How did the month of love treat you? In typical form I’ve not been reading romance novels, but instead I’ve been reading about witches, murderous ghosts, grooming psychopaths, Icelandic spirits and a time detective. It’s been a very much needed month of distraction and escape. I’ve moved from London to Iceland, Manchester to Alaska, Victorian London and the island of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. All are a little scary in places, but I devoured all of them. So my health issues continue and I’ve been having tests so it’s great to have had some lovely proof copies to take along with me and enjoy in the waiting room.
Fiona Smith is new on the street and is trying to get to know her neighbours. Ethan and Emma Dove seem like a lovely couple, in fact they’re the ideal family. Their kids Dylan and Rose are targeted by the two tearaways who live across the road who circle the other teenagers on their scrambler bikes, as their German Shepherds circle their terrified cockapoo Lola. Fiona intervenes and when later one of the boys has a terrible accident their parents are convinced someone caused the tyre blowout that resulted in a head injury. It couldn’t have been Fiona could it? The boy’s parents can’t find a trace of Fiona online so no red flags. However, the elderly lady called Iris who lives on the corner, she’s sure she’s seen Fiona before but can’t quite put her finger on where. When Fiona offers to look after Ethan and Emma’s daughter Rosie for the summer she has definitely become a feature in their lives. Their son Dylan is unsure. He definitely doesn’t need a babysitter, but it isn’t just that. Fiona unnerves him. He’s noticed that when no one is looking her expression becomes neutral, like a robot. Rose is enraptured though and they begin to visit Fiona’s favourite places and play chess together when it’s raining. All the time Fiona is monitoring Rose. Has she seen a glimmer of herself in this ordinary seeming teenage girl? As Fiona starts to test out Rose’s limits, Ethan and Emma are oblivious to what’s happening to their daughter. There are some heart-stopping moments as the novel comes towards the final showdown and I was absolutely gripped. In fact if you want a thriller thats hard to put down, go for any of Mark Edwards’s novels. You wont’s be disappointed.
Our story starts in 1768 on a sugar cane plantation in Jamaica, where a slave rebellion has been brewing. The signal will be sent to all the slaves by drum and Daniel has heard their rhythm. He needs to get to the house where his sweetheart Adanna works for the mistress. When Daniel realises the house is already ablaze he leaves with his little sister Pearl, hoping to find a way to get off the island. His story then jumps to 1782 and the aftermath of the War of Independence where free slaves who fought for the British were promised a new life in England. Daniel was one such soldier under Major Edward Fitzallen, whose life he saved. Edward and his wife Elizabeth have taken Daniel and Pearl under their wing, but when Edward is wounded he knows he wants to ensure that Daniel and Pearl have a future in England and calls witnesses to his signature on a new will and testament. It hands all his worldly goods over to Daniel, telling him to call on his brother James to inform him of Edward’s demise and Daniel’s new position as his heir. Daniel naively expects the Fitzallen brothers to be equally honourable and he underestimates James who drugs Daniel, then throws the new will and all proof of Daniel’s claim and rank into the fire. Now Pearl and Daniel are abandoned in London with nothing. This is such meticulously researched historical fiction, where you’ll become utterly immersed and enthralled by Daniel and Pearl’s struggle to survive.
I couldn’t wait to read this, after reading the third book in this series earlier in the year. So I snagged it on NetGalley and read it immediately full of anticipation. I wasn’t disappointed. I love Tanzy and her adventures, usually she’s confined to the UK but this time she’s a little further afield. When she meets charming Icelandic giant Einar in a bar I did wonder whether vampires were about to debut in the series. His ability to ‘glamour’ Tanz seemed almost supernatural. Soon they’re sharing champagne and a bit of naked dancing too. When he invites her to his holiday cabin in Iceland to get some writing done, she decides to be impetuous and throw caution to the wind. This impulsive decision takes her to an isolated cabin with log burners, cosy decor and of course the odd spectre or two, After their first night together Tanz wakes up alone, without even a note and no plans for Einar’s return. She’s annoyed but not heartbroken. At the least she has a few days holiday in a country cabin for free and time to process her last case. Maybe she could start working on ideas for her own play? However, Iceland has its ghosts just as much as London. Did Tanz really think they would leave her alone? She will only succeed in this case if she relies on the help of others, neighbour Birta and taxi driver, Thor.
She also has a lot of self-reflection to do. Why won’t she let good men love her? It works well with the unfolding of the mystery around the cabin and how the choices we make because of desire are often destructive and life-changing. It seems we can be left with so many regrets that they follow us into the afterlife. I enjoyed some of the final revelations, particularly around the character of Birta. This is another solid addition to the Accidental Medium series and I felt like I’d spent a few hours with an old friend. I have a list of literary characters I’d love to have for dinner and Tanzy is definitely there at the table, possibly next to Mr Tumnus. Although she’d have to promise not to flirt with him.
This was a very spooky second visit to the unusual police department, housed in Manchester’s Tib Street Ballroom. We follow DI Andy Joyce, his team and their consultant Peggy who has some otherworldly skills and expertise. We’re at the Palace Theatre, where the cast are struggling to rehearse their play thanks to a dark, swirling and angry spirit. For some reason it wants them dead or the play cancelled at the very least. Lady Bancroft’s Rose has been performed only three times since 1922, but there has been a mysterious death each time. Particularly affected is Lavinia, a blonde actress who has taken over the play’s main role, since the original actress is now too traumatised to continue. Lavinia seems to be the focus of most of the spooky activity and she’s quite happy to cast Andy in the role of her rescuer – cue a few eye rolls from Peggy. More disturbing than the theatre is Andy’s home, the same cottage he grew up in with mum Agatha and brother Rob. While he knows Rob is there, he’s never been a difficult or angry ghost. Now strange things have started happening that make him think the ghost is angry, leading his guilt over Rob’s death to go into overdrive. With Andy and Peggy at odds with each other, will he ever found out what’s going on? I thought the author managed to combine all the elements of her story well, although it wasn’t the theatre case that caught my attention most. It was the terrifying scenes at Andy’s house and the ‘will they, won’t they” of him and Peggy. I love the humour laced through the action, especially the North West tone. I love that female characters are in the thick of the action and Marnie is honestly the ghost that keeps on giving. Part three of this fabulous series is coming soon.
I was utterly mesmerised by this unusual grown-up fairy tale. Having read the author’s work before I was expecting a certain strangeness and this story definitely delivered. It’s hard to write about without revealing anything and you need to go into this book without spoilers. The story is told through the eyes of Birdie and her little girl Emmaleen. Birdie is a young, single mum. She’s living in a cabin out behind the bar where she works for Della. Birdie is just getting by. She has a wild spirit and although she loves Emmaleen, she’s not the most consistent parent. We meet her on a beautiful morning where she has woken up from the night before relatively unscathed. Yes, she’s a bit hungover and she knows Della is going to have words for her when she goes into work. For now though, the woods and creek are calling her, so she takes her fishing rod and leaving Emmaleen asleep and alone she walks through the trees and down to the water. When she gets back to the cabin, Emmaleen is gone. It’s a man called Arthur who eventually emerges from the woods with Birdie’s daughter on his shoulders and she’s never been more relieved. She knows Della will have something to say about this and she does move her onto the day shift, as a comment on her partying and parenting lifestyle. She has to bring Emmaleen into the lodge with her, but she sits colouring and doesn’t pester while she’s trying to work. Arthur comes in most mornings. She’s fascinated by this strange, wild man. Birdie thinks he smells of wild places, mossy and like earth. When he asks Birdie if she and Emmaleen would like to make a home out there in the mountains, there is only one answer. Yes. But there’s a hidden animal pelt under the earth near the cabin and caribou bones under the bed. How long before Birdie and Emaleen learn the terrifying truth about Arthur? I had a real maternal fondness for this young woman and her acceptance of this taciturn young man. Love comes in so many different forms and even though I could feel something looming on the horizon for this new little family I was hoping against hope for the transformative power of love.
I was entranced by this beautifully lyrical tale of the unseen sorcerous of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This is my favourite Shakespeare play because I love its atmosphere and the use of musical sounds to conjure up this enchanted island, ruled by the magician Prospero. Sycorax isn’t present in the play, but is mentioned as a sorcerous and mother of Caliban, who is depicted as a monster and a slave to Prospero. The author wants to give Sycorax a voice, one that she doesn’t have in the play, to tell us in her own words what it was like to be treated with suspicion and cruelty. Sycorax’s story is an emotional one as she wrestles with her identity, her illness, her powers and the loneliness of being an outcast. Each time her powers grow the more isolated she becomes.The author is clearly so passionate about this book and giving her central character a voice and I think she achieves it beautifully.
The story unfolds slowly while the author immerses us in the world Sycorax inhabits, at first with her parents. I really felt like I was in the presence of a magical being and it was the sounds that really grabbed me – the tinkle of sea shells on her mother’s anklets, the sounds of the sea, the lazy buzz of the honey bees they keep. By creating this mindful and harmonious background the author makes sure that when something does interrupt, it tears through this idyll and comes as a shock. These shocks are usually driven by men. There’s a constant sense of give and take between Sycorax and her universe. Strangely the more she’s affected by illness, the more powerful she becomes. The power comes in the shape of wisdom and resilience, things that come with time and getting to know how your illness affects you. By working with it, Sycorax knows what her body can do and how much activities will take out of her. Beautiful young women with unusual powers rarely go unnoticed and unexploited. Nydia has written a beautiful piece of work that takes us full circle to The Tempest. She’s managed to bring 21st Century injustices to the forefront without losing any of the magical beauty of the original play.
That’s all for now, but here’s a quickly glimpse of my March TBR.
Ever since they first met at university, Beth and Nick have circled in and out of one another’s lives: supporting each other through grief, marriage, divorce, career crises and family dramas.
Fourteen years ago, when they were on the cusp of adulthood, they both survived a devastating fire that sent their lives in different directions. And they’ve been running ever since: from the pain, from the memories, and most devastatingly of all, from the guilt.
But no matter how hard they try, there’s something else they can’t run from. The inescapable, terrifying truth: they’re in love with each other.
But how can they move forward, when neither of them can stop looking back?
