Tag: historical fiction

blog tour, books

Blog Tour: Two Rivers – Bob Rogers

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TwoRivers copy

Welcome to the book tour for Bob Roger’s novel, Two Rivers. Read on for more details!

Front_Cover_TwoRivers

Two Rivers: De Trouble I Be See

Publication Date: June 10, 2023

Genre: Historical Fiction/ Americana/ Southern Gothic

July 1854, Colleton District, South Carolina

A half-dozen years before Abe Lincoln’s inauguration, comes another collision between European immigrants and African abductees that does not end well.

By 1854, the Tiffany family had enslaved over 300 Africans for more than a century on the 1,100-acre slave labor camp that they called the Tiffany Plantation. The Tiffanys were the largest rice producer in South Carolina’s Colleton District. While the toil of enslaved Africans earned untold riches for the Tiffanys, the Africans endured violence inflicted to force increased rice production and profits followed by the indignity of the bodies of loved ones being stolen from their graves and delivered to a medical school.

Determined to put a stop to robberies of African graves was Posey, an eighty-four-year-old man whose ancestors came from the shores of the Bigh of Biafra, now known as Nigeria. It was Posey’s expert river-irrigation skills that made Tiffany crops successful.

More conflict arose when James, the new general manager at Tiffany, realized that Posey’s expertise would be essential for the success of a plantation he planned to gain with ill-gotten money and slave mortgage-backed securities. All the while, the widow Ella, an enslaved nurse-midwife, sought to realize her dream of marrying widower Posey. Matters grew worse when Posey thwarted James’ first attempt to force his attention on Penny, a comely young enslaved wife and mother.

Rich with history and a cast of unforgettable characters, Two Rivers is a sweeping saga of two peoples, European immigrants and African abductees. Together, they experience courtships, infanticide, homicide, rape, rebellions, revenge, sabotage, storms, high-stakes gambling, grave-robbing, counterfeiting, and more.

“De troubles Posey be sees” in Two Rivers reminds one of Southern Gothic storytelling

Available on Amazon

About the Author

Bob Rogers is the author of the historical novels First Dark and The Laced Chameleon, which earned critical acclaim from Kirkus Reviews, San Francisco Review, and Baltimore Examiner.

Bob is a meticulous researcher, known to spend extra time, magnifying glass in hand, deciphering 18th and 19th century handwriting for “just the facts, ma’am.” Bob, a former U.S. Army captain and combat leader during the Vietnam War in Troop A, 1/10 Cavalry, finds his topographic map experiences useful in field research. If not closeted in libraries or museums, you are likely to find him walking centuries old rice fields, battlefields, or in a canoe following the river trails of his characters.

He is a member of the Organization of American Historians and his favorite places to write include his studio, parks, beaches, airplanes, and libraries.

During and after his thirty-three-year sojourn at IBM, Bob created and taught gratis computer classes for under-employed youth (Norfolk, Virginia) and senior citizens (Charlotte, North Carolina) caught on the wrong side of the digital divide.

When not making desserts for neighbors, we see him frequently at baseball games and concerts of the symphony. Bob tends his flowers, okra, and tomato plants in Mérida, Yucatán, México. Visit him at https://bobrogers.biz and see his other books, what he’s up to next, subscribe to his monthly newsletter, and get links to free eBooks by other authors.

His Alma Mater is South Carolina State University, and he studied creative writing at the University of Maryland.

Book Tour Schedule

August 28th

http://rrbooktours Kick-off

https://www.instagram.com/booksawyer/ – Feature

https://www.thesexynerdrevue.com – Feature

https://readsandreels.com – Feature

August 29th

https://starsbooksandtea.com/ – Review

https://www.instagram.com/booksy.tx.ana/ – Feature

https://christinebialczak.com/ – Feature

August 30th

https://ilovebooksandstuffblog.wordpress.com – Feature

https://www.instagram.com/jen_lynn_c14/?igshid=MjEwN2IyYWYwYw%3D%3D – Review

https://www.ladyhawkeye.com/ – Feature

August 31st

https://lshadowlynauthor.com/ – Review

https://www.instagram.com/halfhorchata – Feature

http://ramblingmads.com – Feature

September 1st

https://www.instagram.com/geniewanders/ – Feature

https://www.instagram.com/squeakeysundergroundlibrary/ – Feature

https://bookwormbunnyreviews.blogspot.com/ – Feature

Book Tour Organized by R&R Book Tours

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Cover Reveal: The Drumbeats Trilogy – Julia Ibbotson

