Martin Hicks

It is the late autumn of 1854 and the steam gunboat Spartan, commanded by James Rutherford has returned to duty following the repair of her battle damage in Calcutta. Another, though less powerful, Russian commerce raider is still at large in the China Sea, though as events follow their course...

A Gathering of Soldiers relates the story of Daniel Ryan, an Irish immigrant who has begun a new life in Georgia just as the events leading up to the momentous civil war in America have begun to unfold. The book describes his experiences upon enlisting with a group of his peers, in a north...

It is the autumn of 1852, and the British warship Spartan, commanded by James Rutherford, continues her mission for the East India Company, to destroy a criminal consortium led by the Scorpion, a Chinese criminal named Liang Ziu, who controls an alliance of ruthless pirates, complicit local...

It is May of 1863 and the Civil War in North America has entered its third year. Facing a range of enemy threats, southern commander General Robert E. Lee proposes an invasion of the northern states to supply his army, relieve pressure on other imperilled fronts and to seek decisive victory on...

It is the late summer of 1863 and the third year of the war in North America. In the wake of the defeat at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee has returned, with his Confederate army, to Virginia. But a further crisis to the west, in the Tennessee theatre of the war, compels the general to detach a part...

It is the summer of 1853 and Commander James Rutherford leaves Calcutta once more to renew his campaign against organised Oriental piracy. The principal pirate leader Liang Ziu is dead, but Rutherford obtains intelligence that his criminal organisation continues to operate from a heavily...

A Deepening Twilight, the sequel to A Season for Killing, continues the story of Daniel Ryan, an Irish immigrant serving in Robert E. Lee's confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War. The novel relates Ryan's experiences in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, and in the...

It is the spring of 1864 and the Confederate raider Palmetto is off the Philippines, pursuing her campaign against US shipping. For her captain, Thomas Grover there is much to consider, for with the ship’s previously sustained engine damage not fully repaired, he learns that these seas are now...

It is 1861 and Thomas Grover has resigned from the US Navy to go with his native state of South Carolina which has left the Union. For two years his career in the new Confederate Navy is tedious and unrewarding. He is posted to Britain as a naval attaché, again denied his wish for active...

A Season for Killing is told from the perspective of Daniel Ryan, a corporal in Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Virginia in 1864 during the American Civil War, as the brutal campaign in the spring and summer of that year unfolds. Ryan, an Irish immigrant in a Georgian brigade, serves...

When Lieutenant James Rutherford of the Honourable East India Company is summoned to Government House in Calcutta, he has no inkling of what awaits him there. To his great surprise, he is offered command of the Spartan, a newly converted steam warship, receiving orders to proceed to sea to hunt...

The Rappahannock Line continues the story of Irish immigrant Daniel Ryan who serves in Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. As the year 1862 draws to its close, the powerful Union army gathers its strength on the Rappahannock River in Virginia to renew its advance on the...

The box, skillfully fashioned from wood and with a pattern of stars inlaid on its side, was clearly very old. Intrigued by its age and craftsmanship, David Molloy bought it at the car boot sale in a Glasgow school playground, an acquisition that led to a series of nightmares which grew to exert...