I always say I don’t like romance, then a book like this comes along and I’m all in. Maybe it’s being over 50, but stories of first love grab me in the feels. Especially tragic first love. The thing is we’ve all had the experience of love that’s come at the wrong place or the wrong time, so reading a love story like Beth and Nick’s brings up memories and feelings of nostalgia. Our first love experiences are so intense and when feeling are unrequited or interrupted they can stay with us for the rest of our lives. Beth and Nick have a brilliant first meeting. They’re placed in the same flat at university and Beth walks into the shared bathroom and gets an eyeful! Beth is the last person to join the flat because she’s been ill so relationships have already been established. The other two girls, Rosa and Anna, were best friends before university and Nick is already in a relationship with Anna. Beth senses some chemistry between her and Nick, but she tries hard to ignore it. Nobody wants to be the girl who steals their flatmate’s boyfriend in the first weeks of the first term. When he turns up to watch her in drama club she thinks he must feel the same.
It’s Nick who takes action. He breaks up with Anna and invites Beth on a late night walk. As they walk there’s just so much anticipation. The author builds to their first kiss with all that yearning and tension around who will make the first move. When they spot the fire in their building it’s already well ablaze and Anna is killed.
Wracked with survivor’s guilt, Nick leaves university. Beth struggles to cope, feeling like Nick has abandoned her. She decides to stay and finish her drama course. Lives move on. Yet feelings for each other and about the tragic start to their time at university, still linger. The author tells the story through both characters and over 15 years as they build careers and relationships. They both think of each other. They try to keep in touch as friends and their paths do meet from time to time, but they’re always held back by the past. They do try to support each other, so when Beth’s long-term relationship breaks down, she finds herself wanting to talk to Nick. I really felt their longing for that first love and their thoughts that maybe it could have worked. Then reality crashes in and those feelings of guilt cloud their hopes. Yet the novel isn’t schmaltzy. There are meaty issues here like domestic violence and mental health, not to mention those trauma related feelings they’ve never really shared with each other.
If there was ever a book to emphasise the importance of counselling or simply talking to each other, it’s this one. Until Nick and Beth talk through what happened and how it’s affected them since, they will always be haunted by Anna’s death. When trauma is left unresolved people find unhealthy ways to deal with those hidden emotions. Nick has a rescuer personality, developed because he never again wants to feel like he did back then as the cause of Anna’s sadness in her final hours. I love that Beth writes about what happened and her feelings for Nick because at least she’s processing the trauma, because the more we talk about it the less power it has. The tension in the novel comes from wondering if this pair will ever come together at the right time and place. Will they get the chance to put things right? Can they ever find their way back to each other? I was deeply invested and filled with hope for them. The author has written a beautiful love story, but it has impact because it isn’t a fairy tale and these two characters feel absolutely real. At the end I felt like comparisons to One Day, the archetypal friends to lovers classic, are entirely justified.
Out now in paperback from Aria.
Meet the Author
Charlotte Rixon is the pen name of Charlotte Duckworth, USA Today-bestselling author of suspense fiction published by Quercus. Charlotte studied Classics at Leeds University and went on to gain a PGDip in Screenwriting. She worked for many years as a magazine journalist, and is a graduate of the Faber Academy ‘Writing A Novel’ course. You can find out more about her on her website: charlotterixon.com.
I couldn’t wait to read this, after reading the third book in this series earlier in the year. So I snagged it on NetGalley and read it immediately full of anticipation. I wasn’t disappointed. I love Tanzy and her adventures, usually she’s confined to the UK but this time she’s a little further afield. When she meets charming Icelandic giant Einar in a bar I did wonder whether vampires were about to debut in the series. His ability to ‘glamour’ Tanz seemed almost supernatural. Soon they’re sharing champagne and a bit of naked dancing too. When he invites her to his holiday cabin in Iceland to get some writing done, she decides to be impetuous and throw caution to the wind. This impulsive decision takes her to an isolated cabin with log burners, cosy decor and of course the odd spectre or two, After their first night together Tanz wakes up alone, without even a note and no plans for Einar’s return. She’s annoyed but not heartbroken. At the least she has a few days holiday in a country cabin for free and time to process her last case. Maybe she could start working on ideas for her own play? However, Iceland has its ghosts just as much as London. Did Tanz really think they would leave her alone?
In a nightmare, Tanz sees a man staring over the edge of a cliff. Is he going to jump? Before she can act a second person appears, a strange man whose eyes seem bottomless and hold universes. She can hear a woman crying outside her cabin and eventually a vision comes of this woman and her empty relationship with a man who doesn’t appear to love her. She follows him to work and finds him in bed with another woman, she screams and Tanz can hear his roaring anger as she wakes. It’s clear there’s a mystery here and she’s going to have to find the crying woman to work out why she needs her help. She doesn’t know if it’s going to be dangerous, especially without her friend Sheila in tow. Yet there are signs of protection: the rowan tree at the front porch; the feeling in the bedroom as if there’s a protection spell around her; the strange man from her dream who seems to be magical. Tanz knows she must help the woman, who becomes increasingly desperate and starts to bang on all the lodge’s windows to make herself heard. Tanz just doesn’t know how to help. When her distant neighbour pays a call there’s an instant connection and Tanzy puts it down to the fact they’re both a bit witchy. Birta has the most amazing cabin a short hike away with a seventies style interior that’s retro and cozy. With their combined knowledge and skills surely they can find what their distressed ghost is looking for?
I loved the character of Thor who is Einar’s friend but also a cab driver. He helps Tanz escape the cabin for a while. He has such a wholesome feel about him and is the complete gentleman. He listens to Tanzy’s story and doesn’t seem fazed by her experiences, although the knocking at the cabin is a bit unsettling. Tanzy feels very comfortable and safe around him, as he takes her under his wing. He really does take care of her, cooking for her and showing her some of the sights too. He has been friends with Einar for many years and knows how he operates. He wants Tanzy to feel like her time in Iceland hasn’t been wasted and his care of her really makes her examine why she is drawn towards unavailable men rather than those that show her how much they care. She tends to put nice men in the friend zone before anything has had a chance to develop. There’s part of her that’s addicted to the adrenaline that comes with a ‘bad boy’ and she hasn’t realised before that love doesn’t have to come with a side order of drama. Thor also accepts every bit of Tanz, her charisma and attitude but also the spooky and paranormal side of her life too. He doesn’t ridicule or belittle her psychic abilities, showing real interest and a willingness to help as far as he can. He really does take on her quest as his own, but also knows when to step back – when and where it’s her time to shine. He’s not overwhelmed by her and for someone who might be described as too much, there’s safety and security in that. But can safety and security be sexy?
I’d guessed some of the mystery brought by the distressed woman but thoroughly enjoyed the journey as Tanzy looked for a way of fulfilling her wishes. This takes help from Thor, new friend Birta and the ‘hildunfolk’. All our usual characters are here, including Sheila and Tanzy’s delightful ‘little mam’ whose always there at the end of the phone. She is often more aware of her daughter’s exploits than you’d expect from all the way over in Newcastle. I thought the author delved beautifully into Tanzy’s character and her romantic choices particularly. She has to examine her choices; to follow an unsuitable and unavailable man all the way to Iceland, but to banish a kind, available and warm man to the couch. Why won’t she let good men love her? It works well with the unfolding of the mystery around the cabin and how the choices we make because of desire are often destructive and life-changing. It seems we can be left with so many regrets that they follow us into the afterlife. I enjoyed some of the final revelations, particularly around the character of Birta. This is another solid addition to the Accidental Medium series and I felt like I’d spent a few hours with an old friend. I have a list of literary characters I’d love to have for dinner and Tanzy is definitely there at the table, possibly next to Mr Tumnus. Although she’d have to promise not to flirt with him.
Out on 13th February Pan MacMillan
Meet the Author
Tracy Whitwell was born, brought up and educated in the north-east of England. She wrote plays and short stories
from an early age, then moved to London where she became a busy actress on stage and screen. After having her son, she wound down the acting to concentrate on writing full time. Many projects followed until she finally found the courage to write the first in her Accidental Medium series, a work of fiction based on a whole heap of crazy truth. Apart from the series, Tracy has written novels in several other genres and also writes mini self-help books as the Sweary Witch.
Tracy is nothing like her lead character Tanz in The Accidental Medium. (This is a lie.)
Artists are an endless source of material for novelists and have fascinated me for most of my adult reading life. I think we afford artists the right to behave badly, because what they do feels like alchemy. To be able to take mere pen and paint and turn it into something that’s beautiful or utterly new is magical to someone like me who can only just manage to sketch something if I have lots of time and patience. I stick to colouring for my artistic endeavours. If I think about it I’ve been going to art galleries since my teenage years when the chance to see Klimt’s work at Tate Liverpool was too exciting to pass on. I loved ‘The Kiss’ but this exhibit took his work and placed it into the context of the secessionist movement, just one branch of Art Nouveau. I continued to visit exhibits on Art Nouveau, at the Kelvingrove Gallery in Glasgow to see the Glasgow School exhibits, The Met in New York a few times, as well as the Guggenheim there and in Venice. I visited London for many exhibits at the V and A and the Tate including Lucian Freud, a painter I’ve come to appreciate more recently. One of my great loves are the Pre-Raphaelites, since having the chance to study their work at university. We visit my mum’s hometown of Liverpool very frequently and I’m a regular at the Walker Gallery and Lady Lever gallery in Port Sunlight both of which have a great collection of Pre-Raphaelite work. Artists are often unconventional, have complicated love lives and some have a reputation for being hellraisers. Is it any wonder that we love to read about them? I usually jump at the chance and have quite a collection! here are a few of my favourite novels that feature painters.
Mistral’s Daughter by Judith Krantz
I have a very cracked and broken copy of this novel and I’ve read it several times. I blame it for starting my fascination with painters, I used to swipe it off mum’s bookshelves when I was a teenager. It’s romantic and sexually explicit, two things teenagers are definitely interested in! It follows the story of three generations of women from Paris to New York. We first experience Maggie Lunel’s journey to become an artist’s model. She is chosen by Julian Mistral and becomes his muse, as well as his lover until his ego and arrogance make her walk out. Years later, Maggie’s daughter Teddy is working as a fashion model. Her father Perry Kilkullen was the last man Maggie would fall in love with. Teddy has a job in France posing with artists for a fashion shoot and as soon as she poses with Mistral it is love at first sight. Mistral is married, but he leaves and sets up home with Teddy, never returning to America. Fauve Lunel is Mistral’s daughter, brought up with her grandmother Maggie she visits Mistral in the summer at his villa in the south of France. Fauve is a talented artist and begins to look into her family roots, finding out they are Jewish. When she realise Mistral might have been a collaborator during WW2 the revelation tears father and daughter apart, will they ever reconcile? This is a great story, romantic and bit racy too.
