouse, employing her in his parsonage as a housemaid. So when he dies suddenly of a heart attack, Alice faces a fearful and uncertain future. But as one chapter in Alice's life ends, another begins. For...

The Cornish coast of 1810 was alive with fishing boats, warships and smugglers. For Nathan Jago, a fishing business seemed the ideal place to invest his prizefighting winnings. But it wasn't all plain sailing to a wealthy future. For a start there was wilful young squire's daughter Elinor Hearle. And then there was Amy, with her passion for the sea and her fierce Cornish pride...

Local landowner John Bettison has forbidden his workers to attend church, but when curate Toby Lovell arrives in Porthluney, he is determined to bring about change. Injured during the Battle of Trafalgar, Toby is used to facing adversity but little does he realise the challenge that lies ahead of...