Carrolan Ridge is a dying town. Ever since the Lentzer mining company decided to expand into the area everything has changed. Some people fought to keep the community together but as offers went out for homes and land surrounding the area of the new quarries, it was only a matter of time. At first they offered silly money and the people who took it were seen as traitors, then as the money dwindled more people took the hint. Now it’s a ghost town, only a few people left and a constant vibrating hum of mining activity. Ro left a while ago but she’s back for a few days, staying with her estranged husband Griff. He lives in the house they used to own while he works as Lentzer’s fire officer. It’s the annual memorial for their son Sam, who disappeared five years ago at the three houses where people held out as long as possible. The bungalow once belonged to his Uncle Warren, but Ro and Griff have no more idea why Sam was here than they did five years ago. Sam was researching the effect of industry on the town he was born in, interviewing the people who still lived there. He left his hire car half way up the drive and disappeared into thin air. It had been a tough time, Ro’s father was killed by a car and ten days later Griff’s brother Warren committed suicide in the quarry. The family were engulfed in grief and the worry over Sam, who wasn’t found. Ro only left when the medical centre closed. She was the GP for these people, now she’s an infrequent visitor, no longer able to stay in the place where they were a happy family. Griff can’t leave till he finds his son. When daughter Della arrives they’ll follow the same yearly ritual, but as ever Ro and Griff find their feet take them to where their son disappeared. Still looking for clues as to what went wrong.
The author creates such a heavy atmosphere around this small town, driven home by the constant vibrations and the sound of trucks thundering up and down the road. When Ro visits the three houses at the quarry’s edge, a woman is there maintaining the biggest house unable to watch it become derelict. Ro observes it would have been better to demolish them all. There’s constant dust, in the houses, on their cars and in the air. It feels as if the quarry is pressing down on residents and it’s emotionally draining. There’s the claustrophobia that comes from being oppressed and the empty parts of town feel ghostly with Ro hearing a weird clanging noise when she ventures in. The longer people have stayed the worse their lifestyle has become: there’s nothing for children to do; people have to travel for medical help and essentials; the pub only opens once in a while. The author has created an atmosphere where people no longer trust each other. Those who tried to save the town are resentful of those who left early and made good money. Now their houses are worthless and there’s nothing to look forward to, as soon as they can teenagers leave for better prospects. One shrine stands to the old town and that belongs to Bernie, the father of Griff’s friend Noah. It’s a shack that he built with his son and it is full of keepsakes people have brought from places closed down. Even this is rundown and full of dust. It feels like the last gasp of a town on its knees and the repository for all its sadness.
Ro is intelligent, resilient and a survivor. She knew she had to leave in order to live, not to forget Sam but to have a life without reminders at every turn. We can see this happen as she catches up with friends and they gather at the pub. While having a drink Ro slips into nostalgia, remembering their wedding day and dancing in this very bar. I could see why she left as the days passed, the frostiness between leavers and stayers is so evident and everyone wants to remember Sam, which is lovely but Ro almost wants to have him to herself. Everyone grieves in their own way and I could feel the tension building at the memorial which has become a public event and Ro doesn’t enjoy that part of it. Her walk with Griff, along the path where it’s believed Sam must have got into trouble, is much more private. Each of them thinking their own private thoughts and respecting each other’s need for silence. She’s a natural investigator, which possibly comes from her medical training. She looks around with suspicion, knowing that someone must know something. She reads his notebook again, looking for clues in the last interviews he did and noting anything of interest. Sam is a very real character in the book, although he isn’t present. The sunflower seeds Ro finds in the house that he carefully saved for her garden, the respectful way he treated everyone he interviewed and his emotional intelligence shine out. Sam, Darcy and Jacob were always a three, but after Sam has been away at university he realises that he’s changed and they’ve become closer to each other. He’s invested in what happened at Carrolan Ridge but he knows it’s not his future. However, I could see from his research that he’s asking dangerous questions. He may be a gentle interviewer but he’s still asking people to face their choices and question the decisions they’ve made. Some of his subjects might have found that very difficult to do.
I felt like Ro still loved her husband. In fact they have a lot of respect for each other and make quite a formidable team. There is a section about her garden at the house, where she’d grown vegetables in containers and loved pottering at weekends. She can barely go and look at what it’s become and it’s almost become entwined in her mind with the town, something that’s broken and dying; ‘what she wanted didn’t exist anymore, she knew, and the sad, pale husk of it’s memory would only make things worse.” She’s surprised to find it flourishing and full of flowers when she goes to plant her sunflower seeds. It made me quite emotional to think of Griff doing that, almost as if he’s tending the garden since he can’t work on his marriage. Ro needs to have the realisation that just because Griff stayed doesn’t mean he loved Sam more or loved her less, it was just the only choice he could make in his grief. This is a slow burn novel but it needs to be so the author can properly explore the complexities of the town’s relationships, the different perspectives between generations and who, if anyone, wanted to harm Sam. As the pressure built towards the end I was desperate for Sam’s family to find him, and for Ro and Griff to reach an understanding too. Clues start to appear and I couldn’t put the book down till I knew. The story didn’t end how I expected but it was so good to finally have a flashback, to follow Sam on that day and discover what happened. It was a satisfying ending and made absolute sense, even though I hadn’t expected it at all. This is an excellent slow burn thriller in an incredibly atmospheric setting, exactly what I’d expected from this brilliant author.
Out 23rd April 2026 from MacMillan
Meet the Author
Jane Harper is the author of The Dry, winner of various awards including the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, the 2017 Indie Award Book of the Year, the 2017 Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year Award and the CWA Gold Dagger Award for the best crime novel of 2017. Rights have been sold in 27 territories worldwide, and film rights optioned to Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea. Jane worked as a print journalist for thirteen years both in Australia and the UK and lives in Melbourne.
This is a cleverly plotted thriller by the author, designed to grab your attention and keep the questions coming. Imogen has lived with her boyfriend Josh since they were teenagers. She doesn’t have a big family because of a terrible incident in her past, her father was convicted of killing her mother after a Halloween party. With her father in prison, Imogen is lucky to have older sister Alison who put her life on hold to come back and look after Imogen until she went to university. We meet Imogen at a crossroads after a difficult time at work, she’s on indefinite leave from her job as an investigative journalist after a story led her into danger. She’s shocked to receive a phone call from a solicitor who asks her to come into their offices the next day. It would seem that her mother’s old friend Dorothea has died. Imogen remembers Dorothea very fondly after she took them in when her mum left her dad after years of abuse. Dorothea was a rather unconventional woman, an artist who worked with women who’ve suffered domestic violence using art therapy. Imogen has very fond memories of Dorothea’s large Victorian villa, complete with its own wood and studio. Imogen felt safe there, but it is still a shock to learn that this beautiful villa now belongs to her. As Imogen tries to come to terms with this legacy, questions start to form about Dorothea’s intentions. Was her death an accident? Who is the secretive author writing a book about her? What is contained in the underground bunker found in the wood? Imogen thinks all of this has something to do with her past and her investigative brain starts working.
This author knows exactly how to grab a reader and keep you asking questions. She drip feeds the answers by taking us into Dorothea’s past and the reasons she worked with women affected by domestic violence. We go into her own marriage, her meeting with fellow survivors Annette and Rosemary and founding the charity that helped Imogen and her mum. I kept reading, waiting for the flashbacks to that night – the terrible night Imogen and Alison’s mum died. Although with her dad asking to see her from prison, maybe she will have to weigh up different versions of the truth. The author constantly drops little clues and hints such as the items hanging off one of Dorothy’s final sculptures hidden in the bunker. Imogen also finds a piece of expensive cloth torn and caught on a small opening created in the perimeter fence. Is someone watching Imogen or was Dorothea the target? There are also emotional clues in the present with a little red flag popping up around Josh, Imogen’s boyfriend. They’ve been together forever, so it seemed strange that she needed time away from him to process and explore her new home. He also seemed to assume some things, like wanting to take over Dorothea’s office without realising that Imogen is grieving and it’s a space very personal to Dorothea. I didn’t like the sulking and withdrawing when he didn’t get what he wanted. I wondered if the inheritance had made him feel insecure, after all it does belong to Imogen and not him.
The character I enjoyed most was Dorothea who casts a long shadow over the book, despite being dead. I felt like she becomes Imogen’s saviour again, in many different ways. She has been such a creative woman, something I always admire, but also formidable. Learning some of her history makes us realise why she’s so self-reliant. As for Imogen, she didn’t grab me in the same way and I had a really hard time imagining her as an investigative journalist. I had to wonder whether she was a very different character at work and if so, why does she change at home. If we factor in the trauma of observing domestic violence in the home, it could be that the dynamic has conditioned her to avoid conflict and appear subservient. I felt the longer she was in Dorothea’s house the stronger she became and I hoped she was up to making some very hard choices. Her relationship with her sister Alison is interesting, because she had left home before the home environment worsened. When their father was arrested for their mother’s death, Dorothea offered to have Imogen but Alison wanted to keep her close. Was this a sister’s guilt, a need to keep them together, or was there something in Dorothea that Alison didn’t trust? As a result Alison does have a mum’s vibe with Imogen and it’s interesting to see that relationship develop over the course of the book. It’s very hard for Imogen to accept that Alison has visited their father, who still protests his innocence. This could definitely put a wedge between them. What I missed most was the perspective of Imogen’s mum and I would have loved a flashback into how she felt.
