thelotusreaders

Dance of the Earth by Anna M Holmes

Posted on 3rd Nov 20253rd Nov 2025 by thelotusreaders

London, 1897. Nobody, least of all Molly, knows why she ends up taking the foundling home from her job at the Alhambra Theatre. Molly is a seamstress, creating costumes for ballerinas who perform within the music hall tradition. She loves dance but with her built up shoe and awkward gait she is as close to the stage as she can get. When a baby is discovered on the steps of the theatre everyone discusses who could be the mother, but they’re at a loss. It’s hard to hide a pregnancy in a shared dressing room and with seamstresses who note the tiniest change on a tape measure. She takes Rose home, but her upbringing is also at the theatre where everyone takes an interest in this little girl who grows up enjoying the colours, fabrics and feathers of the sewing room but reserves her love for the ballerinas. When she’s old enough she wants to learn and grows into a role in the chorus very quickly. Rose is determined to succeed and keeps pushing for that breakthrough that will give her the starring role. Molly knows Rose is pregnant before she tells her, the result of an affair with a wealthy married man, but the abortion they arrange is abandoned when Rose changes her mind. Rose’s twins are born backstage at the theatre, where life starts and then life ends as Rose’s dancing dreams die. So the boy, Walter, is sent to live with his father and stepmother and Nina stays with Molly. This decision means that Nina has the same upbringing as Rose and becomes even more determined than her mother to be the best dancer she can be. The younger generation pursue their ambitions, loves and dreams in a new world shaped by the pioneering Diaghilev and his dazzling Ballets Russes, Stravinsky’s dissonant music, and the devastating First World War.

I asked to read and review this book because I enjoy ballet, particularly the more lyrical modern ballets by Mathew Bourne and the brilliant Northern Ballet based in Leeds who often do literary adaptations such as Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby. I’m also fascinated with this period of history, particularly when it comes to the huge impact of WW1 and the way it affected class structures and the lives of the women left behind. The author weaves her story into this time and society beautifully and with such care over every detail. Even the cover shows her themes of rebirth and regeneration with its large golden egg and a female figure as if drawn by Matisse, non-sexualised and not constricted by the corsets and crinolines of earlier generations. Her shape reminded me of the new ballets produced by Diaghilev and choreographed by Fokine that also showed more freedom in their movements and looser costumes. Rose and Nina have a very different upbringing from the average Edwardian woman, the music hall theatre wouldn’t be considered respectable by the middle and upper classes. Molly has no choice but to work so both Rose, and later her daughter Nina, fell asleep to the sound of sewing machines and have clothes that are colourful and unique, thrown together from fabric remnants. Both are dazzled by the dancers and want to be on the stage and both are successful to different extents. Nina is utterly determined and visits all the ballets she can while training, because she’s aiming beyond the music hall and into the world of modern ballet. She hears of the Ballet Russes and Diaghilev’s new approach, she identifies herself with his ‘Firebird’ – another symbol of renewal and regeneration:

‘Tamara Karsavina wore a magnificent head dress – long flaming feathers quivering – a bodice of brilliant reds and oranges […] she adored the exotic creature”.

The premiere of this ballet was in 1910 at the Opera de Paris and showed off the choreography of Diaghilev’s collaborator Fokine which was ground breaking. This dancer had to represent an element, with all the wildness of fire, something we think of as hard to contain and dangerous to be near. It’s definitely a force that’s in Nina and represented the changing roles of women in the early 20th Century: women who wanted to go to university, to have a career, to have the vote. Imagine how strange it must have been to see a woman on stage who’s a rebel and has power, especially with its incredible costume and free expressive dancing.

‘This firebird was her – Nina – aflame, all sharp angles radiating determination’.

Walter is almost his sister’s opposite, a person you could easily miss in a room and caused by his upbringing. Brought up by his mother’s lover Arthur and his wife Beatrice, he is rich in every sense except the one we most need – love. Beatrice was cold, although it is hard to imagine what it felt like to meet the proof of her husband’s infidelity at the breakfast table each morning, especially when she couldn’t have children of her own. I was intrigued by the differences between the twins and what it said about the nature/nurture debate. Nina has been brought up by the entire theatre community of women from Molly’s fellow seamstresses to the dancers, which gives her so much confidence, drive and inspiration. She sees women making their own money and in a creative career, so she knows women can make it on their own in this world. All Walter seems to learn at home is to stay as small as possible and not upset anybody, something he takes to boarding school with him. His masters at school are trying to turn out traditional middle class men, who go on to university and have a profession. The assumption is they will have a career that can support a family, but Arthur’s only love is music but he doesn’t have the confidence or self-worth to make that happen. When Arthur died I thought Beatrice was particularly brutal in dismissing Walter, making it clear he will liaise with his father’s solicitor from now on. When children are rejected they don’t think something is wrong with the parent, they internalise the rejection and are left feeling something is wrong with themselves. For Walter this is compounded at boarding school where he is not athletic or competitive, he is teased, bullied and never stands up for himself. As he discovers his Grandmother and Nina he’s also having feelings that seem natural, but must be kept secret. When they all go to see the Rite of Spring he watches Nijinsky mimicking an ecstatic and sensual moment on stage and becomes aroused. He’s mortified and has to leave immediately. I kept wondering how he would cope with war on the horizon and the huge pressure on young men to enlist. I couldn’t imagine how he would survive the brutality of the experience.

This fascinating family story feels absolutely real and that is down to the incredible amount of research the author has undertaken. She wholly embeds these characters into the history of the time, weaving social, cultural and political history around them, along with her incredible knowledge on dance history. I loved the vividness of the theatre, the backstage bustle and the magic that is produced for the audience especially when what they’re seeing is groundbreaking. She applies equal care to the war sections of the novel too. It feels like you are in those trenches because there’s an immediacy to them. These sections are also graphic and raw, which makes them hard to read about war when you’re invested in the characters. It had to be strong and true to life for us to understand how and why this war tore straight through the lives people had known before. Although changes were already happening at the turn of the century, WW1 was the first mechanised war and the sheer number of casualties were hard to comprehend. It wiped out a generation of men and afterwards there’s an acceleration of modernism that’s visible in the arts and everyday people’s lives. The aristocracy struggle to hold on to property and land as they are tied up with death duties, sometimes more than once. Middle class women who have always relied financially on men have to face life alone and discover ways of making money – less servants, taking in lodgers and finding jobs. If men came back, they came back changed forever due to shell shock (now PTSD) or physical injury and couldn’t work. Women didn’t want to give up jobs they’d done throughout the war and a freedom they’d never had before. Also contraception becomes more freely available and this was the earliest stages of some women not having to choose between career and relationships. As Nina joins the Ballet Russes she becomes more independent, travelling all over the world and living the life her mother had dreamed of. When we see her reach her first stop in the south of France she is utterly in her element and it’s no surprise that she enters into a controversial mixed race relationship, something more acceptable in that time within the bohemian and arty circles she inhabits. It’s almost as if the war curtailed the freedom of men, especially when conscription began, but emancipated women.