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It’s 1965, and 18 year old Jess escapes her stifling English home for a gap year in Ghana, West Africa. But it’s a time of political turbulence across the region. Fighting to keep her young love who waits back in England, she’s thrown into the physical and emotional dangers of civil war, tragedy and the conflict of a disturbing new relationship. And why do the drumbeats haunt her dreams?

This is a rite of passage story which takes the reader hand in hand with Jess on her journey towards the complexities and mysteries of a disconcerting adult world.

This is the first novel in the acclaimed Drumbeats trilogy: Drumbeats, Walking in the Rain, Finding Jess.

For fans of Dinah Jefferies, Kate Morton, Rachel Hore, Jenny Ashcroft

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Jess happily marries the love of her life. She wants to feel safe, secure and loved. But gradually it becomes clear that her beloved husband is not the man she thought him to be. 

She survived war and injury in Africa, but can she now survive the biggest challenge of her life?

This is the second novel in the acclaimed Drumbeats trilogy: Drumbeats, Walking in the Rain, Finding Jess.

For fans of Dinah Jefferies, Kate Morton, Rachel Hore, Jenny Ashcroft 

Purchase

On the brink of losing everything, and still haunted by her past and the Ghanaian drumbeats that haunt her life, Jess feels that she can no longer trust anyone but herself. Then she’s mysteriously sent a newspaper clipping of a temporary job in Ghana. Could this be her lifeline? Can she turn back time and find herself again? And what, exactly, will she find?

Finding Jess is a passionate study of love and betrayal – and one woman’s bid to reclaim her self-belief and trust. It’s a feel-good story of a woman’s strength and spirit rising above adversity.

This is the finale of Jess’s story, the third novel in the acclaimed Drumbeats trilogy: Drumbeats, Walking in the Rain, Finding Jess.

For fans of  Dinah Jefferies, Kate Morton, Rachel Hore, Jenny Ashcroft

Purchase

Award-winning author Julia Ibbotson herself spent an exciting time in Ghana, West Africa, teaching and nursing (like Jess in her books), and always vowed to write about the country and its past. And so, the Drumbeats Trilogy was born. She’s also fascinated by history, especially by the medieval world, and concepts of time travel, and has written haunting time-slips of romance and mystery partly set in the Anglo-Saxon period. She studied English at Keele University, England, specialising in medieval language, literature and history, and has a PhD in linguistics. She wrote her first novel at age 10, but became a school teacher, then university lecturer and researcher. Her love of writing never left her and to date she’s written 9 books, with a 10th on the way. She’s a member of the Romantic Novelists Association, Society of Authors and the Historical Novel Society.

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Blog Tour: Death Comes to Santa Fe – Amanda Allen

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Former New York darling turned amateur sleuth Madeline Vaughn-Alwin is once again thrown into a colourful yet deadly web of secrets, lies and soirees to die for!
It’s the week of Fiesta in Santa Fe and Maddie is looking forward to enjoying the celebrations. But as ‘Old Man Gloom’ Zozobra goes up in flames, so too do Maddie’s hopes for a carefree life . . .

Human remains are found in the dying embers of Zozobra, and then Maddie and her dashing beau Dr David
Cole find a body washed up in the arroyo at the edge of town.
Soon identified as Ricardo Montoya, a wealthy businessman and head of one of the most affluent families in Santa Fe . . . the plot starts to thicken. While his beautiful wife Catalina and her complicated children seem less than heartbroken at his untimely demise, and with many disgruntled locals crawling out of the woodwork, Maddie is surrounded by suspects.
With the celebrations of Fiesta continuing around them, Maddie and her ‘Detection Posse’ get busy infiltrating the best parties and hobnobbing with old and new faces – but can they bring the murderer to justice before they strike again?

