Category: Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope

The anthology gathers together stories from a remarkable group of writers exploring courage in many forms: quiet courage, desperate courage, historical courage, the kind that emerges only when ordinary people are pushed into extraordinary moments.
Fifteen historical short stories by Judith Arnopp, Anna Belfrage, Derek Birks, Cathie Dunn, Patricia Furstenberg, Jean Gill, Kathy Hollick-Bater, Helen Hollick, Carolyn Hughes, Amy Maroney, Alison Morton, Elizabeth St.John, Marian L Thorpe, Antoine Vanner, Annie Whitehead. With an introduction by Lorna Fergusson.

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What Did Medieval Epistles Really Look Like? And Kate’s Surprise Letter

brown envelope with red wax seal

There is something haunting about an old letter.

While writing Kate’s Letter for the anthology Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope (OUT JUNE 17), I found myself drawn not only to the emotions within the letter, but to the physical reality of medieval correspondence itself. How did people protect private messages before envelopes existed? What did secrecy look like in an age of spies, kingdoms, and fragile loyalties?

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Empire’s Passing by Marian L. Thorpe: How to Live the Passing of an Era

Empire's Passing (Empire's Legacy Book 8)

There are endings that close a story and there are endings that open something far larger, echoing like footsteps across a void road. When an empire falls what truly ends… and what quietly survives?

Within our historical fiction anthology Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope Marian L. Thorpe shares a remarkable story.

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Broadside and Boarding: Small Scale Action in the Age of Fighting Sail by Antoine Vanner

History does not always unfold in grand theatres. More often, it is decided in narrow waters, in the press of cannon smoke, in the brutal exchanges where survival is measured not in glory, but in seconds. When history is reduced to a single moment of fire and impact, what remains of the men who stood within it?

Antoine Vanner is one of the contributing writer to our historical fiction anthology Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope.

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How Short Stories Actually Hold Entire Lifetimes and Why It’s Important

writer tip-off fine authors

Readers and writers can dispute the amount of room left to wonder in a short story – and say there simply isn’t enough space.

In a short narrative every sentence must carry weight: be it wound, memory, betrayal, or simply longing. Sometimes an entire lifetime must survives inside a single gesture. This could be something as mundane as a hand reaching for a letter that arrived too late. Like in my short story Kate’s Letter included in the anthology Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope.

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Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope, Pre-Order Now #CourageAnthology

Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope

The old storytellers would have said that courage does not arrive with trumpets. It comes quieter than that: with footsteps in deep snow; with a hand reaching to help when all instinct says withdraw.

And so Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope was born.
Courage is not the absence of fear—it is the decision to face it.

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