In 2010 I visited an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, called Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes which focused on costume and design including collaborations with artists like Picasso and the music of Stravinsky These sketches and costumes were like nothing I’d ever seen, seeming both weirdly modern but archaic at the same time. There’s nothing pretty about them and no tulle in sight, they’re loose with strong colours, geometric shapes and sharp zig-zags. I could see the point being made – by being so aggressively modern it almost forces change and expectation of what a ballet is. I could see how they matched Stravinsky’s music because there was a segment of the Rite of Spring with its themes of growth, fertility and desire. I could see why audiences found this piece so shocking because it has that same aggressive feeling with unusual rhythms and sudden loud bursts of sound. It’s harsher on the ear than the usual score for ballets and the sets were purposely sparse. The dancing had a primitive feel and the subject matter of a young woman sacrificed to the spring is like a modernist version of the contemporary horror film Midsommar. It was reported that people rioted at the premiere, which is probably an exaggeration, but I can imagine an audience finding it strange and confronting when we think of the opulence and beauty they were used to in ballet. It’s such an important piece in the history of dance and without it we wouldn’t have contemporary dance. I came away from the novel feeling I’d learned so much about dance and the early 20th Century in general. While all the characters touched me in different ways I did have a soft spot for Molly, who stands out within these themes of fertility and desire. I thought she was the most incredible mother, yet had never given birth to either of her children. She has a disability but spends her time within a world where bodies are pushed to their limit, creating beauty in their movement. Her love of dance is built into every one of the costumes she lovingly creates and the colourful outfits she makes for her daughters. She provides stability and love for Rose and Nina, plus she never judges their mistakes. She is the earth, grounding these fiery women and eventually Walter, for the rest of her life. She is the heart of this novel for me and Nina can only be what she is because of her. I could imagine her as the central character in an incredibly lush and powerful period drama with the war breaking through everything in its brutality. This is a must read for both lovers of dance and historical fiction.

Meet the Author

Stories with big themes written as page-turners are Anna M Holmes’s speciality. With an extensive background in dance and theatre, Dance of the Earthis a story she has longed to write. Her novels- The Find, Wayward Voyage, and Blind Eye-are all typified by deep research. Anna worked as a radio journalist before embarking on a career in arts management. Originally from New Zealand, she now lives in South-West London.

Squad Pod Collective

Appointment In Paris by Jane Thynne

Posted on 31st Oct 202531st Oct 2025 by thelotusreaders

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

1938. Stella Fry is walking home from her job at the film institute and surprised to find a crowd gathered near her home. It’s clear there’s been an accident, but when Stella enquires she’s shocked at the reply. ‘It’s someone called Stella Fry’ a woman whispers and with great presence of mind she doesn’t identify herself. She simply turns and walks away, thinking that Harry Fox is involved. After a night on the sofa at her friend’s flat she’s deciding what to do next when she’s called in for an assignment with Harry Fox, who she’s worked with before. This is a very sensitive case, looking into the death of a man at the POW camp at Trent Park. A man wearing Luftwaffe uniform was found dead in the grounds with a gunshot wound. It’s vital to know what’s happened because Trent Park isn’t just a POW camp, it’s a huge intelligence gathering centre and one of their listeners has gone missing. Stella is enrolled in the ATS to become a ‘listener’ at Trent Park. She will join other German speakers, listening to cellmates through state of the art microphones. The women are recording and transcribing anything of interest and sending it up the chain. It’s an important tool to learn about Nazi positions, their plans to invade Western Europe and their treatment of Jewish communities. However, Stella must also listen to her colleagues, because they have no idea where the murder weapon came from and there is a possibility that the missing operative has been turned. There’s also intelligence about three German spies living within the immigrant community close by. Harry will be on the trail of the spies which brings Lieselotte Edelman into his path, a beautiful young Jewish woman who fled her own country before war broke out. Could she be a spy and could Harry’s desire for her cloud his judgement about her true purpose?

This is an interesting thriller based on true events and the second to feature Harry and Stella as a team, although this time they’ll be working different lines of enquiry on the same case. Stella comes across as the ideal operative, she blends in well and seems to secure people’s confidences very easily. She’s competent and able to keep secrets, even from those closest to her. As for her own feelings, they’re a little more complicated. She has feelings for her best friend’s brother but he’s become engaged to an American he met through the Kennedy family. Harry also has complex feelings. I wondered how he felt about Stella, but would he ever be able to admit to it? He seems to enjoy his bachelor lifestyle and never gets caught up with one woman. Both take comfort from people they meet in the course of their investigation, but these are war time affairs belonging to people who pass in the night never to be seen again.

I found the psychological dynamics at Trent Park really interesting. The POWs are treated very well, but that’s designed to lull them into a false sense of security. If they’re treated well and have some freedoms they’ll never imagine that their every word is being scrutinised. One man observes that Stella’s job reminds him of the Nietzsche quote that’s the book’s preface – when we look into the abyss the abyss also looks into us. It’s easy to think their inmates are just ordinary men forced into fighting for their country and some are, but others are sadists and enjoy exerting their power over civilians. The stories of beatings, rapes, casual slaughter and the mistreatment of Jews is horrifying. It shows how people’s basest instincts are woken up and distorted by power. Listening to this everyday must chip away at the transcribers as they process these horrors from German into English. I was utterly drawn into this because it’s a very heightened version of working with in the mental health sector, listening to the worst things that have happened to people takes its toll and it’s vital to take breaks and even extended leave in order to do the job well. I wondered how people coped with the roles they were forced to take during the war and whether we would be equally selfless. My grandad missed the war but did his National Service in Germany in the aftermath and I know what he saw affected him. I can’t imagine how a country heals after such horrific events. Those ordinary people who turned on their Jewish neighbours must suffer from terrible guilt when the full truth emerges, whether they believed the propaganda or participated to save their own skin. I was sure that the truth lay somewhere in this sea of human suffering and I was sure Stella would find it.

I found Stella’s narrative more compelling than Harry’s, possibly because the historical detail and background were so brilliant. Harry js delving into the criminal underworld on the trail of a gun as well as the spies but Stella’s narrative takes us to Paris as the Nazis are on the verge of invading and taking control. The author really captures the sense of fear and disbelief combined, there’s a sense of unreality as if it could never happen to them. It’s something I feel personally with the rise in far-right politics. We always think it couldn’t happen again or it couldn’t happen here, but it can. It’s very tense as Stella gets closer to the man she needs to bring in, but also make sure she gets out of Paris in time. Another feeling the author captured beautifully was the nostalgia for a time before the war, for Stella it’s a party she attended at Trent Park as she is falling in love with her friend’s brother. Since then they’ve both had roles to fulfil and perhaps sacrificed happiness for duty, it’s the story of many people who missed their chance or passed only briefly, never to see each other again. When Harry and Stella are together they’re a formidable team and there is just a tiny hint of chemistry. This was a great historical mystery and I’m very curious to know where this team go next.

Meet the Author

Jayne has a passion for historical fiction and loves the research that involves. The first in her Clara Vine series, Black Roses, became a number One Kindle Bestseller. In the UK the series is published by Simon & Schuster. Outside Britain, my novels have been translated into French, German, Greek, Russian, Polish, Romanian, Turkish and Italian. In France the series is published by J.C Lattes and in Greece by Kedros. In the US and Canada the series is published by Random House. The TV rights have been optioned by Hillbilly Films who are producing the pilot for an eight part series.

The Words I Never Wrote is published in the US by Ballantine and in the UK by Sharpe Books.

I have also written two alternative history novels under the pen name C.J. Carey, Widowland and Queen High (published in the US by Sourcebooks as The American Queen). I chose that pseudonym because it’s a reversal of my own initials, coupled with my mother’s maiden name. In the UK, the novels are published by Quercus and in France by J C Lattès.

My most recent novels, the Fox and Fry series, feature Harry Fox, a suspended MI5 surveillance operative, and Stella Fry, a former tutor, who are thrown together to solve mysterious murders on the eve of WW2. Midnight in Vienna and Appointment in Paris are both published by Quercus.

