Tag: historical fiction

Bologna, 1575.

A talented seamstress

A powerful merchant

A fierce battle of wills

Elena Morandi has gained a fragile foothold in the workshop of a master tailor, despite the profession being officially barred to her as a woman. But then a powerful man from her past crosses her path and threatens everything she has worked for. Antonio della Fontana has every corner of the city in his pocket and, as Elena knows all too well, he abused his position of power at the Baraccano orphanage. Driven to fight for justice against a man seemingly above the law, Elena hatches a plan to get retribution for herself, a lost friend and those still prey to Fontana’s abuses.

With sumptuous detail that brings the sights, sounds and textures of Renaissance Italy to vivid life, City of Silk is a breathtaking historical fiction debut.

My thoughts: I loved this, I’m a huge fan of historical fiction, history and Italy. So this was directly up my street. Inspired by art hanging in the National Gallery, both by 16th Century Italian artists, and of ordinary people from that time.

Elena just wants to be a tailor like her father was, and having been through the trauma of losing both her parents and being sent to an abusive orphanage, where the benefactor would choose girls to sexually assault, with essentially the blessing of the staff, and where her best friend Laura chose to end her life rather than be forced to continue to submit to this monster, I felt like Elena deserved to find some happiness.

She was working for a seamstress, making clothes for the wives of Bologna’s great and good, but on hearing a marriage contract was being drawn up, she flees into the city and makes her way to the tailors’ quarter, hoping to find a master who might take pity on her.

In many ways Elena is very lucky in her friends, in the bonds she forms as she works for the Maestro alongside his teasing journeymen. She’s talented and capable and they see that. She and her friend Sofia (properly called Suhailah), kidnapped and enslaved, find freedom in their friendships with the artist family, the Carraccis, who invite them into their studio.

It is with these friends that she plots an audacious scheme, to expose Antonio della Fontana as a rapist, molester and monster. On his daughter’s wedding day, in front of the whole city. Revenge will be sweet but she doesn’t reckon with the city’s short attention span. 

Some of her friends, like Maestro Rondinelli are outsiders as much as she and Sofia are, he’s gay, in a time where there could get you killed, and even Elena struggles to understand why he would risk everything, until she realises the importance of love. Something she doesn’t really see in the marriages around her, arranged as they are to maintain wealth and status. I think the outsider status of the characters is important, Fontana is the ultimate insider, wealthy and influential. Until he isn’t. But there’s nowhere for him amidst those he disregards.

The only off note was that Elena never explained why she wanted to be a tailor and dress the city’s men instead of dressing the women. If I remember correctly from history books, men did tend to dress more sumptuously at this time, displaying their wealth through their clothes, while women were required to be more muted and demure. Think peacocks and peahens. But it would have been nice to see her thinking. I know there’s an emotional connection to her father, but as she could never work under her own name, and he doesn’t appear to have been well known, it was a little confusing.

Overall this is a splendid tale of outsiders, friendship, revenge and taking back power from those who would exploit it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Alice Arden, idealistic and wealthy beauty, burnt at the stake for killing her husband, the former mayor of Faversham in Kent. But was she really the one responsible for the most scandalous murder of the sixteenth century?

William Shakespeare, England’s greatest playwright, born thirteen years after Alice’s execution. Why does his first-ever play, written about this murder, not bear his name?

This is a story of two people – one reviled, one revered – whose fates become linked in a tale of corruption, collusion and conspiracy. Based on historical documents and recently published academic research, Arden unveils shocking new evidence about the murder of Thomas Arden and reveals, for the first time, a remarkable new theory about Shakespeare’s early years.

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I have written four novels in the last eight years under the penname GD Harper.

My last novel, The Maids of Biddenden, the imagined biography of real-life conjoined twins born in 12th-century Kent, was featured on BBC TV News and was the winner of the Next Generation Indie
Book Awards in the historical fiction category, shortlisted for the 2022 Selfie Award at the London Book Fair, and shortlisted or longlisted for five other awards.

It has over a thousand ratings on Amazon UK and Goodreads, with an average score of 4.3. Across the major Amazon markets, it reached number sixteen in overall paid-for e-book sales, number two in historical fiction and number one in medieval historical fiction.

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My thoughts: I am a bit of a Shakespeare nerd, I’ve read most of his plays and poems over the years and studied him at uni. Somewhere I still have an essay on sexism in Hamlet. So I was really excited to read this book which brings the real life murder that inspired his first play and his life as an actor and jobbing playwright to life.

Alice Arden was burnt at the stake for the murder of her husband in Faversham, Kent, and it is this crime and the fact thaat victim and convicted shared the last name of his mother that inspire Will to write his first play, a play only about forty years after the fact, something that wasn’t done in those days for fear of prosecution and being banned by the Master of the Revels from performing it.