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Amanda wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen–a vast historical epic starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class (and her parents wondered why math was not her strongest subject…)
She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA Award, the Romantic Times BOOKReviews Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the
National Readers Choice Award, and the Holt Medallion.

She lives in Santa Fe with two rescue dogs, a wonderful husband, and a very and far too many books and royal memorabilia collections.
When not writing or reading, she loves taking dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs, and watching the Food Network–even though she doesn’t cook.

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My thoughts: set in the 1920s in Santa Fe, New Mexico, among the artistic set that flocked there, this is a fun and somewhat gory murder mystery. When local businessman (and cruel husband) Ricardo Montoya is found murdered, and bits of him are found inside the huge effigy Maddie’s artist pals burnt on their bonfire (think Guy Fawkes), she and her friends investigate.

She doesn’t believe it could be anyone she knows well, her friends are eccentric but they’re not killers. But does the answer lie with his family, who don’t seem too upset, or in his past?

Maddie is a lot of fun, and has a quick mind, able to sort through clues and facts easily, narrowing down her suspect pool, and ruling people out. But she does put herself in some danger, although in the end she gets her killer and is free to party again, with the lovely English doctor.

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

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Blog Tour: Fayne – Ann-Marie MacDonald

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‘I knew from a very young age that I was wrong in the world. And the idea of looking through the eyes of somebody who’s born with an intersex trait has been quite compelling to me for a very long time. It’s not an exotic quality. That’s why I’ve decided not to treat it as a “spoiler”. That’s just who Charlotte is, that’s her body. That’s normal. It’s the world that has a problem and is going to make it a problem for her’ ANN-MARIE MACDONALD

In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious ‘condition’.

Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands, and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery. Her idyllic existence is shadowed by the magnificent portrait on the landing in Fayne House which depicts her mother, a beautiful Irish-American heiress, holding Charlotte’s brother, Charles Bell. Charlotte has grown up with the knowledge that her mother died in giving birth to her, and that her older brother, Charles, the long-awaited heir, died at the age of two. When Charlotte’s appetite for learning threatens to exceed the bounds of the estate, her father breaks with tradition and hires a tutor to teach his daughter ‘as you would my son, had I one’.

But when Charlotte and her tutor’s explorations of the bog turn up an unexpected artefact, her father announces he has arranged for her to be cured of her condition, and her world is upended. Charlotte’s passion for knowledge and adventure will take her to the bottom of family secrets and to the heart of her own identity.

In Fayne we meet an irresistible young queer character whose curiosity and joy collide with the frustratingly arbitrary gender dichotomies in the world. Even with all her gifts – intelligence, wit and strength of character – can Charlotte overcome the violently enforced boundaries of society to claim her own place in the world?

©️ Lora McDonald

ANN-MARIE MACDONALD is a novelist, playwright, actor, and broadcast host. She was born in the former West Germany. After graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, she moved to Toronto where she distinguished herself as an actor and playwright. Her first play won the Governor General’s Award, the Chalmers Award and the Canadian Authors’ Association Award. In 1996, her first novel Fall on Your Knees became an international bestseller, was translated into nineteen languages and sold three million copies. It won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Fiction, the People’s Choice Award and the Libris Award. In 2002, it became an Oprah’s Book Club title. In 2003, The Way the Crow Flies appeared, and in 2014, Adult Onset, both of which also enjoyed immense international success. In 2019 Ann-Marie MacDonald was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contribution to the arts and her LGBTQ2S+ activism. She is married to theatre director, Alisa Palmer, with whom she has two children.

My thoughts: I adore Charlotte, she’s incredibly clever, brave and longs to be a doctor at a time when being female is something of an impediment to that. Except Charlotte isn’t female or male – she’s intersex. And this is her story. But it’s also the story of Charlotte’s mother, Lady Marie “Mae” Bell, originally from Boston, Massachusetts. She marries Lord Henry Bell, Baron DC de Fayne, after meeting him in Rome.

