Classics
Three classic tales of childhood on an island paradise – My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods by Gerald Durrell – make up The Corfu Trilogy.
Just before the Second World War the Durrell family decamped to the glorious, sun-soaked island of Corfu where the youngest of the four children, ten-year-old Gerald, discovered his passion for animals: toads and tortoises, bats and butterflies, scorpions and octopuses. Through glorious silver-green olive groves and across brilliant-white beaches Gerry pursued his obsession . . . causing hilarity and mayhem in his ever-tolerant family. This book is joyous and has the reputation of being the only book my brother loved. The Durrells are gloriously eccentric and this trilogy transports you to Corfu so well it’s like taking a holiday.
It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. At first he is ostracised by the locals but over time he proves himself to be civilised, humorous – and a consummate musician.
When Pelagia, the local doctor’s daughter, finds her letters to her fiancé go unanswered, Antonio and Pelagia draw close and the working of the eternal triangle seems inevitable. But can this fragile love survive as a war of bestial savagery gets closer and the lines are drawn between invader and defender? Forget the awful film, in which barely anyone was Greek, and pick this up if you haven’t already. Not only is it a great chronicle of WW2 in Greece, but it is a touchingly beautiful love story you’ll want to read again.
‘That summer we bought big straw hats. Maria’s had cherries around the rim, Infanta’s had forget-me-nots, and mine had poppies as red as fire. . .’
I read a recent review where Three Summers was touted as a Greek I Capture The Castle and that draws me in straight away. This is a warm and tender tale of three sisters growing up in the countryside near Athens before the Second World War. Living in a ramshackle old house with their divorced mother are flirtatious, hot-headed Maria, beautiful but distant Infanta, and dreamy and rebellious Katerina, through whose eyes the story is mostly observed. Over three summers, the girls share and keep secrets, fall in and out of love, try to understand the strange ways of adults and decide what kind of adults they hope to become. A beautiful story of growing up, sisterhood and first love.
Retold Myths
Now that all the others have run out of air, it’s my turn to do a little story-making . . . So I’ll spin my own thread.
Penelope. Immortalised in legend and Greek myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband’s return from the Trojan war.
Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story – a tale of lust, greed and murder. This is one of the first novels to write back to Greek Myth, to tell the story of a sidelined character in the tale of Odysseus. Atwood tells a tale of the Trojan War from a feminist perspective, looking through the eyes of Penelope who has no action or agency in the original myth, only appearing as the dutiful wife.
‘So to mortal men, we are monsters. Because of our flight, our strength. They fear us, so they call us monsters’
Medusa is so hard done to who acts like a cautionary tale about the meddling Greek gods. Medusa is the sole mortal in a family of gods. Growing up with her Gorgon sisters, she begins to realize that she is the only one who experiences change, the only one who can be hurt.
When Poseidon commits an unforgiveable act against Medusa in the temple of Athene, the goddess takes her revenge where she can: on his victim. Medusa is changed forever – writhing snakes for hair and her gaze now turns any living creature to stone. She can look at nothing without destroying it.
Desperate to protect her beloved sisters, Medusa condemns herself to a life of shadows. Until Perseus embarks upon a quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon . . .
After ten blood-filled years, the war is over. Troy lies in smoking ruins as the victorious Greeks fill their ships with the spoils of battle.
Alongside the treasures looted are the many Trojan women captured by the Greeks – among them the legendary prophetess Cassandra, and her watchful maid, Ritsa. Enslaved as concubine – war-wife – to King Agamemnon, Cassandra is plagued by visions of his death – and her own – while Ritsa is forced to bear witness to both Cassandra’s frenzies and the horrors to come.
Meanwhile, awaiting the fleet’s return is Queen Clytemnestra, vengeful wife of Agamemnon. Heart-shattered by her husband’s choice to sacrifice their eldest daughter to the gods in exchange for a fair wind to Troy, she has spent this long decade plotting retribution, in a palace haunted by child-ghosts.
As one wife journeys toward the other, united by the vision of Agamemnon’s death, one thing is certain: this long-awaited homecoming will change everyone’s fates forever. This is a brilliant retelling of a myth we know so well and the reality of war from a female perspective.
