James Conan is the pen-name for a collaboration between Duncton Chronicles creator William Horwood and historian Helen Rappaport, whose novel City of Dark Hearts (Arrow, £6.99) is set in 1890s Chicago.
Helen is an expert on black Crimean nurse Mary Seacole, while William has written four sequels to Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows and a semi-fictional memoir, The Boy With No Shoes.
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