Tag: historical fiction

Read my reviews of The Serpent’s Mark and The Saracen’s Mark

The Elizabethan world is in flux. Radical new ideas are challenging the old. But the quest for knowledge can lead down dangerous paths…

London, 1594. The Queen’s physician has been executed for treason, and conspiracy theories flood the streets. When Nicholas Shelby, unorthodox physician and unwilling associate of spymaster Robert Cecil, is accused of being part of the plot, he and his new wife Bianca must flee for their lives.
With agents of the Crown on their tail, they make for Padua, following the ancient pilgrimage route, the Via Francigena. But the pursuing English aren’t the only threat Nicholas and Bianca face. Hella, a strange and fervently religious young woman, has joined them on their journey. When the trio finally reach relative safety, they become embroiled in a radical and dangerous scheme to shatter the old world’s limits of knowledge. But Hella’s dire predictions of an impending apocalypse, and the brutal murder of a friend of Bianca’s forces them to wonder: who is this troublingly pious woman? And what does she want?

My thoughts:

I think this might be my favourite in this series so far. Forced to hide out on the continent, Nicholas and Bianca head for Padua, and Bianca’s cheerful cousin Bruno.

They’re joined by a woman who claims to see Judgement Day and who becomes a wee bit too obsessed with Nicholas to be completely healthy.

He sees agents of doom everywhere and even Bianca is under a cloud.

Meanwhile back in Southwark Ned is getting into trouble and the delightful Rose is trying to get him out of it.

I loved having more Rose and Ned in the book, it was great them having their own storyline independent of the misadventures of everyone’s favourite Elizabethan doctor.

I also really liked seeing Nicholas out of his element, forced to learn Italian, having to rely on Bianca a bit more. I loved cousin Bruno, he’s just like a sort of puppy. And the inclusion of Galileo Galili as a drunken University professor, yelling at his students and planning to annoy the Florentines was an excellent touch.

All of the historical details, and the famous names and places add to the sense of time and place, grounding it in the Enlightenment’s early years – Galileo isn’t yet a heretic, Shakespeare’s still a jobbing playwright, the Earth is the centre of the universe.

These are such fun books and the conspiracy this time is not remotely what you expect – doom monger Hella isn’t an agent of one of England’s enemies, she’s a prophet of the apocalypse – or is she?

The curious state of Christianity in the 16th Century, with its mystics and pilgrims, hundreds of saints and apostates is given centre stage and it really is a strange place. I didn’t really think of the Netherlands as a hot bed of this sort of thing, but with a certain Heironymous of Bosch painting his nightmares, there’s a bit of an atmosphere.

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

Sheffield, 1939. With war declared, these brave women will step up and do their bit for their country

Housewife Nancy never dreamed that she’d end up in Vickers steelworks factory but when husband Bert is called up to serve, she needs to put food on the table for her two young children.

Betty’s sweetheart William has joined the RAF Reserves so she can’t sit around and do nothing – even if it means giving up her ambitions to study law at night school.

Young Patty is relishing the excitement the war brings. But this shop-girl is going to have to grow up quickly, especially now she’s undertaking such back-breaking and dangerous work in the factory.

The Steel Girls start off as strangers but quickly forge an unbreakable bond of friendship as these feisty factory sisters vow to keep the foundry fires burning during wartime.

My thoughts:

I’ve always been fascinated by the hundreds of women who took on “men’s work” during the war. My great aunt, Auntie Doll, became a bus driver in London, even though she’d originally been hired to clean them! She was something of a character. There’s something very powerful about women, many of them teenagers or housewives, stepping into the roles society previously told them weren’t suitable.

The camaraderie and friendship between Betty, Nancy and Patty gets them through tough shifts in a Sheffield steelworks, driving the cranes that lift huge pieces of steel through the factory. They have to put up with male colleagues who don’t want women in their workplace and ones who need to learn to keep their hands to themselves. Nancy and Betty also have men away in the war, Nancy’s husband Bert is in the army and Betty’s boyfriend in the RAF.

A heartwarming, enjoyable story about friendship and women finding their place in troubled times.