Crime Fiction
Mykonos had always had a romantic reputation, until the body of a female tourist was found on a pile of bones under the floor of amountain church. The island’s new police chief starts finding bodies, bones and suspects almost everywhere he looks. This thriller has a great atmosphere, is perfect for readers who love a good mystery and also Greek legends, which the author weaves throughout her story. The reader is firmly on the side of the heroine, trying desperately to escape her fate. You will also be rooting for Inspector Kaldis, who was recently demoted from Athens to the isle of Mykonos. He’s trying to avoid the political pitfalls on the island as he pursues the Killer, whose identity is not revealed until the end of the story. This is a fun one for the reader to speculate on as the action builds to a nail-biting climax. Highly enjoyable and addictive.
SOMEONE’S POISONING PARADISE
Detective Inspector Jack Dawes is travelling to a tiny Greek island with wife Corinne, ready for a bit of sun, sea and sand.
However, one of their fellow travellers is a ruthless killer.
When a storm destroys the island’s primitive communications, cutting it off from civilisation, people begin to panic. One victim is poisoned, followed swiftly by another. Then a woman is found in a grotto to St Sophia, the island’s patron saint. She is badly beaten. It feels as if the island’s visitors are being picked off one by one. Can Jack uncover the truth before the killer ups the ante?
Who will return home — and who will be sacrificed to the island?
Historical Fiction
It’s May 1941, when the island of Crete is invaded by paratroopers from the air. After a lengthy fight, thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers are forced to take to the hills or become escaping PoWs, sheltered by the Cretan villagers.
Sixty years later, Lois West and her young son, Alex, invite feisty Great Aunt Pen to a special eighty-fifth birthday celebration on Crete, knowing she has not been back there since the war. Penelope George – formerly Giorgidiou – is reluctant, but is persuaded by the fact it is the 60th anniversary of the Battle. It is time for her to return and make the journey she never thought she’d dare to. On the outward voyage from Athens, she relives her experiences in the city from her early years as a trainee nurse to those last dark days stranded on the island, the last female foreigner.
When word spreads of her visit, and old Cretan friends and family come to greet her, Lois and Alex are caught up in her epic pilgrimage and the journey which leads her to a reunion with the friend she thought she had lost forever – and the truth behind a secret buried deep in the past…
Victoria Hislop is the Queen of fiction set on the Greek Islands, ever since her book The Island
25th August 1957. The island of Spinalonga closes its leper colony. And a moment of violence has devastating consequences.
When time stops dead for Maria Petrakis and her sister, Anna, two families splinter apart and, for the people of Plaka, the closure of Spinalonga is forever coloured with tragedy.
In the aftermath, the question of how to resume life looms large. Stigma and scandal need to be confronted and somehow, for those impacted, a future built from the ruins of the past.
Victoria Hislop returns to the world and characters she created in The Island – the award-winning novel where we first met Anna, Maria, Manolis and Andreas in the weeks leading up to the evacuation of the island… and beyond. Alexis Fielding longs to find out about her mother’s past. But Sofia has never spoken of it. All she admits to is growing up in a small Cretan village before moving to London. When Alexis decides to visit Crete, however, Sofia gives her daughter a letter to take to an old friend, and promises that through her she will learn more.
Arriving in Plaka, Alexis is astonished to see that it lies a stone’s throw from the tiny, deserted island of Spinalonga – Greece’s former leper colony. Then she finds Fotini, and at last hears the story that Sofia has buried all her life: the tale of her great-grandmother Eleni and her daughters and a family rent by tragedy, war and passion. She discovers how intimately she is connected with the island, and how secrecy holds them all in its powerful grip…
In The Figurine we are taken beneath the dust sheets in the Athens apartment that Helena McCloud has inherited from her grandparents, There she discovers a hidden hoard of rare antiquities, amassed during a dark period in Greek history when the city and its people were gripped by a brutal military dictatorship.
Helena’s fascination for archaeology, ignited by a summer spent on a dig on an Aegean island, tells her that she must return these precious artefacts to their rightful place. Only then will she be able to allay the darkness of the past and find the true meaning of home – for cultural treasures and for herself.
