Bruce Harris

The Judas Gene

Leading industrialist and donor to the Conservative Party, Ralph Manningham, forced his father into early retirement so that he could take over the family business. Many years later, he is discovered dead at his home, the spilled bottle of pills on his desk a clear suggestion of suicide.

The news of Ralph’s death causes a stir within his political circles; influential figures are worried that a potential scandal will engulf them. Inspector Max Bellamy’s task is to pick up the pieces, but as events unfold, it becomes increasingly clear that Ralph’s apparent suicide is not as it seems.

Who has the motive to want Ralph dead?

In this perplexing and challenging ‘whodunnit’, will Inspector Bellamy succeed in solving the case, or will the shadows of deception prevail?

Diamond Val

After building a successful group of restaurants, Val Reynolds meets and marries jeweller Hugo Gilard, and forms the Gilrey Corporation. On Hugo’s death, Val finds herself fighting against managers within the corporation who seek to take it over and turn into a more ruthless and profit-driven concern than she and Hugo envisaged. The battle involves Val’s four adult children and their partners, not all of whom are wholly supportive of her.

The business jungle and its effect on the people within it is exposed in the ongoing battle for control of the Gilrey Corporation, and its effect on a family at a vulnerable time shows the different characters and aspirations of them all.

After describing family matters historically in Howell Grange and over three days of a marriage in The Densham Do, Bruce Harris turns to the business politics and conflicts of the Gilard family in this latest work.

The Densham Do

This is a wedding that will change lives – and not just the lives of the bride and the groom.

 

Devon-born London lawyer Kate Densham is to marry her colleague, Robert Harrington. Her father, a senior university professor, is involved in a substantial land deal in which the university is seeking to sell a large chunk of the land it owns to a developer. Kate and her fiancé are acting for the possible buyers of the land. They know that the organisation is involved in criminal activity and has strong ties to the chairman of the local planning committee, and believe they can take effective action against them 'from the inside’...

 

But don’t forget – as all of this is happening, there’s still the wedding to attend.

 

From Matthew Densham, the uncle of the bride, to Celia Harrington, the grandmother of the groom; Phyllis Drayton, friend of the bride’s parents, to Simon Roche, an ex-university friend of the groom; this is a wedding that will impact the lives of all that are involved.

Fallen Eagles

The title story, Fallen Eagles, is a Hamlet-inspired story about a Scottish boy who loses his idolised mountaineer father in an accident and blames his uncle to such an extent that he contemplates murder. Other stories take us to the French Revolution, the First World War and to more contemporary situations such as coming out, shaking off the parental yoke and exploring old and new love. 

Each story explores the diversity of young people’s experience as they emerge into adulthood and the wide-ranging themes are both contemporary and relatable to the modern reader. 

Fallen Eagles has been produced to raise funds for Huntington’s Disease Youth Organisation (HDYO), a charity close to the hearts of Bruce and his partner, following his civil partner’s diagnosis with Huntington’s Disease in 2016. 

“There is strength and warmth, toughness and kindness in these stories, making up a collection that is spirited and uplifting.” Alison Moore, author of Booker Prize short-listed novel, The Lighthouse (Review for Odds Against)

Howell Grange

As a mine-owning family, the Howells are used to the trials and tribulations that the business can bring. But after a knife-wielding miner breaks in and accuses one of the family members of murder, they realise that their safety could be at risk... George and Elizabeth, and their children, Charlie, Francis, Charlotte, Anne and Alice are settled in their Northumbrian home, or so they thought... Told in five parts through the years 1844-1866, these chronicles visit the family at historical intervals, choosing momentous days to reflect the point reached in the family's rich history. We follow Charlie through his battles in the Crimean War; Francis, through his fights to make the mines safer, Charlotte, through her marriage to a substantial local landowner, Alice, through her involvement with a major mining disaster and Anne, through her marriage to a local firm clerk. Howell Grange is a northern history.