But Will persevered, he edited it and published it without adding his name so it could be performed and then his career as a writer began. After the Arden murder, he would delve into history and produce his incredible works, still performed and loved today, something he never could have imagined.

But this is also Alice’s story, that of a young woman essentially sold into a loveless marriage, who found escape in her affair with a tailor, who conspired with him and others who disliked her high handed husband, to kill him and try to make it look like a stranger had, although as he was wearing his slippers and found only metres from his home, badly done.

Alice suffered horribly before she was eventually burnt alive. The other conspirators were also executed, including her lover and the household servants. This fictional Alice is never entirely sold on the necessity of murdering her husband, unhappy as she was, but is talked into it.

Her unhappiness is reflected in that of Will’s wife Anne, raising three children in Stratford, relying on Will making enough money in the theatres to keep them fed and housed.

The author has clearly done an incredible amount of research and brings Tudor England vividly to life along with his characters. I was completely entertained and spotted lots of references and little snippets of the Shakespeares’ history that added to the realism (like his twins being named for his friend Hamnet and wife Judith) that I learnt in my own studies.

I didn’t know about the Arden murder, and it too is really fascinating. Women were chattel and many ended up in lonely marriages like Alice. Whatever her involvement in her husband’s death, she was clearly not willing to just put up with her situation and tried to change things, however misguided.

A thoroughly enjoyable read, I loved the insights into 16th century justice and the world of play writing.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Young and beautiful Gytha Godwinson is the envy of England when her father Harold seizes the country’s crown in early 1066. Soon triumph turns to terror as an evil star appears, heralding the end of an era and a new beginning for Britain. Her family seems cursed, but even as she suffers loss, betrayal and humiliation, Gytha is determined to regain what is rightfully hers.

In a stunning re-telling of 1066, international bestselling author Ellen Alpsten has created a captivating new heroine in Gytha Godwinson. While women were limited to their roles as ‘cup-bearer’, ‘peace-weaver’ and ‘memory-keeper’, Gytha dared the unprecedented and writes world history. Lose yourself in a bewitching blend of myth and modernity and join the daughter of England’s true House of Dragon’s fight for freedom.  

Ellen Alpsten was born and raised in the Kenyan highlands and holds a MSc from the IEP de Paris. 

She worked as a News-Anchor for Bloomberg TV London before writing fulltime. 

Her debut novel ‘Tsarina’ was widely translated and shortlisted for numerous awards. 

‘The Last Princess’ is the first book in her new trilogy.’

My thoughts: Going back to Britain just before the Norman Conquest, Gytha Godwinson is the eldest daughter of Harold, later, briefly, the king and most famous for getting an arrow in the eye.

After her father is deposed and killed by the Norman’s, led by William the Bastard (later the Conqueror) Gytha and her brothers Edmond and Magnus flee to their kinsman in Denmark. However things are not straightforward there, as Sweyn, the king and their cousin, has married the widow of one of their father’s enemies, who he killed in battle.

Gytha is treated like a thrall (a slave) and expected to help around the settlement, doing chores and fetching and carrying, despite being a princess.

Life was not easy in 1066 and discovering that Tora (the queen) is actively working against them and against the new Christian religion, Gytha, her brothers and her new friend Amira, must find a way to survive and plan their escape.

Clever and enjoyable, this was a window into the past, and into another world. The first in a new series, I don’t remember Gytha ever being mentioned in history lessons at school so I look forward to learning more about her and her life in the next book.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

A city burning. A revolution raging. A woman on the run.

Nadezhda has never wanted to be a witch. But the occult is in her blood. Her mother, Militza, conjured Rasputin and introduced him into the Romanov court, releasing the devil himself. 

Now he is dead, but Militza still dreams of him – stalking her sleep and haunting her waking hours. As Petrograd burns and the Russian Empire crumbles, Nadezhda escapes through the capital, concealing a book of generational magic. But as danger grows closer, she may be forced to embrace her heritage to save what she loves most…

Based on a true story, The Witch’s Daughter is an epic tale of women rising from the ashes of an empire, perfect for fans of Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den and Madeline Miller’s Circe.

Imogen Edwards-Jones studied Russian at Bristol University. Her first book, The Taming of Eagles, was about the first 100 days of the collapse of communism. A writer and journalist, she has travelled extensively within the old Soviet Union, studying in Kyiv. She is the author of twenty books including the best-selling Babylon series. Married with two children, Imogen lives in London. She is also a member of the London College of Psychic Studies and an honorary Cossack. Her latest novel, The Witch’s Daughter, is the sequel to The Witches of St Petersburg.

