Crooked Heart – Lissa Evans

As regular followers may remember, I absolutely loved Old Baggage’s Mattie Simpkin. Published as a prequel after Crooked Heart, it provided readers with Mattie’s story in 1928. Crooked Heart, although the first of the two novels, moves forward a decade and Mattie, very sadly, is now suffering with dementia and ‘looking after’ a godson, Noel. …

Advent – Jane Fraser

There's a special sort of joy in reading a novel set in a landscape you love and know well. Better yet if the novel is beautifully written by an exciting new voice in literature. And Jane Fraser's debut novel, published by Honno Press, is just that. Even if you don't know the Gower before you …

Circles of Deceit – Paul CW Beatty #Blogtour

Circles of Deceit is the second in the Josiah Ainscough Casebook series and, like the first novel, Children of Fire, is a brilliantly imagined visit to Nineteenth century Northern England, a period rich in drama and social change. This time, the backdrop is the General Strike of 1842 and the struggles of the Chartist movement. …

The Diabolical Bones – Bella Ellis #BronteMysteries

'I would speak with your father,' Tabby said, agitated. 'But with his eyes so bad and it being almost Christmas, it hardly seems right. And young Mr Nicholls is a decent enough fellow, but he don't have the grit - he don't have the strength of mind or the stubbornness. Not like you girls.' 'Really, …

Small Pleasures – Clare Chambers

The beautiful cover aside, and I did buy it purely because of that cover, this is such a good read. Based, initially at least, on a real story from 1955, in which a woman comes forward to claim a virgin birth, Chambers has given us a compelling and warm-hearted story that is both a mystery …

The Secret Agent – Elisabeth Hobbes

Elisabeth Hobbes is charting new territory here, and the result is superb. A seasoned writer of Medieval and Victorian historical romances for Harlequin, she is now striking out with a new publisher, One More Chapter, and she's jumped forward into the heady and terrifying world of occupied France. Sylvie, or Sylvia, as the more restrained …

A Thousand Ships – Natalie Haynes

In her third novel, Haynes has, as the muse Calliope says, ‘picked up the old stories and … shaken them until the hidden  women appear in plain sight.’ And it is a great cast that tell us the story of Troy and its aftermath from this female perspective. Helen is present, but Calliope tells us, …

Dominicana – Angie Cruz

The shock of the opening line, ‘The first time Juan Ruiz proposes, I’m eleven years old…’, sets us up for an uneasy insight into the life of a young girl from the Dominican Republic, whose life is to be shaped by the poverty of her homeland and the ambitions of her mother. Ana’s mother is …

Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens

I suspect that I’ll be a tad unpopular after this, and so I’ll get straight to the point. I liked this novel – I didn’t love it. Hear me out… I do see all the things that people have raved about, and it is clear that this is a much-loved novel for  lot of readers. …

An Interview With … T. G. Campbell

Good morning! Today, I'm talking to T. G. Campbell, author of the Bow Street Society novels about Victorian London, multiple narrators, and commemorative mugs. Tell us a little bit about the Bow Street Society. Where did the idea originally come from? The Bow Street Society is a fictional group of amateur detectives operating in Victorian …