I loved the feel of the house and it reminded me so much of a family friend’s house that we visited a lot as children. They had a horse and lots of other animals, so the house wasn’t spotless but they had art, books and so many beautiful things that I think it influenced my love of interiors and weird objects. It also gave me a yearning to learn and understand art and literature. This is what the summer at Dorothea’s does for Immy, it opens her up to ideas and ambitions she might not have had otherwise. I loved how the sisters come together to try and solve the puzzle of Dorothea’s art and how that closeness allows Imogen to confide in her sister about her concerns; how do we tell the difference between caring too much and control? There’s something about them becoming more open with each other that gives Imogen more strength and purpose. I did not expect to go where the author takes us at the end and I think it was a brilliant idea. Anyone in our lives can be controlling and we must trust our good when it tells us something isn’t right. This was a great thriller, full of unusual twists and clues, plus some red herrings. I thoroughly enjoyed delving into the past with Imogen’s story and particularly the strengthening of the sister’s relationship.
Out now from Penguin.
Meet the Author
Claire Douglas is the Sunday Times number one bestselling author of eight stand alone novels: The Sisters (2015), Local Girl Missing (2016), Last Seen Alive (2017), Do Not Disturb (2018), Then She Vanishes (2019) and Just Like The Other Girls (2020). Her seventh, The Couple At No 9 (2021) was an Amazon number one bestseller, a number three Sunday Times bestseller and most recently hit number one on Germany’s Der Spiegel paperback bestsellers chart. The Girls Who Disappeared was a Richard and Judy book club pick for Autumn 2022 and was an instant number one Sunday Times bestseller. Her books have sold over a million copies in the UK and have been published worldwide.
So it turns out that March is the month of mysteries and thrillers, suspense, plot twists and secrets aplenty! These are my favourites from the month and although I haven’t managed full reviews for some of them, these are my favourites. Wishing you all a Happy Easter weekend, hope you get some good reading and relaxation time with some treats. ❤️📚 🐇
St Monans, Fife, Scotland 1790. Two women are forced to publicly repent in church, one for adultery the other for breaching the sabbath. Wealthy housewife, Florrie, and salt serf, Eliza, form a quick and unusual bond over their mutual humiliation. So when Florrie’s husband decides she must accompany him on a trade venture to Iceland, she insists Eliza comes as her maid.
Far from home, isolated and fearful, the two women grow ever closer. Then Florrie’s husband reveals his sinister plan: he will leave her in Iceland, banished for the shame she has cast upon him. Florrie must escape, but when she turns to Eliza for help she realizes nothing is quite as it seems . . .
Based on the true story of the British Empire trying to annex Iceland as a penal colony, this books tells us about subjugation and control of women by husbands, serf owners, and ministers. Kate Foster always has strong female characters and Florrie, Eliza and Hallgerd are no exception. This was a historical thriller, full of suspense and with a few plot twists too. It’s about what happens when women reject the shame men and society say they should feel and embrace their transgressions, using them as a stepping stone to true freedom. My full review is coming up soon.
Twelve years ago, Carrie married Johan on a beach in Thailand. But as the sun set on their perfect day, armed men swarmed the island and her husband was taken, never to be seen again.
Carrie is now happily remarried; a mother of two. The past is firmly behind her – until she stumbles across Johan by accident online. He is alive and well.
As the memories of their passionate relationship flood back, Carrie is compelled to find out what happened on that beach, and why Johan never got in contact.
The man who promised her a lifetime of love is now a mystery she must solve. But are the answers worth risking her marriage, her family, and the life she fought so hard to rebuild?
The truth, it turns out, is more shocking than any lie . . .
I read this novel on my weekend away and became absolutely absorbed in the story, a love story that’s also a mystery. It’s heartbreaking, romantic but also sinister and unsettling. Our main character, Carrie Cole, has been a brilliant surgeon but gave up when she had very premature twins and felt the need to be at home with them. She lives with her husband Robin in an old cottage with a holiday let in the old piggery next door that they let through the Roof app. It’s there that she sees Johan again for the first time since his arrest in Thailand. Her urge to see him is part emotional but also a desperate need to know what happened and how he ended up back home in Sweden when he should still be in prison. I loved how the author played with our expectations of who to trust and whether Carrie should think with her heart or head. She’s safe, she’s happily married, she’s a mother about to return to work so we know the right choice to make. Right? Full review coming later in the month.
Famed children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman has summoned her family and friends to her exquisite manor house on the cliffs. They’re celebrating her birthday – and her latest number one bestseller in her series of books based on a mother fox and her cubs.
But the night before the party, Eleanor receives an email: an email that threatens to expose the lie she’s kept up for over half a century.
Someone knows her secret. Is it her estranged literary agent? Is it her ex-husband, to whom she no longer speaks? Is it the nanny she fired all those years ago, who always did have a knack for storytelling? Or is it one of her three daughters, all of whom have a stake in the publishing empire she has built…
With a TV crew arriving to film a documentary of her life, Eleanor needs to find out who sent the email – and preserve her multimillion-pound career.
But when push comes to shove, and it’s time to tell the truth – will anyone actually believe her?
This was a brilliant thriller from Sarah Vaughan, based around a wealthy and respected children’s author and her birthday party. There’s enough tension in the air already with an event so big, but Eleanor’s three daughters each have secrets, her illustrator has turned up early for a confrontation about her percentage, there’s an odd man hanging around the grounds who approached her grandchildren and dog, plus an old couple who have apparently lost their way from their caravan park into the gardens. Told in the tense two days before the celebrations, we also get flashbacks to key moments in Eleanor’s past that might give us the answers. You’ll absolutely devour this book like I did.
When 18-year-old Christian Shaw is found dead in an Edinburgh park, the city reels – and the shock only deepens when police charge her best friends, Eliza Lawson and Isobel Smyth, with her murder.
As their trial begins and headlines scream for justice, rumours of bullying spiral into something darker: whispers of rituals, obsession, and a teenage pact gone wrong.
But then the girls take the stand – revealing a chilling defence no one saw coming – and the jury must question everything: the motives, the evidence, even their own judgement.
Who’s telling the truth? Who can be trusted? And what really happened to Christian Shaw?
Let the Witch Trial begin . . .
Harriet Tyce’s brain works differently to other people’s! We follow the trial of two teenage girls through the eyes of a juror called Matthew who is a surgeon. He’s everything a good juror should be – reliable, intelligent, rational, objective, pillar of the community – but he seems strangely excited about this trial, having been told several times he could have been excused because of his job. As the trial moves on he seems to deteriorate: he stops wearing a shirt and tie, has a rash that spreads and irritates him, starts to drink and eat junk food. The story of witchcraft and teenage girls is intriguing, but does it constitute murder? Who is the blonde woman that catches Matthew’s eye and seems to follow him to the flat? There are so many layers to this story that your mind will be blown in the final chapters!
Ten years ago, Hope left Somerset with a fatal secret and a broken heart. She has spent a decade in the shadows, living a quiet life of penance to protect the man she once loved – the world-famous author Ambrose Glencourt.
YOUR LIFE IS NOT YOUR OWN.
Then, she opens his latest bestseller. To the world, it’s a brilliant work of fiction. To Hope, it’s a betrayal. Every private moment, every dark truth, and every ‘fatal disaster’ from that summer is laid bare on the page.
YOUR TRUTH IS A LIE.
But Ambrose has changed the ending. In his version of the story, Hope isn’t the victim. She’s the villain.
Now, Hope must step out of the shadows to reclaim her narrative. But in a world of glamorous elites and whispered secrets, who will believe the word of an unreliable woman against the word of a literary icon?
Two narrators. One truth. And a secret worth killing for.
This novel is another triumph for this incredible writer, with so many layers and very timely themes around rich white men and their assumption of their own genius and their right to exploit those around them. Hope is a compelling character whose one summer with Ambrose and his wife Delia sets her life on a different course. To find the events of that summer in a book, prompts her to go to the police and tell her story to detective Nat. Is this the ramblings of a mad, middle aged woman or is something very wrong at Shadowlands, the Glencourt’s mansion. Hall beautifully shows us young love and how a girl who loves books can be manipulated by someone who believes young, naive lower class girls who worship writers are theirs for the taking. I love how Hall weaves in the concept of playing with reality, how we construct stories and who has the right to tell them.
There’s something out there in the darkness. By morning, bones lie in the snow, picked clean.
Zach knows the moods of the mountains – his mother taught him before she was gone. His father and the other men on the ski weekend think they know better though.
