Mark Seaman Books

A memoir about challenges, uncertainties, danger - and numerous humorous incidents - through the eyes of a young British woman living and working in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, before, during and after the Rose Revolution of 2003.

Tony Brooks was barely out of school when recruited in 1941 by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the wartime secret service established by Churchill to "set Europe ablaze." After extensive training he was parachuted into France in July 1942, among the first (and youngest) British agents sent to support the nascent French Resistance. Brook's success was primarily due to his exceptional qualities as a secret agent, although he was aided by large and frequent slices of luck. Among much else, he survived brushes with a British traitor and a notorious double agent; the Gestapo's capture of his wireless operator and subsequent attempts to trap Brooks; brief incarceration in a Spanish concentration camp; injuries resulting from a parachute jump into France; and even capture and interrogation by the Gestapo--although his cover story held and he was released. In an age when we so often take our heroes from the world of celebrity, it is perhaps salutary to be reminded of a young man who ended the war in command of a disparate force of some 10,000 armed resistance fighters, and decorated with two of his country's highest awards for gallantry, the DSO and MC. At the time, he was just 23 years old. This remarkable, detailed and intimate account of a clandestine agent's dangerous wartime career combines the historian's expert eye with the narrative color of remembered events. As a study in courage, it has few, if any, equals.

The secret war of SOE's youngest agent at the heart of the French Resistance, Tony Brooks, who built a vast resistance organisation in Occupied France that defied the Nazis for two years until the liberation.

Set in the early 1900s in London's Docklands, the story follows Harry and Karl, two boys who form a deep bond and share aspirations of escaping their shipyard lives. Their friendship is solidified by a lifelong oath, but a tragic accident tests their loyalty and threatens to fracture their connection. The narrative explores themes of friendship, dreams, and the impact of unforeseen events on personal relationships.

Charlie Benton is studying Genealogy and English Local History at Leicester University. As part of his course work, he decides to research his own family tree and discovers his great-great-great-grandfather George Anderson, a local parish vicar, was murdered during a violent attack and robbery at his church in Kent. As Charlie delves deeper into his family’s past, he becomes increasingly disturbed by a series of bizarre hallucinations and imaginings causing his thoughts and grip on life to veer dramatically between fantasy and reality.In an effort to rid himself of these strange visitations, Charlie journeys to Kent to discover more about this brutal episode in his family’s history and of the circumstances leading up to the alleged murder of his long-departed ancestor.Can Charlie uncover the facts about what really happened on that fateful day, or is there something darker still to be revealed that will dramatically alter the course of his life forever?

Mary is adopted by James and Carol Rowland following her birth in 1949 in the grim austere surroundings of a home for young unmarried mothers governed by Nuns.