The Marriage of Oppositesby Alice Hoffman
As you all know by now, I’m a big fan of Alice Hoffman, but when I first picked up this novel on publication day I found it was very different from her usual books. We always expect to find strong women in Hoffman’s novels but there’s usually an element of magic realism to her work. Our heroine Rachel is definitely a strong woman, but magic takes a back seat for this novel that reads more like an biography. Rachel lives on the stunning island of São Tomé or St Thomas and is the mother of Camille Pissarro, one of the founders of Impressionism. Rachel is brought up with a strict Jewish faith, but she has always dreamed of getting off the island and going to Paris. Unfortunately Rachel has no choice and is married off to a widower with three children. Nevertheless she makes of the best of things until her husband dies suddenly. When his nephew Frédéric comes from Paris to settle the will and there is an instant spark between them. For once Rachel decides to make decisions for her own life and begins a passionate affair. The scandal that ensues when they marry has the whole island in uproar, but Rachel stands firm and will not be moved. This is a beautiful story, set on a lush island that’s described in gorgeous detail by Hoffman – she made me want to go there. I loved her relationship with her son and hoped that one day she would get to go to Paris as she dreamed.
Notes From An Exhibition by Patrick Gale
Set in the beautiful county of Cornwall, around Newlyn and Penzance, this is the story of a family struggling with secrets, brought back to the place they were born after a tragedy. Their mother, celebrated artist Rachael Kelly, is found dead in her Penzance studio after struggling with the creative highs and devastating lows that have coloured her life. As her family try to make sense of their mother’s life and it’s effect on them, devastating secrets come to light. As always with Patrick Gale the level of empathy in this book is incredible, he understands how different people think and respond to events. His depiction of mental illness is so authentic and heart-breaking. Rachael’s bi-polar disorder is the source of her art, but Gale also explores how it affects the rest of her working life and how it impacts on her family, especially her children. This is a favourite of mine and I’ve read it several times, but it never loses it’s power.
The Flames by Sophie Haydock
I devoured this brilliant book by Sophie Haydock, where she takes four women painted by artist Egon Schiele. Set in Vienna in 1912, on the back of the secessionist movement and artists like Gustav Klimt, Schiele paints four women and Sophie gives them a voice. Gertrude is in awe of her brilliant older brother, often posing for him but envying his freedom and agency. Then there’s Vally, a model for Klimt who’s trying to work her way out of poverty. Then sisters Edith and Adele move into the apartment building opposite Schiele’s in Vienna. The daughters of wealthy parents, they are not the type of girls who usually model for an artist and are expected to marry well. Yet both become embroiled with Schiele, professionally and privately. A portrait is always how the artists sees or wants to present you to the world, here the women step out from behind that image and tell their own story.
The Paris Muse by Louise Treger
Louise Treger’s 2024 novel concerns the life, or more accurately the love, of Dora Maar – a photographer and painter who lived in Paris for most of her life and most notably, during the German occupation in WWII. Born Henrietta Theodora Markovitch in 1907, she was known as a surrealist photographer exhibiting alongside Dali and other notable surrealists. She used her photographic art to better represent life through links with ideas, politics and philosophy rather than slavishly photographing what was naturally there. She was exhibited in the Surrealist Exposition in Paris and the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936. In the same year she was exhibited at MOMA in NYC. She first encountered Picasso while taking photos at a film set in 1935, but they were not introduced until a few days later when Paul Elduard introduced them at Cafe des Deux Magots. They met in quite a dramatic way that showed her intent to catch his eye. She sat alone and using a pen knife she drove the blade between her splayed fingers and where she missed, blood stained the gloves she wore. The fact that Picasso kept these gloves and packed them away with his treasured mementoes is a metaphor for their entire relationship – he fed from her emotions. The author allows Dora to tell her own story and we are inside her mind at all times. We could say this is only her viewpoint of their relationship, but in a world where she is most known through her relationship with a man instead of her own work, Treger is simply redressing the balance. This is tough to read in parts, showing the ego of Picasso and how his call for freedom in their relationship, means his freedom. I felt sad for Dora, possibly influenced by some of my own experiences. She seemed like a smaller woman at the end with none of her original vitality and flamboyance. I’m so glad to know that her art lives on and is still exhibited as part of the surrealist canon.
The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins
WELCOME TO ERIS – A TIDAL ISLAND WITH ONLY ONE HOUSE, ONE INHABITANT, ONE WAY OUT. . .
A place that is unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day. Once the hideaway of Vanessa, a famous artist whose husband disappeared twenty years ago. Now home to Grace. A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation. Local GP Grace, often referred to as Vanessa’s companion or friend, might have inherited Eris. However, Vanessa’s artworks were left to an art foundation set up by her first agent. The curator of the foundation is Becker, hired for his expertise in Vanessa’s work. He is under pressure from the new owner to extract the last of Vanessa’s work from Eris. They have tried polite enquiries, legal letters and ultimatums but they are sure this has all been in vain and that Grace is deliberately holding back. Now a situation has arisen with one of Vanessa’s found object installations already on display in the gallery. A visiting doctor is convinced that the bone suspended in a glass box is human. They withdraw the box from view and contemplate having to break it open to have the bone properly tested. The unspoken thought on everyone’s mind is whether this might solve the mystery of Vanessa’s missing husband? It’s an opportunity for Becker to tell Grace face to face, but also to address the missing works that must be on Eris. He feels this is the best way forward; a last ditch attempt before legal action. However, visiting Eris is not without it’s risks. Are all of it’s secrets and lies about to be uncovered? This is a great thriller, full of questions about what an artist needs to be able to create, who owns an artwork and when does friendship become obsession?
New Reads To Look Out For …
Sophie Haydock is delving back into the art world with her novel about the women surrounding the artist Matisse.
This is the story of three women – one an orphan and refugee who finds a place in the studio of a famous French artist, the other a wife and mother who has stood by her husband for nearly forty years. The third is his daughter, caught in the crossfire between her mother and a father she adores. Amelie is first drawn to Henri Matisse as a way of escaping the conventional life expected of her. A free spirit, she sees in this budding young artist a glorious future for them both. Ambitious and driven, she gives everything for her husband’s art, ploughing her own desires, her time, her money into sustaining them both, even through years of struggle and disappointment. Lydia Delectorskaya is a young Russian emigree, who fled her homeland following the death of her mother. She is trying to make a place for herself on France’s golden Riviera, amid the artists, film stars and dazzling elite. Eventually she finds employment with the Matisse family. From this point on, their lives are set on a collision course. Marguerite is Matisse’s eldest daughter. When the life of her family implodes, she must find her own way to make her mark and to navigate divided loyalties. Based on a true story, Madame Matisse is a stunning novel about drama and betrayal; emotion and sex; glamour and tragedy, all set in the hotbed of the 1930s art movement in France. In art, as in life, this a time when the rules were made to be broken…
Out from Doubleday on 6th March 2025
PROVENCE, 1920
Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle’s artistic genius possible. Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he’ll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe. But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers. Over this sweltering summer, everyone’s true colours will be revealed.
Because Ettie is ready to be seen. Even if it means setting her world on fire. This book will transport you straight to the south of France and straight to the heart of one woman’s rage.
Our story starts in 1768 on a sugar cane plantation in Jamaica, where a slave rebellion has been brewing. The signal will be sent to all the slaves by drum and Daniel has heard their rhythm. He needs to get to the house where his sweetheart Adanna works for the mistress, the house slaves aren’t in on the secret and he wants to get there in time. The field slaves might harm the house slaves along with their masters, perceiving their lives to be easier and their loyalties divided. When Daniel realises the house is already ablaze he leaves with his little sister Pearl, hoping to find a way to get off the island. His story then jumps to 1782 and the aftermath of the War of Independence where free slaves who fought for the British were promised a new life in England. Daniel was one such soldier fighting with the British under Major Edward Fitzallen, whose life he saved. Edward and his wife Elizabeth have taken Daniel and Pearl under their wing, meaning that both brother and sister have a level of education and independence one might think unusual for Jamaican slaves. When Edward is wounded he knows he won’t make the voyage home and calls Daniel to his side. He wants to ensure that Daniel and Pearl have a future in England and calls witnesses to his signature on a new will and testament. It hands all his worldly goods over to Daniel, telling him to call on his brother James to inform him of Edward’s demise and Daniel’s new position as his heir. Daniel naively expects the Fitzallen brothers to be equally honourable and he underestimates James who drugs Daniel, then throws the new will and all proof of Daniel’s claim and rank into the fire. Now Pearl and Daniel are abandoned in London with nothing.
There were many black soldiers shipped over here with the promise of a new life, without any provision made for them when they arrived. Many ended up in the area of St Giles, home to the infamous Rookery which was a warren of corridors and rooms under Covent Garden and accessed through St Giles church crypt. Here lived those forgotten black slaves, Irish immigrants escaping famine and others who had no means to live. People like Daniel and Pearl were outcasts from civilised society and known as the Blackbirds of St Giles, living in dark caves where sewage ran in channels through the rooms. The book was so beautifully detailed, taking us effortlessly into the late 18th Century like time travellers. I could sense absolutely everything from the steady thrum of the drums in Jamaica to the smells of London squalor and it’s poorest residences. The divide between those in poverty and those who are rich is a deep canyon, all the more shocking to Daniel who has become used to a certain deference and to Pearl who barely remembers the plantation and has grown up by Elizabeth Fitzallen’s side with all the privileges of a middle class young woman. Daniel and Pearl’s new home is a dark underground cave where it’s a choice between breathing or being cold because smoke from the fire can’t dissipate and simply sits in the room with them, making them cough and their eyes water. The rooms are filled with a sense of dark foreboding, worsened when Daniel sees the first ceremony with their self-styled King. I loved how the Black Apollo club is a haven by contrast with such an open and accepting feeling. Here black men are relaxed, having a drink or playing chess with friends. It’s a glimpse into the far future, because many of their customers can only dream of a time they’re not a servant, regarded with suspicion or hidden as a dirty secret. There’s also a contrast with Elias’s lodgings as King of the Rookery, he doesn’t share the dark caves of his subjects but instead enjoys plush lodgings policed by a beautiful, prowling cheetah called Infanta.