My thoughts: I was really excited to read this book, I am a huge Russian history nerd and have been to St Petersburg some years ago, and even been to the palace that features in the opening of this book, where Rasputin was killed. It’s very creepy, our tour guide was a descendant of the Prince who organised the murder. And behind a door on the way out is a terrifying waxwork figure of the monk himself. I think she kept it there to traumatise visitors. It worked!

This is the sequel to The Witches of St Petersburg, but you can read it as a standalone if you haven’t read the first book (but I also recommend it). Opening with the dramatic death of the monk many blamed for the Romanovs’ downfall (he was poisoned, shot and drowned) is very dramatic, winter on the river Nev, beautiful and deadly.

It’s 1916, the First World War is consuming millions of young men from across Europe, including Russia, unrest is gathering as the serfs finally have enough of their aristocratic masters, the boyars and princes of the Russian Empire, there have been poor harvests, people are starving but the Imperial Family continue to throw parties and enjoy life.

As the wartime years gather pace, so do the Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin, and the tide turns against the Romanov dynasty. It can be hard to feel sorry for them but when you read about the deaths, torture and imprisonment, including children, you do, all their wealth and privilege did not stop them being horrifically murdered (the deaths of the Tsar and Tsarina’s siblings, burnt alive in a mine shaft are particularly gruesome and cruel).

I have been to Peter and Paul Fortress where the Romanovs were interred after their bodies were recovered from Ekaterinberg, they lie under huge marble blocks in an austere and silent chapel, far more fitting than the holes they were thrown into by the furious soldiers.

The family members that survived, rescued from house arrest in Crimea, by the British navy, are the ones this story focuses on, the Dowager Empress never truly believing her son the Tsar, and his family had been murdered. Terrified and traumatised the extended remaining royals stayed in their summer homes, guarded by soldiers, surrounded by their enemies, the chef is something of a hero, valiantly scrounging up meals from potatoes and a few bits and pieces in the kitchen, providing a feast from almost nothing.

Militza and Stana are survivors, but the life their children are living is tough and frightening, Nadezhda loses her first love to war, and almost loses her second to the revolution. Struggling to survive in Yalta, she finally embraces the gifts of her mother’s line, the witchcraft she has long denied.

There is tragedy and heartbreak aplenty as the Russian Revolution takes grip, it’s something when the German army are seen as heroes, arriving to relieve the house arrest of the family and negotiate their eventual release.

This was a fascinating read, seeing the Revolution from a very different angle, not that of the Bolsheviks or the Soviets but from the perspective of the extended Romanov family, those that survived the horrific deaths of so many.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

A heartwarming story about a mother and daughter in wartime England and the power of the books that bring them together, by the bestselling author of The Last Bookshop in London.

In Nottingham, England, widow Emma Taylor finds herself in desperate need of a job. She and her beloved daughter, Olivia, have always managed just fine on their own, but with the legal restrictions prohibiting widows with children from most employment opportunities, she’s left with only one option: persuading the manageress at Boots’ Booklover’s Library to take a chance on her with a job.

When the threat of war in England becomes a reality, Olivia must be evacuated to the countryside. In the wake of being separated from her daughter, Emma seeks solace in the unlikely friendships she forms with her neighbours and coworkers, and a renewed sense of purpose through the recommendations she provides to the library’s quirky regulars. But the job doesn’t come without its difficulties. Books are mysteriously misshelved and disappearing, and the work at the lending library forces her to confront the memories of her late father and the bookstore they once owned together before a terrible accident.

As the Blitz intensifies in Nottingham and Emma fights to reunite with her daughter, she must learn to depend on her community and the power of literature more than ever to find hope in the darkest of times

Madeline Martin is a New York Times and International Bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance novels filled with twists and turns, adventure, steamy romance, empowered heroines and the men who are strong enough to love them.

My thoughts: I’m not really a fan of books set during WWII for various reasons, but I really enjoyed this one, particularly the look at the lives of ordinary women and the Boots’ Booklovers’ Library.

Set in Nottingham, where Boots is still headquartered, Emma joins the staff of Boots’ Booklovers’ Library, founded by Mrs Boots after her husband’s family business became more than just a local chemist. Subscribers paid a yearly fee and could take out a book at a time. It no longer exists but it fascinates me as a student of literary history. 

Emma finds friendship and solace in her role advising subscribers on their next reading choice, and even a little romance with a handsome fireman! It also helps her when her daughter is evacuated to the countryside as Nottingham comes under fire from German bombers.

The relationship between Emma and her beloved daughter, Olivia, is at the heart of the book, a widow, herself raised by her widowed father, Emma tries to be the best parent she can, but learns to accept help and support from her kind and generous hearted neighbours so she can work and care for Olivia.

There was some humour and joy amidst the bombs and fear, mostly in the form of Emma’s colleagues and their customers, who all have their own quirks. All of them united by a love of reading, finding an escape from the horror surrounding them.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.