Cold Truth

'A tense, atmospheric nautical thriller, filled to the gunwales with Woodman's trademark authenticity. The Cold Truth is a chilling journey into the heart of a dark, Arctic mystery.' Matthew Willis, author of Bastion

Shortly after the carnage of the First World War, an advertisement in a newspaper, The Courier, sets merchant naval officer Edward Adams on a strange voyage to the Arctic to discover the fate of a lost Swedish polar expedition.

Funded by The Courier's owner in an attempt to uncover the truth, the voyage aboard the Alert is also conceived as a philanthropic gesture to the Swedes, who regard the lost members of the expedition as national heroes.

But the Alert's expedition fails to achieve anything - and the details of what happened aboard the vessel remain a mystery for many years.

It is only during the worst weeks of the Battle of the Atlantic in 1943, that Adams unwillingly reveals the cold truth to the daughter of his old employer.

The Judgement of his Peers

When four old friends, three of whom are retired ship's captains, meet for a few days' sailing and reminiscing, one of them, Mitchell, asks 'did any of you run across Claude Bastable?'

Early in his seafaring life Mitchell had experienced more of the world than his friends. He had not only been ship-mate with Bastable but had found his life more entangled with Bastable's than he cared for.

Finding the others know nothing of the man, Mitchell goes on to reveal the terrible story of Bastable's life, from his birth as the son of a naval hero to the appalling act he had committed and of which he was found guilty, and of what followed afterwards.

But, they find themselves asking, was there anything that could explain Bastable's perfidious conduct that led him to effectively murder a score of people by an act of gross professional misconduct?

Based on real events, bestselling author Richard Woodman skilfully weaves together fact and fiction to create an engrossing narrative which proves difficult to put down.

A novella not just for those who enjoy a tale of men, ships and the sea, but those interested in human motivation, the consequences of human frailty and violent events.

An Absence of Imagination: A Tale of the China coast

Captain John Sanford is the Master of the British steamship Da Feng of Hong Kong, plying her trade in the mid-1950s on the China coast. It is a difficult and dangerous time for British seafarers, with a recently victorious Communist regime consolidating its hold on the vast country.

Born in Shanghai with a deep interest in China, the young Sanford is a highly respected shipmaster. He and his ship have become something of an institution on the coast, where Sanford warily treads the ill-defined line between politics and commerce until one day, in a port in northern China, he is ordered by a sinister Colonel in the People's Liberation Army to embark a passenger.

The person consigned to his care is 'An Enemy of the People, ' and in the few days that follow, Captain Sanford's carefully regulated world collapses round him as he finds his own life is threatened and he is subject to appalling consequences.

In an ironic twist, Sanford's fate is to be forced to confront a reality that turned on ill luck and an absence of imagination.

Captain Richard Martin Woodman LVO is an English novelist and naval historian. He is the author of the series 'A History of the British Merchant Navy' and the Sword of State trilogy, which recreates the true story of George Monck, a giant of the 17th Century