The sense of terrible injustice is palpable and I was desperate for Daniel to get what is owed to him. Daniel and Pearl have been defrauded and it all feels worse because of the dignity and command he’s had under Edward Fitzallen. I found myself rooting for them both pretty quickly. Their friendship meant that Pearl was always well-dressed and learned to read, something of a privilege for a young black woman born into slavery. The only man who could have corroborated Daniel’s claim is back on his ship by the time Daniel wakes from being drugged. There’s no way to get what he’s owed now. It’s only when he starts training with ex-boxer Melkie Trimme at his St Giles gym that Daniel starts to feel a sense of purpose and pride again. If he can beat the European champion then he and Pearl can get better lodgings and start to repay the kindness shown to them by young girl Jen who has organised their place at The Rookery, brought them food from her pub job and introduced him to some of the most influential men she knows. Daniel is drawn to her, but is still plagued with guilt about Adanna.
For me the women were particularly interesting. In the literature written or set in the 18th Century we’re used to the upper and middle classes, not people like these at the bottom. If we think of the Regency novels of Jane Austen and the more contemporary Bridgerton series the women are accomplished, but it’s all focused on making a good marriage. Women who are poor have no time for accomplishments as they’re too busy surviving, but they have more agency and autonomy. Jen is such a pretty girl but she’s fiery and used to making her own decisions. She has very little but she’s surviving and shows kindness and generosity to those she cares about. Having survived an horrific childhood she is keen for rebellion and knows that Daniel might have what it takes to lead people out of The Rookery and end Elias’s tyranny. She also takes Pearl under her wing and guides her into earning her own money for herself. Daniel wants to protect Pearl and keep her in the middle-class propriety she’s been used to, but this is no use to her when they’re living in a squalid underground cavern. Pearl really rises to the occasion with very little complaint, starting to work at the pub with Jen, then sneaking out in the evening for singing engagements. She has a beautiful voice and Jen thinks it might be her ticket out of the slums. As for the Marquise, she has used her beauty and poise to get where she is. When we’re let into her opulent townhouse Daniel is shocked at the squalor most black immigrants are living in compared to her. How could a black woman reach the heights she has? That’s without mentioning the residence in France or her wardrobe, full of all the gowns and perfumes she can wear. Could there be hints of a darker truth underneath the opulence?
All in all this is a fantastic historical novel; vivid and dark, but ultimately hopeful. I love it when authors take a character and write them back into the period of history they’ve been erased from. Middle class writers would rarely write about the people of The Rookery. Even Charles Dickens didn’t hint at this underground life, despite his interest in those living in poverty. Obadiah is such a great character, a disabled resident of the Rookery whose intellect and philosophies are articulate and inspiring. The fact that he runs the brotherhood at the Black Apollo and has a place at the head of the planning table is amazing. The other men do look up to him as their oracle. It seems strange to imagine that the novels of Jane Austen are only a few years away, because in them we never hear of people like this. It’s easy to forget that not everyone lives in the countryside and working class women are out there making things happen, working everyday and not at home with an embroidery hoop on their lap hoping for a gentleman caller. There’s no one from a different country and even the poor are ‘distressed gentlefolk’. Comparing this world with Austen’s shows how urban, dynamic and exciting London is, especially if women and people of all races have an opportunity to create their own future. Some did, like Olaudah Equiano who was enslaved to a master and a role in the Royal Navy. He came to Britain at the same time as Daniel and once he’d bought back his freedom had become a merchant. Sadly he had to stop travelling when he was almost captured and sold back into slavery in Georgia. However, he did write a memoir that’s still in print today. I came away from this book with everything crossed for Daniel and Pearl, as well as Jen. I was so immersed in the story that it felt strange to look up and find myself back in my own living room.
Meet the Author
Writing together as Lila Cain, Marcia Hutchinson and Kate Griffin are the co-writers and creators of The Blackbirds of St Giles, the first of two books centred on the lives of members of the little-known black community in Georgian London. United by their passion for history and a strong desire to tell an unfamiliar – and hugely resonant – story, Kate and Marcia are delighted that ‘Blackbirds’ and its sequel will be published by Simon & Schuster.
Marcia Hutchinson worked as a lawyer before founding educational publishing company Primary Colours and was awarded an MBE for services to Cultural Diversity in 2010. Her solo debut novel Mercy is due for publication in summer 2025.
Kate is the author of Fyneshade (Viper), a stand-alone Neo-Victorian gothic novel of witchcraft in a house of dark secrets. She is also the writer of the popular Kitty Peck thriller series (Faber and Faber) set in the Music Halls of Victorian London. After studying English Literature at university, Kate worked as assistant to a London antique dealer, as a journalist and in PR. Until recently she was Head of Communications for Britain’s oldest conservation charity, The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB). Her love of old buildings and the stories they tell continues to inspire her.
For years and years, when I’m asked the question which book has hit me hardest emotionally I’ve always had to say One Day by David Nicholls. It’s the last book that made me cry spontaneously for one of the characters. I still remember the exact line. Now I’ll be able to say Leaving was the last book that absolutely tore my heart out. Sarah sees Warren, who she dated for a while in their college years. She had ended it, unsure whether they were a good fit. Yet they never stopped thinking about each other. Sarah is divorced now and lives alone in her country home with her dog Bella for company. She has a daughter who’s married and lives a distance away with her husband and two children. Sarah works at a gallery, currently putting together an exhibition about the Bloomsbury Group. Warren lives just outside Boston and has his own architectural practice in the city. He’s married to Janet, exactly the sort of wife he has needed: attractive, a good hostess and great mum to their daughter Kattie who is an older teenager. However, his wife is also a snob, very aware of who should be in their social circle and how things should be done. They don’t talk about current affairs together, listen to an opera or read the same books. Perhaps their marriage has always been like this, but it feels empty since he saw Sarah again. Can he spend the rest of his life in this marriage as he promised or can he be with Sarah? If he leaves what price will he have to pay?
This novel is so clever in the way it engages with your morals and emotions. I was so caught up with the romance of Sarah and Warren, so much sweeter because it is second time around. I felt their urgency. It’s unthinkable thar they shouldn’t grab, what feels like, a last chance of happiness. I felt so much for Sarah, who is an intelligent and self-sufficient woman post divorce. She has such a solitary life, seemingly with a handful of friends. Her life is made up of her job, her home with poodle Bella and occasional visits with her daughter and son-in-law. I loved the tender moments she has with her dog, something I understand completely and just as important as anyone else when considering big life decisions. It feels like she’s where she belongs on the edge of the reservoir walking with her canine companion, so in tune together. She does feel a little remote from her daughter, wanting to be like other grandmothers who look after their grandchildren regularly and have one multi-generational family. Sarah doesn’t quite feel invited into her daughter’s life. I didn’t feel any dislike for her or begrudge her happiness with Warren, even though it comes at the cost of his wife’s happiness. They felt easy and uncomplicated together. Sarah thinks of his wife but doesn’t feel like the other woman because he was hers first. Their relationship is a continuation of something started long ago, or is this simply their justification for something outside their normal moral code. The author beautifully captures those heady romantic moments of a new relationship with simple moments, the joy of receiving flowers or the secret smile that comes from a loving text in the middle of a working day. Sarah doesn’t lie to her own children, she tells them she’s seeing someone from her past. That he’s married. They are happy for her.
Warren’s life is more complicated. The author takes us between his and Sarah’s inner thoughts seamlessly. They are two halves of a whole. By comparison his married life feels mundane and rather one note, but it’s unfair to compare a new love or even a recaptured love with thirty years of married life. A few deft touches show us a marriage that’s become routine, Janet’s red house dress being just one. The reappearance of a frozen chicken pot pie is a beautifully used example. It appears early on, only to be replaced with a beautifully cooked beef bourguignon as Janet tries to win her husband back. It promises so much, this is how it will be from now on. Only to revert to chicken pot pie again, but it isn’t just a pie, it signifies a marriage that’s fallen back into a well worn groove. It screams ‘is this it?’ Janet has done nothing wrong, they haven’t had a bad marriage and when Warren feels the weight of those years there’s a fondness, a gratitude for all those shared moments that make up a marriage. He is both grateful for them and buried beneath them. Does he deserve to climb out from underneath them? Or is it an unforgivable betrayal of everything they’ve shared as a couple and a family?
I loved some of the subplots to the main love story. I found Sarah’s work fascinating. I remember talking to someone ar the V & A about one of their fashion exhibits and the process of creating something with such impact. I hadn’t known a job existed where you could sit and discuss a artist’s work, then choose the pieces you want to tell a story. I thought the quandary over whether to go with a well- known scholar on the Bloomsbury group versus a newer academic voice echoed the love story so completely. The best known scholar may promise something new but will likely deliver something competent but safe. The newer voice might offer something dynamic and new but they aren’t a very big name yet, is newer always better? Sarah’s daughter’s third pregnancy isn’t easy and terrible news brings Sarah deeper into their lives and closer to her grandchildren. I also loved how Kattie’s wedding placed stress on her whole family, especially where Janet wants the big, formal society wedding and her daughter starts to feel overwhelmed. The wedding planner tells them that a wedding is basically a microcosm of society, the one of which their family is a part. People aren’t perfect, so weddings never are either. Neither is marriage.
