A Terrible Kindness – Jo Browning Wroe

The story of a young chorister who becomes an embalmer is an unlikely premise for a bestselling novel - but this will be a bestseller and it is brilliant. I knew within the first few pages that it would be going on my Top Ten Reads for 2022 - I haven't felt like this about …

Atonement’s links – L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between

In an interview with John Sutherland in 2002, McEwan says, 'A novel that was very important ... and I wanted to fit in, was The Go-Between, so Connolly says, "I trust you've read The Go-Between." I was very disappointed when the copy editor informed me that it was written in 1952 and I had to …

The Gilded Cage on the Bosphorus – Ayşe Osmanoğlu

This story has clearly been a real labour of love, and the attention to detail is very impressive indeed. Focusing on the two years from 1903 to 1905, The Gilded Cage explores the realities of life for the members of the Imperial Family of the Ottoman Empire who have been imprisoned after Sultan Murad V …

The Lady in the Veil: The Talbot Saga – Allie Cresswell

I've really enjoyed the first two novels in the Talbot Saga - House in the Hollow and Tall Chimneys - and so I knew I was in for a treat with this new addition to the tale based on the Talbot family. This time, the house itself features only in the background; most of the …

The Blue Bench – Paul Marriner

Set in 1920, The Blue Bench is a moving account of the damage, both physical and emotional in its nature, done to the soldiers who survived the First World War. Edward Thompson, a gifted musician, and his friend and former comrade, William, are in Margate for the summer. William, who acts as Edward's agent, has …

V For Victory – Lissa Evans

I finished Crooked Heart and immediately opened V For Victory, thus deferring that sense of loss you get when you finish an excellent book. That is how I'm feeling now I've come to the end of Lissa Evan's third book in her trilogy (read my review of Old Baggage here). It's now 1944 and Vee …

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 …

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 …