As well as writing books I freelance as a journalist, writing regularly for numerous British magazines and newspapers, and also appear as a broadcaster on Radio 4 and Sky. I have been a guest reader at the Arvon Foundation and sat on the broadcasting committee of the Society of Authors. I’m a patron of the Wimbledon Bookfest and live in London.

Personal Purchase

Venetian Vespers by John Banville

Posted on 31st Oct 202529th Oct 2025 by thelotusreaders

This felt like the perfect autumn read – a sinister mystery filled with atmosphere and a slowly building sense of menace. Evelyn Dolman embarks on his honeymoon with his new wife Laura and it proves to be anything but the honeymoon he expected. The couple are greeted by servants at their lodgings, but soon the landlord of Palazzo Dioscuri is there to introduce himself and tell tales of his grand and adventurous ancestors, many of whom Evelyn suspects as figments of the Count’s imagination. Simply a tale to entertain guests. Evelyn fought hard for Laura’s hand, knowing she was far above him in terms of class and finances as he is merely a struggling writer. He’s been looking forward to getting away and as they settle into their rooms he’s sure they’ll have a successful trip. Despite his awareness of the rot and instability underneath some of the grand palazzos they saw from the vaporetto Evelyn is still dazzled by the faded beauty, the light and the history of this group of islands that make up the city. So, with Laura settling in early for the night he decides to go for a walk and perhaps a drink somewhere close by and she suggests Florian, a cafe that first opened in 1720 and still serves Venetian visitors today. A chance meeting is followed by a night of drinking and one unforgivable act. So when he wakes in the morning, sluggish and nauseous and finds his wife isn’t next to him in bed, he imagines she has taken herself to another room. However, as the morning progresses it becomes clear that Laura has simply disappeared.

I picked this book up on a solid recommendation from the bookshop owner, he said his wife was reading it and was torn between devouring it or savouring every chapter. After reading the first couple of chapters I knew exactly how she felt. I love the city of Venice and I love fiction that is set there, particularly stories that conjure up the feel of the city. I’ve been lucky enough to visit the city twice, both times for a full week of exploring. It was the perfect holiday for me – the gothic feel of the place, the incredible architecture, the artisans creating in their workshops and the history of the islands. This is a city with a potential story round every corner. John Banville has captured this perfectly and the strange atmosphere that goes with it. Venice likes to fool you. Not just at carnival time with its costumes and masks, although there is something thrilling and terrifying about that time, this is a sleight of hand that’s in the everyday: the theatre that is actually a supermarket, a nondescript red brick church adorned with clouds and painted cherubs above the altar, it’s turning off a bustling street full of tourists into an empty piazza, devoid of sound. I think every visitor has the experience of turning into a quiet corner and knowing it’s been like this for centuries and you could have stepped into a completely different time. This idea of the city as a trickster is used cleverly by the author to wrong foot both the reader and our narrator.

Our first strange event happens in Florian, the gilded and opulent cafe recommended by his wife. As Evelyn begins to settle in with his coffee and brandy a man approaches his table with a shout of surprise. A red haired man introduces himself as Freddie Fitzherbert and can’t believe Evelyn doesn’t recognise him, since they went to the same school. Evelyn has the conviction that he’s never seen this man before, but he seems to know Evelyn and out of politeness he allows himself to be ushered to sit with Freddie and his sister Francesca Ransome, whose charms don’t go unnoticed:

“This enchanting creature of the heart-shaped face, lustrous eyes and invitingly intimate smile […] how deeply, warmly hued her gleaming ringlets”.

As Evelyn is coerced into joining them at a late drinking establishment he senses he may be making a terrible mistake.

We see everything through Evelyn’s eyes and he is bluntly honest about his feelings and behaviour. He desires Cesca and once felt a similar craving for his wife, but just like this city appearances can be deceptive. Their marriage looks like a love match, but could it be sitting on gradually rotting foundations. On the night he proposed, Laura accompanied him to his rooms and there “the deed of tender initiation was at last enacted” but far from being the unknowing virgin he expected, his fiance knew the deed and proved more experienced in it than him. She was also eager to participate:

“To say it plainly her deft embraces and practised kisses were such as to leave me gasping less in ecstasy than astonishment, even dismay.”

Despite his own initiations that were paid for in a certain type of establishment, he resents hers. Despite the passion, he doesn’t feel he fully possessed Laura. She felt absent to him but the night was never discussed or repeated. Even since the marriage Laura had shown no indication of being receptive to his advances and he is beginning to think that the carnal side of their relationship is over. As he returns to the palazzo, so drunk he is accompanied by Cesca, he is so full of alcohol and lust that he is on course to act in a way that is unforgivable. When he wakes, foggy and nauseous the next morning, it takes a few moments to remember the night before. Once reality hits he searches their rooms and the rest of the palazzo for his wife but he can find no trace of her. Did she leave? Has she gone to a hotel to cool off for a while? Or did more transpire last night than he remembers?

This is a mystery as labyrinthine as the city itself and despite having only one narrator we are left with so many questions. There’s a vagueness about every detail that could be an adherence to social etiquette but could also be deliberate. Evelyn seems easily pulled into harms way and claims to feel utterly detached from his wrongdoing. It’s as if he’s too weak to be autonomous or stick to his principles, or he could be trying to fool us. Despite claiming not to recognise Freddie he was easily swayed to go late night drinking with them and even secures them rooms at the Palazzo Dioscuri when their lodgings on Guidecca need to be vacated. He claims to be bewitched by his wife’s dark haired beauty but very quickly switches interest to Cesca. Could he really be this callous? It seems our narrator is not to be trusted and he’s not alone. Count Barbarigo drifts in and out at will, with long fantastical stories of his ancestors that must be false. Cesca is very enigmatic, seductive one moment and pulling back the next. Where is her husband? What does she expect from Evelyn? We get the feeling that everyone is behaving oddly as if there’s something else going on just out of Evelyn’s sight. As Freddie and Cesca join the palazzo the Count provides a lunch for his guests, a gathering Evelyn refers to as a Mad Hatter’s party and it’s an apt description of this strange assortment of strangers. He notices the servants are sitting with the guests. He gets the sense of watching a play unfold in front of him, with everyone playing their part but something feels ‘off’. To me it felt like the house of misrule where the usual social order is being turned on its head. Not to mention Laura is still nowhere to be found.

Doubling is also a theme, with Laura seeming to be the quiet, ideal wife but she has this unexpected sexual past. Cesca is pointed out as Laura’s double by the count, with the only difference being her hair colour. Evelyn even wishes his wife was more like Cesca. She does admit to her dual nature and even likens it to the city.

“You will get used to the pantomime that Venice makes of life.”

The reference to pantomime again brought up that twelfth night sense of misrule, where women are principal boys and men are the pantomime dames. Cesca claims that the venality of Venice makes her feel like the essence of respectability. Evelyn flirts around this statement, wondering about her respectability elsewhere in the world also wishing to be a wilder version of himself. He bemoans his character, wishing that Cesca could see this other self that’s the perfect fit for Venice in all its elusiveness and deceit.

“Wherever I end up I will still be Evelyn Dolman, a northerner born and bred, utterly un- Venetian.”

He wishes for the ability to be a wild rover like Freddie, tied down by no one and no principle or creed either. This part of him longs for Casanova levels of debauchery, but as leans his head against the damp wall of the palazzo he longs for his tidy house in Chiswick and the smell of furniture polish. Will this suburban, safe Evelyn win the day or will he allow his darker, shadow self to control his actions?