Everything about this novel rings true, from the details that set each scene to the love story that binds everything together. It’s exquisitely written, drawing you in so very slowly, then unravelling quickly to it’s emotional conclusion. There’s a point in the book where I have never wanted to slap a character more! Even though their actions are understandable and possibly morally justified, I was still absolutely furious and had to share the story with my husband whose immediate response was exactly the same. Once an affair starts to turn into something more, so many decisions have to be made and the sacrifices those choices will create become stark and very real. Sarah has imagined living with Warren, but she’s always thought of them at her home. This is where she rebuilt herself after her divorce. It’s a place she loves and doesn’t think she can give up. Arguably, Warren’s choices are even more difficult. He knows if he does this, his relationship and happiness with Sarah will come at the cost of someone else’s feelings. On the scales does one happiness outweigh another? Or are some costs simply too great? I simply loved this book and although it’s only January but I have no doubt this will be in my best books list come the end of the year. I would happily read everything else the author’s ever written.
Published by Magpie Feb 2024
Meet the Author
Roxana Robinson is the author of eleven books: seven novels, three story collections, and the biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. Four of these were New York Times Notable Books.
Robinson was born in Kentucky, but grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She attended Bennington College and graduated from the University of Michigan. She worked in the art world, specializing in the field of American painting, before she began writing full-time. Her novel, Cost, was a finalist for the NEBA, was named one of the five best fiction books of the year by the Washington Post and received the Fiction Award from the Maine Publishers and Writers Association.Her novel, Sparta, was named one of the ten best books of the year by the BBC, and won the James Webb Award for Distinguished Fiction from the USMC Heritage Foundation, and the Fiction Award from the Maine Publishers and Writers Association. Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Tin House, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. Her non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bookforum, Harper’s, and elsewhere. She was twice a finalist for the NBCC Balakian Award for Criticism and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She teaches at Hunter College, has twice served on the board of PEN, and was President of the Authors Guild, where she continues to serve as a member of the Council. She lives in New York and Connecticut, and spends as much time as she can in Maine.
If you’re anything like me you probably spent the last days of December looking at lists of books you should be reading in 2025. I’ve even made my own list of the ones I’m most looking forward to. It’s also the time of year where we choose how we’re going to track our reading and whether we’re going set ourselves a challenge. There’s the Goodreads annual challenge where you try to read even more books to meet your target, there’s Storygraph which I don’t know anything about. I do Goodreads mainly because there’s a record of what I’ve read so I can do my end of year posts. There are other ways to challenge ourselves, such as choosing to read more classics or the Agatha Christie challenge where you read through her works during the year. As those of you will know I’m struggling with my health at the moment so I decided to take a hiatus from blog tours and Squad POD activities to read by mood for a while and be free from obligations. I’m really enjoying it, even if I am missing the camaraderie of the squad at times, that excitement of all reading a book together and talking about it is hard to beat.
Some non-fiction favourites of mine.
I’m not big on New Years Resolutions, it’s the wrong time of year and too much pressure. So my only change for this year is to act on something I noticed from struggling so much this year. When I’m in a reading slump I noticed that I managed to get going again by reading non-fiction. It seemed to be a mix of memoir, humour, crime, history and fashion. Over the past couple of years I’ve been reading books by celebrities, often comedians and actors: Phillipa Perry, Lou Sanders, David Mitchell, Rupert Everett and Miriam Margoyles to name a few. I’ve read some brilliant memoirs on illness and death such as Patient by Ben Watt, Lucky Man by Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve’s memoirs. I loved reading memoirs by comedians Lou Sanders and Fern Brady who both detailed difficulties they faced being late diagnosed with autism and ADHD. I also found myself drawn to books of letters or diaries and I’ve loved reading Virginia Woolf’s diaries but also Kenneth William’s diaries which happen to be hilarious and sad at the same time. I have a thing about the Mitford sisters and dip in and out of their letters to each other regularly. So this year I’m going to read a non-fiction book every month. Ive found twelve non-fiction books I haven’t read yet and I’m going to pick one every month to read and review. I’m excited to get started on them. I wish you all a Happy New Year and I hope you enjoy all the challenges you’ve set yourself this year.
Here’s the info on my choices:
Mind-Whispering by Tara Bennett-Goleman from Ebury
Always Take Notes: Advice From The Worlds Greatest Writers. Simon Akam and Rachel Lloyd. Ithaca Press from Bonnier Publishing
What about Men? By Caitlin Moran. From Ebury. Penguin Publishing
Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn. Wiedenfeld & Nicolson.
Tove Jansson Work and Love by Tuula Karjalainen. Penguin Books.
The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective by Sara Lodge. From Yale University Press.
MILF by Paloma Faith from Ebury Publishing/ Penguin Random House
The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place. By Kate Summerscale. From Bloomsbury.
Want. Written by Anonymou. Edited by Gillian Anderson. Simon & Schuster UK.
The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasden. Chatto & Windus.
The Untamed Thread by Fleur Woods. By Koa Press.
Jane Austen’s Wardrobe by Hilary Davidson. From Yale University Press.
I love reading debuts because you’re never sure what you’re going to find and this tale of two adult siblings who lose their parents suddenly has all the family dynamics and trauma that I love to untangle in a novel. Jamie and Caz are used to their parents being top of the social scale in their area, a small village close to a market town in Yorkshire. Their family home is a hall in the centre of the village, where Jamie still lives alongside his parents having not found his career path yet. Caz has left home, but has a chequered history of teen pregnancy and alcoholism. She married husband Steve after he came to work on the hall’s electrics when her first little girl was only a baby and she had been sober for several months. Now they live in a cottage a short drive away from her childhood home and recently she’s had another baby. The catalyst to their problems is the loss of their parents. One Sunday both siblings are there for lunch when Jamie and his father clash over what he sees as his son’s fecklessness when it comes to making a life for himself. Jamie has secured a job with the local estate agents but desperately needs to sell a house this month. The best thing in his life is his recent relationship with local vet Zoe. What Jamie loves is his piano, but he doesn’t think he has the skill of a concert pianist. This Sunday he decides not to take his father’s criticism and storms out in a huff. That night the hall goes up in flames, so fast that no one could escape and the hall is burned to the ground.
For both siblings the village now looks like a set of teeth with one missing. The huge gap left in the centre is soon boarded so no one can see the wreckage, but it doesn’t allay the shock. Caz is immediately emotional, dazed even and takes refuge with Ruth, their housekeeper who lived next to the hall. Jamie seems frozen. The only thing he wants to save is his piano but it is damaged, maybe beyond repair. Insurance will take care of it and will hopefully rebuild the hall, but do they want that? They have no idea about their parent’s wishes, for the meantime Jamie has to buy some clothes and moves in with Zoe. It’s very early in their relationship but Jamie thinks they’ll get along fine. As he moves through life like an automaton, Caz starts to slide downhill. Gin was her usual tipple, but avoiding that she thinks an occasional glass of wine won’t hurt. One glass soon becomes a bottle and as she starts to hide her stash from Steve we can see that this could be a serious relapse. So can Jamie, but he’s having his own problems. The turmoil in his life is too heavy for the early stages of a relationship. Zoe had no relationship with his parents and although she can listen, she still has her own routine of riding and looking after her horse, whereas at the moment Jamie is sleepwalking through work and every time they are intimate, visions of the hall burning down come into his mind and ruin the moment. He’s not sure if he’s dealing with his grief at all. When Zoe decides they need some space from each other, he moves out to Caz and Steve’s house. Now he’s noticing that his sister isn’t coping either and his nieces are suffering. How can the siblings best help each other to cope?
I loved how the author shows grief hitting people in different ways. In some ways Jamie has never had to grow up. Living under his parent’s roof has enabled to try jobs and leave them with minimum consequences, while away hours in the village pub and not think beyond tomorrow. Caz has also depended on her parents, dropping out of university pregnant and with an alcohol problem. She moved home and had her baby there, until Steve actually walked through the door for a contracting job and they fell in love. For both of them, there’s now no safety net and the place filled with all those memories has gone too. Jamie also fears the loss of his piano, which has been lifted from the wreckage and been sent to a specialist repairer by the insurers. Music was the way that Jamie processed his emotions and without it he seems strangely neutral all the time, occasionally tapping out melodies using his fingers on whatever surface he find. Caz is more erratic, grabbing convenience foods instead of her usual home cooked meals and forgetting the girls activities or even to wash their uniforms. When the drinking starts Steve stays away from it, leaving Jamie with a full time job and two small children to feed and get out of the door in the open. He knows teachers have noticed the girls are a bit unkempt, but he doesn’t want to drop his sister in it. He just keeps smiling and nodding that everything’s okay. There’s only one person that won’t have the wool pulled over their eyes and that’s their parent’s housekeeper Ruth. Caz fears not letting the emotions out. Jamie thinks if he gives in and feels his emotions he might fall apart completely.
Through Jamie the author shows how grief can change our outlook on life completely. He becomes sentimental about an old couple looking for a house. He has a beautiful Georgian house on the books and he’s shown it to a rude and superior client with an enormous dog who didn’t seem interested. Then he has an adorable old couple who want to downsize and be closer to amenities, but he needs a studio to work in and it is in town. When he shows it to them he knows it should be theirs and when they offer he is ecstatic and shakes hands. Then the first woman comes back and offers 10k over the asking price, but Jamie says it’s already sold and turns her offer down, much to the fury of his manager. Jamie feels different, where once he might have taken the high offer now he can’t. Does he see his own parents in the old couple? Or is it that loss has given him a conscience? I really identified with this because after being seriously ill I returned to my work as an advertising rep only to struggle with selling newspaper space. It felt so trivial in the scheme of things I simply didn’t have the killer instinct. This was when I was sacked but went on to train as a counsellor and worked with the Mental Health Team in my area. It felt like I’d helped someone every day I went to work and it felt more in tune with my changing values.
I really felt for Jamie and wanted him to get his piano back and be able to express himself more. I was also so happy at his care for his nieces and his loyalty to his sister. Underneath the immaturity Zoe was concerned about, he’s a kind, perceptive and caring man. I was hoping they would find a way back to each other. Similarly I wanted Steve to reconnect with his wife and family and realise that while keeping a roof over their head was important, so was spending time together as a family. The author’s setting is perfect and having lived in villages all my life, I knew they come with beautiful countryside around them, but also residents who want to know all of your business. As my parents get older I do wonder what it might be like when they’re gone and I’m now the oldest member of the family. They’re my anchor, but so is my brother and I know our relationship will probably be stronger. I think the author makes it clear how seismic a shock it is when someone close to us dies. I loved the play on musical terms because the storyline has a tempo and Jamie is our conductor, desperately trying to keep the orchestra together towards the crescendo and beyond. This is a thoughtful and real story that had a lot of heart in it.