Drinking and boasting, they laugh in the face of the icy conditions.
But Zach understands what danger looks like. Can he survive the wilderness, and all the monsters within it?
This is a stunning new novel from Tracy Sierra, whose debut novel NightWatching was one of my favourite books of 2024. This is just as good as that thrilling debut, if not better. Set in one weekend in the mountains, this is no ordinary trip or boy’s own adventure. Everyone who is coming is there to be impressed by Zach’s dad and his latest business venture. Everything has to go right. Everything is told through Zach’s eyes and we can see him slowly lose his innocence as he notices that his dad doesn’t have half the knowledge about the outdoors that his mother had, everyone else can see that all his gear is new, flash and not what a regular skier or hiker would use. Zach can also see they dislike him. Russ is the only other kid on the trip and he knows that these men are going to lead them into danger, simply because they’re selfish and full of bravado. They must get to do exactly what they want and damn the consequences. Tracy Sierra gets inside this little boy’s mind perfectly and I was desperate for him to survive, but with a strange monster on the prowl outside and the terrible weather it’s hard to know what he can do to escape. Unless the real danger is on the inside. This author shows shades of Stephen King and The Shining in this brilliant story, bristling with menace and childhood fears.
Rachel (Rocky) is seemingly living her best life as the irreverent, funny beating heart of her family. Her ageing father is his unique, adorable self; daughter Willa is prone to bouts of existential angst whilst berating the fact that her mother has zero filter; husband Nick is steady, logical, sometimes infuriating.
They are messy, they are flawed, they are completely, ridiculously normal.
And like most normal people, Rocky worries about what might happen next. So when a former classmate of her son Jamie dies in a seemingly random accident, Rocky becomes obsessed.
For if accidents can happen – and they do – is it truly safe to love anyone?
Fresh, honest, laugh out loud funny and genuinely relatable, WRECK follows Rocky and her family through one rollercoaster year as they negotiate the unpredictable and beautiful messiness of life.
I don’t know how Catherine Newman does it, but I feel so at home with Rocky as if she’s a really close friend who you can tell anything to. After Sandwich, we meet the family at home, getting over Grandma’s death and getting back into the swing of life. Rocky’s dad has been living in their outside shed since his wife died and daughter Willa is also at home. Newman lets us live alongside these characters as part of the family and I adore their humour and their warm, chaotic household – not to mention their food always sounds incredible. Rocky is a freelance writer and doesn’t have regular work coming in, so when a young man is killed in his car on the nearby railway crossing she becomes fixated on what happened. If anything Rocky is over empathetic, she can’t stop thinking about how devastated his family must be and trying to work out how it happened. Meanwhile, a strange rash appears on her shoulder and while she’s having a check on sun damage her dermatologist suggests they look into it. This turns out to be a good call as it begins to appear elsewhere on her body. A biopsy of the skin and some bloods should solve the mystery but it becomes a deep rabbit hole with many frightening possibilities.
I am not overstating when I say this book could save my life! As Rocky’s symptoms started to mount I kept reading bits out to my husband and looking up the terms, wondering if somehow the author had magical access to my medical records. I identified so strongly with this story of living while unwell because this has been the last eighteen months of my life. I had two breaks in my spine as a child causing issues with pain and the use of my right arm and shoulder. I was also diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 21. However I have always had a collection of symptoms that didn’t fit with that diagnosis. With increasing arthritis in my lumbar and sacral spine my pain management consultant asked for a full body MRI. I couldn’t have prepared myself for the list of problems that unfolded. Not only did I have arthritis and impingement of peripheral nerves, I also had a narrowed spinal canal in places, potentially causing issues with my spinal cord. However, I also had a lesion in my spine, one in my spleen and several growths on my thyroid. All of these things are being dealt with by separate specialists, but Rocky’s story popped a little light bulb over my head. Surely I had to ask the question – what if all these issues are connected? I’ve already been told it’s likely I have Hashimoto’s disease and it’s being treated, but I’m having biopsies and I’ve asked to see an endocrinologist to flush out whether it’s one of diagnoses that Rocky is facing. I recognised the sudden feeling that your body is falling apart and is even working against you. I’ve felt that terrible fear that there’s a ticking time bomb somewhere in your body and almost becoming divorced from it. I could see that Rocky felt better when she did something physical such as going to a dance group or plunging into an icy lake, because her body works for her and becomes part of her again.
This author knows how it feels to be going through all the volatile changes of menopause, while simultaneously supporting young adult or teenage children and elderly parents. It’s a hell of a balancing act while getting used to a body that puts on weight where it never has before, thins all the things you want to be lustrous and thick and thickens all the bits that used to be slender. She captures what it’s like to feel invisible to most of the world, but the absolute beating heart of the home. The generation gap is also brilliantly portrayed when Rocky and Willa try to take grandad to a juice bar, his grumpiness giving the perfect edge this warm and nurturing family. While Rocky’s husband is like a little moon, constantly orbiting his wife and tending to those little things like cheesy nachos in bed. It’s interesting when this very liberal family have to cope with family members whose views are not like their own. Jamie and his wife Maya visit from New York for Thanksgiving and it’s clear their values are different, especially when Rocky makes a discovery about her son. He works for a company that consults for businesses, finding ways to make them more profitable and openly says to his mum that he just loves money. Even though she doesn’t agree, Rocky is never happier than when all her children are under her roof.
‘“Yayy, I say. All the kids back under my roof! When I send out my ESP stealth probe in the night to check on everybody, they’ll be in their proper beds”.
Mostly I love the emotion and atmosphere of this author’s novels. I live for a messy pile of books by the couch, usually with a pint mug of tea within reach and the dog and cats all quietly snoozing in their own places. That’s exactly what this family has, an untidy but welcoming house with cats everywhere and always gorgeous food on the go. It feels very conscious of the seasons too as summer turns to autumn and winter, with festivals like Halloween playing their part – I loved the moment when Rocky tries to do the trick or treat routine on the porch not realising the young woman is Willa’s date. Every festival is marked with excellent food, followed by a long tramp through the nearby woods and foraging for things. I always want to be part of their world and feel like I’ve lived with them for a while once the story ends. As my story continues I’m going to take a bit of Rocky’s dermatologist’s wisdom with me. When he gives his diagnosis Rocky is taken aback and he acknowledges her feelings but tempers it with some advice:
“Yikes, I said, and he said, ‘a little bit of yikes. You can visit with the fear but don’t hire a van and move there.”
Out Now from Doubleday
Meet the Author
Catherine Newman is the New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich and We All Want Impossible Things, which was also chosen for the Richard & Judy Book Club. She is also the author of the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, and the bestselling children’s book How to be a Person. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, Cup of Jo, and many other publications. She writes the Substack newsletter Crone Sandwich and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her family.
On a cold night in a remote Irish village, a girl goes missing.
Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river.
In a place like this, her death isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line.
This was a new series to me, but having read some of Tana French’s earlier novels such as In The Woods I knew it would be something I’d enjoy. I love her writing and here it is such a beautiful balancing act. This is a slow burn novel that’s beautifully atmospheric and manages to convey both moments of high humour and menacing evil. The small village of Ardnakelty is a quagmire. It’s described as gloomy, misty and wet most of the time. There’s something about the weather that’s oppressive and any walk outdoors is liable to leave you muddy and wet. It seems like a harmless place, but it’s full of pitfalls and weeds that can drag you under. The emotional quagmire is impossible to avoid if we look at it through Lena’s eyes. It is so remote, but anyone like Cal thinking they’ve come here for quiet and to avoid other people is in for a shock. He already has Trey, a teenage girl from a difficult family who is like an adopted daughter to him. How much more tied to this place might he become? Villages like this have one shop and one pub and everyone frequents them so eventually there’s a passing acquaintance with everyone. This is a place where neighbours are more like family. They’ve known each other forever, and their mothers knew your mother too. This could be seen as a bonus, but the author depicts it as spider’s web that once you’re stuck it’s impossible to escape. The only question is, who is the spider?
“The cloud is high tonight, letting through a haze of moonlight here and there so that streaks of fields rise ghostly out of the darkness and the air has an icy bite that burrows to the bone.”
The plot reveals itself slowly and once Cal and Trey find the body of local teenager Rachel in the river, the tension starts to build in this small community, until it’s pushed to breaking point. It made me feel angry and utterly powerless in parts. Rachel had been going out with Eugene Moynihan for years and it was apparently Eugene she had been out to meet on that night. Was this a tragic accident or is something more insidious going on? Rachel’s family are devastated and Lena is shocked to find out she was the last person to see her that night. The village gossip is in overdrive with different theories, but the narrative that seems to be emerging is that Rachel might have committed suicide. Cal doesn’t think so, but most people daren’t think anything different. The Moynihans are a big deal in Ardnakelty, living in a huge house with all mod cons and Eugene’s dad Tommy has a finger in every lucrative pie. Cal is told no one is going up against the Moynihans, because Tommy has all the right friends in very high up places. There was part of me that could see this story as an allegory for what’s happening in the world – a money-hungry bully, who is always looking for the next chance and has such a hold over people he could get away with almost anything.