There are clues to what is transpiring here but they are subtle. The writer has incredible sleight of hand and they seem inconsequential or at list explicable. Some completely passed me by. As I opened the book again for writing this review it made me think of The Sixth Sense and how no one saw the clues on their first watch of the film but when they watched for a second time they couldn’t believe they’d missed them. Each character is slippery and elusive with an unpredictable quality that felt dangerous. I lived this uncanny feeling the author created which grows organically from the city. This is a sparking jewel of a city that’s risen from the mud and brackish waters of the lagoon. Evelyn mentions the fin de siécle, that time of decadence towards the end of the 19th Century and that timing certainly informs some of the events in the book, particularly the fluid social order and sexual licentiousness. We’re told constantly that Venice is decaying and sinking. One day it may be completely under water, but the decay isn’t what you see when you first visit. Venice bewitches you with its golden domes, Morrison arches, coloured glass and the way sparkling light from the surface of the water bathes everything in a soft light. Then suddenly, only a street away you notice a tree growing out of someone’s house and at night most residences seem in darkness now that families can no longer live in the water logged lower floors. Banville captures this ‘double’ city utterly, describing the timeless romance of a gondolier serenading his passengers but also the jarring sound of the vaporetto. We see the sparkling water but also smell the mud as the passing boats churn it up. He links this duality with human nature, our surface selves and the real us, even the parts we avoid and keep locked away. Everything about this novel is a conjuring trick and I fell head over heels in love with it.

Meet the Author

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of thirteen previous novels including The Book of Evidence, which was shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize. He has received a literary award from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Dublin.

Random Things Tours

Black as Death by Lilja Sigurdardóttir

Posted on 28th Oct 202528th Oct 2025 by thelotusreaders

The haunting final chapter to an award-winning series…

And a final reckoning…

With the fate of her missing sister, Ísafold, finally uncovered, Áróra feels a fragile relief as the search that consumed her life draws to a close. But when Ísafold’s boyfriend – the prime suspect in her disappearance – is found dead at the same site where Ísafold’s body was discovered, Áróra’s grip on reality starts to unravel … and the mystery remains far from solved. To distract herself, she dives headfirst into a money-laundering case that her friend Daníel is investigating. But she soon finds that there is more than meets the eye and, once again, all leads point towards Engihjalli, the street where Ísafold lived and died, and a series of shocking secrets that could both explain and endanger everything…

I’ve been hooked on the story of Áróra and the case of her missing sister Ísafold for a few years now and the tension has slowly gripped me ever tighter as each novel has brought its revelations. With her disappearance being the reason Àrora is in Iceland, it’s always been the over-arching narrative, with other cases running alongside. The combination of Áróra’s skills as a financial investigator plus the skills and powers of Daniel and Helena who are detectives, means complex cases are profiled and attacked from different directions, making them a formidable team. We’re back with everyone after the discovery of Ísafold’s body in a suitcase deep within a fissure in a lava field. They were directed to it by an unusual little girl who claimed to be the reincarnation of Ísafold, something that was difficult for Daniel to accept. As Áróra’s boyfriend, his hackles were raised particularly with her parents who he suspected of feeding ideas and information to their daughter with the aim of deceiving them. But what possible motive could they have? As we meet our characters again, Áróra occasionally has the urge to go back and visit the family, but there’s been nothing new from her reincarnated sister for some time as if the thread that bound them has broken or the little girl’s age means the channel that was open between this life and the next has now closed. With Bjorn found in the same fissure as Ísafold many new questions are thrown up. Not least the one aspect of Ísafold’s death has remained a secret up till now. Daniel doesn’t know how to tell Áróra that her sister’s body was found without a heart.

There’s so much to understand here and we get the narrative through different viewpoints, not just from Áróra, Daniel and his colleague Helena. One narrator named Felix has fallen into working for a local dealer and we see his fear as the bag he was sent to collect disappears from the car while he’s getting some food. This theft draws his ties to this man ever closer, with no real chance of escape. There are also flashbacks to the last few months Ìsafold was alive and we finally hear the story in her own voice, which I loved. There’s a lot of crossover between these two narratives in terms of control and manipulation. The means used to tie Felix to the drugs gang are diabolical, making sure he ‘owes’ the boss and keeping him firmly onside. On one hand the boss demands total loyalty from its operatives but on the other he uses treachery to keep everyone in their place. Bjorn’s treatment of Ísafold feels even worse, because this is someone is supposed to love her. We have always known that Ísafold’s partner was violent, in fact Áróra’s guilt about her sister is based around their last phone call when for the first time Áróra decided not to run to her sister’s aid. The downstairs neighbour Grimur had also testified to the violence his neighbour suffered, but hearing it from the victim adds another layer to the narrative. We can feel how vulnerable Ísafold is and the tenderness Bjorn treats her with from time to time, that glimmer of a meaningful connection he drip feeds to her guarantees her forgiveness again and again. Almost more than the violence I hated that he took away her only bit of independence by making her leave the job she loved, to work with elderly people. At first it’s a suggestion, then he flatters her by saying how good she would be in a caring role, but the truth is he wants to coerce her into stealing their drugs. There’s a realisation that Bjorn is a low level dealer, just doing enough to get by but slowly coming to the attention of the bigger players who feel their territory has been encroached upon. Could this be the beginning of the end for the couple?

The tense and twisty parts narrative also follows Daniel’s investigation into a local coffee chain, where every barista seems to tell customers that their other sites are busier. What he finds is a company with a large turnover but no real evidence of where that money is coming from. None of their shops are in tourist areas and they seem to take a large amount in cash, an unusual thing these days. He also finds a couple of complaints from the director’s home of criminal damage, that they later chose not to pursue. This seems like a case where Áróra’s financial skills could be utilised and she throws herself into it, with dangerous consequences. This is where the couple work so well together, although there’s a recklessness to Áróra that Daniel finds difficult. He would never get in her way, she’s tough and quite capable of looking after herself physically but it’s in his nature to worry about those he cares for. He knows that her weight training and work are her ways of sublimating her frustration that she still doesn’t have all the answers about her sister. With Helena currently working the case he has a choice to make, if answers come does he let Helena break the truth to her, or does he choose to do that himself? Although he could have the chance to comfort and support her as he’s wanted, will she let him? Or will he always be the man who told her the harshest and most painful truth she will ever hear?

We’ve always had suspicions but have never known who killed Ísafold. The novel is gripping and of course we want this mystery resolved, but I didn’t feel any of that racing tension or triumph that I often get from thrillers when the killer’s revealed. This was just so desperately sad. I found myself taking a moment for this under confident woman who was so far out of her depth. A woman whose emotions dictated her life decisions. I was horrified and had that strange empty feeling of loss. A loss I knew Áróra would feel. The question is, if she does get all the answers she needs, what will Áróra do next? Unlike her sister Áróra has a clear sense of what she wants and needs in order to be happy and fulfilled. She makes decisions based on self-knowledge and it remains to be seen whether Daniel is a part of that eventual happiness. This has been an incredible series from the author, combining a good mystery with real intelligence and depth of emotion played out on a bleak and forbidding landscape.