Out now from Flying Dog Press
Meet the Author
Joanna Howat trained as a journalist and worked as a news producer for BBC Radio 5 Live. She now lives in her native North Yorkshire with her family and two spaniels, and is a keen classical pianist. Crescendo is her first published novel.
It never ceases to amaze me that I can be sat here in the days between Christmas and New Year telling you about books I want to read next summer. Despite doing this for a fourth year I can’t believe that I get to read next year’s books or that publishers would be willing to send me them but here we are! The novelty never wears off and I’m grateful for every book I receive. So some of these are read and others are just beautiful covers and a synopsis, either way here are a few books I’ll be looking out for and you might like to as well.
In the small town of Gold Springs, Calliope Petridi and her two sisters carefully guard the secret of their magic and the price they must pay to practise it: memories. Luckily, all Calliope wants to do is forget: the mother who left without a trace, the sisters from whom she feels increasingly distant, and most of all, the way the love of her life shattered her heart two years ago.
But when an ancient evil awakens, the fragile thread that holds the sisters together breaks. As their magic slowly begins to fade, Calliope accidentally binds herself to the handsome leader of a rival coven infamous for their ruthless pursuit of power. Battling the sizzling chemistry with a man she can’t trust, Calliope must confront painful memories of her past, dark family secrets, and ancient magic in order to protect the town and all she loves.
But will she have anything left of herself?
Out 27th Feb from Aria.
It is 1895. A high-speed steam train is the emblem of progress. Industry and invention are creating ever greater wealth and poverty. One autumn day an anarchist boards the Granville to Paris Express.
The train carries others from all over the globe: the railway workers who have built a life together away from their wives, a little boy travelling alone for the first time, an artist far from home, a wealthy statesman and his invalid wife, and a young woman with a secret hidden under her dress.
The Paris Express is a thrilling ride and a literary masterpiece that captures the politics, fear, and chaos of the end of the 19th century.
Out Thursday 20th March from Picador
When Nina was just five years old, her family’s whole world was torn apart when her seventeen-year-old sister Tamara was found dead in the pool of their Cote d’Azur property. Nina’s evidence led to the conviction of their housekeeper’s daughter and occasional babysitter seventeen-year-old Josie for Tamara’s murder. But when new evidence emerges to suggest that Josie was innocent, Nina is forced to question the accuracy of her memories, her role in one of the most notorious cases of the past twenty years, and what actually happened to her sister on that hot summer day.
Out Thursday 14 th August by Bantam
It is the 60s and, just out of school, Edith finds herself travelling to rural Italy. She has been sent by her mother with strict instructions: to see her sister, ballet dancer Lydia, through the final weeks of her pregnancy, help at the birth and then make a phone call which will seal this baby’s fate, and his mother’s.
Decades later, happily divorced and newly energized, Edith is living a life of contentment and comfort in Ireland. When her best friend Maebh receives a call from an American man claiming to be her brother, Maebh must decide if she will meet him, and she asks Edith for help.
Ripeness by Sarah Moss is an extraordinary novel about familial love and the communities we create, about migration and new beginnings, and about what it is to have somewhere to belong
Out Thursday 22nd May from Picador
Constance Macken, in her ninth decade, is looking back on a life filled with laughter and loss, tragedy and triumph, but knows it is time to right the wrongs from her past that have always haunted her.
Heather Banks arrives on the island to bury her mother. Already adrift with her business sold and her divorce finalised, time on the island may be the perfect opportunity to change the course of her future. Ros Stokes has managed to slip into the perfect job, the perfect cottage and friends that feel like family. However, when the stitches of her life begin to unravel, she must find a way to hold onto the things that have become most dear to her and let go of what holds her back.
In a faded art deco house by the sea these women must come together to save the house they love and each other, because they might have run from their troubles but only time will tell if they can overcome their past.
Out on Thursday 5th Jan from Aria Fiction
She thinks it was murder. But if she can’t trust herself, can anyone else?
Nancy North and her boyfriend Felix are making the move across London to Harlesden. A new flat, a new area, a new start. Because while Nancy is fine now, she wasn’t fine before. But settling into the new flat and meeting the new neighbours isn’t helped by Felix’s hovering concern. She is all right. She is sticking to her breathing exercises and doctor-prescribed help.
So, when their new neighbour Kira Mullan is found dead by suicide, Felix is understandably worried about Nancy’s frame of mind. But Nancy saw Kira the day before she died and she didn’t strike her as someone who was suicidal – she was upset and angry, yes, but was she upset and angry enough to take her own life?
Nancy is the only one convinced that there’s more to Kira’s death than has been discovered. But all the police and the neighbours see is a vulnerable woman who isn’t sure of what she saw, and might even be imagining things . . .
Is Nancy imagining things, or are there more questions that should be asked about the last days of Kira Mullan?
Thursday 16th Jan from Simon & Schuster
This is the story of three women – one an orphan and refugee who finds a place in the studio of a famous French artist, the other a wife and mother who has stood by her husband for nearly forty years. The third is his daughter, caught in the crossfire between her mother and a father she adores.
Amelie is first drawn to Henri Matisse as a way of escaping the conventional life expected of her. A free spirit, she sees in this budding young artist a glorious future for them both. Ambitious and driven, she gives everything for her husband’s art, ploughing her own desires, her time, her money into sustaining them both, even through years of struggle and disappointment.
Lydia Delectorskaya is a young Russian emigree, who fled her homeland following the death of her mother. After a fractured childhood, she is trying to make a place for herself on France’s golden Riviera, amid the artists, film stars and dazzling elite. Eventually she finds employment with the Matisse family. From this point on, their lives are set on a collision course….
Marguerite is Matisse’s eldest daughter. When the life of her family implodes, she must find her own way to make her mark and to navigate divided loyalties.
Based on a true story, Madame Matisse is a stunning novel about drama and betrayal; emotion and sex; glamour and tragedy, all set in the hotbed of the 1930s art movement in France. In art, as in life, this a time when the rules were made to be broken…
Out Thursday 6th March by Doubleday
It’s time we name our kingdom!’ he shouted over the wind. ‘I say we call this place Happy Land. If this ain’t the land of happy people, then where is it? Why not create our heaven right here on earth?’
Nikki Berry hasn’t seen her grandmother Rita in years. When she calls out of the blue asking Nikki to visit her urgently in the hills of North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. Her mother and grandmother have long been estranged, and after years of silence in her family, Nikki is determined to learn the truth while she still can.
But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki the incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who became its queen. It sounds like the makings of a fairy tale – royalty among a community of freed people. But the more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family’s secrets are contained in these hills. Because this land is their legacy, and it will be up to her to protect it before – like so much else – it is stolen away.
Inspired by true events, Happy Land is a transporting multi-generational novel about the stories that shape us and the dazzling courage it takes to dream.
Out on 10th April 2025 from Phoenix
Born of the sun and moon, shaped by fire and malady, comes a young woman whose story has never been told . . .
They call her Sycorax. Seer. Sage. Sorceress.
Outcast by society and all alone in the world, Sycorax must find a way to understand her true nature. But as her powers begin to grow, so too do the suspicions of the local townspeople. For knowledge can be dangerous, and a woman’s knowledge is the most dangerous of all . . . With a great storm brewing on the horizon, Sycorax finds herself in increasing peril – but will her powers save her, or will they spell the end for them all?
A beautifully written and deeply moving imagining of what came before Shakespeare’s The Tempest from the author of A Girl Made of Air.
Out on 27th February from Quercus
In a city built on secrets, who would kill to keep theirs hidden?
The year is 1759, and London is shrouded in a cloak of fear. With the lawmen at the mercy of robbers and highwaymen, it’s a perilous time to work the already dangerous streets of Soho. Lizzie Hardwicke is somewhat protected from the fray at Mrs Farley’s Bawdy House, a reputable brothel. But then a wealthy customer is found brutally murdered… and Lizzie was the last person to see him alive.
The magistrate’s assistant, William Davenport, has no hard evidence against Lizzie, but his presence and questions make life increasingly difficult. Desperate to be rid of him and prove her innocence, Lizzie turns amateur detective, determined to find the true killer, whatever the cost. Yet as the body count rises, Lizzie realises that, just like her, everyone has a secret they will do almost anything to keep buried…
Out on 6th March from Verve
Lexi is looking for no-strings-attached fun with a stranger. She deserves one night for herself, doesn’t she? Zeke is looking for love. But for one night with a woman like Lexi, he’ll break his rules.
Sparks fly at the pub – one passionate kiss leads to another, and they soon end up stumbling home to the marina together. But the next morning, they’re unable to part ways as planned.
The houseboat they stayed on last night has been swept out to sea. How long can Zeke and Lexi survive on a drifting houseboat? Will search and rescue find them? And who will they have become if they both make it back to dry land?
Out on 6th March from Quercus
In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilots Hank Redmond and John Griffin; mission specialist Lydia Danes; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.
Out on 3rd June 2025 from Hutchinson Heinnemann
The Brookes are gathering in their eighteenth-century ancestral home – twenty bedrooms of carved Sussex sandstone – to bury Philip, the head of the family – the blinding sun around which they have all orbited for as long as they can remember.
Frannie, inheritor of a thousand acres of English countryside, has dreams of rewilding and returning the estate to nature: a last line of defence against the coming climate catastrophe. Milo envisages a treetop haven for the super-rich where under the influence of psychedelic drugs a new ruling class will be reborn. Each believes their father has given them his blessing and are set on a collision course with the other.
Isa has long suspected that her father thought only of himself, and only hopes to seek out her childhood love, who still lives on the estate, to discover whether it is her feelings for him thatm are creating the fault lines in her marriage.
And then there is Clara, who arrives in their midst from America, shrouded in secrets and bearing a truth that will fracture all the dreams on which they’ve built their lives.
Out 1st May 2025 from Fig Tree
Alex, Nancy and Eva Fisher. Three grown-up sisters; each wonderful and imperfect in their own individual ways. And loved equally by their parents, Vivienne and Patrick.
Or so they thought.
