The Kephrath series

The Kephrath series of books is set in the ancient near east, towards the end of what we now call the Late Bronze Age. Long-standing nations, empires, and ways of life are beginning to break down, and nobody yet knows what will replace them. Groups of people, displaced from their former homes, are seeking to settle elsewhere, and conflicts arise with the current inhabitants.

The series opens with In a Milk and Honeyed Land, following a young village priest as he tries to reconcile his calling with the injustice of his plight at the hands of the local chieftain, and the unknown threat of new, warlike, would-be settlers arriving in the hill-country where he lives.

In a Milk and Honeyed Land Cover

Life, love and conflict in the hill country

Damariel is apprenticed as a young man by the village priest, whose reckless actions lead to his disgrace. Damariel manages to avoid becoming implicated in the matter and carries on his training, marrying his childhood friend Qetirah shortly before they begin their shared ministry in the town.

Feeling ashamed of their continuing inability to have children, Qetirah becomes pregnant by the chief of the four towns, but the pregnancy is difficult. Damariel’s anger and outrage spills over into the marriage. He holds the chief responsible for the situation but cannot see how to get either justice or revenge.

Buy Now
Listen to author reading 1
Listen to author reading 2
Listen to author reading 3
Read a sample on the website

Scenes from a Life Cover

What journey would you make to encounter the meaning of a dream?

Makty-Rasut is a scribe in New Kingdom Egypt, fashioning tombs for the elite. He lives a comfortable but restless life, moving every few years further upstream along the river Nile. He is content to exercise his talent without examining his origins.

Then a series of vivid dreams, interpreted with the help of a senior priest, disrupts this pattern. To solve the riddle, he must go on a journey that will take him outside the Beloved Land and away from the life that he knows. His travels take him into the neighbouring province of Canaan, to a hill-country village called Kephrath, and to a way of life he has never considered.

Buy Now
Listen to author reading 1
Listen to author reading 2
Read a sample on the website

The Flame Before Us Cover

Conflict and commitment in the shadow of a city's downfall

The raiding ships have come before, but this time it is different. This time the attackers are coming to stay, and defensive walls will not hold them back. Nowhere is safe. One by one, the great kings and their vassal cities collapse as the newcomers advance.

The land is already a patchwork of many different peoples, bound together in a fragile web of traditional alliances and rivalries. How will political and personal promises change with the arrival of the new clans? Is war inevitable, or can a different answer be found?

Walk with refugees, migrants, and defenders of the land alike, as they struggle to create a different way of life beside the ruins of the old. Can alliance, commitment and love survive the turmoil?

Buy Now
Read a sample on the website

Ennor is the planned sequel to The Flame Before Us, and follows the trading routes in search of precious tin…