They return, first to Edinburgh, where Henry’s sister the Honorable Clarissa, lives in the family’s town house, and then to Fayne, a wilderness of bog and fen. Where Charlotte grows up, wild and curious.

The story moves back and forth between Charlotte and Mae, as we learn more about the Bells and Fayne. There are so many secrets and lies that Charlotte will have to uncover as she ages and grows up. The absence of her mother, the death of her brother Charles, why they’re so cut off at Fayne and she doesn’t have any playmates and only a handful of servants remain.

This isn’t a short book, it’s a hefty tome, but it needs to be as there’s so many layers to the story of this family and especially Charlotte. I felt for her, I was delighted by the later chapters, as Charlotte asserts herself and finds happiness. The lonely grief of the earlier sections was well rewarded. Ghastly aunt Clarissa, so bitter and so conniving, what a shame she wasn’t the Baron. And Mae, oh poor, sweet Mae. Her story is heartbreaking. Have tissues handy, like many 19th Century women, fate was not kind to her.

This is an incredible book, powerful, moving and heartening. My mum used to be a midwife and has delivered intersex babies, the decisions families have to make at what should be a joyous time, can be very tough. Depending on their baby’s situation. As we know now, gender isn’t one thing or another, it can be a lot more complex than that and so is biological sex. I could write whole essays on the various in-between states – from the Disputed County of Fayne itself, to Charlotte, something for a new generation of literature students. I imagine this will be a future classic.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all

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Blog Tour: Mayhem in the Mountains – Kelly Oliver

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1918 Italy
When a deadly blizzard traps Fiona Figg and Kitty Lane in the Dolomite Mountains, it’s all downhill from here.Their hotel is snowed-in, and no one can get in or out. Then a man is found dead in his locked hotel room – and the killer is still on the premises. But with no murder weapon and too many suspects, their investigation is treading on thin ice.
The colder it gets outside, the hotter it gets inside as Fiona squares off with both her beloved Archie and her nemesis Fredricks. With her love-life on a slippery-slope, Fiona risks everything in one bold move…
As fast and twisty as a downhill slalom, this slick new cozy from Kelly Oliver will have you melting into a puddle of laughter.
Snap in and enjoy the ride.

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Kelly Oliver is the award-winning, bestselling author of three mysteries series: The Jessica James Mysteries, The Pet Detective Mysteries, and the historical cozies The Fiona Figg Mysteries, set in WW1. She is also the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

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My thoughts: still in pursuit of Frederick Fredericks, Fiona, Kitty, Charles and Poppy are now in the Italian Dolomite mountains, snowed in with a motley crew of soldiers, socialists and one Benito Musolini, the future leader of Italy.

After a soldier is injured and taken to the hospital next door, Fiona starts to investigate, something strange is going on in this lonely place and she’s determined to ensure it won’t affect the war and that Fredericks won’t get up to any more mischief.

As usual Fiona feels she’s got less information than everyone else, especially Kitty, and with her beloved Archie popping up out of nowhere, she’s suspicious. But she’ll put all her skills and knowledge into this mystery first.

Lots of fun, and with a few real people and events thrown in for good measure, Fiona is getting even better at investigating, and while her colleagues seem to be less than open with her, it is war and loose lips…

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

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Blog Tour: The Paris Model – Alexandra Joel

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After a shocking discovery, Grace Woods leaves her vast Australian sheep station and travels to tumultuous post-war Paris in order to find her true identity.

While working as a mannequin for Christian Dior, the world’s newly acclaimed emperor of fashion, Grace mixes with counts and princesses, authors and artists, diplomats and politicians.

But when Grace falls for handsome Philippe Boyer she doesn’t know that he is leading a double life, nor that his past might inflict devastating consequences upon her. As she is drawn into Philippe’s dangerous world of international espionage, Grace discovers both the shattering truth of her origins – and that her life is in peril.