Underneath this main mystery is the narrative of Cal and Lena’s relationship, in fact very early on we get a conversation about their wedding. Despite being engaged, Cal and Lena are still in two separate houses and have made no wedding plans. This suits them, but Lena’s sister Noreen who runs the shop is forever warning them. If they don’t book something round here they’ll lose the only venue. There’s Cal’s worries about Trey who is hoping to gain an apprenticeship as a joiner, has exams to get through and trouble at home where the landlord seems to want them out of their house. All of these things weave in and out of each other, seemingly unconnected but as with everything here patterns and connection exist under the surface. Tommy and Eugene pay Cal a visit, as an outsider maybe he’s the best person to investigate this? Cal refuses but is left with the feeling that will count against him. If he’s to ask any questions he’d rather do it alone, with no one controlling the narrative. What he doesn’t know is that Lena is already asking questions and because she’s from this place she knows who to ask. It’s clear sides are forming, even in the way people arrange themselves at the wake. Cal is with Trey but also his neighbour Mart, the only locals he feels any allegiance to. While Lena is drawn to a women’s table, containing everyone she went to school with and usually avoids. She doesn’t want to join sides, but with Cal increasingly pulled into Mart’s group she knows there’ll be pressure from the Moynihans. Maybe there’s a positive to being part of Ardnakelty, but she can’t see it as yet.
I loved the build up of tension in this small village and the wonderful way the author balances that with humour. There’s a scene with Mart and a squirrel that’s comedy gold and made me laugh out loud then read it to my husband. Mostly it’s the juxtaposition of things; a gang of masked men is menacing, but has a more comical touch when some are Wolverine and other varied superheroes. As the situation escalated I felt angry and powerless to stop what was happening. It wasn’t so much the brawls, it was the quiet threats and controlling nature of what was happening, particularly to the women involved. Tommy Moynihan made my skin crawl but so did Noreen’s mother-in-law Mrs Duggan, the perfect example of someone who appears powerless but actually controls the household and watches the to and fro of the village from her armchair. This fight could knit Cal, Lena and Trey into this place’s history. They could commit to being lifelong Ardnakelty people but if they are, they must find out what’s behind Rachel’s death and end Tommy’s dominance over the place. I became so drawn into this world that I was genuinely upset by the loss and how far apart Lena and Cal become. I loved that he didn’t crowd her and gave her the space to be her own person. I also loved the way he parented Trey and responded to her new relationship. This is an intricate and carefully balanced thriller that’s perfectly grounded in its rural Irish setting. Cal learns that the villager’s allegiance to their land runs deep and they are willing to put absolutely everything on the line for it, even their lives;
“Their tie to their land is different, not in its intensity but in its nature: rooted thousands of years deep, through strata of dispossession, famine, bloody rebellion. This land has been reclaimed and that changes things.”
Out 2nd April from Penguin
Tana French is the author of In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and The Trespasser. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family.
Hello all. Welcome to my February favourite reads. It’s been a busy reading month and thankfully I’ve been feeling less foggy and able to read a lot more. I’ve also found more balance in my reading so I’ve been able to read by choice a lot more too. These are the best ones I’ve read this month, a couple still have full reviews outstanding but I’ll tell you a little bit about why I enjoyed them so much.
This beautiful Pride and Prejudice inspired book is an absolute dream to read and felt like being back with old friends. I had always felt that Elizabeth Bennett underestimated her friend Charlotte Lucas and clearly she was a character whose possibilities played on author and comedian Rachel Parris’s mind too. Taken from the point Lizzie rejects Mr Collins’s proposal, the book takes in events from the rest of Austen’s romance and carries on beyond giving us glimpses into events we don’t get to see, such as the Darcy wedding at Pemberley. It’s told from Charlotte’s perspective but with letters from other characters and glimpses into Mr Collins’s past. These give us an insight into his manner and behaviour, while the letters give us a new slant on other characters too. I felt that Charlotte was pragmatic in her choice of husband and found ways to grow within it – sometimes in spite of Mr Collins and other times because of him, rather surprisingly. She has purpose, status and time to educate herself. Even Mr Collins has to admit she has blossomed, but when a spark is lit with a visitor to Rosings will Charlotte pursue the one thing she doesn’t have – romantic love and passion? I loved this and I’m sure many of you will too. It is pitch perfect, funny, sad and incredibly entertaining.
I have raved about Tracy Whitwell’s series following the adventures of Tanzy, actor and reluctant medium. This is the fifth and final instalment so I wanted to savour it. After her eventful trip to Iceland Tanz is back on home soil and soon makes her way back to her childhood home of Newcastle. Both she and her ‘little mam’ have been experiencing dreams about hangings, in Tanz’s case very alarming ones where she has a bag over her head and a noose round her neck. Her visions are powerful and are accompanied by sudden and torrential storms. Knowing she needs some help here, she asks Sheila to come and join her. They’re soon at the very spot where a travelling witch finder condemned several women to death by hanging. Even more alarming than usual, he seems to be able to see Tanz too, coming at her with his ‘pricker’ – the implement he uses to prod his prisoners to see if they bleed. This is toxic masculinity 17th Century style and Tanz is going to know her new Icelandic guides and all her power to defeat it. There’s the usual eccentric characters, including an Amazon woman dressed ‘like a Valkyrie’ who is also researching local history of witches and a ghostly lady called Mags who is full of mischief when it comes to putting men in their place. This is genuinely scary in parts and is based on historical research of the area. It was great to see Tanz back home again and with a case to solve, a love story to wrap up and a surprise that might determine her future, it’s a great finale to this funny and fierce series.
I’ve been able to catch up on some reading this month and I’ve been dying to get to the latest Kate Sawyer. She is now one of my ‘must buy’ authors and this novel just confirms her status on my shelves. Using the structure of family holidays, this book follows four generations of one family and the secrets they carry. Starting post-war with Betty who is at the seaside with her little girl Margaret and husband Jim, but Margaret doesn’t know the secret romance her mother had with the son of a local factory owner. Jim was a pragmatic choice and he’s a good husband despite the facial injuries and terrible memories he carries. Jim is doing well in his job and a few years later they visit the beach with his American colleagues and a teenage Margaret. There something happens that changes the course of this family. The author takes us through the 20th Century, showing how the changing world shapes the experiences of this family. From a beach on the east coast of England, we see holidays in Cornwall, then abroad as Maggie embraces the opportunities of a her husband’s job as a travelling buyer, and when her brother Tommy invests in and up and coming area of Europe. We see howchangesinlaw and culture make some relationships and break others. The womenin this novel are exceptionally well-written and the issues they face from infidelity, domestic violence, infertility and the consequences of a more permissive society opening the door for a more open generation than the one before. Throughout, this is a family that tries its hardest to stay together, even when some members are on the other side of the world. I love complex relationship dynamics so this was an absolute joy to read.
This incredible debut by Rachel Canwell deserves all the praise it’s receiving online. In fact she had a books signing at my local bookshop in Lincoln and had sold out within an hour! Her book is set in the south of Lincolnshire, in the fens and a family who live on the banks of the River Nene at Sutton Bridge. The new swing bridge allows them to visit the village and on the opposite bank a port is being built. Next to their home is a small hospital, readied by their father to serve port workers when everything is finished. One dark and disorienting night the family are woken by a rumbling sound and the splash of things hitting the water, but it’s only in the morning that the full devastation can be seen. The bank has collapsed underneath the new port, the family has lost their occupation and one of its sons, who drowned trying to rescue workers. We meet the three women who tell our story in the 1910s, Eleanor and her sister Lily are the last family members living in the house adjacent to the hospital – still empty and unused. Eleanor has fallen in love with John, the local blacksmith but can’t make plans because of her sister Lily. Lily will not leave the family house, in fact she rarely leaves her bedroom. The loss of her twin brother in the port disaster still affects her daily and she will not allow Eleanor to leave her alone in the house. Eleanor’s best friend Clara is married to their older brother Frank and they live in the village with their children. Clara is married to a bully and she sees one in Lily, who passive aggressively controls her sister. War is looming and as a prisoner of war camp is suggested for the old port site tensions within the community rise. With grief joining domestic violence, manipulation and alcohol issues this family is set for an explosive reckoning. I became so attached to these women and their family’s tragic history that I read it so quickly. I will go back and read it again though. Every element – character, setting, plot – is beautifully done and the historical background took me back to a time when my own grandparents would have been working the land and living next to the River Trent further North in the county. This is an excellent debut that had me absorbed completely.