Out now from Orenda Books

Meet the Author

Icelandic crime writer Lilja Sigurðardóttir was born in the town of Akranes in 1972 and raised in Mexico, Sweden, Spain and Iceland. An award-winning playwright, Lilja has written eleven crime novels, including Snare, Trap and Cage, making up the Reykjavík Noir trilogy, and her standalone thriller Betrayal, all of which have hit bestseller lists worldwide. Snare was longlisted for the CWA International Dagger, Cage won Best Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year and was a Guardian Book of the Year, and Betrayal was shortlisted for the prestigious Glass Key Award and won Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year. The film rights for the Reykjavík Noir trilogy have been bought by Glassriver. Cold as Hell, the first book in the An Áróra Investigation series, was published in the UK in 2021 and was followed by Red as Blood, White as Snow and Dark as Night. TV rights to theseries have been bought by Studio Zentral in Germany. Lilja lives in Reykjavík with her partner and a brood of chickens.

Netgalley

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Fenton

Posted on 20th Oct 202520th Oct 2025 by thelotusreaders

Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan.

Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning.

Having seen this billed as a Victorian horror comedy and having a taste for the macabre I thought this would be my perfect read and it definitely was. If you ever wondered whether the governess was the psychopath in The Turn of the Screw, then this is the book for you. Here our young governess Winifred arrives at Ensor House to take charge of Drusilla and Andrew Pound, however she isn’t just teaching them French, instilling a Christian faith and charitable nature, along with their etiquette. Winifred has instead set herself a very different and unexpected agenda.

“It is early fall, the cold is beginning to descend, and in three months everyone in this house will be dead.”

So, alongside her everyday duties to the children she slinks around the house unnoticed by the rest of the family – cutting the eyes out of the ancestral portraits, stealing the children and bloodthirstily stalking the servants. Miss Natty is the perfect killer because of her position. I love reading about governesses in fiction because of their liminal position in a household, not as elevated as the family of the house and certainly not in the ranks of the servants. Too educated to fit in downstairs but as someone who earns a living, she’s definitely below the family. In one sense this could make her lonely at Ensor, but it also gives her an incredible amount of freedom. Governesses have bedrooms near the children, but the nanny will be on night duty. She’s free to roam with impunity, carrying out her horrible deeds. By day she’s teaching good manners and Christian values but by night she’s free to follow her darkest obsessions.

“It fascinates me, the fact that humans have the capacity to mortally wound one another at will, but for the most part, choose not to.”

Disturbingly I found this character rather amusing, there’s a certain quirkiness about her that’s appealing and in places I found myself laughing. She is our narrator so we have her inner monologue as well as the havoc she creates. Miss Natty notices everything in the house with the skill of a psychotherapist: observing the servants, the family and their visitors closely to decide who will be murdered next. She’s weighing up their behaviour and those who are unkind and treat others badly will be in the firing line first. As she becomes increasingly murderous, with plenty of gore flying around, she is most definitely enjoying herself and so are we. What has turned this young woman into a potential psychopath? The author has written this book with the staid politeness of a Victorian novel, contrasting sharply with the mayhem being described. It added to the humour and my enjoyment. Of course there’s a feminist slant to this, the men in the house know it all, explaining away any anger and displeasure from their wives as hysteria. Meanwhile their particular shortcomings go unacknowledged. I think we’re still told a lot about how to behave as women and books like these with a female protagonist who commits terrible acts with total abandon and enjoyment is like a release valve. Her tongue can be as sharp as her scalpel, bringing them rapidly down to size. She is breaking every convention, particularly that of the Victorian ‘angel in the house.’ I felt like the author had taken the two Mrs Rochesters from Thornfield Hall and put them in one woman; the quiet and unassuming governess and the murderous madwoman in the attic. She is so incredibly clever and likes her revenge to come, not cold, but sharply, precisely and decorated with liberal amounts of blood.

Out now from Fourth Estate Books

Meet the Author

A native of Spain, Virginia Feito was raised in Madrid and Paris, and studied English and drama at Queen Mary University of London. She lives in Madrid, where she writes her fiction in English. Victorian Psycho is being adapted for a feature film.

Blogger Life

Book Blogging Life: Gallovidia Books in Kircudbright

Posted on 19th Oct 2025 by thelotusreaders

On my holidays I visited the loveliest little bookshop and I do like to share new book haunts with everyone. Gallovidia Books is in the Scottish Town of Kircudbright (pronounced kir-coo-bree if you want to avoid being laughed at like my husband did when I tried to pronounce it). Kirkcudbright has a sheltered position in the estuary of the River Dee on the north Solway shore and is a busy fishing port, behind the harbour the streets have housed generations of creative artists. This is clearly a tradition maintained today because there’s a flourishing colony of painters and craftworkers with lots of pop-up shops and galleries to look at. This has led to it being called “The Artists’ Town“. Other well known features of the town are the pastel coloured houses and wide streets. Set on a corner, Gallovidia books is a quirky little shop, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in its beautifully presented stock and a cute children’s nook.

I found plenty of signed books, including one by my comedy hero Bob Mortimer that I was very pleased about. There were also a great range of classics in special editions and I couldn’t resist yet another copy of Wuthering Heights, this one with illustrations, maps and letters.

The lovely owner was incredibly welcoming and we bonded over a pet hate of people photographing books then loudly declaring they’ll buy it on Amazon. I always ask when I want to photograph bookshops for that very reason. Stewart knew a lot about the books I’d chosen and his wife Elizabeth has been in touch since to ask if I’d let them know how I get on with another choice – John Banville’s Venetian Whispers which came highly recommended. Another collection of mine is books set in Venice and I’m itching to start it. The couple opened the shop in 2021 with experience in library work and the arts in general. Stewart was founder of the Louder in Libraries projects and he’s booked both Sam Fender and Adele as she started her career. Elizabeth’s background is in youth community projects with a passion for connecting young people with books.

There were some lovely bookish and stationery extras including some cute little notecards with a book print that I can when I’m sending a giveaway book. All in all it was a lovely visit and I’ll certainly return.

If you’d like to know more about Gallovidia Books you can visit their website

https://gallovidiabooks.co.uk/

There you can find out about their loyalty scheme and their monthly book club membership.

Random Things Tours

Spotlight Post: An Echo of Children by Ramsey Campbell

Posted on 16th Oct 2025 by thelotusreaders

That title is enough to get the hackles raised because everyone knows that the most terrifying type of ghost is a child ghost! The novel’s opening does nothing to dissuade us of our fears. Thom and Jude are an elderly couple visiting their son Alan, his wife Coral and their grandson Dean. Recently moved to the seaside town of Barnwall, it’s an environment that should be perfect for children, but there is something right from the outset that feels ‘off’. While Thom and Jude seem natural and doting grandparents, they are warm and seem to have real affection for one another. However, the house feels stifling and distinctly unnatural. There are no toys scattered around and Alan and Coral’s dialogue is stilted and cold, even towards their son. As his other grandparents arrive, it doesn’t improve. As his grandparents give him a present Dean is reminded to thank them even before he’s had chance to do so. Jude’s quiet replies try to chip away at their reserve, thinking perhaps that they’re worried about how she and her husband will perceive Dean’s behaviour. She makes it clear that they’re fine, not at all concerned or bothered by a bit of mess or a late thank you. It simply does not matter. Yet as the day continues I began to think this is how they are all the time. There are so many rules, all of them contrary to how a child of that age would normally behave. It’s no surprise that he’s conjured up an imaginary friend called Heady, who he talks to from time to time. Although he does point out that it’s sometimes hard for Heady to hear him, because he doesn’t always have a head. It’s the first sign that something very weird is going on in this sterile and unpleasant atmosphere. All too soon the significance of Childer Close will be revealed.