Inspired by an astonishing true story, The Paris Model is a tale of glamour, family secrets and heartbreak that takes you from the rolling plains of country Australia to the elegant salons of Paris.

Alexandra Joel is a former editor of the Australian edition of Harper’s Bazaar and of Portfolio, Australia’s first magazine for working women. She has also contributed feature articles, interviews and reviews to many national and metropolitan publications.

With an honours degree from the University of Sydney and a graduate diploma from the Australian College of Applied Psychology, she has been a practising counsellor and psychotherapist.

Alexandra has two children and lives in Sydney with her husband.

My thoughts: from the sweeping vistas of Australia to the glamour of Christian Dior’s Parisian atelier in 1940s Paris, Grace Woods (a real person, fyi) swaps her rural life for one of extreme elegance and romance a world away.

Fabulous fashions, famous faces, as well as romance with a handsome French spy, Grace’s new life doesn’t leave room to miss home. Swept up in the whirlwind of delight, her life seems to be perfect but deep down she misses her mother, Olive, and her search for her beloved lost “Siddy” consumes her.

When she falls pregnant and leaves Paris for her friend’s family chateau, she leaves everything behind. Hoping to be forgotten by handsome Philip, she buries herself in the countryside. But questions still haunt her. Can it all be put right?

Inspired by the details of Grace Woods’ life and that of Christian Dior’s emergence as the forefront of post-war glamour, this is a moving and entertaining read. Highly enjoyable.

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

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Blog Tour: The Lost Heir – Jane Cable

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Cornwall, 2020
At the beginning of lockdown, teacher Carla Burgess needs to make some changes to her life. She no longer loves her job, and it’s certainly time to kick her on-off boyfriend into touch. But then, while walking on the cliffs she meets, Mani Dolcoath, a gorgeous American with a dark aura.
Mani is researching his family history, and slowly their lives and their heritage begin to entwine. The discovery of a locked Georgian tea caddy in the barn on her parents’ farm intrigues Carla, but then
she starts to see orbs, something that hasn’t happened since her grandmother died. They terrify her and she’ll do anything to outrun them, but will she lose Mani’s friendship in the process?

Cornwall, 1810
Harriet Lemon’s position as companion to Lady Frances Basset (Franny) perfectly conceals the fact they are lovers. But when Franny is raped and falls pregnant their lives are destined to change forever.
The one person who may be able to help them is Franny’s childhood friend, William Burgess, a notorious smuggler. But he has secrets of his own he needs to protect. Will his loyalties be divided, or will he come through?
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Bassett Cove, Cornwall
Tehidy
Leat Tehidy woods
Portreath Harbour
View from North Cliff


Jane Cable writes romance with a twist and its roots firmly in the past, more often than not inspired by a tiny slice of history and a beautiful British setting.
After independently publishing her award-winning debut, The Cheesemaker’s House, Jane was signed by Sapere Books. Her first two novels for them are contemporary romances looking back to
World War 2; Another You inspired by a tragic D-Day exercise at Studland Bay in Dorset and Endless Skies by the brave Polish bomber crews who flew from a Lincolnshire airbase.
Jane lives in Cornwall and her current series, Cornish Echoes, are dual timeline adventure romances set in the great houses of the Poldark era and today. She also writes as Eva Glyn.

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My thoughts: I really enjoyed this story, although partly set during the recent pandemic lockdowns, not something anyone really wants to be reminded of, the forced isolation allows Carla to meet Mani during their mandated exercise and find ways to get to know one another without actually being together. Which is of course quite strange for the most recent past, but before dating was allowed, courtship happened by letter or heavily chaperoned. It’s a bit like a modern twist on old methods.

Franny and Harriet’s story is somewhat darker and sadder than Clara and Manny’s. Nowadays we would probably think Franny was neurodivergent, her unique way of seeing the world, her naive innocence. It makes her extra vulnerable and a truly awful man takes advantage of that fact. Having a child outside of marriage was a huge deal in the 1800s, and so her parents and Harriet devise a plan to minimise Franny’s suffering and preserve her reputation.