It seems crazy to think of the 1960s as a historical era, but it is now 60 years ago! In this dreamy and bohemian novel, Erica is eighteen and ready for freedom. It’s the summer of 1960 when she lands on the sun-baked Greek island of Hydra and is swept up in a circle of bohemian poets, painters, musicians, writers and artists, living tangled lives. Life on their island paradise is heady, dream-like, a string of seemingly endless summer days. But nothing can last forever.
Romance and Self-Love
Set on the breathtaking island of Andros, The Jasmine Isle is one of the finest literary achievements in contemporary Greek literature. Mina Saltaferou is the despotic wife of a ship’s captain, Savvas Saltaferos. Her tyrannical influence over her two daughters is unquestionable and unrelenting, like nature itself. Tragedy becomes inevitable when Mina’s beautiful, eldest daughter, Orsa, is sentenced by her mother to marry a man she doesn’t love and watch as the man she does love weds another.
I love a family saga and this one spans half a century in the history of modern Greece, this novel explores the solace and joy women find in each other’s company during the insufferably long absences of their husbands, sons, and lovers. The story alternates between descriptions of domestic life and evocations of the world’s seas and ports, as it follows both the men who embark on voyages lasting months and the lives of the women who remain behind
Calli’s world has fallen apart – her relationship is suddenly over and her chances of starting a family are gone. So when she’s sent to write a magazine article about the Greek island of Ikaria, it seems the perfect escape.
Travelling to Crete, where her family is from, Calli soon realizes there is more to discover than paradise beaches and friendly locals. When her aunt Froso begins to share the story of her own teenage heartache, will the love, betrayal and revenge she reveals change Calli’s life forever?
As a young woman, Helena spent a magical holiday at Pandora, a beautiful house in Cyprus – and fell in love for the first time. Now, twenty-four years later and following the loss of her godfather, she has inherited Pandora. And, though it is a crumbling shadow of its former self, Helena returns with her family to spend the summer there.
When, by chance, Helena meets her childhood sweetheart, her past threatens to collide with her present. She knows that the idyllic beauty of Pandora masks a web of secrets that she has kept from her husband and thirteen-year-old son. And that, once its secrets have been revealed, their lives will never be the same . . .
Sophie Keech has it all. A new life in Greece with a handsome man enables Sophie to leave her mundane job and her estranged mum. But four years on, a domineering mother-in-law to be and the reality of living in Greece not being what Sophie imagined, strains her relationship with Alekos.
When her mum is involved in an accident, Sophie jumps at the chance to escape. Time to reassess her life and make amends is sorely needed. Yet an attraction to a good looking and newly divorced man, and a shock discovery, complicates things.
Can Sophie and Alekos’ love survive the distance?
Can one house hold a lifetime of secrets?
Corfu, 1930, the moment Thirza Caruthers sets foot on Corfu, memories flood back: the scent of jasmine, the green shutters of her family’s home ― and her brother Billy’s tragic disappearance years before. Returning to the Greek house, high above clear blue waters, Thirza tries to escape by immersing herself in painting ― and a passionate affair. But as webs of love, envy, and betrayal tighten around the family, buried secrets surface, is it finally time to uncover the truth about Billy’s vanishing?
New To Look Forward To.
Could discovering a family secret encourage Kat to follow her heart?
Shattered by the sudden loss of her twin, Nik, Kat is lost in grief. The comfort of family feels both soothing and suffocating, but everything changes when she inherits a house on the breathtaking Greek island of Agistri from a mysterious uncle she’s never met.
Arriving on Agistri, Kat is mesmerized by its crystalline waters, lush pine forests, and the citrus-scented air. Among the white-washed houses and warm, welcoming locals, she begins to feel her heart heal. The island offers more than solace, sparking courage in Kat to face her loss — and maybe even embrace the spark of unexpected love…
But as she unearths her family’s buried past, Kat must also confront her own fears of belonging, forgiveness — and the possibility of rediscovering happiness in the shadow of heartbreak…
The Lotus Readers 