This was an unexpectedly great crime novel set around an auction rooms in Glasgow, a venue where criminal elements mix with rich collectors and eccentric dealers. Rilke is pulled into a difficult situation after his friend Les finishes his prison sentence. When one of the Bowery Auctions regulars, the creepy and questionable Manderson, is killed on the premises it’s only 24 hours till their next auction. In fact Manderson has been stabbed in the eye with one of the antique hat pins they had out for the viewing afternoon. An Edwardian amethyst pin would have had to make its way through a huge hat and into a woman’s long, piled up hair, to keep it secure. Now it’s made its way through Manderson’s eye into his brain and it’s going to take a lot of strength to remove it. Knowing the police will be involved and that Bowery’s will be implicated, perhaps it would be better if it wasn’t obvious that he’s been killed with one of their auction lots. Things get worse when a gangster turns up at Bowery Auctions with Rilke’s mate Les in tow. Ray has a way with a razor and he focuses Rilke with a swipe to Les’s face. Rilke must now investigate who killed Manderson in just ten days or Les will pay the consequences. His investigations will take him to an old school where many ex-pupils have reported sexual abuse, to a brothel named after a questionable film and a girl called Chloe who may or may not be controlled by her boyfriend, Dickie Bird. Will he find the answers that will save Les? More to the point, are the answers to be found outside Glasgow or a lot closer to home? Glasgow is a city that doesn’t hide its darker quarters or episodes in its history and we see them here from pubs to brothels and a particularly creepy old school. The author brings in modern concerns around women using Only Fans and other internet sex work to make ends meet. Can it ever be a feminist thing? There are also issues around coercive control and manipulation, but as Rilke learns it’s easy to get the wrong end of the stick. There’s a familiar jaded feeling around these issues and a knowledge that no matter what’s brought to light, some people will always get away with it. This is a gritty thriller with a streak of humour and some fantastic characters. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.
Finally this month I’m recommending this brilliant thriller from Tana French, the third in a series featuring ex- Chicago cop Cal and his new life in the small Irish village of Ardnakelty. This is such an atmospheric read that manages to feel isolated, but suffocating at the same time. Cal and his fiancée Lena, who was born here, try to keep out of any local gossip or feuding. However, when young teenager Rachel goes missing one night in a storm both Cal and his woodworking protoge Trey go looking for her. She’s found in the river, after setting out to meet her boyfriend Eugene Moynihan at the bridge. She appears to have drowned but Eugene claims not to have made the arrangement to meet in such terrible weather and when the autopsy comes back it reports that Rachel had swallowed anti-freeze. Is this an accident or suicide. Cal and Lena suspect foul play and with Lena being the last person to see Rachel, staying out of this might not be possible. When Cal appears to side with his neighbour Mart against the Moynihan family tensions rise and Tommy Moynihan, family patriarch, starts to show just how much of Ardnakelty he holds in his power. This is a complex mystery, with risky allegiances and terrible consequences. The Irish dialogue is so beautifully written and there are moments of laugh out loud humour to dispel the tension. This was an incredibly good thriller with plenty of twists and a fascinating central character too.
Charlotte Lucas has never been a romantic. Practical to a fault, she accepted Mr Collins’s proposal with clear eyes and a steady heart, trading passion for security. Life at Hunsford Parsonage may be quiet and predictable, but it is hers to manage – and she’s determined to make the best of it, whatever Elizabeth Bennet may think.
That is, until an unexpected guest at Rosings Park turns Charlotte’s careful world on its head. He sees her, challenges her – and a spark is lit. But true contentment is not only about who you choose to love, but who you choose to be. For the first time, she wonders: has playing by the rules kept her on the sidelines of her own life?
It is a truth, universally acknowledged that a sick woman in bad humour will be revived in the company of a witty novel…
This is the Pride and Prejudice inspired novel I’ve been waiting for and it came at the perfect time, when I’ve been feeling very unwell and was stuck in bed. I read for two days between sleeping and I swear it kept me sane. I always felt that Lizzie Bennett underestimated her friend Charlotte and I wondered what happened to her and Mr Collins in the future. It’s a great reminder that we only see a novel’s events through the gaze of our narrator and central character. The same events, viewed from a different perspective, bring a more balanced and multi-faceted view of what happened in the novel and its characters. The events of Parris’s novel take place during and after Pride and Prejudice, from the point that Lizzie rejects Mr Collins proposal. A decision that pleases her father but sends her mother into conniptions! Lizzie’s choice means that once Mr Bennett dies, Mrs Bennett and all of her daughters are at the mercy of Mr Collins, the male heir. Whoever he chooses to marry will become mistress of the Bennett’s home Longbourne. Charlotte Lucas is our focus, Lizzie’s best friend and now the recipient of Mr Collins’s attentions. The author has added inserts from the past, adding depth and insight to both Charlotte and Mr Collins’s characters as adults. We see events that we have only imagined, like the Darcy’s wedding at Pemberley and its ensuing drama. However we also see Charlotte settle into the everyday of married life, with all its strangeness and frustrations. I left Pride and Prejudice a little worried about Charlotte, even though the way she does talk about life at the parsonage with humour and optimism when Lizzie visits. So this story of her growing relationships, her new home and her dissatisfactions with her new life is so welcome. What she misses most is passion, but if it arose would she be able to resist it?
Charlotte is viewed with pity by the Bennetts, apart from Mrs Bennett who is wailing that she will be the mistress of their beloved home. I felt like Charlotte knows her prospects are few. She’s witty and fun, but she knows she doesn’t have the charm and looks of Lizzie. She is someone who people get to know slowly and hasn’t reached her full potential yet. Mr Collins was always a pragmatic choice, but here I could also see it as a mature and confident choice. The Bennetts may see Mr Collins as ridiculous and in some ways he is, but Charlotte doesn’t see her worth as solely defined by the man she chooses to marry. He may be thought of as silly, but that doesn’t mean she is. Also, as Mrs Collins she has a beautiful home and garden, a steady income and a benefactor in Lady Catherine de Bourgh. As a married woman she has status and purpose, going out to visit sick parishioners and keeping the home running smoothly. While Mr Collins is busy Charlotte spends her hours in her library continuing to educate herself, she tends her garden and she practises her piano at Rosings. Charlotte is able to be happy and content in her own company, separate from Mr Collins’s anxieties and emotions. In this light we also see Lizzie differently, perhaps even as a little spoiled. As we see in this book, Mr and Mrs Bennett are the architects of their daughter’s misfortunes and their attitudes are clear in two crucial letters they send to the parsonage. Darcy’s assessment of the family, unwisely passed on to Lizzie during his first proposal, is absolutely correct. Mr and Mrs Bennett’s leniency with their younger daughter’s behaviour allows a window for Mr Wickham to connect with the foolish Lydia. It’s their behaviour that prompts both Darcy and Caroline Bingley to warn Mr Bingley away from his attachment to Jane. In letters to both Charlotte and Mrs Collins, the Bennett parents show they are both fierce in the defence of their daughters but spiteful towards the recipients. Mr Bennett calls Lydia unwise, but at least not judgmental – a criticism that Mr Collins perhaps deserves. However, in a letter to Charlotte Mrs Bennett shows awful spite in an unnecessary postscript:
“I saw your Maria this week at church and she is become such a beauty! What a pleasant girl – always with a smile and a manner that puts one at ease. You would not think you were sisters.”
However, I did come away with some forgiveness for Mrs Bennett’s view that Lizzie might have thought of her mother and sisters when she refused Mr Collins, because now they would surely lose their home. It’s clear that Mr Bennett has little respect for his wife and for good reason on some occasions. However, he does favour Lizzie and perhaps his treatment of her has led to Lizzie thinking she has better prospects than she does. Luckily fate brings her Darcy but I did understand Charlotte for thinking that luck just seems to fall into her friend’s lap.
I felt like Charlotte blossomed in her new environment and that sometimes it is because of Mr Collins not despite him. If nothing else he shows kindness and understanding. The vignettes of his childhood show a sad history that goes some way to understanding his character better. However, it is a connection that she never expected that seems to bring out a new side to Charlotte. An unexpected visitor to Rosings Park brings her friendship and an affinity she never expected, not to mention a passionate spark. I loved the point in the novel when Mr Collins has both a revelation about his wife and is genuinely awe inspired by her. As she plays a piece on the piano for a gathering at Rosings, Mr Collins sees his wife anew:
“This poised assertive woman was a vision, undaunted by entertaining a room of high-born people in a house such as this with the talent he had no idea she possessed […] she was splendid and her splendour shook the foundation of his peace of mind. Whereas another man might have felt only pride in his wife, for Collins, this feeling was mixed with something much more disquieting. She is beyond me: what he felt was I will not be able to keep her.”
This is a worry born of never being enough for his father, who tried to change him by whatever means necessary. I felt the author didn’t excuse all of his failings, but explained what was behind them. The narrative voice is so incredibly good that this didn’t feel like a stranger telling me about these characters I knew very well. It felt like a continuation; a meeting with old friends. Of course the author does bring some of our modern thinking to the story, otherwise we wouldn’t be hearing about Mr Collins’s childhood – a psychological aspect to character we wouldn’t perhaps expect in a book pre-Freud. I won’t touch on Charlotte’s eventual fate but I will say that Mr Collins definitely has a part in it. Maybe not in the most romantic sense, but sometimes there’s a kind of love in duty and honour. I love Rachel Parris’s humour and there’s plenty of that here, with the tone and the wit feeling positively Austen-esque. I could tell by how well each character was drawn that the author loved her books and wanted to do them justice. I think she has.