The author clearly has a knack for making the reader uncomfortable and I certainly was. The dialogue didn’t feel real to me and this company of people made me squirm. As someone who immediately sits on the floor with children and starts to play I’m afraid I’d have been very vocal. My first thought was intergenerational child abuse and there are certainly clues that Coral’s parents are disciplinarians when compared to Jude and Thom, but why would Alan go along with it? It really did stretch my belief when time after time Dean is told that his wants and needs don’t matter, in tiny little micro-aggressions from his parents – not being able to play with his present as it will be untidy, talking too much, not leaving his grandparents alone, not finishing his fish and chip dinner. It’s a slow drip drip drip of negativity that drove me crazy. Why wasn’t Thom taking his son aside and asking what the hell was going on? We learn that an unusual number of children have died in Barnwall’s history, so why would a loving parent move there? Alan and Coral believe the house may have a malevolent spirit and perhaps an exorcism needs to be performed. He seems the least likely child to be possessed and by focusing on him in particular, again he gets the message that he’s not like other children and something is wrong with him. What unfolds I will leave you to find out….

Meet the Author

The Ramsey Campbell Special Editions. Campbell is the greatest inheritor of a tradition that reaches back through H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the early Gothic writers. The dark, masterful work of the painter Henry Fuseli, a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, is used on these special editions to invoke early literary investigations into the supernatural.

Ramsey Campbell (born 4 January 1946 in Liverpool) is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. Two of his novels have been filmed, both for non-English-speaking markets. Since he first came to prominence in the mid-1960s, critics have cited Campbell as one of the leading writers in his field: T. E. D. Klein has written that “Campbell reigns supreme in the field today”, and Robert Hadji has described him as “perhaps the finest living exponent of the British weird fiction tradition”, while S. T. Joshi stated, “future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood.”

Netgalley

The Killing Stones by Anne Cleeves

Posted on 14th Oct 202512th Oct 2025 by thelotusreaders

I can barely contain my happiness at being back in the world of Jimmy Perez, this time in the Orkney islands where he grew up. Jimmy is living with partner Willow Reeves, who’s both his boss and heavily pregnant with his child. It’s Christmas and the couple are looking forward to the celebrations. Jimmy’s stepdaughter Cassie is spending the holidays with her father Duncan and his family on Shetland, so it just the two of them and son James. For the police, Christmas isn’t a holiday and as a huge storm passes across the islands, terrible discoveries are made. Everywhere there’s storm damage, but when a body is found at an ancient archaeological site Jimmy is devastated to find out it’s his childhood friend Archie Stout. Archie is a well known ‘larger than life’ character who’s the centre of every gathering and runs the family farm with a wife and two teenage sons. Jimmy finds that Archie has suffered a blow to the head and the murder weapon is a Neolithic stone covered in ancient runes and Viking graffiti, one of a pair taken from the heritage centre. Now Willow and Jimmy must investigate their friends and neighbours to solve the murder in the run up to Christmas, where events will traditionally bring the whole island together. The uncomfortable truth is that the murderer is likely to be someone they know and that means nobody is safe.

Jimmy always comes across as someone who’s very still, the listener rather than the talker and the exact opposite of Archie and perhaps that’s why they became friends when they boarded at secondary school, something that all the islanders doat that age. Only the reader and perhaps Willow know the depth of feeling that runs underneath Jimmy’s calm exterior. We are privileged in knowing the depth of his grief for his previous partner Fran, the mother of his stepdaughter Cassie. I’ve always loved the way Duncan and Jimmy co-parent Cassie after Fran made it clear she wanted Jimmy to be the resident parent. He’s also dad to James and we can see the love and the anxiety he has about both his children, brought to a head when James becomes lost on Christmas Day. Part of him hates delving into the private lives of people he’s so close too, but then his knowledge and understanding of this small community is also a strength. He finds out things he didn’t know about his friend: an unexpected relationship with an island newcomer; a secret investment in the hotel and bar; financial difficulties at the farm. The killer made a point with their choice of weapon because they managed to get access to the heritage centre then lugged the stones to the murder site. But what was the point? Did they think Archie was betraying the community or the history of the islands? Is the inscription a clue? To have lured Archie out to such a remote spot in a storm means the site or the weapon must have been important to him.

Anne Cleeves creates a beautiful atmosphere in this novel, her descriptions of this series of islands are both beautiful and savage, echoing its residents who are inextricably linked to each other and their shared ancestry. The storm really sets the scene of just how remote this community is and how they must pull together to get through difficulties, even where they don’t like each other. Each of the families are living history, something you can hear when Jimmy and Willow interview people and they have an encyclopaedic knowledge of several generations of other island families. Each generation has been at school together, worked together, attended each other’s weddings and celebrated the birth of the next generation. Archie’s father Magnus was an amateur historian and archivist, with a box of his research in the heritage centre. Even his looks hark back to a time when Vikings invaded the islands with his blonde hair and stature a stark contrast to Jimmy’s dark hair and Spanish eyes, thought to be a throwback to an Armada ship blown off course and it’s sailors who settled in Orkney. The different celebrations that lead up to Christmas show these different influences from the Christian carol service at the cathedral, to The Ba on Christmas Day and then Shetland’s Up Helly Aa in January. James’s determination to watch Archie’s sons participate in The Ba shows how the upcoming generations are inspired to take part just as their forefathers did in their predestined teams of the Uppies and Doonies. It’s best described as a game of ‘mob football’, something very like the Haxey Hood that takes place on 6th January with two teams trying to get their hands on a leather hood and take it back to one of two pubs in the village in the Isle of Axholme. My dad and his father before him participated in the Hood as young men and it’s still Christmas until Twelfth Night in our family. The author also uses this history to highlight tension between generations, those who leave and those who stay, those who participate and those who don’t, islanders and incomers. This tension also exists over development on the island and those trying to keep a balance between respecting the past, but also providing projects to employ newer generations. Incomers who use islanders to further their own agenda or make money will be made unwelcome.

I really loved Willow and the atmosphere she creates at home, particularly around Christmas. Just as dedicated to her work as Jimmy she takes an active role in the investigation, her pregnancy not holding her back at all. She knows it’s a delicate situation, working together and being in a relationship, especially when she’s the boss. Somehow they manage to keep the personal and the work life separate and she seems to know which responsibilities she must let Jimmy bear and those she’s happy to share. As Christmas Eve approaches fast she’s not running around like a headless chicken trying to make sure they have all the right things, they have food and she points out something I say every year – the shops are only closed for one day. It’s the traditions and being together that are the most important thing. She’s a great interviewer though, brilliant at picking up what people are not saying. She reads their body language and their tone, plus knowing each islander’s history helps too. What she picks up on are the unexpected or secret alliances, such as Archie’s investment in the hotel or his in-law’s apparent friendship with a regularly visiting academic. The case is fascinating, covering potential adultery, family tensions, environmental disagreements and historical conflicts, as well as academic jealousy. As everyone gathers on Christmas Day for The Ba and someone goes missing, my nerves were like violin strings! It’s this gradually rising tension alongside the beautifully drawn relationships that make Anne Cleeves’s novels. Jimmy has always had incredible empathy for others, feeling his own loss alongside theirs and understanding behaviour that might at first glance seem inexplicable. This is a hugely welcome return for Jimmy, both in a different landscape and place in life. Hopefully it’s the first of many.

Meet the Author

Ann Cleeves is the author of more than thirty-five critically acclaimed novels, and in 2017 was awarded the highest accolade in crime writing, the CWA Diamond Dagger. She is the creator of popular detectives Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez and Matthew Venn, who can be found on television in ITV’s Vera, BBC One’s Shetland and ITV’s The Long Call respectively. The TV series and the books they are based on have become international sensations, capturing the minds of millions worldwide.

