I am so excited to announce a new historical fiction anthology coming soon, Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope: 25.06.2026!
Courage includes Kate’s Letter, my short story set in 15th century Transylvania. This short story was inspired by the main character from my latest novel When Secrets Bloom and a historical character who needs no introduction: Kate Webber and Vlad Dracula.
At the heart of the Courage anthology lies a simple, unyielding truth:
Courage is not the absence of fear – it is the decision to face it.
Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope gathers fifteen lives drawn from across time, each poised at the brink of fear—and each choosing, in that decisive instant, not to retreat.
These are not tales that clamor for attention.
They endure.
They remain.
Within these pages, the lion is not always seen in the open field of legend, crowned in certainty. Instead, it waits in the hidden chambers of the human spirit—summoned in moments of grief, uncertainty, and quiet reckoning.
Men, women, and children alike step forward when every instinct urges them to turn back.
What they find is not ease, but strength: unexpected, hard-won, and transformative.
COURAGE, BOOK COVER REVEAL:
Book cover by Cathy Helms at Avalon Graphics
Some stories do not shout.
They endure.
This anthology invites you to walk beside them. To witness ordinary lives pressed by circumstance into something enduring, something resolute—something, in its own way, lion-hearted.
15 writers. 15 tales. 15 courageous lives:
- Alison Morton — The Sentry (Noricum, AD 395)
- Derek Birks — The Saxon (Southern Britain, AD 471)
- Marian L Thorpe — The Phoenix (circa AD 900)
- Judith Arnopp — Siflede (London, 1066)
- Annie Whitehead — Daisy Chain (England, 1141)
- Anna Belfrage — Stepping Between (England, 1308)
- Carolyn Hughes — Confronting Plague (England, 1361)
- Patricia Furstenberg — Kate’s Letter (Transylvania, 1478)
- Amy Maroney — The Portrait’s Secret (Paris, 1536)
- Jean Gill — Legacy (England, 1558)
- Cathie Dunn — (forthcoming)
- Helen Hollick — A Taleteller’s Tale (Caribbean, 1709)
- Elizabeth St.John — The Gate (London, 1900)
- Antoine Vanner — A Sack of Potatoes (Netherlands, 1954)
- Kathy Hollick-Bater — Grumpy Old Grandfather (Present Day)
With an introduction by Lorna Fergusson.
Book trailer by author Jean Gill
Pre-order: May 25
Publication: June 25
Link coming SOON.