Meet the Author
Rachel Parris is a BAFTA-nominated comedian, musician, actor and improvisor, best known for her viral segments on The Mash Report and Late Night Mash, which have garnered over 100 million views. Her TV appearances include Live at the Apollo, Would I Lie to You?, QI and Mock the Week, and she is a regular guest on Radio 4’s The Now Show and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. She co-hosts the popular podcast How Was It for You? with her husband Marcus Brigstocke. Rachel also wrote and presented a Jane Austen comedy programme, Austensibly Feminist, about how to view Jane Austen as modern feminists. Rachel is a founding member of the critically acclaimed improv comedy group Austentatious, in which the all-star cast invent a play based on a title suggestion from the audience. As a touring comedian she has performed her award-winning musical comedy to sell-out audiences across the UK.
Like many English Literature students, Jane Eyre remains one of my favourite books and it has inspired writers ever since its publication in 1847. I first read it at ten years old and for me it was a romantic ghost story, read alongside the 1980s BBC series. As one of my first reads at university I could see how the novel contained aspects of everything I needed to learn on my 19th Century module: class, colonialism, morality, gender, work, women and much more. It also defies genre, with the potential to be classified as a mystery, romance, gothic fiction, Bildungsroman and historical fiction. I think this is what helps the novel endure. Its flexibility allows it to appeal to different generations for very different reasons. Each of this authors were inspired to use those multiple themes to shape a novel around Charlotte Brontẽ’s work.
My reading of the novel has definitely changed over the years. University opened up the novel for me as much more than the ghost story I’d enjoyed as a child. It brought colonialism into my mind for the first time, feminism and autonomy. It made me think more about the role of governess as a liminal figure in the household – she is an employee but doesn’t sleep or eat where the domestic staff do, she is unmarried and independent, earning her own money and making her own choices about it. I think it’s easy for a reader to identify with Jane, whether it’s the bullied and child trying to read behind the curtain or terrified by the Red Room. The girl scapegoated at school as ‘too passionate’ and a little bit defiant too. The young woman falling in love with an older man who isn’t what he seems, making decisions about whether to be in the role of mistress. All of these aspects are ripe for fictional updates and retellings. Bringing the book bang up to date there are aspects of manipulation and coercive control in Rochester’s use of Blanche Ingram and dressing up as a fortune teller to influence Jane’s thoughts. We can look at femininity through Bertha Mason, the madwoman in the attic and the comparison of Jane as everything she supposedly isn’t – modest, compliant, emotionally stable and moral. This is especially important in light of public figures like the Tate brothers who want to control how women behave and denigrate those who don’t fit their ideal. The nanny or governess has become a staple of modern thrillers because of their intimacy with the family they work for, often living in close quarters and becoming close emotionally. That is the book’s enduring appeal, that we can always look at it through the lens of today and find something new. One of my specific interests in the novel is mental health and who is in control of what constitutes instability. I’m also interested in the disability aspect of the novel and what it is about Rochester’s disabilities towards the end of the novel that brings some equality between him and Jane. Here I’ve gathered just a few of the novels that are inspired by the novel in very different ways.
Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel’s heroine. Rhys shows us why Antoinette isn’t just the antithesis of the quiet and composed Jane Eyre. Her work evokes thoughts around female sexuality and whether sexual enjoyment or the woman’s initiation of sexual activity is what Rochester rejects in his wife. Is it really the history of madness in her family or is it the ‘Creole’ aspect of Antoinette’s heritage? Is she insane or furious about his rejection, withdrawal from and later imprisonment of her that aroused violent tendencies? This is a classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature and is Jean Rhys’s brief, but beautiful masterpiece.
Jean Rhys (1894-1979) was born in Dominica. Coming to England aged 16, she drifted into various jobs before moving to Paris, where she began writing and was ‘discovered’ by Ford Madox Ford. Her novels, often portraying women as underdogs out to exploit their sexualities, were ahead of their time and only modestly successful. From 1939 (when Good Morning, Midnight was written) onwards she lived reclusively, and was largely forgotten when she made a sensational comeback with her account of Jane Eyre’s Bertha Rochester, Wide Sargasso Sea, in 1966.
He did not belong to me at all, he belonged to Rebecca. . .
Everyone knows that Maxim de Winter was obsessed with his glamorous wife – and devastated by her tragic death. So when he proposes to a shy, anxious young woman after a whirlwind meeting in the South of France, no one is more surprised than the new bride herself. But when they reach Manderley, his beautiful, isolated Cornish mansion, the second Mrs de Winter begins to realise that every inch of her new home – and everyone in it – still belongs to Rebecca.
Daphne du Maurier’s thriller has Jane Eyre in it’s DNA, especially when it comes to it’s heroines: the dark and delicious vamp Rebecca who we never see and the quiet, awkward and compliant second wife who is never named. Here though, instead of a housekeeper, we get the gothic masterpiece that is Mrs Danvers, once Rebecca’s maid and now the housekeeper of Maxim de Winter’s stately home on the Cornish coast, Manderley. Maxim has chosen this new, much younger and adoring wife without any thought as to whether she has the knowledge or the qualities to run a great house. She doesn’t even have the confidence to ‘leave it all to Danny‘ as he tells her. He has the detachment of the upper classes who are so privileged they don’t care if they’re rude, ignorant or leave the staff to pick up after them. His new wife however can’t give orders and ends up trying to fit into the routine of her predecessor only to be reminded of her at every turn. Here, the madwoman is in the attic of the mind, ever present and even more intimidating in the imagination. There is also the creepy Mrs Danvers, slowly pressuring the new bride, showing her deficiencies as a mistress to Manderley and hinting at the sexual chemistry between Rebecca and Maxim. This is an incredible update of the classic, bringing in psychological aspects from the age of Freud and an addictive suspense that culminates in that bright glow of fire in the Cornish dawn.
It is 1957. As Daphne du Maurier wanders alone through her remote mansion on the Cornish coast, she is haunted by thoughts of her failing marriage and the legendary heroine of her most famous novel, Rebecca, who now seems close at hand.Seeking distraction, she becomes fascinated by Branwell, the reprobate brother of the Brontë sisters, and begins a correspondence with the enigmatic scholar Alex Symington in which truth and fiction combine.
Meanwhile, in present day London, a lonely young woman struggles with her thesis on du Maurier and the Brontës and finds herself retreating from her distant husband into a fifty-year-old literary mystery. This is a subtle update of the themes of Jane Eyre in a time when a second wife isn’t an unusual and dealing with issues like blended families and the presence of ex-wives is an everyday occurrence. However, we have the clear Jane Eyre figure still in our PhD student, quiet and unassuming but psychologically dependent on her husband who still holds a fascination for the more colourful and bohemian poetess who was his first wife. It also delves beautifully into the psychology of Daphne Du Maurier, who sealed her journals for fifty years after her death. We now know she suffered mental abuse from her father, an actor whose fascination with younger actresses derailed his marriage and perhaps provides the blueprint for the older romantic figure of Max de Winter, an updated version of Edward Rochester. There is an incredible amount of research in this book that even goes back to the Brontë’s and the psychological genesis of their writing. The more you know about them and Daphne du Maurier, the more you will enjoy this one.
1852. When Margaret Lennox, a young widow, is offered a position as governess at Hartwood Hall, she quickly accepts, hoping this isolated country house will allow her to leave the past behind. But she soon feels there’s something odd about Hartwood: strange figures in the dark, tensions between servants and a wing of the house no one uses.
Why do the locals eye her employer, widowed Mrs Evesham, with suspicion? What is hidden in the abandoned East Wing? Who are the strangers coming and going under darkness? Hartwood Hall conceals mysteries, perhaps even danger. Margaret is certain that everyone here has something to hide, and as her own past threatens to catch up with her, she must learn to trust her instincts before it’s too late?
This is a brilliant example of the ‘gothic governess’ novel as I like to call them and brings an elements of modern preoccupations like gender and sexuality to the 19th Century novel. It begins with a du Maurier style opening of a winding drive and a forbidding house that local people like to avoid. When her charge is ill, Margaret is disturbed that locals won’t come near the hall and is more puzzled by the sudden presence of Miss Davis, a nurse who turns up at the house after hearing a child was unwell at the hall. After experiencing lights in a forbidden part of the house and seeing the unease Mrs Evesham has about people knowing their business, Margaret knows there’s a mystery here but is unsure exactly what it is. Because it’s a mystery I can’t say more, but I loved how this story unfolds and what it means for the women involved.