As we learn of Franny and Harriet’s sad predicament, Carla and Mani are digging into their families’ history. And what they find is a distant connection between them, and to Franny and William Burgess. While they won’t learn the details, we do and thankfully it’s not a miserable tale at all but one of love and kindness and a deep abiding friendship.

This is a sweet and gentle love story, two really, one in 2020 and one two hundred years before. Set in the beautiful Cornish countryside and peopled with characters who are genuinely likeable and interesting, some of them real historical figures, who inspired the author to weave them a new past from the limited records.

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

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Blog Tour: Sherlock Holmes and the Silver Cord – M.K. Wiseman

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“I speak of magic, Mr. Holmes.”
Mr. Percy Simmons, leader of London’s Theosophical Order of Odic Forces, is fully aware that his is not a case which Mr. Sherlock Holmes would ordinarily take up.
These are not ordinary times, however.
For something, some unquiet demon within Holmes stirs into discomfiting wakefulness under the occultist’s words. The unassuming Mr. Simmons has spoken of good and evil with the sort of certainty of soul that Sherlock yearns for. A certainty which has eluded Holmes for the three years in which the world thought him dead. While, for all intents, constructions, and purposes, he was dead.
But six months ago, Sherlock Holmes returned to Baker Street, declared himself alive to friend and foe alike, took up his old rooms, his profession, and his partnership with Dr. J. Watson—only to find himself haunted still by questions which had followed him out of the dreadful chasm of Reichenbach Falls:
Why? Why had he survived when his enemy had not? To what end? And had there ever, truly, been such a thing as justice? Such a thing as good or evil?

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M. K. Wiseman has degrees in Interarts & Technology and Library & Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her office, therefore, is a curious mix of storyboards and reference materials. Both help immensely in the writing of historical novels. She currently resides in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

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My thoughts: I quite enjoy this author’s take on the Sherlock Holmes stories, she sticks to the feel of the original stories well and to the style Arthur Conan Doyle used so they seem authentic. This one was interesting to read as it’s narrated by Holmes, not Watson, so there’s more of the great detective’s inner life, something that isn’t always there in the original stories. Holmes is struggling with the events of Reichenbach Falls and after, the years he was supposedly dead. He’s not a killer, rarely using any weapons, preferring his great intellect and his involvement in the death of Moriarty and his followers haunts him.

He rejects religion so is unable to find comfort in prayer or faith, unlike his creator who was a famous spiritualist, so when he meets the leader of the Theosophical Order of Odic Forces, a Mason-like order of those who believe in a form of magic, he is intrigued. He envies their faith and certainty in something other than what he can see. But something has stricken several of the order’s members, and they’re dying. But it’s no ordinary illness of the flesh. Mr Simmons believes they are under a spiritual attack by a hostile magician and he needs Holmes and Watson’s help to stop this enemy.

It’s a very interesting bent to take, Holmes prides himself on his rational mind and struggles with the concept of a hidden world beyond ours, that magic exists and can be wielded to cause harm. Having identified a possible suspect, he is too late to prevent another death. But can he stop more? With his faithful Watson and his medical bag at his side, Holmes searches for a rational cause, but refuses to believe anyone is capable of magic. Could the mysterious Mr King merely be an illusion?

A clever and enjoyable addition to the Holmes continuation, giving us an insight into the mind of the consulting detective at a strange point in his life, back from the dead but not yet feeling truly alive.

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

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Blog Tour: A Stranger in Baghdad – Elizabeth Loudon

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In beautifully rendered prose, a mother and a daughter struggle as outsiders in Baghdad and London in this intergenerational drama set against a background of political tension and intrigue

“Who would be charmed by tales of life in the beautiful old house on the banks of the Tigris—looted now no doubt, its shutters torn and the courtyard strewn with mattresses?”

One night in 2003, Anglo-Iraqi psychiatrist Mona Haddad has a surprise visitor to her London office, an old acquaintance Duncan Claybourne. But why has he come? Will his confession finally lay bare what happened to her family before they escaped Iraq?

