1812.  Europe has been at war for twenty years. Britain stands alone against the greatest threat to peace the world has ever known, at daily risk of a French invasion and revolution that would consign 1066 to a footnote.  In London, a handful of men struggle to protect their country and maintain the war effort.  Among them, the Earl of Myddelton, code-breaker to the Foreign Office, strives to crack the most difficult French code yet—the Grand Chiffre—before still more men die on the battlefields of Europe.

Then, on 11 May 1812, the Prime Minister is assassinated.  Amid widespread panic and fear of a French conspiracy, the government falls. 

From the ballrooms of London, to the backstreets of power, to the death-in-waiting coast of enemy France, Myddelton is drawn inexorably into the deepening crisis—his private life unravelling all the while, as misunderstandings, gossip and spite threaten to destroy his marriage, his inheritance and his career.

May 1812 will be published on November 14th, 2009, at which point the Amazon ordering link will function correctly.