1867. On a dark and chilling night Eliza Caine arrives in Norfolk to take up her position as governess at Gaudlin Hall. As she makes her way across the station platform, a pair of invisible hands push her from behind into the path of an approaching train. She is only saved by the vigilance of a passing doctor.
It is the start of a journey into a world of abandoned children, unexplained occurrences and terrifying experiences which Eliza will have to overcome if she is to survive the secrets that lie within Gaudlin’s walls. This is such a gothic novel that it could almost be a parody but what saves it is Eliza herself, arguably a rather more modern governess than we would expect in 1867. curiosity, her determination and her rational analysis of her situation. Eliza is no hysterical heroine of a sensitive disposition, and her self-awareness is not just important to her handling of the mystery that surrounds Gaudlin, but also entertaining. Her independence, dry wit and forward-thinking views on certain social issues, if not necessarily likely for a woman living in the 1860s, elevate her above the average Victorian Gothic female protagonist, and her innate kindness is also an endearing counterpoint to her impressive courage. The children are also much more than the standard creepy kids of many a horror story, and the different ways in which they each deal with the challenges of their situation are fascinating and credible.
In a modern and twisty retelling of Jane Eyre, a young woman must question everything she thinks she knows about love, loyalty, and murder.
Jane has lost everything: job, mother, relationship, even her home. A friend calls to offer an unusual deal―a cottage above the crashing surf of Big Sur on the estate of his employer, Evan Rochester. In return, Jane will tutor his teenage daughter. She accepts.
But nothing is quite as it seems at the Rochester estate. Though he’s been accused of murdering his glamorous and troubled wife, Evan Rochester insists she drowned herself. Jane is skeptical, but she still finds herself falling for the brilliant and secretive entrepreneur and growing close to his daughter.
And yet her deepening feelings for Evan can’t disguise dark suspicions aroused when a ghostly presence repeatedly appears in the night’s mist and fog. Jane embarks on an intense search for answers and uncovers evidence that soon puts Evan’s innocence into question. She’s determined to discover what really happened that fateful night, but what will the truth cost her?
Meet Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, fear or boyfriend.
There is another 1985, where London’s criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of the new crime wave’s MR Big. Acheron Hades has been kidnapping certain characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing.
Thursday sets out to find a way into the book to repair the damage. But solving crimes against literature isn’t easy when you also have to find time to halt the Crimean War, persuade the man you love to marry you, and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Perhaps today just isn’t going to be Thursday’s day. Join her on a truly breathtaking adventure, and find out for yourself. Fiction will never be the same again. This is such an inventive novel, part sci-fi and part detective novel with all the post-modern intertextuality you could want. Thursday is such an appealing heroine, with a detective’s flair and a keen nose for the bad guy – possibly due to her criminal father. We slip into various different worlds before finding ourselves back on that flaming roof at Thornfield Hall. Whimsical and utterly brilliant.
Uncover the secrets of Edward Fairfax Rochester, the beloved, enigmatic hero of Jane Eyre, as he tells his story for the first time in Mr Rochester, Sarah Shoemaker’s gorgeous retelling of one of the most romantic stories in literature.
On his eighth birthday, Edward is banished from his beloved Thornfield Hall to learn his place in life. His journey eventually takes him to Jamaica where, as a young man, he becomes entangled with an enticing heiress and makes a choice that will haunt him. It is only when he finally returns home and encounters one stubborn, plain, young governess, that Edward can see any chance of redemption – and love. Rich and vibrant, Edward’s evolution from tender-hearted child to Charlotte Bronte’s passionately tormented hero will completely, deliciously, and forever change how we read and remember Jane Eyre. Sarah Shoemaker takes us back to a world before Jane Eyre, using a 19th Century style in keeping with its source material. Most of the book is Edward Rochester’s early life, giving us a background that makes sense of the moody and changeable man we see in the original novel. His background is dogged by loss, including the death of his mother at an early age. We see with each loss how isolated he feels so that when he is betrayed by family into a marriage with the unknown Bertha Mason she becomes all he has, but everything he didn’t want. When Jane finally appears the stage is set for events at Thornfield but through his eyes. The tragedy is that the angel he sees before him is out of reach. Given access to his inner voice we can see how much he agonises over his feelings and whether to act, making sense of his odd hot and cold behaviour towards her. This book shines a new light on this story and is a definite must read for lovers of Jane Eyre.
What the heart desires, the house destroys…
Andromeda is a debtera – an exorcist hired to cleanse households of the Evil Eye. She would be hired, that is, if her mentor hadn’t thrown her out before she could earn her license. Now her only hope is to find a Patron – a rich, well-connected individual who will vouch for her abilities.
When a handsome heir named Magnus reaches out to hire her, she takes the job without question. Never mind that he’s rude and eccentric, that the contract comes with outlandish rules, and that the many previous debteras had quit before her. If Andromeda wants to earn a living, she has no choice. But this is a job like no other, and Magnus is hiding far more than she has been trained for. Death is the likely outcome if she stays, the reason every debtera before her quit. But leaving Magnus to live out his curse isn’t an option because, heaven help her, she’s fallen for him.
This is an unexpectedly romantic debut from Lauren Blackwood that has been both an Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon book club choice. It has beautiful imagery and its Ethiopian setting gave me background on a country mainly known for famine (especially for this child of the 1980s). The mythology is fascinating and brings an even spookier aspect to the story. This is a very loose retelling of Jane Eyre, with the emphasis on the gothic elements and reminding us what a Beauty and the Beast story this is. The romance develops a little too quickly for me, but there’s a great banter between the central characters that feels true to the original pair. It also sticks quite firmly to the premise that he is the one being rescued. An interesting addition for the Jane Eyre fan, but not a faithful retelling.
A collection of short stories celebrating Charlotte Brontë, published in the year of her bicentenary and stemming from the now immortal words from her great work Jane Eyre.
The twenty-one stories in Reader, I Married Him – one of the most celebrated lines in fiction – are inspired by Jane Eyre and shaped by its perennially fascinating themes of love, compromise and self-determination. A bohemian wedding party takes an unexpected turn for the bride and her daughter; a family trip to a Texan waterpark prompts a life-changing decision; Grace Poole defends Bertha Mason and calls the general opinion of Jane Eyre into question. Mr Rochester reveals a long-kept secret in “Reader, She Married Me”, and “The Mirror” boldly imagines Jane’s married life after the novel ends. A new mother encounters an old lover after her daily swim and inexplicably lies to him, and a fitness instructor teaches teenage boys how to handle a pit bull terrier by telling them Jane Eyre’s story.
Edited by the fantastic Tracy Chevalier, this collection brings together some of the finest and most creative voices in fiction today, to celebrate and salute the strength and lasting relevance of Charlotte Brontë’s game-changing novel and its beloved narrator.
A fantastic new novel from a writer who is now on my list of ‘must buy’ authors. She sets her novel in 18th Century Covent Garden, where bawdy houses are far from uncommon and while Mrs Macauley’s house isn’t a high class establishment, her girls are clean and she looks after them well. Our main character Sukey Maynard is a young black woman who has run from Mrs Macauley and finds a young man almost beaten to death in the street. He is also black and she fears he’s a runaway slave. So she finds a local doctor who is known to treat people in poverty and leaves him there, with Dr. Sharp promising to let her know how he gets on. Sadly, her altruistic act means Mrs Macauley’s security man Jakes catches up with her; in saving Jonathon’s life she has forfeited her own. As she’s dragged back to the house and a punishment in ‘the coffin’, it sets up a claustrophobic and scary atmosphere where the rules have to be obeyed. However, life at Mrs Macauley’s is more complicated than that. Sukey is anxious, having just had her first bleed. This means she is ready for work and has years of ‘debt’ owed for her keep so far. She and her equally young friend, Emmy are like family, having grown up together after the death of Sukey’s mother who was Mrs Macauley’s friend. They were prostitutes together in their younger years, along with a third woman Madame Vernier who is recently back on the London scene after years in France. After visiting Mrs Macauley, Madame Vernier learns that Sukey may be ready to work and that an auction will be held for her virginity. She promises to help, hopefully finding someone for the auction who has the means to ‘keep’ Sukey if he’s pleased with her. But why does Madame Vernier want to help? Is it in remembrance of her friend or does she have a different scheme in mind?
The plot is fascinating with disappearing prostitutes, competing houses and Sukey desperately trying to work out who has fled of their own accord and who might have been taken by the feared ‘Piper’. When Madame Vernier secures Sukey a regular client she feels her worries are solved, but as Mrs Macauley starts to apply pressure for more than a week to week retainer will he come through for her? She dreads being thrown downstairs into the parlour for the nightly competition with the other girls for whichever drunk falls through the door. When the most vocal and experienced resident Camille goes missing from one of Madame Vernier’s parties, Sukey is determined to find out what happened to her. Weirdly she’s also sure she saw another girl missing from their neighbourhood, but working the party under a different name. There’s a mystery here and Sukey is unsure who to trust. This mystery brings an element of suspense to the story and means Sukey must grow up fast if she’s to solve it. She’s a naive girl, only just a young teenager really. She’s been protected until now by Mrs Macauley and considers Emmy her sister, so it’s a huge jolt to suddenly be deemed a woman and expected to entertain men with no experience whatsoever. Even worse must be seeing the ledger with every moment of her childhood laid out in pounds and shillings – an amount she now has to pay back. It’s no surprise that Sukey’s hopes for a ‘keeper’ are paramount and when she thinks she’s safe it leaves the other girls thinking she feels superior.