Their stories begin in 1937, when Mona’s mother Diane, a lively Englishwoman newly married to Ibrahim, an ambitious Iraqi doctor, meets Duncan by chance. Diane is working as a nanny for the Iraqi royal family. Duncan is a young British Embassy officer in Baghdad. When the king dies in a mysterious accident, Ibrahim and his family suspect Diane of colluding with Duncan and the British.

Summoning up the vanished world of mid-twentieth-century Baghdad, Elizabeth Loudon’s richly evocative story of one family calls into question British attitudes and policies in Iraq and offers up a penetrating reflection on cross-cultural marriage and the lives of women caught between different worlds.

Elizabeth Loudon is a former college lecturer and charity development consultant. She has an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MA in English from Cambridge University, and has taught at Smith, Amherst, and Williams Colleges. She’s published fiction and memoir in the Denver Quarterly, INTRO, North American Review, and Gettysburg Review, among others, and received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She drew on her experiences traveling in Iraq and Lebanon in the 1970s when writing A Stranger in Baghdad, her first novel. It was longlisted for the Bridport Novel Award and won the Stroud Book Festival Fiction Competition. She lives in London.

My thoughts: bringing Baghdad in the 1930s to life beautifully, this is a moving and complex novel about family, secrets, spies and loss. Diane’s impulsive marriage to a young Iraqi doctor, will lead her down dangerous paths. She moves with Ibrahim to his family’s home, where his widowed mother reigns and his sisters resent his new wife. Desperate and lonely, she clings to the British Embassy and the local contingent of ex-pats, which brings her into Duncan Claybourne’s orbit and into danger.

Relayed to daughter Mona, years later in London, Duncan’s story of espionage and coups, murder and her mother, is shocking and terribly sad. Mona completes the story with her own. The loss of her father, brothers and home, as she and Diane fled to England. While she’s made a life for herself, there have always been questions and now she finally has some answers. But has what she’s learnt from the former spy helped her at all or left her with more?

Rich and rewarding, this is a clever and enthralling thriller set in a lost world, vividly written and utterly captivating.

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

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Blog Tour: So Last Century – Charles Nevin

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Sherlock Holmes, Butch Cassidy, Margaret Thatcher’s bloomers and a racehorse strongly resembling Shergar feature in SO LAST CENTURY, the new collection of whimsically witty stories from award-
winning journalist and writer Charles Nevin. SO LAST CENTURY begins with Edward VII on a tricky country house visit and ends with one of the first national lottery winners struggling with fame,
fortune and romance. On the way you will also meet two music hall comedians in the First World War and two remarkable double agents in the Second, get raided in a 1920s London night club, take part in some lively Coronation celebrations and discover what really might have happened when the World Cup was stolen in 1966.

SO LAST CENTURY follows the format of Nevin’s last book, the widely praised SOMETIMES IN BATH, providing an afterword for each story which separates fiction from fact and provides fascinating background to those breakneck, tumultuous times. And be warned: after
this, you will never view the Twentieth Century in quite the same way ever again.
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CHARLES NEVIN has written for The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Sunday Times,The New York Times and many others. So Last Century follows his
acclaimed Sometimes In Bath, featuring stories happy and sad throughout the city’s history. He has also published three non-fiction books, including the highly popular tribute to the overlooked romance of his native county, Lancashire, Where Women Die of Love.
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My thoughts: this was such a fun book, beginning with Edward VII in a spot of bother, with Holmes (yes, that one) hiding in the bushes, and ending in 1995, a story a decade for the whole 20th Century is pretty impressive. They’re also very funny, there are real people, fictional people and characters who bear a strong resemblance to real people, throughout.

I was highly entertained by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on a trip to Blackpool, Ted Heath and his longing for Mrs Thatcher (urgh) and a few other familiar, and not so, having the strangest times. The World War One story was full of pathos and inspired by some remarkable real people, as was the almost too ridiculous to be true World War Two one.

King Canute makes an appearance to celebrate the crowning of the late Queen, and there are all manner of horses, donkeys and dogs in the stories. Something for everyone really.

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