Ann worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She is a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other British northern writers to promote crime fiction. Ann also spends her time advocating for reading to improve health and wellbeing and supporting access to books. In 2021 her Reading for Wellbeing project launched with local authorities across the North East. She lives in North Tyneside where the Vera books are set.

Monthly Wrap Up

Best Reads September 2025

Posted on 12th Oct 202510th Oct 2025 by thelotusreaders

September has been a month of crime fiction, with even my one historical read has a mystery at its heart. I’ve honestly been struggling to read and review this month because we are still living without a kitchen. We decided on a new one but it wasn’t as easy as popping in a new one – emptying the bath and having the water cascade through the kitchen ceiling is something I don’t recommend. So we have a new levelled ceiling and a new floor too. The kitchen is in and it’s now just tiling, painting and putting all the contents from the kitchen back! So my round up of September is a little late and a bit sparse!

I’m quite the Prime Suspect fan so I was beyond pleased to receive a proof copy of the first in Lynda La Plante’s new series featuring CSI Jessica Russell. I’m fascinated with the psychology of profiling suspects and in awe of how every tiny bit of evidence has to be catalogued and checked. There has to be so much trust between a team of CSIs and the team of detectives they work alongside. Jessica Russell is another strong character for the author, although outwardly she feels a little softer than La Plante’s other heroines. However, she has great confidence in her abilities and intellect as a forensic psychologist and head of the Met’s new MSCAN team. Jess, Diane and Taff have a lot of experience in working together and are hired to create this fast-track forensic team reserved for the most serious of the MET’s cases and they have to hit the ground running. Johan de Clerk is a young South African man who has settled in London after marrying his wife Michelle and started a branch of his family’s wine company that supples their products direct to restaurants across the capital. An intruder disturbed him while sleeping and there was a fight. The intruder fled, leaving Johan with serious stab wounds and a head injury. His sixty-thousand pound Rolex watch was taken along with money from a safe. While Johan fights for his life in hospital, Jess and her team make a start forensically examining the scene. I think what the author has done is very clever in terms of setting up a new series. We’ve spent a lot of time with the central character and there was a fascinating case to get lost in, but there are also clear hints where this might go next. There were whispers of a course with the FBI in Quantico for Jess, some hints of potential romance and I was sure there was a lot more to Guy who’s had a fascinating working life before MSCAN. There were also interesting aspects of her personal life I’d love to explore more such as Jess and her brother’s family background. Her brother is also diagnosed with a life limiting disease that will affect them all. We also don’t get much in terms of Taff and Diane’s lives. All of which shows there is definitely room to grow here, which isn’t surprising given the author’s track record at plotting a series. I can see this being an addictive reading experience and I look forward to seeing where this series goes next.

This was a totally new series to me, despite this being the seventh in the Ben Kitto novels. I absolutely loved it! Winter storms lash the Isles of Scilly, when DI Ben Kitto ferries the islands’ priest to St Helen’s. Father Michael intends to live as a pilgrim in the ruins of an ancient church on the uninhabited island, but an ugly secret is buried among the rocks. Digging frantically in the sand, Ben’s dog, Shadow, unearths the emaciated remains of a young woman. The discovery chills Ben to the core. The victim is Vietnamese, with no clear link to the community – and her killer has made sure that no one will find her easily. The storm intensifies as the investigation gathers pace. Soon Scilly is cut off by bad weather, with no help available from the mainland. Ben is certain the killer is hiding in plain sight. He knows they are waiting to kill again – and at unimaginable cost. This is a fantastic crime novel, acknowledging the savagery of someone who will traffic young women and keep them captive and the daily difficulty of living on an island that’s at the mercy of the weather, cut off in the Atlantic. I could see what Ben finds so special about this place, but it does taint his idea that the islands are a safe place. To have had a crime that’s so serious happen right under his nose, involving people he knows, has left him feeling unsure and more suspicious of his fellow islanders. It’s going to be fascinating to see where things go from here for Ben Kitto. In fact I’m so fascinated that I’ve bought all the previous novels in the series to take on holiday with me and have a binge read. I’ve fallen in love with this unusual and wild backdrop but also with this giant of a man who carries the weight of the crimes he investigates with him.

Nina and her daughter Ash live in the bougie seaside town of Whitstable in Kent. They are grieving for husband and father Paddy, who was killed when a man having a mental health crisis pushed him into an oncoming train. Ash has been living at home since her own mental health deteriorated. She was living in a house in London with two other girls but she developed a crush on her boss, that turned into an obsession. She claimed to have letters from him, but it turned out she’d written them herself and she was eventually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She had come home to recover when Paddy, her dad, was killed. When her mum receives a parcel in the post Ash is intrigued. It’s beautifully wrapped, with a note inside from a man who has heard about Paddy’s death. He used to work with him in the 1990s when he Paddy was just starting out. The gift wrapped box contains a Zippo lighter he borrowed from Paddy but never returned. Since then Paddy has built a restaurant empire, with his flagship restaurant in Whitstable and two others down the coast. There is of course a number, should Nina wish to thank him for his thoughtfulness. Over the next few months Nick and Nina start to WhatsApp each other and then go out for a drink. Ash is glad to see her mum with a glow, but there’s something about Nick that’s just ‘off’. She can’t be sure and maybe she’s viewing this situation through her own grief or her personality disorder, but something isn’t right. She needs to find out more about him before he becomes a permanent fixture.

I galloped through this book as we went backwards and forwards in time, learning a little more in each chapter and inching towards the truth. I loved the fragile Ash who is at that stage of recovery where she doesn’t fully trust her own mind. Is she making too much of this? Is she just paranoid? Worst of all, if she finds something questionable, will her Mum even believe her? She’s so lonely at this point, she doesn’t have many friends to talk to and feels bad she’s had to bounce back home at her age. Her mum deserves to be happy and she might ruin it all. Just when you think you have all the answers, the author takes it to the next level! There were twists here that I wasn’t expecting and I felt very relieved that I once got away from a similar situation relatively easily, if not unscathed. This book is like a twisted knot in a necklace. It takes a long time to loosen it, but then the whole thing suddenly unravels before your eyes. This is masterful thriller writing from an author who gets better and better.

According to our narrator, a ‘bride stone’ is a precious stone given to the groom’s family as a dowry, although they were sometimes shown a beautifully made fake stone that they could only have checked when it was too late. It’s an apt title for a book where the women are traded in many different ways. It is set just after the French Revolution when many aristocrats left France for British shores and were welcomed in society. Edmée has somehow made her way to Britain, despite seemingly being an ordinary citizen. Yet she is being offered at a ‘wives’ sale’ by her husband’s brother, this chapter can’t be worse than the last. For Duval Harlington it’s something he would never usually countenance, but his circumstances are uniquely desperate. Having been captured by the French while treating wounded soldiers, on his return he is met by one of the family servants who bears bad news. Duval has become Lord Harlington as his father has recently died. Although he has the title, his right to the ancestral home of Muchmore and his father’s wealth is rather more complex. Duval had a tough relationship with his father who didn’t see the point of him training as a doctor. Once he departed for France, Duval’s father installed a distant relative, Mr Carson and his wife, to manage the day to day running of the estate. So his will has an interesting stipulation, in order to claim his inheritance Duval must be married and now he has only two days to achieve this. Otherwise the estate is Mr Carson’s. When his servant points out the wife sale it seems like a means to an end. Duval notices a young woman being led around the room by a scarf round her neck. Her hair looks like it’s been shorn away and she has a veil covering her face, but the buyers call out for it to be removed and he’s shocked to see that one side of her face is swollen and covered in bruises. Someone has recently beaten her very badly. On impulse he puts up his hand and bids for her, his intention being to marry her quickly and claim his inheritance. Then he could seek an annulment. However he does find Edmée fascinating and with the Mr and Mrs Carson ready for a fight this might not be as easy as he thinks.

