Novels

First published in 1837, The Bivouac is a collection of stories set against the backdrop of the Peninsular War (which began in 1808, making 2008 the bicentenary). It opens with a company of foot soldiers encamped in England when they receive their orders to sail for the Iberian Peninsula and follows it through the campaign against the French in Portugal and Spain, including the battles of Vittoria and Busaco. As well as the overarching story of their part in the Peninsular War, it also includes tales told by the characters themselves about other aspects of the lives. Focusing on the officers and soldiers of the company, rather than just on military matters, The Bivouac blends fiction and history and is a charming collection of stories that puts a different perspective on this part of the Napoleonic Wars.

Harriet Heron’s life is almost over before it has even begun. At just twenty-three years of age, she is an invalid, over-protected and reclusive. Before it is too late, she must escape the fog of Victorian London for a place where she can breathe.

Together with her devoted mother, Louisa, her god-fearing aunt, Yael, and a book of her own spells inspired by the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Harriet travels to a land where the air is tinged with rose and gold and for the first time begins to experience what it is to live. But a chance meeting on the voyage to Alexandria results in a dangerous friendship as Louisa’s long-buried past returns, in the form of someone determined to destroy her by preying upon her daughter.

As Harriet journeys towards a destiny no one could have foreseen, her aunt Yael is caught up in an Egypt on the brink of revolt and her mother must confront the spectres of her own youth.

Award-winning journalist and writer Wendy Wallace spins a tale of three women caught between propriety and love on a journey of cultural awakening through an exquisitely drawn Egypt. In prose both sumptuous and mesmeric, she conjures a sensibility akin to that of E M Forster and Merchant Ivory.