When a near-disaster strikes during a family party, Patrick inadvertently lets slip that he has a favourite daughter. And while they try to gloss over it, this almost-accident begins the unravelling of everything the sisters thought they knew. As their past is re-examined, secrets and lies are uncovered, and, slowly, the close-knit Fisher clan starts to implode in a way they could never have dreamed possible.
Set over a single week’s holiday, The Favourite is a witty, tender, sharply observed portrait of the highs and lows that shape a family over the decades. A story about rivalries and regret and blame, about memory and identity, and above all, about love – at its messiest and most joyous.
Out on 12th June 2025 from Michael Joseph.
1963: At the stark and isolated modernist mansion of controversial political philosopher Richard Acklehurst, the glittering annual New Year party has not gone quite as planned. Considered a genius by some, and something far darker by others, by the end of the evening Acklehurst will be dead in mysterious circumstances that are never fully explained. And although the popularity of his work waxes and wanes over the coming years, a core of acolytes remains true to his vision.
1999: Richard Acklehurst’s remains are defiled in the country graveyard where they have lain undisturbed for over thirty years, forcing his daughters – Aisling and Stella, teenagers at the time of his death – to return to their childhood home where they must finally confront the complex and dark dynamic at the heart of their family.
Moving from the West of Ireland to Dublin, London, Florence and back, The Glass House is a captivating and compelling tale of two sisters and their secrets, of love, regret and vengeance.
Out on 6th Feb from Corvus.
IN PLACES OF DARKNESS, WOMEN WILL RISE . . .
Iceland, 1910. In the middle of a severe storm two sisters – Freyja and Gudrun – rescue a mysterious, charismatic man from a shipwreck near their remote farm.
Sixty-five years later, a young woman – Sigga – is spending time with her grandmother when they learn a body has been discovered on a mountainside near Reykjavik, perfectly preserved in ice.
Moving between the turn of the 20th century and the 1970s as a dark mystery is unravelled, The Swell is a spellbinding, beautifully atmospheric read, rich in Icelandic myth.
Out on 27th February from Manila Press
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until ― betrayed and brokenhearted ― she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.
In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.
Out on 4th March from Fourth Estate
When fiction is fatal…
Living in exile in Venice, the disgraced Lord Byron revels in the freedoms of the city. But when he is associated with the deaths of local women, found with wounds to their throats, and then a novel called The Vampyre is published under his name, rumours begin to spread that Byron may be the murderer…
As events escalate and tensions rise – and his own life is endangered, as well as those he holds most dear – Byron is forced to play detective, to discover who is really behind these heinous crimes. Meanwhile, the scandals of his own infamous past come back to haunt him…
Rich in gothic atmosphere and drawing on real events and characters from Byron’s life, Dangerous is a riveting, dazzling historical thriller, as decadent, dark and seductive as the poet himself…
Out on 24th April 2025 from Orenda Books
Welcome to the Kennedy household:
Lila wrote a bestseller about keeping your marriage alive, before discovering her ex was playing happy families with another woman. A woman she sees everyday at school pick-up. Bill, her stepdad, moved in after Lila’s mum died. He’s kind, old-fashioned and driving her absolutely nuts. Celie, Lila’s eldest, hates school. Hates it so much she’s stopped going. Her mother’s fine with that – because she doesn’t know yet. Violet is nine and sings age-inappropriate rap songs, laughs at fart jokes and Lila dearly hopes she’ll never, ever change. And Truant the dog, who has just bitten the American actor who’s suddenly landed on the Kennedys’ doorstep.
This is Gene – Lila’s estranged father, and no one’s idea of a role model. He walked out on Lila and her mum years ago – and wherever he goes domestic discord follows. Because Gene’s presence changes things in unexpected ways. Soon the girls discover a kindred spirit in a man always chasing life’s joy. Bill even loosens up. And Lila finds herself, astonishingly, dating. Something is happening to the Kennedy household – but what is it? And will it break, or save, their family?
Out 11th Feb 2025 from Michael Joseph
Ali Dawson and her cold case team investigate crimes so old, they’re frozen – or so their inside joke goes. Most people don’t know that they travel back in time to complete their research.
The latest assignment sees Ali venture back farther than they have dared before: to 1850s London in order to clear the name of Cain Templeton, the eccentric great-grandfather of MP Isaac Templeton. Rumour has it that Cain was part of a sinister group called The Collectors; to become a member, you had to kill a woman…
Fearing for her safety in the middle of a freezing Victorian winter, Ali finds herself stuck in time, unable to make her way back to her life, her beloved colleagues, and her son, Finn, who suddenly finds himself in legal trouble in the present day.
Could the two cases be connected?
Out Feb 13th 2025 from Quercus
They knew they were changing history. They didn’t know they would change each other.
Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.
Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Beatrice, politically-minded daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way – and her own friends – for the first time. Socialite Otto fills her room with extravagant luxuries but fears they won’t be enough to distract her from her memories of the war years. And quiet, clever, Marianne, the daughter of a village vicar, arrives bearing a secret she must hide from everyone – even The Eights – if she is to succeed.
But Oxford’s dreaming spires cast a dark shadow: in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.
Out April 2025 from Fig Tree Publishing
1910. With the disappearance of her mother and the sudden death of her father, Lena instantly loses any security she has within the circus she has known all her life. She is advised to sell the carousel her father cared for like a child and look for a husband, or a job in a factory.
Until flame-haired Violet, known to all in the fairgrounds as ‘the greatest trapeze artist that ever lived’, suggests they go it alone with their own, all-female act. With her outspoken ways and her refusal to marry, Violet is as much an outcast as Lena. What do they have to lose? Recruiting new performers including bareback horse-rider Rosie, on the run from her abusive father, and Carmen whose rainbow ribbons hide the darkness in her past, the four women form an unbreakable bond.
Thrust into a harsh and dangerous world that treats them with suspicion, disdain and even violence, they must forge their own path in search of freedom, security, and love.
Deeply rooted in the Edwardian era, THE SHOW WOMAN is brilliantly realised and expertly interlaces strong female characters, deeply-woven family secrets and heartfelt love stories.
Out on 21st May 2025 from Hodder & Stoughton
Molly the maid is no stranger to secrets…
She sees everything behind closed doors at the Regency Grand hotel: wiping away the dust and grime of guests passing through.
But one secret lies much closer to home. An old trinket – a faux Fabergé egg – is revealed to be a precious antique during an appraisal at the hotel, making Molly a rags-to-riches sensation. But no sooner has the egg shown its value than it’s stolen: vanishing without a trace.
Determined to crack the case of the missing Fabergé, Molly begins dusting for clues – uncovering a mystery that stretches deep into the past.
For in the pages of a long-forgotten diary, written by her late gran, lie the secrets that could unlock all others – and only Molly holds the key…
Out on 25th May 2025 from Harper Collins
Come children, come children from far and near. Come choose your steed, you galloping knights, to enjoy the fun of the carousel . . .
Paris, 1900
Celebrated carousel-maker Gilbert works night and day to finish his masterpiece in time for the city’s Exposition Universelle. But Gilbert is struggling in the wake of his wife and son’s tragic deaths, and as he finalises his creation, a dangerous idea forms in his mind . . .
Chicago, 1920
Maisie Marlowe has come to America in the search of a new life. When she unearths a beautiful, neglected old carousel, she seizes the opportunity to carve a thrilling new destiny for herself. But Maisie doesn’t know that beneath its glittering facade, the carousel is hiding a dark secret. Twenty years ago, it was linked to a number of people inexplicably vanishing into thin air – and now history has begun to repeat itself . . .
Out April 25th 2025 from Michael Joseph
A stunning new novel exploring the lives and secrets of a group of residents of an island in the Thames
Walnut Tree Island is home to artists, dreamers, lovers and heartbreakers. Life is different here: slow, languorous and always communal, with every evening offering a new opportunity to gather at a neighbour’s houseboat over a glass of wine.
But when a former resident reappears after nearly two decades away, the islanders are thrown into a frenzy as they wonder what plans their new landlord has in store for them.
And for Jo, an artist who long ago lost her muse, his return reopens the wounds of a love she thought was gone forever…
Out July 2025 from HQ
Here are a few more great titles to look out for …
It may seem strange that someone with six bookshelves, two cabinets and a pair of book trolleys would ask for books for Christmas. Not to mention the piles lingering around the house – the bought and unread, the proofs I don’t want to keep, a pile for the book exchange, books set aside for friends and family. However, I do always have a ‘handful’ of books on my Christmas wishlist. I read in so many different formats over the year: PDF copies of upcoming books, NetGalley copies, physical proofs and sometimes proper physical books you can throw at a wall. So I often want a finished copy of a book for my shelves, especially if I had a very early e-copy which can arrive up to six months before publication. There are some books where I’d like a special copy such as a special edition or signed copy by a favourite author and I’m a sucker for spredges! I also save coffee table books for Christmas, having a love of fashion Illustration and design can mean I hanker after expensive books on particular designers or fashion periods. Here are the books I’m asking for this year.
Next year is the eighty year anniversary of the Moomin series by Tove Janssen, a series I absolutely adored when I was a child. I still love these stories and their illustrations. Many people talk about Winnie the Pooh for it’s personality types and psychological insight, but it’s all about the Moomins for me. They are not just cutesy little hippos and were way ahead of their time. In this first eightieth anniversary edition of The Moomins and the Great Flood, the Moomins become homeless and are essentially refugees. The characters include Mymble, who is the single mother to Little My, the Hemulen who is a crossing botanist who suffers from anxiety, the Snork Maiden loves Moomintroll but is very conscious of being short and very round (tell me about it). Snufkin, who has always reminded me of my brother, needs freedom to come and go from Moomin House but that doesn’t mean the Moomins aren’t important to him. He always returns, because they never judge his need to go. There’s something about the books we love as children, particularly from that age where you’re first choosing your own books. It may seem odd to collect them now but they have nostalgia factor and I’d love to read them again, knowing what I know. I have to choose between the 80 year anniversary edition and the Folio Society edition which is beautiful. I have my fingers crossed that someone has chosen it from the list.
It’s so pretty. Is it wrong that I want to order it now just in case??
The rest of my Christmas list.