I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know this house of working women and regular readers know my love for writing marginalised people back into history. Here it was great to read about women who are not the middle or upper class characters we often encountered in historical fiction. This is the turning upside down of 19th Century fiction norms, where we might expect the book’s focus to be one of rescuing our heroine. Yes, these women are in a tough situation and it may not be the way they’ve chosen to earn a living, but there are benefits compared to service or marriage. They are cooked for, sleep till late in the morning and they don’t have the drudgery of housework. They are also free from spending their lives obeying the man of the house. They earn more for less hours of work than a domestic servant. Their hours of leisure are their own, within reason and we see Sukey become more emancipated as she meets others who are black and live in her neighbourhood. I particularly loved the bookshop owner and his son who write the famous guide to London’s prostitutes and a profitable line in erotic literature. This is a great novel where no one is quite what you think they are and our intrepid heroine has a lot to learn, very fast. I learned a huge amount about the ethnicity of London in the 18th Century and I have to say I loved how the mystery unravelled. Sukey’s choices towards the end show a huge amount of growth and a deep longing for independence. I must also mention the title, bringing to mind a very different type of house and a sisterhood of nuns. This is another fantastic novel from Louise Hare with a complex and fascinating heroine.
Out on 12th February from HQ
Meet the Author
Louise Hare is a London-based writer and has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. Originally from Warrington, the capital is the inspiration for much of her work, including This Lovely City, which began life after a trip into the deep level shelter below Clapham Common. This Lovely City was featured on the inaugural BBC TWO TV book club show, Between the Covers, and has received multiple accolades, securing Louise’s place as an author to watch. This is her fourth novel.
When record executive Theo meets the Future Saints, they’re bombing at a dive bar in their hometown. Since the tragic death of their manager, the band has been in a downward spiral and Theo has been dispatched to coax a new – and successful – album out of them, or else let them go.
Theo is struck right away by Hannah, the group’s impetuous lead singer, who has gone off script in debuting a new song-and, in fact, a whole new sound. Theo’s supposed to get the band back on track, but when their new music garners an even wider fan base than before, the plans begin to change-new tour, new record, new start.
But Hannah’s descent into grief has larger consequences for the group, and she’s not willing to let go yet. not for fame or love.
I wasn’t sure at first that I’d get into this novel about a rock band, but it soon grabbed hold of me and I was rooting for all of them and their new manager Theo. The book managed to be both sad and angry, but also romantic and full of hope. The Future Saints are reeling from the death of their manager Ginny who was the lead singer Hannah’s sister. The rest of the band are simply following Hannah’s lead at the moment and she’s gone off their usual track with a new sound that’s darker and more rock. Theo is known as ‘the fixer’ at Manifold Records, he is sent in when a band is struggling or going off the rails. He has one instruction from the CEO, bring in a Future Saints album, then let them go. However, fate intervenes at their first gig when Hannah debuts a deeply emotional new song and falls into the audience while being filmed. The clip goes viral and everyone is talking about the Future Saints new sound and their singer who appears to be having a meltdown. The telephone starts to ring with bookings for gigs and television, but are Hannah and the band in the best frame of mind for interviews and this kind of exposure? Theo has a difficult line to tread, between the instructions from Manifold and this whole new world opening up for a band he’s starting to care about. Perhaps he cares a little too much.
It took me a while to connect with Hannah, she’s angry, defensive and you never quite know what she’s going to do next. Somehow the author conveys just how magnetic a presence she is on stage and the depths of emotion she has the ability to communicate. She constantly talks to Ginny, something I assumed was only happening internally but Hannah is very clear. Ginny is the only person she allows close to her, even more so since she became ‘the girl who haunts me, my own personal ghost.’ I could see she was so wrapped up in her grief, that she’s forgotten others are grieving too. Her bandmates and her parents have also lost Ginny, but Hannah can only cope with her own pain. Her bandmates are going along with the new sound and direction, especially as the album starts to take shape, and they’re committed to Hannah too but as she increasingly melts down she seems to have forgotten that her actions affect all three of them. They now affect Theo too, but where he might have come down hard on a musician in the past, when Hannah plays up he increasingly feels an urge to hug and protect her. She’s so unbelievably raw but even with therapy she struggles to articulate what she’s really feeling and why. She also hasn’t stopped to think whether her version of Ginny is accurate, or simply the Ginny she wants to see. Anyone who has lost someone will identify with Hannah’s loss and perhaps the catharsis of using her creativity to express those difficult emotions. After my husband’s death I wrote a book about my experience and it did help me process some of the trauma as well as the loss. Hannah wants to communicate what an incredible person Ginny was and everything she meant to her. This is understandable as sometimes I felt like screaming because of all the turmoil inside, especially in places where everyone else doesn’t know what happened and is just going about their everyday life.
However, Hannah isn’t reserving this raw anger for the stage, her drinking is reaching worrying levels and she’s taking on stunts like shaving her own head at a party, egged on by Manifold Records’ CEO Roger. Through him we see the exploitative side of the music industry, because instead of looking after Hannah outside of working in the studio, he’s taking on bigger and bigger gigs and bookings from Jimmy Kimmell and SNL. He also makes sure she’s seen with the right people at parties – usually other Manifold signings he wants to promote – and encourages her destructive side. After all, a lead singer in meltdown is always going to be news, especially when they’re a woman. We learned this from Britney. Hannah isn’t strong enough to withstand this sort of pressure and Roger knows that. I didn’t trust him with the band or in his promise that he’ll make Theo director of management if the Saints deliver their album. We get a glimpse of the luxury that’s available when you’re a star in the ascendancy, but posh hotel rooms, infinity pools and champagne on private jets isn’t the way this band need looking after. Theo knows this and while I often find romantic prospects in novels rather boring, Theo is interesting and has his own conflicts that cause him to be a ‘rescuer’ of people. He longs to do well in his job, then perhaps when he meets his absent father he might be proud of him. There’s a conflict here though. He really starts to love the members of this band and desperately wants success for them, but he also wants them to be well and happy – something they’re a long way from when he finds them. If Roger comes good on his promise, could Theo walk away from the Saints and become the ‘Suit’ they tease him about? Also, realising the person you have feelings for needs help is hard, especially when you suspect the help they need will take them away from you. Can Theo prove his worth and wait?
We hear more from the rest of the band through articles and transcripts of interviews, but that doesn’t mean that Ripper and Kenny are one dimensional. Ripper is proudly one of the few South Asian guitarists on the scene and his move to lead guitar on some of their new tracks has really blown the audience away. He is interested in his Hindu roots and the philosophy around the religion, something that he also has to reconcile with coming out as bisexual. Kenny is the happy little heartbeat of the group, an incredibly skilled drummer who keeps the others on track. He is also surprising, he could have been a stereotypical flower child but he isn’t, having an interest in the philosophy of Heidegger and how it relates to music. I used Heidegger for my unfinished PHD on disability representation, because he was part of the phenomenological branch of thinking that values lived experience and being in the moment. It adds a dimension that I hadn’t expected when in one interview Kenny sums up exactly why human life is of such value and it’s because of time, our existence is finite and therefore becomes more precious. I was fascinated with the author’s depiction of therapy and the self insight Hannah has that allows her to engage with it fully and with commitment. The author pitched the novel well, flowing from the depths of grief to the terrible tension of Hannah’s eventual breakdown and Theo desperately trying to save her. What stops Hannah’s grief from being unbearable are the humorous moments of party antics, the band playing her old school and the stories of Ginny – one involving a tapir! I loved learning about Ginny through these people who loved her and had every hope that through their music the Saints would immortalise her. These moments lift the book and I did hope that the band would succeed, that Hannah would recover and laugh again, that Theo would find his path in life and perhaps that love might eventually find a way. As Kenny tells his interviewer, music is the perfect medium to express the experience of living because like life, a song is a finite thing. It’s why when the music builds and reaches a crescendo we feel euphoric and emotional, because we know it signals we’re nearing the end.
“Her art is alive, searing, moving, brutal, honest. She represents us as we are in this moment; beleaguered by pain and exhaustion, unsure if we can save ourselves, but incapable of not trying, of not making art and meaning.”
From a review of Hannah and the Future Saints’ performance that goes viral.
Meet the Author
Ashley Winstead is an academic turned bestselling novelist with a Ph.D. in contemporary American literature. She lives in Houston with her husband, three cats, and beloved wine fridge.
The Lotus Readers 