Tag: historical fiction

Life can change in a single moment…

Living under the watchful eye of her controlling and abusive father, Hannah Dawson’s hopes for freedom and happiness seem a distant dream. Her mother, passive and ashamed of her self-preservation, refuses to challenge her husband. It is the mysterious circumstances of her long-lost Aunt Lizzie’s disappearance in the 1920s that inspires Hannah to seek a better life.

Since escaping his family’s notoriety in Australia Will Kidd has spent a decade sailing the seas, never looking back. Content to live the life of a wanderer, everything changes in a single moment when he comes face to face with a ghost from his past on a cloudy beach in Liverpool.

Hannah and Will are thrown together by fate and bonded by secrets from long ago. Now, they discover a love like no other. But with Hannah’s father determined to see her wed to a man of his choosing they must fight against a tyrant who has ruined many lives. Even if they succeed, can they escape the chains of their histories? And will their plans for a future be possible when the whole world is changing forever…?

A compelling tale of family secrets and undeniable love against the odds, perfect for fans of Susanne Goldring and Fiona Valpy.

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Historical novelist Clare Flynn is a former global marketing director and business owner. She now lives in Eastbourne on the south coast of England and most of her time these days is spent writing her novels – when she’s not gazing out of her windows at the sea. Clare is the author of eight novels and a short story collection. Her books deal with displacement -her characters are wrenched away from their comfortable existences and forced to face new challenges – often in outposts of an empire which largely disappeared after WW2. Clare is an active member of the Historical Novel Society, the Romantic Novelists Association, The Society of Authors and the Alliance of Independent Authors.

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My thoughts:

I found this an enjoyable and interesting book, for various reasons. I used to work for an agency that supports merchant seafarers like Will so I was interested in the historical aspect of his job (my father-in-law was a captain in the merchant navy) and I enjoy history, especially when it’s as well researched as this.

I also really liked Hannah, she was a strong, intelligent woman with a huge heart who loves books, I think we would be friends.

Their disparate lives and tragedies bring them together in a surprising way and with the Second World War looming, there’s a lot to fight against, not just Hannah’s horrific, brutal, Bible misquoting, misogynist father.

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

Twenty-six-year-old Esme Munroe has finally left the Scottish Highlands for the excitement of London.

Working at a prestigious art gallery in Mayfair, she meets gorgeous, worldly Suki, who takes her to the most exclusive bars and clubs in the city.

But it’s easy to get lost in London’s glamour and chaos, especially when a long-hidden secret looms – will Esme discover it and who she can really trust, before it’s too late?

My thoughts:

This was a modern take on the sort of novels Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins are famous for – posh girl making her way in the world, complete with parties, Society types and sex.

Esme is a bit naive and needs to grow a thicker skin to make it in the 80s London art world.

She’s landed a job and a temporary home courtesy of her sister’s godfather, an art dealer who lives with his flamboyant partner is Kensington.

Making friends as an adult is hard, and Esme struggles to find her place and her tribe.

Susannah Constantine (of Trinny & fame) is an enjoyable writer and knows her world of privilege and picking a few things up in Harrods well.

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

The Second World War is over. England is losing its empire, world status and old elite values. The Empire strikes back with mass immigration, while the government soothes its people with welfare, the NHS, televisions and refrigerators.

At the centre of the novel is the contemptuous Joan Kite, at odds with all the changes imposed on the country in the post war period. Shut up in a house with her only daughter, she refuses to compromise and adapt, pouring vitriol on anyone who seeks to enter their lives.

After years of frugality, patriotism, service and excitement, she is angry at the contracted existence she’s been delivered and at the manner in which her aspirations to upper-middle-class culture have been thwarted. When her daughter is threatened, she begins a diary to investigate her past before and during the war. In it she gives rein to a flamboyant imaginary life and to an energetic loathing for the reality of a diminished England.

During the freak hot summer of 1976, as water is rationed and ladybirds invade their home, the intimacy of mother and daughter intensifies. Their lives unravel within the claustrophobia of their semi-detached house behind closed velvet curtains.