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

After her beloved grandmother Rozenn’s death, Morane is heartbroken to learn that her sister is the sole inheritor of the family home in Cornwall—while she herself has been written out of the will.
With both her business and her relationship with her sister on the rocks, Morane becomes consumed by one question: what made Rozenn turn her back on her?

When she finds an old letter linking her grandmother to Brittany under German occupation, Morane escapes on the trail of her family’s past. In the coastal village where Rozenn lived in 1941, she uncovers a web of shameful secrets that haunted Rozenn to the end of her days. Was it to protect
those she loved that a desperate Rozenn made a heartbreaking decision and changed the course of
all their lives forever?

Morane goes in search of the truth but the truth can be painful. Can she make her peace with the past and repair her relationship with her sister?

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Eliza Graham’s novels have been long-listed for the UK’s Richard & Judy Summer Book Club in the UK, and short-listed for World Book Day’s ‘Hidden Gem’ competition. She has also been nominated for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Her books have been bestsellers both in Europe and the US.

She is fascinated by the world of the 1930s and 1940s: the Second World War and its immediate aftermath and the trickle-down effect on future generations. Consequently she’s made trips to visit bunkers in Brittany, decoy harbours in Cornwall, wartime radio studios in Bedfordshire and
cemeteries in Szczecin, Poland. And those are the less obscure research trips.

It was probably inevitable that Eliza would pursue a life of writing. She spent biology lessons reading Jean Plaidy novels behind the textbooks, sitting at the back of the classroom. In English and history lessons she sat right at the front, hanging on to every word. At home she read books while getting dressed and cleaning her teeth. During school holidays she visited the public library multiple times a day.

Eliza lives in an ancient village in the Oxfordshire countryside with her family. Not far from her house there is a large perforated sarsen stone that can apparently summon King Alfred if you blow into it correctly. Eliza has never managed to summon him. Her interests still mainly revolve around reading, but she also enjoys walking in the downland country around her home and travelling around the world to research her novels.

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Giveaway to Win 3 x Paperback copies of You Let Me Go by Eliza Graham (Open to UK / USA only)**

My thoughts:

This was a moving family drama, set partly in Brittany and partly in Cornwall. After her grandmother’s death, Morie is left with questions, only by travelling back to the village of Rozenn’s wartime experiences can she start to put the pieces together.

At times very sad and with a bittersweet series of discoveries to be made, this is a gentle and tender story about love and family above all else.

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

* *Terms and Conditions –UK and USA entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.**

Nearly two hundred condemned women board a transport ship bound for Australia. One of them is a murderer. From debut author Hope Adams comes a thrilling novel based on the 1841 voyage of the convict ship Rajah, about confinement, hope, and the terrible things we do to survive.

London, 1841. One hundred eighty Englishwomen file aboard the Rajah, embarking on a three-month voyage to the other side of the world.
They’re daughters, sisters, mothers—and convicts.
Transported for petty crimes.
Except one of them has a deadly secret, and will do anything to flee justice.
As the Rajah sails farther from land, the women forge a tenuous kinship. Until, in the middle of the cold and unforgiving sea, a young mother is mortally wounded, and the hunt is on for the assailant before he or she strikes again.
Each woman called in for question has something to fear: Will she be attacked next? Will she be believed? Because far from land, there is nowhere to flee, and how can you prove innocence when you’ve already been found guilty?

My thoughts:

Inspired by real events and real people, the story of the Rajah and its passengers – roughly 200 women condemned to transportation to what is now Tasmania, is beautifully written, told by several different voices – Kezia the warder, Sarah the convict and a few of the others.

During the voyage a terrible crime is committed and the captain puts together a panel to investigate the women and find the culprit.

In-between interrogations, Kezia and her selected group of 18 women work on a patchwork quilt, the real one hangs in the National Gallery in Canberra. It is Kezia’s hope this work will offer something to the women – hope, spiritual salvation, community.

The long voyage gives them all time to reflect on their pasts and the crimes that have led them here. Most are petty ones – thefts to survive the desperate hard lives they lead, but among them is someone fleeing the noose.

This was a fascinating look at a group of women often forgotten by history, women who were required to be incredibly brave as they were taken away from their homes and families, forced into new lives in a strange land.

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