The furies

June 1914: In London, a militant suffragette plants a bomb on the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey, while in Sarajevo, an idealistic young surgeon fights to save the life of the mortally wounded Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Four weeks later the Great War begins and their paths cross when one of the worst typhus epidemics in European history sweeps across the Balkans.Set in Edinburgh, London, Vienna, and Serbia, this epic love story tells the remarkable tale of the Scottish Women’s Hospital Unit, who travelled to Serbia in 1915 in order to establish a hospital that saved the lives of thousands of Allied solders and civilians.

The dedication of these brave women was a triumph for the suffrage cause, destroying the myth of female fragility and heralding the 1918 Act of Parliament, which finally gave women the right to vote.

This novel also tells the true story of the Austrian General whose incompetence led to the start of the First World War and contributed to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.