Janet Todd (Jane Austen’s Sanditon, Radiation Diaries, Aphra Behn: A Secret Life, A Man of Genius), novelist, biographer and internationally renowned scholar, is the General Editor of The Cambridge Works of Jane Austen, author of The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen, and a former president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

Now a full-time writer and literary critic, she is an Emerita Professor at the University of Aberdeen and an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Born in Wales, she grew up in Britain, Bermuda and Ceylon/Sri Lanka and has worked at universities in Ghana, Puerto Rico, India, the US (Douglass College, Rutgers, Florida) Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen) and England (Cambridge, UEA). She lives in Cambridge, England and Venice, Italy.

My thoughts:

Written as a diary kept by an angry, resentful Joan in the 1970s, recounting her life, from a repressive inter-war childhood to a lonely Second World War as a single mother struggling with rationing and isolation.

Her fraught relationship with daughter Maud is central to her life, as she tries to ensure that Maud has a better life than she did.

As Maud starts to unravel and Joan becomes concerned, her diaries track the deterioration of her daughter.

Well written, engaging, and opening a window into the lives of women in post-war period.

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

The third instalment of The Jackdaw Mysteries. A tale of conspiracy, murder and espionage in Elizabethan London and dazzling Marrakesh.

Betrayal has many guises…

London, 1593: Five years on from the Armada and England is taking its first faltering steps towards a future as a global power. Nicholas Shelby – reluctant spy and maverick physician – and his companion Bianca Merton are settling into a life on Bankside. But in London there is always a plot afoot…

Robert Cecil, the Queen’s spymaster, once again recruits Nicholas to embark on a dangerous undercover mission that will take him to the back alleys of Marrakech in search of a missing informer. However, while Nicholas hunts for the truth across the seas, plague returns once more to London – ravaging the streets and threatening those dearest to him.

Can Bianca and Nicholas’ budding relationship weather the threats of pestilence and conspiracy? And will Nicholas survive the dangers of his mission in a hostile city to return safely home?

S. W. Perry was a journalist and broadcaster before retraining as an airline pilot. His debut novel, The Angel’s Mark, was listed for the CWA Historical Dagger and was a Walter Scott Prize Academy Recommended Read 2019. He lives in Worcestershire with his wife.

My thoughts:

This series just gets better and better. This time Nick is off to Marrakech on the service of the Cecils but closer to home conspiracy threatens Bianca and the Jackdaw crew and plague looms.

It was fascinating to read, especially the Marrakech episodes which remind me yet again of how backward a lot of Western thinking has been – if only we’d spent more time studying the advances of the Arab world than the Greco-Roman ones, maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long for women to become doctors and for hygiene to be recognised as vital to recovery.

Sorry, rant over.

Clever writing, a real sense of time and space (Bankside really comes alive), engaging characters and sophisticated plotting make this the best yet.

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

1560: Amy Robsart is trapped in a loveless marriage to Robert Dudley, a member of the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Surrounded by enemies and with nowhere left to turn, Amy hatches a desperate scheme to escape—one with devastating consequences that will echo through the centuries…
Present Day: When Lizzie Kingdom is forced to withdraw from the public eye in a blaze of scandal, it seems her life is over. But she’s about to encounter a young man, Johnny Robsart, whose fate will interlace with hers in the most unexpected of ways. For Johnny is certain that Lizzie is linked to a terrible secret dating back to Tudor times. If Lizzie is brave enough to go in search of the truth, then what she discovers will change the course of their lives forever.

My thoughts:

The past and present mirror each other in this fantasy tinged historical novel with a twist.

Lizzie is drawn into the secrets of the Robsart family’s history following the death of her best friend’s estranged wife. Coupled with her own strange gifts, she seeks the truth of Amelia’s tragic death and also that of noble woman Amy Robsart, wife of Elizabeth I’s favourite Lord Dudley.

Mixing historical fact with fiction, Nicola Cornick suggests Lady Dudley’s death was a bit more complicated that history suggests and reflects it down through the ages, until it comes into contact with Lizzie Kingdom.

A clever examination of fame, friendship and family ensues.

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