I love books about fashion and there are always a couple floating around the house for people to flick through – a particular favourite being Dogs in Vogue. I enjoy fashion history and illustration as well as specific designers like Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood. This year I’m hoping for a book on Christian Dior – the beautiful film Mrs Harris Goes to Paris really touched me and I want to look at more of his creations. I understood her need to own something beautiful to lift her out of the ordinary. So I’d love to have some photographs of his new look. Other than that I have a book of fashion illustration through history and another of Vogue photography with an art nouveau feel. These will sit happily in my study for me to browse through in quiet moments.
Another special edition I’d love is this one of Suzanne Clarke’s fantasy novel Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell. This is one of my all-time favourite books and I have a dog-eared red paperback that I’ve read and re-read. This is a stunning copy with illustrations that I’m dying to pop in my cabinet while keeping the original for future re-reads. For those of you who haven’t come across this novel or are put off by it’s size, give it a chance. In 18th Century England, magic is no longer practiced and the renowned magician Mr Norrell is hoarding all the books about magic for his library. Only gentlemen should be allowed to study magic. However, new upstart Jonathon Strange is ripping up the rule book and gaining a name for himself very quickly. In his concern Mr Norrell breaks one of his own rules. He is asked by an important politician to perform a spell that’s beyond his capabilities. Desperate not to let him down he consults a fairy who’s able to access ancient magic, but fairies are capricious and don’t always stick to their word. This is a masterpiece of historical and fantasy fiction so it would be wonderful to add this favourite to my bookshelves in a more fitting edition.
Another special edition I’m keen on is the beautiful new hardback edition of Carrie by Stephen King. Im a lifelong fan of his novels and I’m constantly amazed by how prolific he is! I started reading his books in my teens and they have always been borrowed copies or ones I found in charity shops. Carrie is perhaps the only one of his older novels that I haven’t read yet and this copy is absolutely beautiful.
The next books on my wishlist are ones I’ve read this year on NetGalley and absolutely loved. I often buy the books I’ve had early access to because it’s great to have a finished copy and it supports the author. These are some of my NetGalley favourites from 2024 and I recommend every one of them. One Of The Good Guys was a Squad Pod pick for early 2024 and it blew me away. Cole is the perfect husband: a romantic, supportive of his wife, Mel’s career, keen to be a hands-on dad, not a big drinker. A good guy. So when Mel leaves him, he’s floored. She was lucky to be with a man like him. Craving solitude, he accepts a job on the coast and quickly settles into his new life where he meets reclusive artist Lennie. Lennie has made the same move, living in a crumbling cottage on the edge of a nearby cliff. It’s a scary location, but sometimes you have to face your fears. As their relationship develops, two young women go missing while on a walk protesting gendered violence, right by where Cole and Lennie live. Finding themselves at the heart of a police investigation and media frenzy, it soon becomes clear that they don’t know each other very well at all. This is what happens when women have had enough. This book was a breath of fresh air in the genre and very of the moment, asking the question if there are so many good guys out there, why are women so scared?
Another great NetGalley find was Kristin Hannah’s latest novel The Women, focused on women’s roles in the Vietnam War. Twenty -year-old nursing student, Frances “Frankie” McGrath, hears some unexpected words and they are a revelation. Women can be heroes too. Raised on California’s idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different path for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the young men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed America. Frankie will also discover the true value of female friendship and the heartbreak that love can cause. I was engrossed by this book, both the horrors of war and the wonderful love story too. It’s a period of history I know very little about, especially women’s roles in Vietnam so it stayed with me through the year and I’d like to add it to my shelf.
My final NetGalley pick is Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lisa Evans. I have a real thing about stories set in big rambling houses – in fact shouldn’t this be a genre? Anyway, set in 1945, this is the common case of aristocratic families struggling financially in the aftermath of war. Corporal Valentine Vere-Thissett, aged 23, is on his way home to Dimperley. Built in the 1500s, the house is vast and dilapidated, up to its eaves in debt and half-full of fly-blown taxidermy and dependent relatives, the latter clinging to a way of life that has gone forever. The worst part is the death of his heroic older brother meaning Valentine is now Sir Valentine, and is responsible for the whole bloody place. To Valentine, it’s a millstone; to Zena Baxter, who has never really had a home before being evacuated there with her small daughter, it’s a place of wonder and sentiment, somewhere that she can’t bear to leave. But Zena has been living with a secret, and the end of the war means she has to face a reckoning of her own…Funny, sharp and touching, Small Bomb at Dimperley is both a love story and a bittersweet portrait of an era of profound loss, and renewal.
Finally there are the books that have risen to the top of my Amazon wishlist that I haven’t managed to read yet this year. I love Richard Ayoade and I saw him talking on BBC2’s Between the Covers about his fictional quest to rescue Harauld Hughes – the almost mythical mid-century playwright – from obscurity. He first chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. At first startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author’s photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive, and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes’s writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published. Ayoade embarked on a documentary, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, to understand the unfathomable collapse of Hughes’s final film O Bedlam! O Bedlam!, taking us deep inside the most furious British writer since the Boer War. This is the story of the story of that quest. I’m hoping this has all the intelligence and quirks of the man himself.
Another Between the Covers recommendation is The Kellerby Code written by Jonny Sweet, the writer responsible for the brilliant film Wicked Little Letters starring Jessie Buckley and OliviaColeman. As soon as Sarah Cox mentioned toxic friends and Saltburn I knew this one had to go to the top of my wishlist.
He’s found a life worth killing for
Edward is struggling to hold it together. Just about getting by in a world he cannot afford, scurrying after his friends, doing everything he can to prove his value. But not to worry: the attention of his beloved Stanza and the respite he finds in her ancestral home, Kellerby House, provide all the reward he needs. Until he realises that Stanza is in love with his best friend Robert, forcing Edward to re-evaluate what those closest to him are actually worth. No price is too high to stop the life he has strived for slipping from his grip. Especially when he won’t be the one paying.
Over Christmas I’m catching up on Clare Chambers’s previous novel Small Pleasures which inexplicably I haven’t got to yet. Her novel Shy Creatures is on my list and it would be great to take them both on holiday with me over the New Year. In a failed relationship there is a point that passes unnoticed, but can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.
Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with Gil: a charismatic, married doctor. One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen’s home. A thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story. Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.
Fire by John Boyne is another story that hinges on a moment. On the face of it, Freya lives a gilded existence, dancing solely to her own tune. She has all the trappings of wealth and privilege, a responsible job as a surgeon specialising in skin grafts, a beautiful flat in a sought-after development, and a flash car. But it wasn’t always like this. Hers is a life founded on darkness. Did what happened to Freya as a child one fateful summer influence the adult she would become – or was she always destined to be that person? Was she born with cruelty in her heart or did something force it into being? In Fire, John Boyne takes the reader on a chilling, uncomfortable but utterly compelling psychological journey to the epicentre of the human condition, asking the age-old question: nurture – or nature?
In a total change of pace I’m looking forward to reading this small town story with witchy vibes. In Oak Haven, this witch is about to brew up more trouble than she bargained for…
When Scarlett Melrose receives a call from her estranged sisters, she immediately knows something is wrong. The magic at their mother’s inn – and in fact, the whole of Oak Haven – has gone awry, and they need her help to save it. As the conflicted middle-child, returning home has given Scarlett the heebie jeebies. And to make matters worse, she’s just come face-to-face with charming old flame and handyman, Nate. When her spell to fix the magic goes horribly wrong, all Scarlett wants to do is flee back to the peace and quiet of her San Francisco flat. But she can’t keep running away forever, and she’ll need all the help she can to solve this magical mess. With time slipping away, Scarlett must learn that sometimes the greatest spells really do come with the greatest responsibility – especially when love is involved…
Welcome to Rook Hall.
The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed. Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie is one of my literary crushes so her new instalment is definitely on my list. Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town, and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But one theft leads to another, including the disappearance of a valuable Turner from Burton Makepeace, home to Lady Milton and her family.
Once a magnificent country house, Burton Makepeace has now partially been converted into a hotel, hosting Murder Mystery weekends. As paying guests, a vicar, an ex-army officer, impecunious aristocrats, and old friends converge, we are treated a fiendishly clever mystery; one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers. Brilliantly inventive, with all of Atkinson’s signature wit, wordplay and narrative brio, Death at the Sign of the Rook may be Jackson Brodie’s most outrageous and memorable case yet.
I’ve had the next book sitting on my wishlist for a while and I’ve been drawn back to it recently. In January 1986, newly engaged Marnie Driscoll is found dead in her parents’ kitchen. With no witnesses, it seems as though the circumstances of her death will remain a mystery. Six months later, high-flying Detective Inspector Andrew Joyce’s career takes an unexpected detour when he finds himself unwillingly transferred to an obscure department within Greater Manchester Police, known as the Ballroom. The Ballroom team employs unorthodox methods to crack previously unsolved cases, and Joyce, a sceptic by nature, must find a way to work with Peggy Swan, a reclusive ex-socialite with a unique talent: she can communicate with the dead. Joyce soon discovers that Marnie’s death, initially dismissed as an opportunistic act of violence, actually seems to be a carefully orchestrated murder. It will take both Joyce’s skill as an investigator and Peggy’s connection to her new ghostly charge to navigate the web of secrets surrounding the case and bring closure to Marnie’s tragic story before the killer can strike again. This seems like a book I’m going to read in a day because I can’t put it down.
My final choice is fantasy fiction, something I only dabble with here and there, but really enjoy when I do. The Last Hour Between Worlds might just fall into that category. Kembral Thorne is spending a few precious hours away from her newborn, and she’s determined to enjoy herself at the year-turning ball. But when the guests start dropping dead, Kem has no choice but to get to work. She’s a member of the Guild of Hounds, after all, and she can’t help picking up the scent of trouble. Especially when her professional and personal nemesis, notorious cat burglar Rika Nonesuch, is also on the prowl.
At the heart of the mayhem is a mysterious clock that sends the ballroom down into strange and otherworldly new layers of reality every time it chimes. As the party plunges through increasingly dangerous versions of their city, Kem will have to rely on her wits – and Rika – to unravel the mystery before catastrophe is unleashed on their world. There are some beautiful editions around so hopefully there will be spredges to admire.
I hope your reading dreams come true and may all your presents be book shaped.
The Lotus Readers 