This isn’t just a love story, it’s a thriller. Just as Duval starts to settle in to being home, the unthinkable happens. The couple are talked into holding a ball to introduce the new Lady Harlington to society. Their guests come from the local area, but also from London and some are French emigrés including a Marquis. Mr and Mrs Carson are even invited and unbelievably accept. Edmée is a great success as the host in her new role as mistress of Muchmore, but the next morning she has simply vanished. Did she leave of her own accord – perhaps spooked by someone she saw the previous night. Or has something more sinister happened? It could be the work of someone closer to home though – a disgruntled lover of Duval’s or someone determined that their marriage won’t succeed. I was drawn so deeply into the story of these unlikely partners. Duval and Edmée have both had difficult starts in life. It’s a hard read when it comes to the ways women are mistreated but I was hoping for Edmée to have a happy ending. It was clear that this might not be the case, which made for a tense read in those final chapters. The book has a mix of hardship, adventure and mystery interlaced with the romantic possibility of an unlikely match being perfect, if only he can find his unlikely wife.

That’s all for this week but here’s my potential tbr for October.

Squad Pod Collective

Silent Bones by Val McDermid

Posted on 10th Oct 2025 by thelotusreaders

It’s delightful to be back in the hands of a consummate storyteller like Val McDermid and to be reading with my fellow Squad Pod friends. She takes us straight into the story and I always feel like her characters are real people going about their business and we just drop into their world from time to time. Here the Historic Cases Unit are working two cases: the death of a high-end hotel manager and the identity of a body found after a landslip in heavy rain on the M73. Tom Jamieson’s death is flagged up by his brother in New Zealand. Thought to be an accidental death, Tom’s brother has footage that shows someone was behind Tom as he left the hotel after his shift and in the staircase where he met his death. If this man entered the steps after Tom and can be seen exiting then he must at least have seen Tom’s fall, or is there a more sinister explanation? The body in the M73 has to have been placed there deliberately. It turns out to be the body of investigative journalist Sam Nimmo, thought to have killed his pregnant girlfriend Rachel before going on the run about eleven years ago. The discovery opens up her murder case as well as Sam’s. I was hooked by the evidence that leads to a secretive book club of successful men who meet once a month in Edinburgh. They’re named the Justified Sinners, alluding to a James Hogg book that’s based on the Calvinist principle that once a person is ‘saved’ they can commit any sin, even murder, and still enter the kingdom of heaven. Is this a joke between literary friends or something more more? Have they stumbled upon an unofficial Freemasons’ club where the members share business tips and inside knowledge? The team start to wonder about the potential benefits of becoming one of the twelve members and whether those benefits are worth subterfuge or even criminal acts.

Every time I pick up one of the books in this series the same thing happens. I start off slowly, savouring each chapter until about halfway, then I’m racing all the way to the end. It’s superbly plotted, creating a build-up of tension through the short chapters. Each chapter flits to a different viewpoint or separate lead in the cases, causing cliffhangers that last for three or four chapters. This means ‘just one chapter’ at bedtime becomes just three more and finally – I may as well finish. As we near the end of the book those revelations come thick and fast and I had to keep reading till I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I loved the red herrings thrown up in Sam Nimmo’s case as they try to find out what story he was working on. Every lead has to be followed and Jason is tireless on his match fixing leads but is this the story that got Sam killed? The political intrigue is as always murky and fascinating. Between the Independence Referendum and COVID there are plenty of possibilities for corruption and cover-ups.

What I love most about Karen is her tenacity and absolute belief in her own skills as a police officer. She knows she’s a good detective and believes in the team she’s built, even if Jason and Daisy do bicker and become competitive. She knows how to use their skills and how much free rein to give them. I loved her conversations with the boss, the Fruit Gum and other men who outrank her. She doesn’t allow them any room for misogyny or sexism. When she’s told mockingly that the force can do better than rely on ‘women’s intuition’, she’s quick to tell him that it’s no different from a hunch or copper’s nose, a phrase male officers use frequently. She also won’t be bulldozed into moving their office, stating that it would mean longer commutes and distance from the research and forensic teams they rely on most. She also pushes for what she wants in the course of the investigation. When she doorsteps the Justified Sinners, their facilitator mentions they have plenty of pull with the Chief Constable who calls Karen and tells her to back off. She insists on him supplying a list of members before she does and even follows up in the morning to make sure she wasn’t fobbed off. Even in her private life she’s very sure of what she needs. She is still involved with Syrian refugee Rafiq who’s currently working as a surgeon in Canada. With British and US politics ‘beyond satire’ and political funding becoming ever more shady Karen does worry about their future. She’s flown to Montreal several times but she can’t wait until he has Canadian citizenship and can visit Scotland again, maybe even returning for good at some point. When she has a heartbreaking choice to make she faces it by staying true to herself, because she can be romantic but has a hefty dose of realism too. She can also be ruthless, at one point perhaps a little too ruthless for a softy like me. She has her eye on the end goal, not the other person’s feelings because in her eyes the end justifies the means. The truth is not found by treading lightly.

I enjoyed getting to know more about Daisy and Jason’s home lives and it’s here where a bit of humour creeps in. Jason and Meera’s stake-out of a football match with the aftermath being a ‘follow that cab’ tour of Scotland’s motorways made me smile. Especially when the reward that clinched Meera’s attendance was a match day pie. Food looms large in Daisy and Stephanie’s relationship too, in fact Daisy eats so much that Jason is sure she has a tapeworm. That’s not a problem for Daisy, in fact she ponders that it might be the only thing that ensures she stays thin. She’s always scoring leftovers from lunches out and between Italian biscuits, french pastries and the South Indian curry that lures a suspect out of hiding I kept feeling hungry. All of this is to balance the darkness at the heart of these cases, where we see powerful and rich people doing what they like, safe in the knowledge that their status and privilege will always protect them from answering to their crimes. It’s also set in dark times and the weariness Karen feels about what’s happening in the world is something I’ve felt myself for the last couple of years, finding myself thinking the world can’t get any worse. Not only is a sex offending, fraudulent, narcissist running the biggest country in the world, but we have politicians here happy to emulate him. The book is rooted firmly in the now with cancel culture, the MeToo movement, the Covid pandemic and all the corruption surrounding it, as well as the cost of living crisis all pertinent to these cases. I think the team are feeling overwhelmed, even without the quagmire surrounding the Justified Sinners and Sam’s quest for the truth. Some characters did behave unpredictably, just like they do in life. The outcome isn’t straightforward and there were people to blame that I genuinely didn’t expect. This is an enthralling read from a writer at the very top of her game. Someone who knows exactly how to pitch a story and keep the reader engrossed until the final pages. She knows that the joy of a book is in the journey not just those final revelations and that sometimes we don’t get the answers we expect and it’s a better read for that.

Out on 23rd October from Sphere

Meet the Author

Val McDermid is a number one bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than forty languages, and have sold over eighteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010 and received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award in 2011. In 2016, Val received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and in 2017 received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime, and was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Val has served as a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, and was Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. She is the recipient of six honorary doctorates and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She writes full-time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife.