Historical Novels Review | Issue 33 (August 2005)

THE HISTORICAL NOVELS

of Troy

PUBLIS H ED BY THE H I STOR I CAL OVEL SOCIETY© 2005

Founder/Publisher: Richard Lee , Marine Cottage, The Strand, Starcross, Devon , EX6 8NY, UK (richard@historicalnove lsociety.org)

SOLANDER

CO-ORDINATING ED ITOR: Cla ire Morris, 324-2680 West 4 th Avenue, Vancouver, BC , V6K 4S3 CANADA.(claire.morris@shaw.ca)

Associate Editor, Features: Kate Allan, (kate.allan@gmail.com)

Associate Editor, Indu slly: Cindy Vallar, PO Box 425, Keller, TX, 76244-0425, USA. (cindy@cindyvallar.com)

Associate Editor, Profiles: Lucind a Byatt, 13 Park Road, Edinburgh, EH6 4LE. (mail@lucindabyatt.com)

Associate Editor, Fiction: Richard Lee, Marine Cottage, The Strand, Starcross, Devon , EX6 8NY, UK (richard@historicalnovelsociety.org)

T H E HI STOR I CAL OVELS REVIEW

CO-ORDINATING EDITOR (UK)

Sarah Bower, Tanglewood , Old Forge Close, Long Green, Wortham, Diss , Norfolk IP22 I PU, UK.(sarahbower@clara.co.uk)

CO-ORDINATING EDITOR (USA)

Sarah Johnson , 6868 Knollcre s t , Charleston, IL , 61920, USA.(cfsln@eiu.edu): R a ndom House , Penguin , Five Star, Cumberland House , Bethany I louse

REVIEWS EDITORS (UK)

Mary Sharratt, 20, Marler Drive , Great Harwood, Lancashire 886 7TX ( tvlariekeSharratt(a,aol.com ): Arcadia, Canongate, Robert Hale , Hodder Headline (includes Hodder & Stoughton, Sceptre, NEL, Coronet), John Murray Ruth Ginarlis, 16 , Wimbledon Close, The Downs , W. Wimbledon , London SW20 8HW ( rjl!inarlis;a'.btintcmcl.c,)m ): Allison&Busby, Little , Brown & Co, (includes Abacus, Virago, Warner) , Random House UK (includes Arrow, Cape, Century, Chatto&Windus, Harvill , Heinemann , Hutchinson , Pimlico , Secker & Warburg, Vintage), Simon & Schu ste r (includes Scribner) Ann Oughton, 11, Ra msay Garden, Edinburgh, EH I 2NA.(annoughton@tiscali.co.uk). Penguin (includes Hamish Hamilton, Viking , Michael Joseph, Allen Lan e), Bloomsbury , Faber & Faber, Constable & Robinson , Transworld (includes Bantam Pre ss, Black Swan, Doubleday , Corgi), Macmillan (includes Pan , Picador, Sidgwick & Jackson). Sally Zigmond, 18 Warwick Crescent, Harrogate , North Yorkshire , HG2 8JA.(szigmond@fsmail.net): HarperCollins UK (includes Flamingo, Voyager, Fourth Estate), Orion Group (includes Gollancz, Phoenix , Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Cassell), Piatkus , Severn House , Solidus, Summersdale, The Women 's Press , House of Lochar Mary Moffat (Children's Historicals - all UK publishers) , Sherbrooke, 32, Moffat Road, Dumfries, Scotland, DG I I NY (sherbrooke@marysmoffat.ndo.co.uk)

REVIEWS EDITORS (USA)

Ellen Keith , Milton S Eisenhower Library , J o hn Hopkins Univ., 3400 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21218-2683 (ekeith@jhu.edu) I larperCollin s (inc William Morrow , Avon, Regan, Ecco, Zandervan), Houghton Mifflin (including Mariner) , Farrar Strauss&Giroux, kensington , Carroll&Graf, Algonquin Books of C hape l Hill. Trudi Ja cobson, University Library , University at Albany, 1400 Washington Avenue , Albany, NY, 12222, USA (tjacobson@uamail.albany.edu) Simon & Schuster, Warner, Little Brown , Arcade, WW Norton, Hyperion, Harcourt , Toby , Akadine, New Directions Ily sa Magnu s, 5430 Netherland Ave #C4 l, Bronx, NY, I 0471, USA: ( goodlaw2@optonline net) St Martin 's Minotaur , Picador USA , Tor/Forge, Grove/Atlantic, Poisoned Pe n Pre ss, Soho Press , Dorchester, Tyndale

THE H I STORICAL OVEL SOCIETY ON T H E I NTERNET: WEBSITE: www.historicalnovelsociety.org. WEB SUPPORT: Sarah Johnson (cfsln@eiu.edu) EMAi L NEWSLETTER: Read news and reviews. http: // groups.yahoo.com/ group/HNSNewsletter DISCUSSION GROUP: Join in th e discussion. http :// groups.yahoo.com/ group/ HistoricalNovelSociety

MEMBE RSHIP DETAILS :

Membership of the Historical Novel Society is by calendar year (January to December) and entitles members to all the year's publications: two issues ofSolander, and four issues of The Historical Novels Review Back issues of society magazines are also available. Write for current rates to: Marilyn Sherlock, 38 , The Fairway , Newton Ferrers , Devon , PL8 I DP, UK (ray .s herlock@macunlimited.net) or Debra Tash , 5239 Commerce Ave., Moorpark CA 93021, USA, timarete@earthlink.net or Teresa Eckford, 49 Windcrest Court , Kanata, ON , Canada K2T I BF (eckford@sympatico.ca), or Patrika Salmon, Box 185, Turangi, New Zea land. (pdrlindsaysalmon@xtra.co.nz)

CONFE R E 'CES:

The society organises annual conferences in the UK and biennia l confe rences in the US. Contact (UK): Richard Lee (richard@historicalnovelsociety.org) Contact (USA): Sarah Johnson (cfs ln@eiu.edu)

CO PY RI G H T r ema ins in all cases with the authors of the articles. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitt e d in any form, without th e written p er mis s ion of th e authors concerned.

ED I TO RI AL PO LI CY Authors should be aware tha t reviews, articles and letters may be cut, corrected and/or rearranged to meet our space restrictions. We will endeavo ur to co nta c t th e authors/or approval of any changes.

T H E HI STO RI CAL NOVEL SOC ! ETY was formed in 1997 to help promote historical fiction. All staff and con tributors are volunteers and work unpaid. We are an open society- ifyou want to get involved, get in touch.

THE HI ST ORI CAL NOVELS REVIEW

Issue 33 August 2005

ISSN 1471-7492

CONTENTS

Editorials 1

Forum 2

Miss Bridget Jane's Diary 2

Val Whitmarsh 3

Sarah Cuthbertson 3

Evolution of the Pirate 4

Interview with Margaret

George 6

Life of Lady Florence

Dixie 7

Reviews 10

FROM THE EDITORS

As the eagle-eyed among you will already have noticed, two new names have appeared on our masthead , and two familiar ones have disappeared

Both Sarah Cuthbertson and Val Whitmarsh have decided to hang up their quills (well, keyboards , actually , but it doesn't conjure up quite the same image and they don't hang as elegantly) and relinquish their roles as reviews editors. Their organisationa l ski ll s, capacity to bu ll y publishers' publicity departments and their critical perceptions will be missed by us a ll. On a personal note , these two quickly became val ued colleagues and firm friends to me when I was finding my feet as UK editor, and I shall miss them a great deal - as I told them repeatedly, made garrulous by white wine and hot sun, over a long and excellent farewell lunch in London a few weeks ago. Val's and Sarah's reflections on their time as reviews editors appear on later pages , and I hope to be able to persuade them to contribute features from time to time in future . So , many thanks , and goodbye - but not quite.

Ruth Ginarlis , one of our longstanding reviewers, takes over Val's list and Mary Sharratt, who also reviews for us and is herself a successful novelist, is stepping into Sarah's shoes.

Mary describes herself as an American expat currently living in East Lancashire, and is the autho r of two historical novels, Summit Avenue, and The Real Minerva, which was a Minnesota Book Awards finalist and a Midland Autho r Society Fiction Award finalist. Her third novel , The Vanishing Point, set in l 7'h century England and colonial America, is due for publication next spring. Mary has appeared on BBC Radio 4's Woman 's Hour and is also coediting Bitch-Lit, a fiction anthology aimed to be a refreshing antidote to victim/ch ick lit. A tribute to bunny boilers, divas, and anti-Bridget-Joneses , Bit ch-Lit will be pub lished next summer.

Ruth has been a reviewer for two years, ever since meeting Towse in a queue for the ladies at the Cambridge History Festival! So there is some justification for the under-provision of faci lities after all. A keen student of mediaeval history and Egypto logy, Ruth lives in London with her husband, two cats and an enormous book collection.

A very warm welcome to them both.

I hope to have the chance to meet Ruth and Mary face to face at this year ' s conference, which is taking place on Saturday, 22 nd October, at the same venue as last year - the New Cavendish Club in London. As those who came last year wi ll know, the New Cavend ish is a terrific venue, close to Marble Arch but w ith comfortable , reasonably priced rooms for those who want to stay overnight , good food a nd a friendly bar. We have a strong programme, from Tom Harper (Knights of the Cross) on the Crusades to Ann Harries (No Place For a Lady) on the " British holocaust" of the Boer War. In addition , talent scout , Hilary Johnson will give advice on the market for new and established authors , and the first Short Histories prize winners will be announced. The cost of the conference is £59, bu t on l v £49 if yo 11 b ook befo re the 3 1st A 11 gust.

I shall look forward to meet ing as many of you as possible in October. SMd~0

Lately I've heard about the dwindling popularity of historical romance from several different sources At BookExpo America in New York in early June, 1 attended a panel discussion with Tara Taylor Quinn (president of Romance W riters of America) , Donna Hayes (Publisher and CEO of Harlequin) , and several romance authors. The group ' s message was clear : historical romances in America simp ly aren ' t selling like they used to. Instead, publishers are focu s ing their attentions on contemporary romantic suspense, chick lit , and paranormal romance.

A recent Publishers We ekly article 1 spoke of the same phenomenon and posited reasons why. Some authors, editors, and booksellers quoted in PW believe that younger romance readers, by which they mean women under 40 , have a hard time re lating to historical heroines and processing novels with "arcane period detail." It was suggested that they'd prefer to be entertained by contemporary novels , since reading them takes less work, and they have more relevance to their dai ly lives. As usual , the American educational system is cited as a cause for peop le's indifference to history Dry history classes have been blamed for years for young people's lack of interest in historical fiction , so it's curious to see this given now as a reason for the decline of historica l romance Or perhaps the cause has more to do with the mass market paperback format , readers ' preferred format for historicals, which is performing poorly across all genres.

Not all romance publishers are cutting back on historica ls as a result , but many are One upcoming trend involves adding a modern twist to historicals in order to entice that younger crowd. Despite the hype , I don't find the idea of Regency vampire romances all that enticing , but maybe that ' s just me.

Perhaps it's all part of the usual cycle: as mainstream historicals gain in popularity in the U S. , historical romance declines For years, the reverse was true. It disappoints me personally, though , whenever I hear that historical

THE HISTORJCAL NOVELS

ISSUE 33 AUGUST 2005

romance authors are abandoning their current manuscripts in favor of something more marketable I realize this ha ppens all the time, but it 's sad nonetheless. Though some readers and authors may benefit from their switch to contemporaries or chick lit, fans of historical romance may be missing out on some wonderful stories.

I Dyer, Lucinda. " Romance: In Its Own Time." Publish ers Weekly l 3 June 2005: 20-24.

THE FORUM

From Muriel Smith, Maidenhead Sally Zigmond is right to praise The Once and Future King in issue 31. My own favourite Arthurian novel , though , is Alfred Duggan 's Conscience of the King (Faber 1951 ), the autobiography of Cerdic, King of Wessex (451-534), whose one set back was at Mount Badon , when Arthur (Artorius) charged downhill with cavalry in Byzantine-style armour on armourclad heavy horses. This is what Duggan 's Cerdic has to say about Artorius:

'Artorius does not come into this story again, but he was a very interesting figure, and I will set down the little that I know about his end. At first his war-band had been composed of noblemen who thought it a sacred duty to defend Britain against the pagans in return for just enough pay to buy their food; but, of course, when his army won famous victories it attracted a very different class of warrior. His followers grew discontented , and at last one of his captains raised a sedition against him ; I have heard that the rebel was also the lover of the leader's wife, and that may have been the case; but I always doubt that sort of story. Poets often pretend that the chief motive of a

THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

striking action is a love-affair, but in my experience greed causes more trouble than adultery. Anyway, for whatever reason, there was a civil war inside this band of heavy cavalry, and eventually it split up. Artorius himself was not slain in the fighting, but went into hiding after a defeat ; he is believed to be living as a hermit in the west, and the poorer Romans hope that he will one day raise another warband and rescue them from their oppressors. Of course , all the big foreign horses are dead now.'

From Rosemary Pollock, Lanreathby-Looe

Many thanks to Pamela Cleaver and all concerned for the lovely review of A Distant Drum by Marguerite Bell (May 2005).

Well deserved as it is, this kind of thing gives enormous pleasure to the book's remarkable, and now very elderly, author.

MLss. 1;rLdgetJciV\,e's.

JANUARY 7 1h

Erotic encounters with earl 3, Improving books read 0, Bottles of cooking sherry stolen 0, Bottles of champagne drunk 2

7am

Go for breakfast wearing high necked 'I am a career girl so don't try and lure me into the broom cupboard because a refusal can cause offence' gown. See earl sitting at the table looking broodingly handsome.

'Ah, Miss Jane ,' he says absentmindedly. ' I've sent for the justice of the peace We've had a burglary .'

Heart sinks into slippers.

'So meone broke into the kitchen last night. We don 't known exactly what's gone so far, but we ' re missing a bottle of cooking sherry,' says the earl. 2

Have visions of being clapped in irons and sent to Newgate.

'Why, Miss Bridget Jane, what's the matter?' he asks.

'I might know something about the cooking sherry,' I croak. 'Please don't send me to jail.'

' You know something about the cooking sherry?' he asks in i:!mazement. 'What do you know?'

' I took it,' I say.

'Why?'

'Because you were ignoring me and flirting with your neighbour! ' I shout.

Immediately regret it. Meant to be cool and calm, with a 'Were you flirting with your thin as a rake neighbour last night? Sorry , I didn't notice ,' expression on my face.

Earl laughs. ' I wasn't ignoring you. And I wasn't flirting with my neighbour. I was catching up with the news. She might be my neighbour but she's also my sister.'

' Your sister?'

'Yes. She has a house in town. Did I forget to mention it?'

'Yes, you did ,' I say, feeling ridiculously pleased.

Wish I hadn't worn dress with such a high neck

Earl walks over to me.

'l hope you realize that stealing cooking sherry is a serious matter ,' he says tantalisingly.

'Oh. I do,' I say breathlessly.

Wish I hadn ' t laced corset so tightly.

'It can't go unpunished ,' he says wickedly.

'I know,' I say.

'I'll have to see what suitable punishment I can come up with ,' he says.

Just hope it involves unlacing of corset.

JANUA R Y 8 1h

Bottles of champagne drunk 2, bottles of ink spilt I

10 am

A week ago I'd never heard of Lord Horty. Now I'm engaged to him!

Dear Mama and Smug Married Sister, I am writing to let you know I am engaged to an earl.

ISSUE 33 AUGUST 2005

Live Author to begin the interview, who should amble into the room but a Dot Cottonesque cleaning lady am1ed with a vacuum cleaner whose noise proceeded to drown out our nascent conversation. We struggled on for a minute or two but it became impossible, not so much because of the noise but because neither of us, author or interviewer, could keep our faces straight. Eventually, Mr Saylor's publicist asked the cleaner to stop, which she did with the greatest reluctance accompanied by a look of disgust that I feared would morph into something Jack Aubrey's dyspeptic steward Preserved Killick might have said ("Which I'll be finished when I'm finished", perhaps) Anyway, as an icebreaker, she was a spectacular success, bless her Dot Cotton socks. The rest of the interview passed off very comfo1iably and though I've been a little nervous at author interviews since, I've never been that nervous again. So maybe Our Lady was listening after all - and has a delightful sense of humour.

On that note, I'll hand over to Mary Sharratt. 1 hope Mary will have as much fun as I've had in doing this job. It would be hard not to!

The Evolution of the Pirate: Romanticism vs. Reali t y

By Cindy V allar

author and friend

Once portrayed as frightening villains, pirates have become daring heroes we yearn to emulate. This transformation from common thieves to roguish heroes began with writers. Early stories, which did not

glamorize sea rovers, depicted gruesome incidents of cruelty Torture , murder, battles at sea, and marooned marauders fascinated readers. In 1678, a Dutch publisher released a book filled with such descriptions. Written by Alexandre Exquemclin (also known as John Esquemeling), The Buccaneers of America was an eyewitness account, the vivid details of which continue to curl the most steadfast toes. A Frenchman by birth, Exquemclin joined the pirates after acquiring some training with a doctor on the Isle of Tortuga in the 1660s. After five years, he quit and returned to Europe.

A General History of the Robbers and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates related the exploits of many well-known pirates. It was published in 1724 , not long after the demise and /o r capture of Blackbcard, Anne Bonny and Mary Read , and Bartholomew Roberts. Although the identity of its author, Captain Johnson, remains a mystery, this book inspired later stories, such as 8/ackbeard the Pirate. While first released in 1798, this historical novel remained popular into Victorian times.

Credit for starting the romantic myth of piracy rests with George Gordon, Lord Byron, and his poem, The Corsair. Conrad, leader of pirates based in the Mediterranean , practiced all the vices of a typical corsair while possessing the traits of noble outlaws akin to Robin Hood. On the first day of publication in I 8 I 4, the poem sold I 0,000 copies. Over the years it inspired countless operas, paintings , musical scores, and ballets.

When Charles Elms' The Pirates' Own Book was released in 1837, it also became a bestseller. The author combined myths with facts drawn from previously published documents to create a "c lassic • of classics" (as Elms himself wrote) about piracy throughout the world from ancient times to the nineteenth century.

Exciting and colorful, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure ls/and ( 1833) portrayed pirates as fearsome villains to whom one should give a wide berth The

ruthless Long John Silver and his cohorts forever linked fictional buccaneers with certain images : treasure maps , tropical islands , wooden legs, and parrots. This adventure story also provided future readers and writers with symbols that were in reality myths Few pirates held their treasure long enough to bury it, preferring instead to spend their ill-gotten gains on drink, women , and games. Nor did they have map s where X marked the spot of their buried treasure. As for forcing captives to walk the plank, the only account of them doing so occurred in 1829.

The release of Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood in 1922 transformed the pirate into a romantic hero. Peter Blood, a physician , ministered to a rebel soldier. Arrested and convicted of treason against the English Crown, Blood was transported to Jamaica where he became the slave of a wealthy plantation owner. After his escape, Blood achieved success as a pirate captain and led his men on daring adventures. The idea of an educated or landed gentleman turned buccaneer through some misfortune became a recurrent theme in literature and drama. In actuality, few English-speaking pirates of the Golden Age of Piracy ( I 690-1730) matched thi s description. A notable exception was Stede Bonnet , a gentleman planter who purchased a ship and went on the account in 1717. His life of crime ended the following year when South Carolina officials hanged him.

All these tales were initially written for adults. Peter and Wendy (1911), known today as Peter Pan , captivated children and introduced them to the world of pirates. As fanciful as this book was, J. M. Barrie gave Captain Hook some of the same traits possessed by one of the most infamous piratesBlackbeard. One question Barrie left unanswered in his tale, however, was how his villain lost his hand. To explain that , as well as numerous other mysteries about Peter and Neverland, Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson wrote a prequel to the tale entitled Peter and the Starcatchers (2004).

ISSUE 33 AUGUST 2005

THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

The

As in most historical novels for children and adults published today, these authors portray pirates in a more realistic vein. Black Stache, who becomes Captain Hook, displays a cruelty reminiscent of history's worst pirates, such as Edward Low or L 'Ollonais. The authors counter this violence and the misery of life at sea with humor and exaggeration, such as Black Stache's new weapon m his plundering arsenal, a sail shaped like a black brassiere, or the totally unappetizing and horrid food served to Peter and his friends.

Playwrights and scriptwriters also added to the romanticism of piracy. The first theatrical production to feature sea rovers was staged in 1612. With the premiere of The Successful Pirate in the next century and The Pirates of Penzance in 1879, pirates became regular characters in the theater and their bright clean costumes overshadowed the tattered filthy clothes most real pirates wore. Those that surfaced during the Victorian Era continued to be villains, but the melodrama made them not quite believable Gilbert and Sullivan's pirates entertained rather than frightened.

During the 1950s, pirates were featured in nine movie s. Technicolor films loved red and yellow clothes and large ships in flames . Anne of the Indies further muddied the waters by pitting Anne Bonny against Black beard , who never actually met. These films often portrayed galleons and ships with three masts as the vessels of choice In reality, novelists came closer to the mark, having their pirates sail sloops and brigs , smaller vessels that were faster than their prey and could navigate shallow waters, where naval vessels hunting pirates could not follow. Hollywood preferred large ships because they were more impressive. The heroic buccaneer had room to fight a duel with the villain, and more actors could fit on the deck during a battle. Climbing aloft on the rigging of a galleon was far more exciting than doing the same on a smaller ship.

If you learned of pirates only from the seventy plus films

THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

produced during the 20 th century, you have a skewed picture of them. Most of these movies depict pirates who lived during the Golden Age of Piracy. In truth this criminal activity predates the Egyptian pyramids. Heroic buccaneers did not rescue beautiful women from villainous ones. In I 825, Lucretia Parker witnessed the brutal slaying of the ship's crew then was taken prisoner, although she was eventually released. Chinese pirates often held women for ransom. One such incident involved Mei Ying, who fought her captive In the ensuing struggle, he broke two of her teeth Rather than submit, she flung them both into the river, where they drowned.

Perhaps the most visually awesome pictures were those that illustrated pirate stories. In the 1920s, one artist rendered the majority of paintings- Howard Pyle "Marooned," "An Attack on a Galleon," "T he Buccaneer was a Picturesque Fellow," and "So the Treasure was Divided" were several of his more famous scenes. His artwork possessed an element of realism that books , films , and plays often lacked. He did not include traditional props found m the majority of pirate stories since the publication of Treasure fa/and. Rather his paintings compelled viewers to consider the true nature of pirates and the harsh life they led.

James L. Nelson, a master storyteller today , attempts to do the same in his historical novels. He casts his pirates in leading roles without turning them into swashbuckling heroes or glamorizing their lives. Oftentimes events propel these characters into going on the account, whether they do so willingly or not. In Bla ckb irder (part two of the Brethren of the Coast trilogy; published 200 I), an innocent gesture forces one character to become a pirate, and in making that decision , he knows his friend and employer, a reformed buccaneer, will have no choice but to hunt him.

In The Only Life That Mattered (2004), Nelson spins a gritty yam based on the lives of history's two most famous women pirates , Mary Read and Anne Bonny. These women are three-dimensional characters with strengths,

weaknesses, and dreams just like real people, but both know that if caught, they will dance the hempen jig Even so, they prefer the short and merry life. They epitomize the most admirable of the traits we associate with pirates: freedom , independence, daring. They defy the inequity of society's rules and classification of women as secondclass citizens without rights , making them romantic heroines that appeal to women of today who continue the struggle to gain equality m a male-dominated world.

Although no count exists of how many women donned male attire and went on the account, evidence suggests far more became sailors, soldiers, and pirates than originally thought. Rather than relegating female characters to the role of victim or prostitute, historical novelists today have them take center stage as searoving protagonists. Some of the best portrayals of these heroines, whom their creators depict with gutsy realism rather than sappy romanticism, include Alan Gold's The Pirat e Queen, Marsha Canham 's The Iron Rose, and Celia Rees ' Pirates !

If real pirates were and continue to be bloodthirsty violent people, why do we romanticize them? Children focus on the image of a buccaneer in search of daring adventure and fantastic riches. They don costumes for Halloween or celebrate their birthdays with pirate-theme parties. They dream of finding a lost treasure and sailing the high seas in wooden ships. Adults dream of those same thing s, but they also identify with the aura of freedom that sea rovers represented and the lush tropics they inhabited Criminals by their very nature live outside the law They neither heed society's rule s nor endure the drudgery of commuting to work each day. Pirates were free to do what they wanted and they could savor the warm tropical sun and white sandy beaches instead of sitting in an office from 9 to 5 five days a week. They represent escapism.

Three centuries of entertainment- be it found in books , on stage or screen, or at a child's

ISSUE 33 AUGUST 2005

birthday party - have instilled in us an image that is universally recognized. When we see a man with a wooden leg, wearing a black eye patch, armed with cutlass and pistol, and accompanied by a parrot on his shoulder, we know without hesitation he is a pirate. No matter that he no longer resembles the true marauders of yore. No matter that they had welldeserved reputations for drinking, cursing, and harming innocents. The clean-cut image that captivates us is a far cry from those men We prefer to root for the downtrodden and wrongfully accused gentleman who became a pirate because of injustice and corruption. He's not to blame for turning to a life of crime; it's our fault.

As is often the case, however, legend and fact merge and the truth becomes muddied. Enjoy the rousing adventure and swashbuckling hero of historical novels. Just remember that such buccaneers may not resemble the infamous pirates of yore or the murderous ones who prey upon ships today.

Cindy Vallar is the editor of Pirates and Privateers, a monthly column on the history of maritime piracy, which can be found at www cindvvullar.com/pirntes htm/. She is a HNR reviewer and an associate editor of So lander.

Being Helen

Val Perry talks to Margaret George about her forthcoming novel, Helen of Troy

Margaret George's internationally bestselling novels have spanned I st century Egypt , Biblical-era Palestine, and l 6'h century England and Scotland. Why has she now shifted to 1200BCE to tell the story of Helen of Troy? '"How else can l find out what it's like to be the most beautiful woman in the world?" she jokes. Her fifth novel, Helen of Troy, is due to hit bookstands in 2006. Though George is known for

THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

her portrayals of controversial or ambiguous historical figures such as Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, Cleopatra and Mary Magdalene, Helen may be her most ambitious subject yet. Her protagonists seem to have one thing m common: they are simultaneously larger-than-life and shrouded in misperceptions and misunderstandings. "[Helen] has been a mystery for over 2,500 years," George explains. "Even Shakespeare didn't know what to make of her. Marlowe contributed "the face that launched a thousand ships" to our quotations about her, and even Poe wrote a poem 'To Helen.' I wanted to get to know her better. History is coy about her. The best way to approach her was through art."

George's determination to bring Helen to life has led her to university courses on the history of Troy, the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, museums around the world, and the site of Troy itself in modem-day Turkey. While film and dramatic depictions of famous historical figures sometimes influence her work (she especially admires Robert Shaw 's portrayal of King Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons), George typically prefers a more traditional approach to research. She remains unimpressed with the recent Hollywood film Troy, though she notes that it did "give rise to a number of documentaries about Troy that I found helpful, including one in which a new Trojan horse was built and tested to see how many men could fit inside it, how it could be rolled and what its maximum size could be. Conclusion: not very large and not very many men."

It 's details such as these that give George's works their characteristic feel. Selecting the right "writing music" for each book also helps to re-create the atmosphere of the time and place. "As usual, Helen was a difficult lady to capture," she says. "I wanted something 'ancient,' but nothing was quite right." So what mood-music finally helped her to conjure the greatest epic of the ancient world? "H's embarrassing to admit this , but the sound tracks

from Pirates of !he Caribbean and The Time Machine were quite evocative."

This seeming paradox only reinforces George's conviction that fiction - historical or otherwise-is more about connecting to the reader's emotions than getting the physical details scrupulously exact. ''.I think historical novels resonate when they tie into common human concerns. We don't read them for facts, really (nonfiction is better for that), but to understand what the facts mean, emotionally, to us. Henry VIII, to me, was a study in what happens to someone who doesn't live up to his gifts. Now that is something that we can all relate to; we don't have to be royalty to understand this dilemma. It's one each of us faces---how do we use what we've been given? Draping it in the form of Henry VIII makes it an 'historical novel,' but really it's a morality tale."

Still, fidelity to time, place and character remain particularly important in the historical genre. George notes the controversy among writers, readers and publishers about whether to use "slangy language in an attempt to make the long-ago seem more accessible .In my opinion it doesn't work. I don't accept Agamemnon saying, " We 've gotta have a plan, guys!" or the like. lt sounds absurd, and actually has the effect of distancing you from the characters, rather than what the writer intended. Dialogue doesn't have to be purple prose or too formal but it should echo the times, if possible."

George also cautions historical writers against "the slice of life technique"-telling only a relatively small part of a famous person's life. "I know why writers are doing it---we are all under pressure to make things byte-size and have the books smaller---but these are not byte-size people and don't lend themselves to that treatment." Still, she acknowledges that the realities of the marketplace must sometimes intervene: "In spite of myself, I'd have to say if you can make it reasonably short and portable, that would be something to aim for. People travel so much now , they want something

ISSUE 33 AUGUST 2005

they can tote along. I can't manage to do that, but maybe you can." Since each of George's previous works weighs in at 800-plus pages, she's aware of the irony of her advice: "Do as I say, not as I do!"

Perhaps not surprisingly, George offers Shakespeare as a model for modem writers: "He was amazingly accurate in his facts, considering the resources available to him , but he never sacrificed action and character to them. And of coUIBe, being Shakespeare, he managed to make them short as well."

So where does the divide between historian and fictionwriter lie? It can be a difficult gap to bridge at times , even for the most talented in both fields. "We historical fiction writers would like to think we influence ' real ' historians," says George, "but outside of a very few instances , they ignore us , the careful and the sloppy of us alike. I think Robert Graves's l, Claudius was respected by historians, but then Graves was a scholar himself Shakespeare is of course the exception as he is in everything else. However, he fell down on the job with Helen of Troy. He wrote about her in Troilus and Cressida, but for once he failed to capture the essence of an historical character. She was too much even for him." It happens to the best of us

Seasoned and new writers alike can benefit from some of the strategies that have helped contribute to the success of George's books: "C hoose someone who's already well known rather than an obscure person , because it helps if your reader already knows who your character is Don't make your potential reader guess what your book is about---and don't give it a vague, non-descriptive title or an overly literary one. People may not get it on first glance and move on to the next book on the table. Never automatically assume your reader will be interested in your story. It is your Job to make him or her interested. Just imagine someone tired and yawning when they pick up your story and try to overcome it. It 's a good exercise for writers.

"Write what excites you. That way you will enjoy coming to

THE HISTORICAL OVELS REVIEW

work each day, and the journey will be an adventure."

You can learn more about Margaret George, her four previous bestsellers and her forthcoming Helen of Troy at www.margaretgeorge.com

Val Perry is Assistant Professor of English and Coordinator of Writing at Eureka Collage, Illinois, where she also edits Eureka Literary Magazine Her novel-inprogress, To Obey and Serve: A Novel Featuring Jane Seymour has recently been selected as a semifinalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship.

One Single Bud

A reprise of the life of Lady Florence Dixie 1855-1905

I first met Florence Dixie in July 2004 by which time she had been dead for more than ninety-eight years. We were introduced through an epitaph. I was researching a book into animal graves and memorials and in a neglected comer in the grounds of Bosworth Hall in Leicestershire stood a decaying monument to Smut, a terrier killed on a railway line in 1876.

Forget thee!

Never!

Never while memory lives Can this sad heart do aut but dream of th ee

So wrote his grieving mistress.

Smut died at Wroxall on the Isle of Wight where Florence had left him behind , to "go abroad." Being born only three miles from this spot I found myself wondering who she was. This casual encounter launched me into a fascinating and unexpected journey - no ordinary woman this, but poet, novelist, travel writer and campaigner for women's and animal rights

Florence Douglas was the youngest daughter of the 7th Marquis of Queensberry, sister of the 8 th Marquis of boxing rules fame and the aunt of Lord Alfred Douglas. She arrived in the world

on May 25 th 1855 with a twin brother. James Her mother Caroline had eloped with Florence's father to Gretna Green. There they jumped the anvil m traditional style and presented their families with a Fait accompli. Why Caroline's father objected to the marriage is uncertain Possibly he hoped that his daughter's friendship with Prince Louis Napoleon might result in having a French Empress in the family, or maybe he feared the bad blood coursing through the aristocratic suitor's veins.

The bridegroom, Archibald Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig, heir to the Quccnsberry title carried on exactly as he had always done, hunting , gambling, conducting discreet liaisons, making brief forays into the army and then politics. By the time the last of their six children were born, he and Caroline were virtually estranged. Depressed by the gloomy family scat of Kinmount in Dumfriesshire, she rented houses around Britain and took her growing family on extended holidays.

Florence's childhood was dominated by bereavement. When the twins were three their father died in a mysterious shooting accident. Too young to under stand, 'Florrie and Jim' were infom,ed that as the rabbit was killed with the gun, so had the same thing happened to Papa Later Florence wrote a poem : " Do not shoot the rabbit ," perhaps a distant link in her troubled mind with her father's demise.

The twins' brother John inherited the title 8 th Marquis of Queensberry, a freedom clearly unsuited to an unstable boy of fourteen. Meanwhile their mother sought refuge in the Catholic Church, a conversion that appealed to her daughter Gertrude and middle son Archie. ot so the rest of the family. Caroline's motherin-law, the Protestant Dowager Marchioness of Queensberry immediately took steps to have the children removed and Caroline responded by fleeing with her brood to France.

That Florence became a writer at all is surprising. By nature sporty, s he had little time for

ISSUE 33 AUGUST 2005

indoor activities and this antipathy was strengthened when she and six year old twin Jim were separated and she was packed off to a convent school. She was so miserable that her brother Francis insisted on her release Thereafter she fought against all attempts at formal education.

Back in England, when Florence was eight and on the eve of brother Queensberry's coming of age, her adored brother Francis died in a climbing accident on the Matterhorn. In anguished childhood verse she questioned the nature of God. John who went to Switzerland to search in vain for his brother's body became passionately anti-Christian and joined the British Secular Society.

Once again Caroline fled to Europe. Trailing aimlessly behind her mother, Florence was spotted by Bulwer Lytton sitting on the shores of Lac Leman. Something of her sadness inspired him to write a poem, little Florrie Douglas , an act that she never forgot. When many years later she published her own poetry Songs of a Child, she dedicated the volume to him

Florence early proved herself superior in sporting and organisational skills. She hunted , swam, played cricket and football and rejoiced in the epithet "a female Nimrod." The indolent Jim was content to be her disciple.

With no intention of conforming to the conventional woman's role she refused to ride side-saddle and took to devising her own style of dress what the Prince of Wales laughingly referred to as nightwear , when she turned up at Ascot in something resembling a sailor suit. When she was presented at court however with short hair and lacking the expected lace and feathers, his royal mother was not amused. Florence was happy to forego further social functions.

At the age of 20 she married the 11 th Baronet Dixie, "Beau" to his friends. Weak , idle , a spendthrift, he showed a remarkable resemblance to Jim and the twins now became a trio . Two sons were born to the couple, John and Albert, the second boy being named after the Prince of Wales who became his sponsor.

THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

Florrie's only sister Gertrude, twelve years her senior, spent much of her adulthood wrestling with her chosen calling as a nun She and Florrie held opposite views on everything from the existence of God to the role of women In 1874 Gertrude published her first novel Brown as a Berry under the pseudonym George Douglas. This may have fuelled Florrie's desire for literary success for she now published Abel Avenged an "unactable" drama she had written when she was 14.

In 1875 the Whitehall Review featured her as one of their "Leaders of Fashion," extolling her equestrian skills and literary pursuits .

But Florrie soon grew bored 'Pa ll ed with civilisation and the monotonous round of society's socalled pleasures,' she organised a trip to Patagonia. The party spent some months exploring the alien South American hinterland. Florence was the only woman , the conditions were harsh , sleeping in the open air, hunting their food and facing unfriendly locals On her return she recorded their experiences in a book Across Patagonia dedicated to the Prince of Wales and published in I 880. It was a resounding success. She felt s ufficiently assured to correspond with Darwin about the wildlife she had encountered. At the same time she began to express regret at the wholesale slaughter they had inflicted, in particular the shooting of an antelope. ln Across Patagonia she confessed that: for many a day I was haunted by a sad remorse for th e loss of that innocent and trusting life - Florence had wanted his antlers.

Beau Dixie , feckless, indulgent and addicted to gambling and alcohol, gave to Florence a freedom rarely attained by Victorian society wives She planned another adventure to the Arctic but she and Beau were broke Still heady in her role as lady adventurer she looked around for a commission to pay their expenses and persuaded the editor of the Morning Post to send her as war correspondent to South Africa covering the Zulu Wars. Arriving too late she justified her presence

by v1s1tmg the defeated King Cetswayo and, impressed by his dignity, returned home to campaign for his reinstatement. In 1882, her impassioned writing: A Defence of Zululand and its King, was published Her partial success in getting him reinstated set her on a new course as a crusader. A second travel book recounting their African adventures, Land of Misfortune, dedicated to Charles Darwin , followed.

Meanwhile, a rather unfortunate event had come to light. Now in her forties, Gertrude had left the convent to help their brother Archie, a Catholic priest, run his orphanage for boys All was well until Gertrude fell in love and eloped with Tom Stock, anl8 year old inmate. The press descended on the event with glee. Gertrude and Tom set themselves up as gardeners but the social divisions proved too great and inevitably they drifted apart.

Florence was still riding high on her literary success. Her portrait appeared in Vanity Fair in January 1884 , revealing a small, slim woman dressed in flounces, her straw boater thrown carelessly onto the brocade covered chesterfield on which she sat. The tilt of her head , her straight back and challenging stare underlined her confidence. But all was not well. Every penny she earned was needed, for Beau seemed incapable of understanding their dire financial straits and in spite of Florrie's efforts they were forced to sell Bosworth Hall and rent a place near Windsor.

When Lady Augusta Fane waspishly referred to Sir Always and Lady Sometimes, she was remarking on the state of inebriation of the new residents. The neighbours were not prepared for their eccentric behaviour or for the presence of a pet jaguar that Florence frequently exercised on a lead When it escaped and killed deer in Windsor Park she was persuaded to donate it to London Zoo.

With an Irish Catholic grandmother, the troubles across the Irish Sea soon engrossed her. Her mother Caroline had already alienated her contemporaries by donating money to Irish causes. Florence, more suspicious,

ISSUE 33 AUGUST 2005

questioned the activities of the Irish Land League In 1882 she published her own view of events : Ireland and h er Shadows. The following year, out walking her dog , she was set upon by "Fenians" with knives, saved from death only by the whalebone of her corset. The incident became a cause celebre. Resident at nearby Windsor Castle, when new s of the anack reached Queen Victoria she sent John Brown to investigate. Unfortunately he caught a chill and died and in a scenario reminiscent of blaming Bertie for the death of Prince Albert, the Queen blamed Florence for causing Brown's demise

No longer able to afford the Windsor house , she, Beau and Caroline returned to Scotland, occupying the dower house on the Kinmount estate. To the surprise and delight of the family, Jim announced his marriage to the widow of a brandy magnate Without the forceful presence of his sister however he soon began to show signs of mental illness. In an attempt to distract him he was shipped off to America but the trip increased his isolation and on returning to England on May 4 1891 hi s body was discovered in the Euston hotel. He had cut his throat. Florence had inscribed on his grave: Loved with an undying love by his twin sister Florri e. H e r e where h e played in childhood's happy days he now rests

She threw herself into two campaigns. Inspired by John Stuart Mill's On th e Subjection of Women she challenged the inequalities meted out to her sex. Perhaps more surprisingly, she metamorphosed from a female Nimrod into St Frances , championing animal rights , becoming a vegetarian and attacking the evils of blood sports and vivisection. She led a heated exchange of correspondence in the Daily Graphic and wrote an article The Horrors of Sport for the Pall Mall Gazette.

In 1890 she gave an interview to the Women's Penny Paper, produced by women for women. The intrepid male reporter encountered a formidable woman dressed in tartan kilt, shirt, tie and brogues She berated female fashion, designed deliberately to restrict women's freedom She

THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

worked to promote equal opportunities for women in jobs and education and regretted that her second child was not a daughter in order that she might practice what she preached. To alter women's position in society she declared she would gladly "give my life ." Unrestrained by her affable spouse, she insisted that greater equality would "p revent th ousa nds of wretched marriages " The reporter concluded that he had met a woman made of heroic stuff that knows not what defeat m eans.

In that year she published Ainiwee or th e Warrior Queen: a boys ' own story about the Amazons , while in the futuristic Gloriana or th e R evolution of 1900 , a woman in the guise of Hector d'Estrange succeeds in becoming Prime Minister. Her time was filled with correspondence and teaching her sons, the eldest of whom she was personally preparing for his entrance exams into the navy She sent copies of her books to the Women's Institute (a forerunner of that present institution) and the Humanitarian Society, to be sold for funds.

Two other works of fiction were written specifically to promote her ideas. The first, The Young Castaways a children's adventure story, recounted the adventures of a twin boy and girl on a trip to South America. Here , the girl, Topsy , is the equal in every way of her brother ; while Cherie or the Train er's Daughter was promoted as a " racing and social novel. " Everything carried a message

When Rider Haggard published his novel B eatrice, Florence , who had previously met him in South Africa, wrote in high dudgeon regretting the role he gave to the women in his books , asking " why do yo u not use your pen to upraise women?" Many years later , Haggard observed that Florence 's longed for revolution was "still to seek."

Other troubles dogged the family. In 1893 the salacious details of the Lord Alfred Dougla s affair filled the press and in the same year Gertrude died In 1894 Florrie 's nephew Lord Francis Douglas died in a shooting accident

horribly reminiscent of his grandfather's. Brother John died in 1900 In 1903 her thinly disguised autobiography Ijain or th e Evolution of the Mind was published. There also appeared two dramas : Eilabe/le, or the R edee m ed and its sequel:/so/a or th e Disinh eri t ed. But Florrie's words were falling on deaf ears. Overwhelmed by a sense of isolation, in her correspondence she professed herself a "lonely agnostic, " and for her secular views, those around her would " prefer to shoot me " She was short of funds but asked for nothing : "and never have (because I should get nothing if I did) •, This, written some eighteen months before her death. Caroline, ailing and in her eighties died shortly afterwards in I 904.

On a miserable Saturday morning in November 1905 , a funeral cortege wound its way across the windblown Kinmount estate to the private burial ground. There being no roadway, the coffin was manhandled to an unmarked spot close to Caroline's grave and here , according to her instructions, Florence was laid to rest with no religious ceremony. Only a handful of peopl e were present, her sole surviving brother Archie, her sons George and Albert and a cousin, Mr A Johnstone-Douglas of Comlongon Castle. Beau , laid low either by illne ss or grief, did not attend. A year later he remarried and died in 1924.

In a fitting epitaph she long before wrote a poem: Just Plant the Wild Flower on my Grave, her philosophy encapsulated in the telling line : Kill not one single bud for me.

How did Florence becom e the person she did? Her strident feminism, adoption of masculine clothes, support for women's football, passionate campaigning for animal rights, her reveren ce for nature , her agnosticism - what do they tell us about her?

My feelings about her ha ve changed with each piec e of information revealed. I certainly like her much more than I did at the beginning, but that says as much about me as about her.

ISSUE 33 AUGUST 2005

Florence did not earn the recognition later heaped upon the suffragettes neither did she live to see her Utopia In a quirk of fate however her name still lives on in a hotel in remote Chile - Th e lady Florence Dixie Janet Mary Tomson

Jan et Mary Tomson 's last novel, The Midwillow Martyrs , was revie wed in Issue 32 Her tenth novel, One Small Candle, will be publish ed by Robert Hale in September.

CALL FOR REVIEWERS

Wom en's History Magazine needs reviwcrs for the following books :

Academic Studies

McTavish , Lianne , Childbirth and th e Display of Authorship in Early Mode rn Fran ce (Ashagate) Arnold , Marianne & Brenda Schmahmann, eds. Wom en Artists in South Africa 1910-1994 (Ashgate)

Novels

Evans, Margiad , Th e Wooden Do c tor (Hanno)

If interested , please contact Jane Potter at 1:>ook rcv 1C"-s,c1, wo mcn s h ist o ryn c t'A ork org

REVIEWS

PREHISTORIC

PEOPLE OF THE RAVE

Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W Michael Gear, Forge, 2004, $25 95 /C35 95 , hb , 494pp,0765308SSX

Once again the Gears focus on a prehistoric population, this time people living on North America ' s northwest coast 9 ,300 years ago The world is growing warmer, and with glaciers melting , the shoreline species are dying, leaving fewer traditional resources Although they ' ve lived side by side in an exchange relationship as long as anyone can remember, the

THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

disrupted ecosystem upsets the uneasy balance between the fairhaired North Wind People and the darker Raven People, with violent consequences.

The Gears - archaeologists/ writers - fill their pages with a mythdrenched fare of outcasts, violence, gritty realism and native spirituality The happy resolution of this conflict results in marriages that ultimately swallow up the genes of the North Wind People But there is no theory expounded by the Gears on how the two peoples came to live side by side in the first place. The fact that we never return for answers to the questions posed in the Prologue causes similar reader confusion. The Prologue is set in the recent past, when a modem native anthropologist and her great-uncle medicine man glean what they can from the Kennewick Man skeleton before the FBI pound~ on her door. But maybe that is the Gears' intention: to instigate us to learn more about this culture.

Although I was sometimes overwhelmed by the number of characters, the character ofTsauz, the blind boy who goes on a vision quest and hears the thunderbirds for the future of his people , stands out as a particularly interesting spiritual wrinkle in this complex book Ann Chamberlin

ANCIENT EGYPT

THE SEASON OF THE HYAENA

Paul Doherty , Headline , 2005, £18.99 , hb,403pp,0755303393

Egypt , circa I 325BC. The Pharoah Akenhaten , the Great Heretic , has disappeared and the young Prince Tutankhamun is now on the throne But Tutankhamun is only six years old and the country is governed by a group of officials , led by Ay, Akenhaten ' s father-in-law The story is told by Mahu, Chief of Police and official guardian of the Prince, by way of a confession written some time after the events in this book have taken place. Into the sheltered peace and calm of court life, comes a startling piece of news - Akenhaten has returned. Akenhaten , who introduced the idea of there being only one god, the sun , Aten , who overthrew all

the old gods of Egypt. The news affects everyone - those who followed Akenhaten and those who were delighted when he disappeared. So what now?

The events that unfold are graphically told The main characters really existed and much of Mahu's story can be verified Paul Doherty's writing is colourful, full of atmosphere and totally gripping. This is the second of a trilogy I will certainly read the first book , An Evil Spirit Out of th e West and look forward to the final part. This is an historical novel worthy of the genre.

Marilyn Sherlock

BIBLICAL

GODS & Kl GS

Lynn Austin, Bethany House , 2005, $12 99 , pb , 316pp, 0764229893

Though he is the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, Hezekiah is not protected from his father's perverted attempts to seek the favor of the idol, Molech Judah is under attack on three sides As the armies approach Jerusalem, the king orders each household to sacri lice their eldest son to the god Terrified and powerless at the foot of Molech's altar, Hezekiah encounter.; Yahweh, the God of his ancestors Against the advice of his most trusted advisors, Ahaz seeks out an alliance with the Assyrian emperor, sweetening his offer of friendship with gold stripped from Yahweh's temple. Ahaz learns, too late, that treasure given as a gift may be received as tribute Hezekiah grows to manhood in a palace where the king is enslaved to a foreign emperor and Yahweh's high priest is consumed by a lust for power. Few even remember Yahweh ' s ancient covenant with Judah But Yahweh has not forgotten

This retelling of the biblical story of Hezekiah is a riveting combination of thriller , intrigue , and romance Austin brings a depth of p sychological understanding to her characters that is refreshing in inspirational fiction. Although the original may be found in 2 Chronicles , I will eagerly await Austin ' s sequel.

Nancy J Attwell

ISSUE 33 AUGUST 2005

ABIGAIL'S STORY

Ann Burton, Signet, 2005, $5.99/C$8.99, pb,280pp,045121479X

Abigail of Carmel is beautiful and intelligent, and hopes some day to become a pottery-maker like her father. But when her brother incurs a huge gambling debt to the greedy and cruel Nabal - a debt Nabal knows he cannot pay - Abigail sets aside her dreams of independence and happiness and persuades Nabal to marry her to free her brother from his obligation. Although Nabal exiles her to the hills to manage his sheep herders and flocks, Abigail tries to be a good and loyal wife. She grows to enjoy the work and to admire the people under her care, and finds a kind of peace, even though she ha s fallen in love with a man not her husband - the warrior David.

But the peace is illusory: civil war ravages the land as King Saul battles his protege David , now an unwilling rebel. When the miserly Nabal refuses David's request for food and supplies, David vows to destroy Nabal and all his servants. It takes all of Abigail's tact and skill to persuade David to spare Nabal. and she is rewarded by gaining true happiness for herself

Abigail's Story is a nice, competently done novel ; it ends with Nabal's timely natural death and Abigail's marriage to David I'd hoped to read more about her life as David 's wife, rather than about her early years - but perhaps that will be another story!

India Edghill

ZIPPORAH, WIFE OF MOSES

Marek Halter, Crown, 2005, $23.00/C$33.00, hb , 270pp, 11400097398

Pub. in the UK as Zipporah, a H ero in e of th e Old Testament, Bantam, £10.99, pb, 0593052803

A foundling adopted by Jethro , High Priest of Midian , Zipporah is intelligent , beautiful , and black. Although she's Jethro's favorite daughter , Zipporah knows her black skin means she is undesirable as a wife in his tribe. Her dreams of a husband and children seem unattainable until a stranger named Moses wanders into her life Moses is fleeing the wrath of Pharaoh and his own inner demons ; he finds love and comfort in Zipporah 's arms, and she urges him to return to Egypt to free his enslaved people. When God speaks to Moses from a burning bush , it is Zipporah who ensures Mose s does God's bidding and returns to Egypt to fulfill his destiny . Since I have a huge problem with this book that has nothing to do with its historical accuracy, I won't do more than mention the unlikelihood of a woman being allowed to have two children by a man she refuses to marry until he confronts Pharaoh, or that the Egyptian army wasn't equipped with iron swords at this time

As those who've read my own books know , I'm not usually apt to complain that someone changed what was in the Bible to

suit their novel. I've done it myself. But in this case, I must comment on the change Halter chose to make - making Zipporah a foundling out of Africa rather than one of Jethro's biological daughters - because this book is the most amazing case of purblind racism l 've ever run into.

Jethro's descended from Abraham and his second wife, Keturah. Moses marries Zipporah and they have two sons. Halter draws on a long-standing tradition that Zipporah was black; fine But he then makes her adopted, and her entire lineage dies out. This means that while Zipporah's black , not to worry, folks, because she's not descended from Abraham and her line is cut off entirely. So Halter has created a woman of wit, charm, strength, and admirable character, a woman anyone ought to be proud to call "a ncestor" - and then made sure no one is descended from her. Halter wants to have his politically-correct cake without actually having to eat it.

I can't believe the author did this, and it absolutely infuriated me

India Edghill

THE GILDED CHAMBER

Rebecca Kohn, Penguin 2005, £6.99, pb , 368pp,0141020504

When King Xerxes orders that every beautiful virgin in Persia must serve as his concubines many young women are taken by force from their families. Hadassah is among them. Snatched from her betrothed and forced to enter the harem, Hadassah must hide her Jewish roots and try to use her wiles to captivate the King

Renamed Esther, her beauty and grace ensures that King Xerxes chooses her as his queen In spite of this , Esther's position is insecure and constantly threatened by the machinations of Xerxes' advisors. She remains passive and pliable until the day that Xerxes agrees to the massacre of every Jew in the country. Now Esther must use whatever influence she has to save her people

The Gilded Chamber takes the Old Testament story of Esther and retells it from her intimate point of view. Hers is a claustrophobic world characterised by suppressed emotion and restraint. Rebecca Kohn paints a complex and heady picture of the inner workings of the Persian court where trust is dangerous and power fleeting. It is a romantic story although, Esther's love is not for the King but for her promised husband, Mordechi. It is also a story of faith and truth in which the st rength of one person can tum the tide of injustice. Beautifully written and compelling throughout.

Sara Wilson

TILL SHILOH COMES

Gilbert Morris , Bethany House, 2005, $12.99,pb,3l8pp,0764229192

Gilbert Morris tells the Old Testament story of Joseph , the second youngest of the twelve sons of Jacob Indulged by his

father, Joseph grows to be an arrogant youth, flaunting before his older brothers both his scholarly abilities and his father's gift of a coat of many colors Enraged by his behavior, the ten half-brothers attack Joseph, beat him, sell him into slaveryand tell their father that he's dead Over the long years of servitude in Egypt, Joseph realizes how terribly he had behaved Placing his faith in God, he uses his natural skills to gain the trust of his masters Through his ability to interpret dreams, he wins the favor of the Pharaoh, who makes him the Great Protector of Egypt, charged to gather grain during seven bountiful years. When famine hits, and Jacob and his people are threatened with starvation, Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to bu y g rain Joseph learn s of their arrival and dons a disguise to question them. Once he sees that they regret their actions of so many years ago, he tells them who he is, and forgives them their crime. Written in a clear and masterful voice, Till Shiloh Comes incorporates Old Testament history and lessons of faith and forgiveness into a vibrant narrative.

Lisa Ann Verge

CLASSICAL

MEN OF BRONZE

Scott Oden, Medallion , 2005, $26.95/C$35.95, hb, 473pp, l 9328 I 518X Men of Bronze is set in 526 BC during the death throes of the ancient Empire of the Pharaohs A captain of the Medjay (special forces who patrolled the borders of the embattled kingdom) is the hero. His name, Hasdrabal Barca , is not Egyptian, but Phoenician This was the first of many difficulties I had with thi s book. Egypt at this late period was a melting pot of races, so a Medjay warrior of Phoenician blood is certainly within the realms of possibility. The problem is that "Hasdrubal Barca " was the name of a documented member of the Barcid Dynasty of Carthage circa 396 BCE At first I attempted to connect Mr Oden 's Medjay Berserker with the historical Barca , but even after I got that sorted, other troubles arose. Although detail s of daily life and party politics came across as realistic , and although the battle/fight scenes were bloody and exciting, the chapters hopped between characters who were barely introduced before they were killed. Worse, most of them might have strayed in from the pages of Conan the Barbarian. The two-dimensional men are better drawn than the women. Even the heroine, a victimslave of unbroken spirit and a "hea ler, " is barely sketched in.

Juliet Waldron

THE PRINCESS AND THE PIRATES

John Maddox Roberts , Minotaur, 2005, $22.95, 978031233 723X

St. hb , Martin 's 208pp, The ninth entry in the SPQR series takes place in the period of the late republic, on

the island of Cyprus, birthplace of Aphrodite and, for the time of this book, temporary residence of the Egyptian princess Cleopatra. Decius Caecilius Metellus has been given the assignment of contammg local piracy, solving the obligatory murder along the way. Much of the interest of the book comes from descriptions of ancient vessels, and having a narrator with the traditional Roman ignorance of the sea enables the reader to learn along with him.

The main character has a Roman austerity and sense of superiority that owes little to modem sensibilities. He is convinced that his own Roman ancestry manifests itself even when he is in a simple tunic, but at other times he recognizes that this means he is descended from the fugitives who began the criminal enterprise with Romulus. The novel opens with Cleopatra who is the princess in the title, but she is not as central as this indicates. We have seen her before in the series and will no doubt see her again. A more memorable character would be Flavia, whose efforts to entertain six sailors at once cause Metellus to reminisce about his pornography collection.

Roberts invites comparison with other Roman mystery series, like those by Lindsey Davies, Steven Saylor, David Wishart, Anne de Leseleuc or Marilyn Todd. In some ways, the ground covered more closely resembles the series of political intrigue by Colleen McCullough, Allan Massie and Benita K,me Jaro. From either perspective, SPQR re-creates Roman history in an unusually convincing manner. Recommended.

James Hawking

15T CENTURY

SEE DELPHI AND DIE Lindsey Davis, Century 2005, £17.99, hb, 30 I pp, 0712625909 (Century, $35.10)

Package holidays in Greece sound familiar? Marcus Didius, his adored Helena Justina and the usual cast of principal characters plus some younger additions, return as old friends in this 17 th of the Falco series by super Lindsey Davis. See Delphi and Die is back to the author's true form.

It is now AD76; Falco and Helena hear that both a young girl and a newly married woman have been murdered at Olympia whilst traveling with 'Seven Sights Tours', a travel company based in Rome with Greek-speaking guides. The local authorities are not investigating the cases with any degree of thoroughness until Falco arrives on the scene and immediately makes himself unpopular with the priests at the famous sanctuary of Zeus.

The search for culture brings together a disparate group of tourists, some of whom have things to hide. With a vanishing bridegroom and absentee tour guide, plus Helena's brother, who just happened to be

there at the time they thought him to be safely studying law in Athens, Falco and his beloved struggle with a case that contains more baffling features than any they have dealt with before.

The ancient cities of Olympia, Corinth, Delphi and Athens are skillfully described but for those readers who may not have been fortunate enough to have traveled with 'Seven Sights', it would nevertheless have been useful to have basic town plans included. The book, however, is a Roman feast with Greek trimmings, full of detail which brings the period to life, and is immensely readable.

Gwen Sly

WARRIOR QUEEN

Alan Gold, New American Library, 2005, $ I 4/ C$20/ £8.99 , pb, 384pp, 045 I 215257

In this most recent contribution to the evergrowing legend of Boudica, the great queen of the Iceni who fought the Romans in Britain, Alan Gold has valiantly tried to outdo the new offerings by such authors as Manda Scott. Given the familiarity of most historical fiction readers with the facts to the extent that they are known, it lies to Gold to craft his Boudica in a memorable fashion so that his warrior queen is different than all others. To say the least, that is a daunting task.

While Gold manages to flesh out the characters of such historical figures as Claudius and Nero more fully than many other authors telling Boudica's story - and makes them disgustingly unpalatable as human beings - and convincingly paints Boudica's stepson, Cassus, as a really bad fellow , he fails, I think, to make Boudica more accessible than other authors. Doubtless, Boudica is a wise diplomat who manages to rally the tribes to fight the Roman invaders. She is a fearless warrior. She is much beloved of her husband, Prasutagus (who departs this mortal coil early on in the book) because of her beauty, her sexuality and their true partnership during their marriage.

But it falls flat. Gold does try valiantly to tell the story from a slightly different perspective and has done a yeoman's job of sorting out historical fact from fiction. But the prose is sometimes stilted and uncomfortable. There is no spark. The story - which is the stuff of legend - becomes boring. There are a number of other Boudica offerings that kept me engaged and interested, but this wasn't one of them.

Ilysa Magnus

THE DAWN STAG

Jules Watson, Orion 2005, £17.99, hb, 552pp, 0752856871

The Dawn Stag is the second book of Jules Watson's trilogy set in ancient Scotland, Alba. I rushed out and bought the first book, so I could catch up with the plot! Rhiann is now devoted to her heroic husband, Eremon, an Irish Prince, after the initial marital disharmony in The White

Mare. The threat from Rome is increasing, and they must unite the tribes to fight the invader. In addition, raiders from Ireland, and treachery among the clan chiefs, pose danger nearer to home, and Rhiann must use her mystical powers to help her people. There is much in this novel about The Sisterhood, priestesses who have The Sight (Rhiann included). This is somewhat New Age and feminist, and does rather detract from the atmosphere of Ist Century A.D. Britain. Also the characters are far too clean and well fed! However, that aside, the story is really engaging, and in spite of some reservations, I could not stop reading. Here's to the next volume. Well done Ms. Watson.

Ruth Ginarlis

2N°CENTURY

ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE

Rosemary Rowe, Headline, 2005, £18.99, hb,308pp,0755305183

Libertus the mosaicist arrested for murder? Surely not! But in 2 nd century Britannia, anything is possible. Libertus finds himself in deep trouble in Venta, a town in Silurian territory, when he sees a man whom he thought was dead. Ever curious, Libertus tries to pursue the fellow, only to find himself on the wrong side of town. From there he is plunged into a deftly woven tale of patriots and intrigue.

Rowe is very good on the realities of Roman life, not shirking some of the less pleasant aspects, and there is a pleasing attention to detail, which lends the story an authentic feel. Libertus seems to be rather less pompous (and more likeable) than in the last tale I read - perhaps the return of his wife has mellowed him.

S Garside-Neville

5TH CENTURY

THE CYBELENE CONSPIRACY

Albert Noyer, Toby Press, 2005, $14.95, pb,324pp, 1592640338

Review appeared in Issue 32 (May 2005), p. 15.

7TH CENTURY

BADGER'S MOON

Peter Tremayne, St. Martin's Minotaur, 2005,$23.95,hb,265pp,0312323417

Pub in the UK by Headline, 2004, £6.99, pb,0755302249

Badger's Moon is the fourteenth installment in Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma series, set in 7th-century Ireland. Fidelma, an advocate of the law courts and sister of Colgu, one of the five kings of Ireland, is living at her brother's court in Cashel with her companion, the Saxon monk Brother

Eadulf, and their infant son. (In Fidelma's time, monks and nuns were not required to be celibate, as Tremayne explains.) Her cousin Becc, chieftain of the clan of the Cine] na Aeda, arrives at Cashel to summon Fidelma to investigate a series of murders in his territory. Three young girls have been brutally murdered, each on the night of the full moon, with the last murder taking place at the Badger's Moon (October's full moon). Three foreigners who have been staying at the Abbey of Finnbarr in Becc's territory have been accused of the murders. But, after questioning the local people, Fidelma realizes that they have been quick to leap to conclusions because of their prejudice. Will she find the real killer before the next night of the full moon arrives?

I had only read one of the earlier Sister Fidelma mysteries before this one, but Badger's Moon certainly makes me want to read the rest of the series. Tremayne makes 7'h century Ireland come alive for the reader and provides an excellent introduction, which explains the historical background of the Fidelma series and a guide to the pronunciation of Irish names.

Vicki Kondelik

10TH CENTURY

SAGA: A Novel of Medieval Iceland Jeff Janoda, Academy Chicago, 2005, $26,50,hb,360pp,0897335325

Though this first novel is saddled with an unimaginative title and a host of similarly named and motivated characters, it is a compelling narrative. The setting is the socalled Free State, a harsh land where weakness begets trouble and men struggle to fight off hunger. Before the arrival of Christianity, Iceland is haunted by ghosts, elves, and the ancient pagan gods. People there are "always negotiating, wheedling, gossiping, forever immersed in their neighbor's business, never happy until they had all your wealth in their pocket." The island's most envied possession is the Crowess, a lon ely stand of wood.

Besides being a teacher, Jeff Janoda is an outdoorsman who has spent ten years researching medieval Northern Europe. His writing shows it. He makes us smell the smoke, the peat, and the ha! f-rotten beef, and feel the terrible cold. His images are distinctive. He says of a character nicknamed Lamefoot: "He threw a vast leg over the saddle and slid down onto the tub like a walrus sliding down a wet rock into the sea." His characters baffle and incense. How can Thorolf the Viking (Lamefoot) rob his own son of his inheritance? Still, his son, Amkel, is no innocent bystander; he sets out to recover what is his, the Crowess, by any means necessary. In the bloody feud that ensues, the weak are trampled. Chieftains, who are supposed to uphold the law and resolve disputes in a democratic assembly, are involved in the quarrel. It is a

savage land, an alien landscape that Janoda describes brilliantly and unsparingly.

Adelaida Lower

11 TH CENTURY

KNIGHTS OF THE CROSS

Tom Harper, Century 2005, £10.99, pb, 370pp, 1844131424

I 098. The First Crusade: outside the impregnable Turkish city of Antioch. In this second book about Demetrios Askiades, Demetrios is sent to the Byzantine Emperor to keep an eye on the leaders of the crusading armies, particularly the unscrupulous and land-hungry Bohemond. Antioch once belonged to the Byzantine Empire and the emperor wants it back; he certainly doesn't want an ambitious Bohemond ruling Antioch on his doorstep.

The crusaders have failed to take Antioch and are starving and quarrelling amongst themselves. In this deteriorating situation, one of Bohemonds' knights is murdered and Demetrios is ordered to find the killer. Soon Demetrios is caught up in a deadly web of treachery, betrayal and deceit - meanwhile, a vast infidel army under the formidable Kerbogha is approaching. The crusaders' only hope is to take Antioch, where they will be safe .

Like Demetrios, I soon lost track of the murder investigation amid the complexities of bitter competing ambitions amongst the crusading factions. The situation swiftly degenerated into internecine feuding and, frankly, I had only the vaguest idea what was going on.

If you enjoy a well-written, historically all-too-plausible tale of bloodshed and savagery, look no further. Just don't expect to follow the plot.

Elizabeth Hawksley

12TH CENTURY

QUEST OF HOPE

C. D. Baker, River Oak, 2005, $14.99, pb, 498pp, 1589190114

It is the year 1174 in the village of Weyer, Germany. On the day the peasant, Heinrich, is christened, the joy of celebration changes to terror as a column of knights approaches the village. Without thought of standing in their own defense, the villagers flee to the sanctuary of the church. Heinrich grows to manhood accepting the boundaries which define his life, including the village border he must not cross, and the uncle's tyranny he must not defy. Yet of all the restrictions which confine Heinrich's world, the cruelest is the one he takes upon himself: Bound by a terrible oath given when he was but a child, Heinrich dares not lift his eyes to the heavens. Conscripted as a baker for the army that marches against the peasants of Stedinger, Heinrich is astonished to see

men of his own station ready to fight for their freedom. When his cousin is killed by •a knight, for sport, fury rises within him at last, and Heinrich turns from the safety of the ways he has always known to the more precarious life of a free man.

In the first part of this book, the unfolding days and years of Heinrich's life are as sumptuous as a box of handmade choco lates . While neither idealizing the peasantry nor demonizing the nobility, the author lays a delectable feast of images , characters and story. Unfortunately, once Heinrich breaks free from his cultural imprisonment, he hurtles toward the climactic moment of his life through a series of adventures written in such a different style that I wondered if this was, in truth, a second novel pasted to the end of the first. Despite this weakness, Quest of Hope is a wonderfully evocative story of a peasant's life in the Middle Ages.

Nancy J. Attwell

GRAVEN IMAGES

Barbara Reichmuth Geisler, Lost Coast, 2004, $17 .95, pb, 411 pp, 1882897846

This second book in the Averillan Chronicles series is set in 12 th century Shaftesbury, at the Benedictine Abbey of nuns. A young woman is murdered, and the people of the town decide that Master Levitas, the Jewish moneylender and goldsmith, is responsible. While this plot provides the backbone of the novel, it is an extraordinarily rich book with multiple storylines. The language and descriptions give a strong sense of the period, and the characters are fascinating. The abbess, Emma, is slowly growing into her position of authority and attempting to cope with the abbey's severe financial problems. Several of the nuns are adjusting to changes in their responsibilities, and some English residents of Shaftesbury are still grappling with the loss of lands and wealth under the Normans. (While this book can be read independently, I highly recommend reading Other Gods first , which takes place one year ear li er and provides full introductions to many of the characters .) The precarious position of Jews in medieval England is vividly portrayed. A fascinating subplot involves Master Hugo, a renowned a1tist who has come to the Abbey to undertake a commission, the young boy who travels with him, and Hugo's relationship with Levitas. Geisler provides very useful supplementary material: maps of the town and abbey; the seven offices of psalms, with their times; a cast of characters; a glossary; and a section explaining key elements of the story, and where her fiction meets facts. The power this book held over me was such that I got up in the middle of the night to finish it-I could not fall asleep without finding out how things were resolved. I recommend it highly.

Trudi E. Jacobson

13 TH CENTURY

THE FALCON OF PALERMO

Maria R Bordihn, Atlantic Monthly, 2005, $25.00,hb,419pp,0871138808

This author's first novel is a fictional biography of the legendary Frederick II, who ruled as Holy Roman Emperor for the first half of the thirteenth century. Frederick's story begins in Sicily. Orphaned by the age of four, he ha s inherited the once-wealthy but now impoverished kingdom from hi s moth er Constance. As a young man, he occupies himself with kingship, denying any connection to the legacy of his late grandfather Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor. But the German princes and Pope Innocent have other plans. Hoping for a more malleable emperor than Otto, the y offer to suppon Frederick's election instead. To their dismay , Frederick, who comes to be known as "S tupor Mundi ," the wonder of the world, is not willing to be a puppet of the Church. As emperor, Frederick believes he can bring back the glory and stability of ancient Rome

This well-researched novel succeeded best in outlining the historical and political details of Frederick's reign , his conflicts with Otto and with successive popes Unfortunately, I was not equally drawn in to th e portrayal of Frederick's personal life People flitted on and off of the pages without making much of an impression on him or upon me. Eventually the book became simply a se rie s of major events with little transition. The characters were present because they were necessary to the storyline, but they never developed enough emotional depth to make the relationships see m real. This may have been the fault of trying to fit too large a life into too short of a book. However, if you are looking for an introduction to this extraordinary emperor, this is a pleasant and quick read.

Sue Asher

A CRUEL COURTSHIP

Candace Robb, Heinemann, August 2005, £10.99,pb,303pp,0434009423

August 1297 In Stirling Castle the English invaders wait for reinforcement s Their object: the defeat of the Scottish armed forces, leaving nothing to hinder their advance and the conquest of Scotland while th e Lowlands a re plagued by usele ss, irreconc ilable disagreement amongst the Scottish leaders. For the sake of James Comyn, 19 year-old Margaret Kerr makes a pe rilous journey to Stirling to discover why information from the town is no longer reaching him. Comyn is loyal to John Balliol's claim to Scotland's throne. Margaret's estranged husband, Roger Sinclair, supports the other claimant: the Bruce. Margaret is a very troubled young woman, forced to acknowledge her growing desire for Comyn whilst still having strong feelings for her husband. Above all, she fears she has inherited her mother's dangerous gift of The Sight -

foreknowledge which may be true but gives her no chance to act on it.

At this time of lawlessness and the threat of war, Stirling is a dangerous place where the townsfolk tum on one another, motivated by fear and greed and the settling of scores. Although Margaret finds strong friends, in particular Ada de la Haye , a worldly courtesan , this novel with its four brutal murders gives a frightening demonstration of a society on the brink of collapse.

All the descriptive passages, whether lovely or repellent, take the reader right there with Margaret, her family and friends , and lively dialogue whisks the story along. Nancy Henshaw

14 th CENTURY

THE MARK OF A

MURDERER

Susanna Gregory, Time Warner Books, 2005, £17.99, hb , 469pp, 0316726400 (Time Warner Books UK, $25.00, hb , 0316726400)

The eleventh chronicle of Matthew Bartholomew opens m the aftermath of the 1355 St. Scholastica 's Day riots in Oxford. Several members of Oxford's town and gown head toward Cambridge. Some hope to avoid repercussions of the riots ; others are hellbent on revenging a murder It's not long before several deaths are brought to the attention of Brother Michael , Senior Proctor , and his Corpse Examiner and friend, Matthew Bartholomew.

Brother Michael's enquiries are hampered by the mysterious behaviour of the Oxford contingent and by Matthew's inexplicable night-time visits to town prostitute Matilde Pressure on the intrepid investigators increases as a visit by the Archbishop of Canterbury draws close and a plot to instigate a riot in Cambridge is uncovered.

Matthew Bartholomew's chronicles are some of the best historical detective novels out there - as long as they are read with tongue firmly in cheek. They are bra sh, bold , colourful and witty. If they ha ve a fault it is that the plots are so complex they require the narrative to contain frequent repetitive recaps, which slow the action somewhat. Put that grouse aside and you have a rollicking good book . The Mark of a Murderer is a mustread for fans of the genre.

Sara Wilson

ECT AR FROM A STONE

Jane Guill , Touchstone , 2005, $15.00/C$22.00, pb, 439pp, 0743264797

Medieval Wales is one era I know well , and so I approached this novel with a critical eye. Set in 135 I , when the Black Death was still snatching victims, Nectar from a Stone is a tale of dislocation and assumed identities, murder and revenge, love and

new beginnings After losing her family to the plague, Elise marries Maelgwyn . But when her new husband proves to be as abusive as he is well-off, she fights back, believes that she has killed him , and bolts, with only her servant for company On the road, they encounter Gwydion, who is on a quest to reclaim his family estate and avenge his father's death. What ensues is a series of adventures-many of them violent-that leaves the reader wondering if love truly will triumph

I think Jane Guill has captured the time and the place in her writing. Some of the unlikely , off-beat characters can only be Welsh, and the details of life at that timeWelsh people forbidden to enter English towns freely, for example-ring true It is clear that she ha s spent considerable time doing on-the-ground re sea rch Howeve r, her characters lack depth and uniqueness. The villains are all extraordinarily evil, with no redeeming qualities , and Elise seems as ethereal as the visions to which she is occasionally prone Gwydion came across to me as the stereotypical medieval nobleman As a result , I found it hard to take this novel seriously.

Claire Morris

THE BUTCHER OF ST PETER'S

Michael Jecks , Headline, 2005, £18.99, hb , 328pp,0755322975

This is the nineteenth novel of the medieval series, this one set in Exeter. The murders are gory and frequent. The plot is convoluted, with many apparently unconnected strands which gradually mesh into a solution. Estmund lost his own family in the famine, and like s to enter hom es to watch over sleeping children. But one night a sergeant protecting his children is killed and Estmund is suspected. The canons of the Cathedra l are disputing with the Friars, wealthy Jordan seeks to protect his interests in brothels and gambling, the doctor Ralph treats both rich and poor, a passing merchant is robbed and accuses the Canons, and there is a web of adultery. In the background the country is moving towards another civil war.

Michael Jecks uses the conditions and conventions of the time with great skill, and readers can immerse them se lves in medieval Exeter, whether brothel or butcher's shop, Cathedral or cottage. The maps of the town and Close, and the brief descriptions in the lengthy character list were invaluable and I turned to them frequently

Marina Oliver

THE ILLUMINA TOR

Brenda Rickman Vantrease , St. Martin 's Press , 2005, $24.95/C$34.95, hb , 406pp , 0312331916

It is 1349, a time of religious unrest in England. While John Wycliffe works for Church reform under John of Gaunt's protection , his followers enjoy no such luxury Lady Kathryn of Blackingham Manor in East Anglia, a widow, doesn't

share these Lollard beliefs; she simply hates the Church's greed. To please the local abbot, she agrees to let an illuminator and his daughter lodge with her, but this adds to her problems. A priest's body is found on her property; her bailiff is cheating her; and Finn, the master illuminator, conceals the manuscripts that Master Wycliffe had asked him to illustrate (and much more besides). Finn soon wins over Agnes, Lady Kathryn's cook, and he wins over Kathryn as well; their love affair parallels that of Finn's daughter Rose with Kathryn's gentle son Colin. But reality interrupts these romantic interludes. When Finn reveals one of his deepest secrets, Kathryn's world unravels, and with it, the lives of everyone around her.

The author's characters, from Kathryn and Finn to Agnes to Julian of Norwich, are all flawed and genuine, their relationships honest, their language not sugar-coated, their thoughts and feelings appropriate to their time. This is not a book that romanticizes the Middle Ages , but one that vividly describes the reality of feudalism, religious expression, and daily life in 14 th century England. Little details , from the meals cooked for supper to the prejudices and jealousies that make us all human , breathe life into the era. If you appreciate historical fiction that can "take you there," you're sure to love this novel.

Sarah Johnson

15TH CENTURY

THE WIDOW'S TALE

Margaret Frazer, Berkley Prime Crime, 2005,$22.95,hb,266pp,0425200183

It is the year 1449 in Broxbourne, England, and Edward Helyngton knows he is dying. He also knows that once he is gone his wife, Christiana, will be at the mercy of men grasping for her widow's hand; with it will come control of his estates and their daughters' marriages. As such, The Widow's Tale is the story of a mother's nightmare. Christiana is kidnapped, locked into an abbey, and abandoned without hope of being reunited to her children. Her rescue precipitates events that force her to choose between her children and her nation. However , without losing a beat in credibility, the story takes a totally unexpected tum and draws us into a heartpounding and tragic conclusion. This novel is sure ly some of Margaret Frazer's best • writing. As a historical mystery it ha s it all: a wonderful plot, richness and accuracy of historical information, believable and finely drawn characters, quick pace, surprises, and good action. But what makes it more than just a great read is its depth. The reader comes away sadder and wiser, knowing that what they've read is the stuff of real life. Brava 1 Lucille Cormier

16 th CENTURY

SAILS OF FORTUNE

Christine Echeverria Bender, Caxton Press, 2005 , $16.95,pb,40lpp,0870044494

Sails of Fortune opens on a September night in I 5 I 9, when Juan de Elcano fears that a Portuguese spy is about to attack him , and almost accidentally skewers his dear friend Elorriaga. Little do the two shipmasters know, as they wait to join Magellan's quest for a westward passage from Spain to the Spice Islands , that they may find themselves far more dangerously divided before the voyage is over. Their journey will be plagued with storms, plots, mutinies, desertions, starvation, friendly and unfriendly natives, scurvy, and pursuit by the Portuguese. Magellan's command is tenuous, because many of the Spanish crew are uneasy to have a Portuguese captaingeneral, even if his own countrymen damn him as a traitor. Once they find westward passage and reach the islands , one would think that the worst times were over, but in fact, they had only begun Bender crafts the novel around Elcano. Certainly this is historically convenient, since he was one of the few men to complete the voyage, and Bender gives him a likeable and all-too-human personality. The novel will delight old salty dogs and readers without sea legs; Bender has clearly done her research, but it is not necessary to have strong historical or technical knowledge to enjoy the tale.

Bender's third-person narrative is extremely adept; her dialogue skills are a little lighter but still enjoyable . The first half of the book occasionally conveys "reader education information" awkwardly: a knowledgeable seaman will "remind" an equally experienced friend of facts that both would know stone cold, merely for the reader's benefit. It would have been nice to get this information in a less contrived way, but these instances taper off as the book progresses, and the explorers ask ingenuous questions about new wonders seen on the voyage.

Andrea Bell

FACE DOWN BELOW THE BANQUETING HOUSE

Kathy Lynn Emerson, Perseverance Press, 2005,$13.95,232p~pb, 1880284715

This is the eighth novel in Emerson's series featuring Susanna, Lady Appleton, a widowed gentlewoman and herbalist in Elizabethan England. In the summer of 1573, when the queen- with her entourage--<lecides to visit Susanna's country estate, Leigh Abbey, Susanna is not at all thrilled at the prospect. Brian Tymberley, a courtier who comes to inspect Leigh Abbey to see if it is suitable lodging for the queen, incurs the hatred of the inhabitants of Leigh Abbey and the surrounding area by blackmailing them. Everyone, it seems, has a secret to hide. When Tymberley's manservant, who has

assisted him in his extortion , turns up dead under the banqueting house which has been constructed at the top of Susanna's oak tree, Susanna, with the help of her lover, Nick Baldwin, the local justice of the peace, must find the killer before the queen arrives.

I had not read any of the Face Down series before, but this book made me want to go back and read the others. The feisty Susanna, who refuses to give up her independence by marrying Nick, is a wonderful heroine. The supporting castN ick, his horrible mother Winifred, Susanna's housekeeper Jennet, and othersare all well-drawn characters I would like to encounter again And it is wonderful how Emerson gives the reader details about everyday life m Elizabethan England without seeming to lecture.

Vicki Kondelik

THE PYRE MlRROR

Karen Harper, St. Martin's Minotaur, 2005, $23.95/C$33.95, hb, 273pp, 0312326920

The seventh offering in Karen Harper's Elizabeth I series opens with Good Queen Bess escaping London for Nonsuch Palace, where she hopes to relax and pose for the official royal portrait, for which she is holding a competition. Her young court artist , Gil Sharpe, returns from studying in Italy just in time to witness the beginning of a terrifying period of murders, arson and court treachery. Summoning her Privy Plot Council, she wonders if the culprits are supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots, her enemies on the Continent, or a " running boy" apparition bent on revenge.

Well-written and packed with detailed history, this book is a definite page-turner. To take such a well-known woman and create such a vivid, strong-willed detective is absolutely fantastic! It's easy to imagine Elizabeth in this incarnation My only question is: does my library have the first six books in the series?

Dana Cohlmeyer

DEMON OF THE AIR: An Aztec Mystery

Simon Levack, St. Martin's Minotaur, 2005,$23.95,hb,320pp,0312348347 Reviewed in Issue 28 (May 2004).

KATHARJNEOFARAGON

Jean Plaidy, Three Rivers, 2005 (cl96l62), $14.95, pb , 66lpp, 0609810251

If you have an interest in any particular period of British history, the odds are that Eleanor Hibbert wrote a novel about it, either under the name Jean Plaidy or Victoria Holt. This attractive volume reissues three related works: Katharine, the Virgin Widow; The Shadow of the Pomegranate; and The King's Secret Maller. Early in the first volume, a prospective marriage with Arthur, Prince of Wales, brings a young Spanish princess to Dogmerfield, blissfully unaware of just what she is stepping into. Her brief unconsummated marriage to the gentle

ISSUE 33, AUGUST 2005

prince results in an impoverished widowhood when the avaricious Henry VII holds her a virtual hostage in disputes over her dowry His death brings about what seems to be a happy ending, as she marries the newly crowned King Henry VIII. To correct this impression, the reader must move on to the second volume where Katharine contemplates the irony of her choice of the fertility symbol the pomegranate as device , while Henry moves farther away from her with each new mistress Cardinal Wolsey assists the king in his quest to use scripture to justify the divorce from an aging and probably barren queen. The final volume sees Katharine defending the legitimacy of her marriage and the rights of her daughter Mary against the king's insi stence that she was really his brother's widow. The execution of the Duke of Buckingham for an imagined treason shows how stubbornly vicious Henry has become , foreshadowing his later brutalities. Part of Plaidy's appeal is that her omniscient viewpoint explains motivations that may even be hidden from the principals This volume is recommended , and there are plenty more where it came from . James Hawking

THE SIXTH WIFE

Jean Plaidy, Three Rivers , 2005, $13.95, pb,290pp,06098l026X

Reviewing a Jean Plaidy (aka Victoria Holt/Philippa Carr) novel is rather like asking a teenager at a family barbecue how she like s her grandmother's pineapple cake. If the teen offers criticism, oh what impertinence! Yet if she raves, always there lingers the suspicion that she is mouthing platitudes for the sake of dear ol' Grannyeven if she isn ' t.

So it is with Plaidy's novel, The Sixth Wife, originally published in 1953. Plaidy brings to life Katherine Parr, King Henry VIII's final spouse. The young Katherine is already a widow for the second time when she falls in love with Thomas Seymour. Her hopes for happiness are dashed, however , when the king's roving eye falls upon her. Forced into a dangerous marriage , she navigates in a calm, motherly way through the storms of the king 's shifting moods , which swing ever wilder as the years pass and she shows no signs of pregnancy. The king's death saves her from a trumped-up charge of treason, and within a month she's married to Thomas Seymour. Happiness eludes her, however , as rumors about a relationship between Seymour and Katherine's stepdaughter, the future Queen Elizabeth, grow ever more vicious. The Dowager Queen, a betrayed and melancholy creature, dies giving birth to a daughter.

Th e Sixth Wife is a powerful, living portrait of the characters of the era-and a novel that shows no sign of aging.

Lisa Ann Verge

THE TURQUOISE RING

Grace Tiffany, Berkley Signature , 2005, $23.95,hb,368pp,0425202488

The Merchant of Venice is arguably one of Shakespeare's most controversial works. The 16 th century tale of vengeance and religious intolerance among rival merchants was recently made into a film , and now comes to us reinvented as a new novel by Grace Tiffany (author of My Father had a Daughter and Will.)

Told from the viewpoints of five women, this entertaining , though at times uneven, novel employs the symbol of a turquoise ring made in Toledo to weave together the stories of brave Leah, her rebellious daughter Jessica, clever courtesan Nerissa, eccentric heiress Portia , and a Moorish servant with a secret, Xanthe Some of these names will be familiar to Shakespeare aficionados, though such knowledge is not required in order to enJoy Tiffany 's intelligent feminist construction of the Renaissance woman's plight, as well as her ode to the revered playwright 's talent for finely honed characterization and rambunctious dialogue. Though the novel does offer a wellresearched and charismatic depiction of the money lender Shylock (known here as Shiloh, an independent spirit who flees the Spanish Inquisition and martyrdom of his beloved wife only to find himself captive to Venetian hypocrisy and the bitterness of his own heart), he does not overshadow the plot. This is a refreshing choice that instead allows Tiffany to frame her narrative through the ghosts of lost love and exile. While Jessica, Nerissa, and Portia supply a diverse, sometimes amusing, and always sympathetic portrait of how women sought survival in an often callous age, it is Leah's lyrical beginning and Xanthe's sage ending that elevate this unusual interpretation of a classic stage drama

C. W. Gartner

17 TH CENTURY

EMILIE'S VOICE

Susanne Dunlap , Touchstone , 2005, $14.00,pb,320pp,0743265068

Emilie is content sit in her father's atelier, singing to him as he crafts his violins and cellos. When a composer named Charpentier comes to purchase a violin , he hears Emilie's extraordinary voice, becomes her teacher , and introduces her to a larger world. Immediately after a successful debut and just as her feelings for her teacher begin to grow, Emilie is whisked away to the court at Versailles by a devious nobleman, la ckey of the pious yet cruel Madame de Maintenon, confidante of King Louis XIV. Madame de Maintenon may have the king's ear, but Madame de Montespan occupies the king's bed, and na"ive, innocent Emilie is powerless to prevent herself from becoming a tool in the war between these two powerful women-a

war which could well end in Emilie's own destruction.

Dunlap has crafted a lyrical and lovely tale, as well as a suspenseful one. Her portrayal of the intrigues at Versailles brings the setting to life, and her depiction of the machinations of the characters that populate the court imbues the atmosphere with palpable menace. At times, this tale seems bursting with villains and short on heroes , but Emilie and Charpentier are both sympathetic characters, and the reader is pulled along as events beyond their control continue to shape their fates. One of the most frightening aspects of this tale, which Dunlap adept ly illustrates, is how the smallest event, such as ruining a pair of shoes, can change lives forever. Dunlap 's forte lies in her description of the music , Emilie's voice, and the effect Emilie's remarkable gift has on herself and others. The expressive prose, which is faintly reminiscent of Susan Vreeland , adds depth and charm to the story without detracting from the gripping plot. Recommended.

Bethany Skaggs

A BRIDE MOST BEGRUDGING

Deeanne Gist , Bethany House, 2005, $12.99,pb,314pp,0764200720

In the 17th century, women were indentured as "tobacco brides" to Virginia farmers. Lady Constance Morrow boards a shallop to say goodbye to her uncle, transported for political reasons, and is abducted by the villainous captain. Her uncle succumbs to ship fever. Constance reaches the colony half-starved and ragged, and is sold to despicable, crude Emmett for 200 pounds of sot weed. Drew O 'Co nnor wins her in a poker game, and she goes to his cottage to learn housewifery. Her cooking skills are nonexistent, and she has never had to wash dishes, or brave a rooster attack to collect eggs. Drew is a strapping provincial , autocratic and stem, broken-hearted after lo sing most of his family and his beloved. His brother Josh provides humor.

Constance isn't the stereotypical romantic heroine. She has freckles and curly auburn hair. Her passion is for mathematics, and she wants to continue her uncle's work publishing "The Ladies' Mathematical Diary." She poses riddles to Drew , and he realizes that no trollop would have such an education. However , he puts off contacting her father until months have passed. The characters speak in formal dialog with odd, reversed syntax. The author's strength is in the conflicts faced by her plucky heroine , who struggles to succeed in a primitive land.

Marcia K Matthews

EARTHLY JOYS

Philippa Gregory, Touchstone, 2005 , $16.00,pb,516pp,0743272528

Pub in the UK by HarperCollins, 1999 , £7.99, pb, 480pp, 000649644X

John Tradescant designs gardens for Sir Robert Cecil as James I takes the throne of

England. Through these lofty connections, Tradescant is able to travel to faraway places to collect rare plants for cultivating on his master's estate. After Cecil dies, Tradescant's reputation as a botanist brings him to the attention of the Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham is selfindulgent, immature, and the King's favorite. Tradescant immediately falls under the duke's spell and will do anything for him, much to his wife's despair. She warns her husband of the duke's depraved behavior, but Tradescant remains loyal, too loyal. Buckingham, through an attack on France, where Tradescant accompanies him , nearly brings England to financial ruin In the midst of battle , the duke draws his gardener into a forbidden liaison. King James , then his son Charles I, spend lavishly on themselves while ignoring the growing discontent , the starvation, among subjects on the verge of civil war

I found Tradescant extremely na ive toward Buckingham's flaws. The story is episodic in the beginning but picks up when Buckingham comes on the scene. Gregory includes details of this naturalist's work with exotic plants and his innovative gardening techniques. An interesting , if not always involving , read.

Diane

Scott Lewis

GHOST PORTRAIT

Gregory Norminton , Sceptre , 2005, £14.99, hb , l 94pp, 034083465X

This novel interweaves three periods in the life of 17 th Century painter , Nathaniel Deller. The story moves back and forth between 1650 and 1680. In part it's a meditation on mortality , an old man's recollections of his work and ambitions and of certain momentous events of his life Now blind and dying , Deller tries to commission his former pupil , William Stroud, to complete the portrait of his longdead wife, at the risk of re-igniting the romance between Stroud and his daughter.

The whole of the story (including flashbacks) is written in the present tensenot my favourite narrative style. I found it difficult to identify with the characters or to feel their emotions. However , there is a moving account of the displaced people who joined the Digger movement ; I'd have liked to have followed that strand of the story further.

Celia

Ellis

CAPT AlN ALA TRISTE

Arturo Perez-Reverie, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2005 (pub. 1996 m Spanish), $23.95/C$33.00, hb, 272pp, 0399 l 5275X Pub. in the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson , 2005,£9.99,hb,0297848461

The story is "the adventure of masked men and two Englishmen," a superbly told tale set in 17 th century Madrid. It is an adventure from start to finish, moving with the rhythm of fencing masters at playswift, light motion, pause, explosive clash of action - always gallant, always proud.

The story's namesake, Captain Diego Alatriste, is a veteran of the Flemish Wars. His soldier's skills are up for hire. The commission he undertakes is deadly , his life at stake ifhe fails. Ifhe succeeds, Spain and England will again cross swords. But the story is not all dark skullduggery. The narrator , Alatriste's ward, Inigo, recounts the tale with the candor and simplicity of youth. The poet, Francisco de Quevedo, is a comic foil. Thus the story is light and dark, innocent and cynical at the same time. It leaves the reader happy , sad, and wanting to know what is next in store for Alatriste. This being said, though, this reader , for one, hopes that the author will soon take up a new intellectual thriller of the type that first brought him to the world 's attention Nonetheless, Captain Alatriste is an awfally good read.

Lucille Cormier

18 TH CENTURY

THE SQUIRE AND THE SCHOOLMISTRESS

Ann Barker, Robert Hale , 2005, £18.99, hb, 224 pp , 0709077769

Never judge a book by its cover! Confronted by the garish illustration on the book jacket you might well think this was an equally banal story, and that it was set in Victorian times whereas it is late 18th century. It is the tale of Flavia Montague, an independent young woman who is tired of teaching at a select Bath seminary and wants a home of her own and to be out of the social round. She takes up the post of village schoolmistress which she finds satisfying and enjoyable, but as anyone who lives in a village knows, a newcomer is soon caught up in village society.

The village characters are beautifully drawn and in spite of her shyness she finds them intriguing. Is the flirtatious Paul Wheaton ever sincere? ls Sir Lewis Glendenning the ogre he seems? What happened to her predecessor the mysterious Miss Price who left under an apparent cloud? What is the mystery surrounding Penelope and Philip , two of her pupils who seem socially above the village children? All these and other tantalising questions are gradually answered as she falls in love , but the biggest question of all is - dare she trust that love ?

A well written, entertaining read.

Pamela Cleaver

THE HIDDEN DIARY OF MARJE ANTOINETTE

Carolly Erickson, St. Martin's Press , 2005, $24.95,hb, 352pp,0312337086

Marie Antoinette begins writing her diary as a young girl in the 1760s and continues sporadically until just before her death in 1793. Through her entries, we learn of her life in Austria as daughter to Empress Maria Theresa. Through an arranged

marriage, fifteen-year-old Antoinette begins an unhappy union with the French dauphin. As the diary reveals , her husband refuses to consummate the marriage for many years, preferring to pursue his interests in botany and hunting In 1774, he becomes King Louis XVI. Over time , Marie Antoinette becomes a mother , and her scandalous extravagances are toned down. As she matures, she tries to influence her husband to support a strong proAustrian foreign policy. The diary confirms her passionate affair with Axel Fersen , a Swedish nobleman in the French service. Finally, the French Revolution erupts, and the King and Queen attempt to flee, but they are caught, arrested, tried for treason, and executed.

Carolly Erickson's fictional account adds a fresh perspective to the well-known facts of Marie Antoinette's life From her entries, we see a person who was much influenced by the society she was a part of. This is an appealing examination of a bygone era.

Gerald T Burke

KINGSTON BY STARLIGHT

Christopher John Farley, Three Rivers , 2005,$13.95,pb,336pp, 1400082455

The trial of Anne Bonny, Mary Read , Calico Jack Rackam and their shipmates from the pirate ship William drew international attention when it occurred in I 720. Women in breeches swashbuckling across the Caribbean remain attractive today and certainly deserve another pas s, whether for th e romance, women's history , or as we might say in this case, black hi s tory

Unfortunately, like the child of our narrator and Calico Jack , which saves Bonny from the gallows, I found this conception stillborn on a number of levels The author's native Jamaica is beautifully drawn , but Bonny's native Ireland does not live Bonny 's father dressed her as a boy to pass her off as a son when she was too young to remember? This is only revealed at the end and so doesn't serve as motivation (besides that, I 8th-century boys often weren't breeched themselves until five or six). Motivation continues to be weak, particularly in our main character where it is most needed, the reader completely unengaged in her struggle.

First-person narratives , when well done, are my favorite. Nothing can bring a similar immediacy. This attempt stu mbles into all the pitfalls of this choice, however : telling rather than showing. Philosophical musings pull a retreat from blow-by-blow descriptions , distancing and defusing swashbuckling at every opportunity. An example of defused narrative occurs near the end when Bonny and Read are heading to Bonny's father's plantation. A slave revolt has gone beyond the brewing stage. Fields are burning, although we don't smell them. As if this means nothing to them , Bonny and Read placidly cook dinner. ISSUE 33, AUGUST 2005

Sure, they're fearless pirates, but if they don't register threat , neither does the reader.

Ann Chamberlin

WHENCE CAME A PRINCE

Liz Curtis Higgs, WaterBrook, 2005, $ l 3.99/ C$20.99, pb, 551 pp, l 578561280

It is 1790 in Galloway, Scotland. Leana McBride lives at her aunt's cottage, nursing a broken heart, after the Kirk declared her marriage to Jamie McKie invalid. Their union had begun with a proxy wedding in which her father ordered her to take her sister Rose's rightful place, but over time, it grew into a real and loving marriage Now, Jamie and Rose are finally, lawfully wed and charged with raising Leana 's son. It's a legal and emotional quagmire, great fodder for a novel, and Higgs doesn't disappoint

Readers will recognize similarities to the biblical triangle of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, and just as in that story, the sisters' greedy father schemes to obtain free labor from his son-in-law. Gentle Leana faces scorn from her aunt's neighbors for her adultery, while Rose gains some longawaited maturity. Jamie struggles with his love for two very different women, only one of whom he's allowed to have. He longs to return home but worries that his brother will kill him for stealing his birthright. Though a happy ending is possible, the journey has its fair share of suffering and heartache.

This book is marketed as Christian fiction , but whatever your religion, seek out this series (beginning with Thorn in My I/earl and Fair ls lh e Ros e) if you love a heartfelt, poignant, and romantic story. After waiting a year to read the final volume, I was sad to see it end.

Sarah Johnson

ATrVESON

J M. Hochstetler, Zondervan, 2005, $12 99, pb, 293pp,0310252571

In 1775, the British have placed a price on ex-officer Jonathan Carleton's head for deserting to the Continental forces. His love, Elizabeth Howard , pretends to be a Tory while spying for the Americans. George Washington asks them to wait to marry, sending Elizabeth into Tory-held Boston to gather intelligence, and Carleton to lead a delegation to the Indians to negotiate their support. When a hostile tribe ens lave s him, Carleton suddenly understands the plight of his own slaves in Virginia. A mystical experience with a white eagle raises his status among the Indians, some of whom see him as a war leader. Will he return to Elizabeth and "civilization," or remain to lead the Shawnee against the settlers?

The religious elements of this Christian historical are heavier than average, including several scenes of Carleton, now called White Eagle , evangelizing to the Shawnee. I didn't quite believe Carleton's motive for "going native" and changing sides (yet again) to

fight against the Americans. He is true to Elizabeth when he refuses an Indian wife, but if he loves her that much , would he really fight against the cause she is working for? The unresolved ending leaves the door wide open for the third installment of the American Patriot Series

B.J. Sedlock

THE GOVERNOR'S LADIES

Deryn Lake Allison and Busby Ltd. 2005 £18.99 hb 383pp 074908220208 / U.S. Allison and Busby (November 2005)

$25.95 hb 288pp 0749082208

1756 in the American Coloi1ies: British officer, Tom Gage, falls deeply in love with beautiful American-born Margaret Kemble. When she responds with all the freedom of her ardent nature , he counts himself fortunate. Political differences add spice to a happy marriage.

In 1774 , General Thomas Gage is appointed Governor of Massachusetts and commander-in-chief of the British forces. His relationship with his still lovely wife deteriorates with frightening rapidity, epitomizing the feelings of many independent Colonials who regard themselves as free-born American citizens. Tom Gage has the thankless duty of suppressing the rebels with inadequate forces and an uncomprehending British Government. When he learns of Margaret's vital part in the rebel victory of Concord and Lexington, Tom bitterly acknowledges the end of their marriage and accepts the consolation of his exquisite slave girl, Sara.

The prologue, telling us what will happen at a crucial point in the story, is unnecessary. Nevertheless, Deryn Lake has achieved an admirably straightforward account of the tangled events leading to the start of the War of Independence, and its pitiful consequences. An enormous cast of highly individual heroes and eccentrics decorate the story; descriptions of a vast, unspoiled land enhance the tragedy. Tom Gage's task is impossible: it is hard to condemn his heavy drinking and indiscreet visits to the beguiling Sara. We can never know whether more restraint would have given him greater success on the battlefield or as a diplomat.

Nancy Henshaw

A SPECTACLE OF CORRUPTION

David Liss, Abacus 2004, £7.99, pb, 39lpp, 0349118310 (Ballantyre Books 2004, $14 95 , 037576089X)

Set in the I 720s, the hero of Liss's mystery, Benjamin Weaver, a Jewish 'thieftaker' and ex-pugilist, is falsely accused of murder, then mysteriously given the opportunity of escape from Newgate Weaver quickly realizes that the affair is in some way connected to a forthcoming election in which the Whigs and Tories will battle it out. lt is this struggle that gives us the underlying theme of the book and provides much of its interest.

The end of the story is both surprising and unexpected. I would recommend this book highly both as a straightforward mystery and for the picture it paints of early I 81h century politics and society.

Neville Firman

SNOW

Ellen Mattson, trans. Sarah Death, Jonathan Cape, £10.99, ($20.01) pb , 183pp , 0224072668

Snow is an unusual historical novel. The setting is a small town in Sweden in the aftermath of the death of Charles Xll, who devoted his entire adult life and reign to warfare, principally against Peter the Great, and was killed by a single bullet to the head while besieging a Norwegian fortress. Charles's starving and frostbitten army retreats as far as the unnamed town, where Jakob Torn is called upon to assist in the embalming of the king's body before its final journey home. Tom is a large shambling man , a reluctant apothecary, whose own dreams of glory were shattered by a fall with a horse on the only occasion he took up arms. Now the great mystery of his life is why his wife suddenly attacked him with a knife on hearing the news of the king's death.

Snow is an intensely visual book, and the narrative proceeds as a series of vignettes. It cannot be described as a relaxing read, but it is an extraordinarily interesting one.

Ann Lyon

ALL THE BRAVE FELLOWS

James Nelson, Corgi 2005, £6.99, pb , 448pp, 0552149640. Pub. in US by Atria $13.95,pb , 416pp , 0671038478

Captain Isaac Biddlecomb of the Continental Navy is sailing to Philadelphia with his wife, Virginia and newborn son, Jack. He is due to take command of a newly built frigate, the Falmouth. Events take a nasty tum when his brig is attacked by the British. It seems that the British fleet is blocking his passage to the new capital and Isaac will need to keep his wits about him ifhe is to escape unscathed.

Along the way Isaac's arch enemy, Lieutenant John Smeaton intercepts him and is determined to settle old debts by demanding a duel he is sure he can win. It's a good thing that Isaac has his fair share of common sense and more than his fair share of good luck.

All lhe Brave Fellows is book five of the Revolution at Sea saga set during the American War of Independence. It's a rip roaring naval saga crammed with authentic detail - complete with a handy glossary of terms for those lacking the necessary knowledge. This is a Boy's Own tale full of adventure, peril and action with Biddlecomb looking set to become the American Hornblower. James Nelson has written a spirited novel that should satisfy even the most dedicated of landlubbers . Sara Wilson

BY HONOR BOUND

Helen A. Rosburg, Medallion, 2003, $6.99 /C$9.99 , pb, 469pp, 09743639 IX

This historical romance spans thirty-three years, climaxing in 1793 during the Terror. Instead of the expected aristocratic-love-inthe-shadow-of-the-guillotine story, the author presents a romance between servants. Honneure Mansart , an orphaned servant from the provinces, is dazzled by Versailles when she obtains a place as caretaker of Marie Antoinette's pet dogs. She and her foster brother Philippe, a groom , are happy serving the kind and generous Dauphine, and plan to wed When Louis XV becomes interes ted in Honneure , the machinations of Madame du Barry's jealous servant Olivia results in Honneure ' s exile to a loveless ma rriage in a distant province When she does return to court , she and Philippe are reunited , but their happiness is threatened by the looming Revolution , especially when a secret about Honneure's parentage is revealed. Will loyalty to the Queen doom her and Philippe?

The emphasis is on the romance; the landmark Revolutionary events take place mostly offstage There are a few awkward conversation-as-exposition passages, and Marie Antoinette is depicted as an almost faultless , misunderstood saint. The novelty of the servants' perspective and the satisfying romance overrode those reservations , and I enjoyed the book. An epilogue listing the fates of the historical characters is provided.

B.J Sedlock

HMS EXPEDIENT

Peter Smalley , Century 2005, £16.99, hb, 320pp , 1844136833

It was pleasing that the publishers did not claim this book to be ' another Patrick O'Brien' as the Napoleonic Wars are over. We won The enemies of the Royal Navy , as ever in a peaceful world , are politicians and civil servants. The villains of this piece are covert, rather than overt.

In the ever-recognisable underhand style , the truth of the expedition is never properly disclosed to the sailors carrying out the missions Neither are they fully equipped , nor trusted. Their orders must remain secret until they are far away and even with that precaution a faster-sailing frigate shadows them There was no country with whom Britain was then at war. The shadowing frigate flies no flag and will not answer signals; and untrusling Admiralty or pirates ? Captain Rennie , and his second-in-command Lieutenant Hayter, can only speculate There is tension and excitement , adventure and bloodshed as the battered ship reaches an uncharted Pacific island The inhabitants, never having had contact with the outside world, kidnap Captain Rennie and worship him as a god

The detail of naval life is wholly believable and the sailors true to life . Above all, the descriptions of the perils of the sea, the storms and near shipwrecks , the

improvisations needed to survive, all show a writer completely at home in the world of the wood war ship. This is an excellent start to the series, and I look forward to the next instalment.

Roger S Harris

THE LOVEDAY PRIDE

Kate Tremayne, Headline , 2005, £18.99 , hb , 352pp,0755324188

This sixth book in the Loveday series opens with twins Adam and St John Loveday at loggerheads once more. Adam is struggling to sustain his precarious boat building business whilst also pouring all his spare money into renovating his Boscabel estate. Meanwhile St John looks set to blame his brother for all his woes, from the poor state of his marriage to his dwindling finances. Not far away their cousin Hannah finds herself a widow in charge of a large farm and at the mercy of a local ruffian

In London their illegitimate half-sister Tamasine is suffering from the pangs of a first love that looks set to be doomed. And Japhet, the black sheep of the family, is on a convict ship bound for Botany Bay unaware that he has already been pardoned. This is a welcome addition to the popular Comish saga series and Kate Tremayne continues the story with the assurance of an author who loves her characters and knows them well. It is a well-crafted tale that effortlessly blends several story strands into one cohesive whole.

Sara Wilson

19 th CENTURY

THE EXPLOITS AND ADVENTURES OF MISS ALETHEA DARCY

Elizabeth Aston, Touchstone, 2005, $14.00 , pb , 353 pp, 074326 I 933

Pub in the UK by Orion, 2004 , £12.99 , hb , 352pp , 07528524l8

To escape her husband ' s brutality , young Alethea Darcy Napier slips out a window, and with her stalwart maid, flees England. Dressed as men, the two women head for Venice, where Alethea is certain her older sister will offer sanctuary. On the rough journey through the Alps , Alethea crosses paths with Titus Manningtree , who is searching for a Titian painting bought by his father before the Napol e onic Wars. Titus is detennined to retrieve this painting before an agent steals it for his benefactor, King George IV Titu s immediately sees through Alethea 's charade, and against his better judgment , becomes involved in her plight as the un scrupulous Napier chases her across the continent. Written in the style of Jane Austen, this is a continuation of characters began in Pride and Prejudice: Alethea is the daughter of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. The coincidences made me groan ; there's a lot of backstory in the beginning , and inconsistencies abound , but none of this detracts from the vivacious

characters and involving plot. It was a delight to read.

Diane Scott Lewis

JANE AND HIS LORDSHIP'S LEGACY

Stephanie Barron , Bantam, 2005 , $24.00 / C$34.00, hb, 292pp , 0553802259

Being the eighth Jane Austen mystery, this novel centers on the family ' s move to brother Edward ' s cottage in Chawton , Hampshire, where villagers are loathe to hear that his family will displace the bailiffs widow Jane's enthusiasm is subdued with the loss of her friend, Lord Harold Trowbridge (" the Rogue"), but soon her mettle is tested not only by her chatterbox mother, but by a dead body found in the cellar whilst storing a newly arrived Bengal chest containing a very unusual inheritance Jane soon learns the contents are coveted by more than one person desperate to recover the bequest. Devotees of Jane Austen ' s works who may have resisted reading these gentle yet complex mysteries will find the writing a comfort, as the time spent again in Jane's world is well worth their time and attention Tess Allegra

CHALLENGE TO HONOR

Jennifer Blake , Mira , 2005, $6 99 / C$8 50, pb,4l0pp,0778321703

In New Orleans of I 840, dueling was the honorable way to redress an affront. When Rio de Silva , a legendary maitre d ' armes , insults a lady , hoping to goad her fiance , Rio ' s longtime enemy , into a challenge, it is her brother who responds The lady in question , Celina Vallier , visits Rio in secre t to plead with him for her brother ' s life However , once a challenge is extended and accepted , it cannot be ignored Rio's reputation and livelihood depend on it. He sees an opportunity to destroy his enemy by despoiling his fiancee . The bargain he puts to Celina is her virtue for her brother's life Celina accepts because it will have two benefits Her brother's life will be spared , and the loss of her innocence will cause her detested fiance to back out of the betrothal. Neither Rio nor Celina have any idea that this bargain will change both their lives forever. Chall e nge to Honor is a rom a ntic sus pen se novel that kee ps the pages turning Blake's description s of New Orleans in 1840 puts you ri g ht in the time and plac e. Her characters are welldeveloped and intri g uing . Audrey Braver

MRS. JEFFRIES SWEEPS THE CHIIMNEY

Emily Brightwell , Berkley Prime Crime , 2004 , $6.50/ C$9 99, pb, 2 l 5pp , 0425193918

If you were a fan of the British TV serie s " Upstairs , Downstairs," this London Victorian mystery (eighteenth in a series) is made for you. The series is structured around dense but wealthy Inspector

Witherspoon and his bright housekeeper, Mrs. Jeffries, widow of a Yorkshire policeman. On his own, the inspector doesn ' t have the wit to solve any murder. However, Mrs. Jeffries, with the aid of a network of amateur sleuths formed of servants and higher-class friends, manages to steer him in the right direction , allowing him to so lve his cases and maintain his super-sleuth reputation. In this case, a vicar is killed, and the bones of a woman are found in the chimney of an abandoned house Are both crimes related? The setup is ingenious in that it makes it plausible for an amateur to bump into so many crimes. The characters are varied and interesting , with personal lives that sometimes interfere with the investigation. The setting is vivid, one where the reader can smoothly drift into the chosen timeframe It is light , cozy fare, pleasant to read, devoid of gore, filled with gentility Except for the need to believe that Witherspoon still hasn ' t a clue of what is going on around him , it is highly enjoyable. Nicole Leclerc

MYSTERIOUS WAYS

Terry Bums , River Oak, 2005, $12.99, hb, 3l7pp, 1589190270

A conning cowboy is about to be outconned. After stealing the clothes of a parson and robbing a stagecoach, Amos Turnbuckle moves into a nearby small Texas town. Amos becomes a celebrity, one who is making more money as an inspiring preacher than as a coach robber and con man But all is not so serene, as one blind black man , Joseph, sees behind Amos's plans. Add to that one young lady , Judy Valentine, who admits that as her coach was being robbed, she was thrilled by the robber's sense of adventure and now comes to trust Amos as a man of God who can help her curb her unruly passions. A fast-paced western with guns, booze , small town justice, romance, mystery and inspiration, Mysterious Ways is a great story for those who love a complex plot, plenty of action and conflicting dialogue, and an old-fashioned, light, Western tale Viviane Crystal

TESTI G MISS TOOGOOD

Stella Cameron, MIRA, 2005, $7.50, pb , 394pp,0778321487

Fleur Toogood has been charged with making a brilliant match that will save her family 's fortunes. To that end, she reluctantly agrees to be escorted around London by Lord Dominic Elliot, but that does not mean she will be intimidated by her arrogant chaperone Lord Dominic would be happy to squire the seductive Miss Toogood ifhe were not in the midst of a dangerous undercover investigation. Someone has been abducting society misses and then demanding a ransom in exchange for their safe return and a pledge of silence to protect their reputations But Dominic has reason to believe that the kidnapper is beginning to find this sport much too tame.

He fears that the villain's next victim may not be returned alive. Against the backdrop of the mores and manners of the Regency, Testing Miss Toogood is a steamy psychological thriller. Ms. Cameron's novel is sure to please those readers who enjoy a romp on the Regency wild side.

Nancy J.

Attwell

THE ITALIAN SECRET ARY

Caleb Carr, Carroll & Graf, 2005, $23.95 , hb ,266pp,0786715480

Pub in the UK by Little Brown , 2005, £12.99,hb,0316730831

As Jon Lellenberg (the US representative of the Conan Doyle Estate) tells us in the fascinating afterword to this slight volume, Caleb Carr first envisioned The Italian Secretary as a short story intended for a compilation of new Holmes and Watson stories with a supernatural bent Carr - who writes notoriously hefty tomes - excels in this literary form as well.

Something is afoot in Scotland With the help of Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock and Watson are transported to Scotland to investigate the goings on at the Royal Palace of Holyrood - the palace of Mary , Queen of Scots and the site of the murder of her Italian secretary, court musician , and confidante David Rizzio. Are there really ghostly visitations by the skewered Rizzio? Or is something much more sinister and less spectral happening?

What a delight this novel is! By the time you sit down to read it, it's finished and makes you desperate for more. Carr has struck just the right notes with that Sherlockian power of observation and has honed the understated brilliance of both Holmes and Watson to a fine point. The pattern and cadence of their interaction is pure Conan Doyle - albeit via Carr. The tone, pacing, wit and atmosphere are perfect. Go read this!

Ilysa Magnus

MR. IMPOSSIBLE

Loretta Chase, Berkley Sensation, 2005, $6.99/C$9.99, pb , 31 Jpp , 0425201503

This delightful Regency-period romance is set in Egypt. Daphne Pembroke, a scholar of Egypt's history who was recently widowed, has come to visit the ancient sites and to work on deciphering hieroglyphs She is accompanied by her brother Miles , who has assumed the guise of the scholar in the family, as it would not be seemly for a woman to ha ve such studious pursuits When Miles buys Daphne a particularly fine papyrus that supposedly refers to the resting place of a pharaoh, they land themselves in the midst of nefarious schemes of a Frenchman and an Englishman, both of whom lust after the glory that would come from discovering (and taking) the riches to be found in a pharaoh's tomb. When Miles is kidnapped , Daphne turns for help to Rupert Carsington, fourth son of the Earl of Hargate, who tends to leave a whirlwind of trouble in his wake.

She will provide the brains and he will provide the brute strength in their efforts to rescue Miles.

The relationship between Daphne and Rupert is a delight to watch unfold. There are some very engaging secondary characters (including a mongoose). The setting and the vivid descriptions of travel through desert and on the Nile are absorbing. This is the second in the Carsington series, following Miss Wonderful , but it is not necessary to read that book to enjoy this one Trudi E. Jacobson

THE TRANSFORMATION

Catherine Chidgey, Picador 2005, £ 16.99, hb, 306pp, 0330433229/ Henry Holt & Co, $25.00,hb,320pp,0805069712

Set in the end of 19th century Tampa , Florida , this is a finely crafted literary novel. The story centres on three main protagonists : Marion Unger, an attractive grieving widow, Lucien Goulet, a French wig maker or peruquier, and Rafael Mendez , a Cuban migrant friend of Marion and employee of M. Goulet. As Goulet, living in the ornate Tampa Bay hotel that Marion's husband helped to build , weaves his clever and imperceptible chignons and fristettes for the vain citizens of Tampa and the hotel's visitors, he also deftly spins a network of deception and evil. Marion is confronted with the nightmare discovery that her husband had a private sexual life of which she knew nothing Goulet has nefarious designs on Marion and constructs an elaborate hairpiece made up of her own hair. As Rafael and Marion become closer the wigmaker's plotting advances until he becomes the epitome of pure evil.

This is a macabre tale with Gothic elements, the historical context is good. It is both entertaining and literary Catherine Chidgey's third novel confirms her reputation as a talented and thoughtful novelist.

Doug Kemp

CHARBONNEAU'S GOLD

Rita Cleary, Leisure, 2005, $5.99, pb, 3l7pp,0843955112

The novel opens in l 804 as the Lewis and Clark expedition prepares to depart from Fort Mandan in the Dakotas It is here that John Collins , the protagonist, encounters the Frenchman Toussaint Charbonneau. After a brief scuffle, the two men become instant enemies. When the expedition sets off for the Pacific coast, Collins, along with his close friend Frani;:ois Labiche and the other members of the company, discover that Charbonneau and one of his wives , Sacagawea, will be going along Throughout the spring, summer, and fall, the expedition traverses the Northwest, encountering numerous obstacles, including native Indians , bad weather, harsh terrain, and the Rocky Mountains. Charbonneau, whose real motive is greed, proves to be useless as a guide, but his wife, who was

stolen from the Shoshone as a child, is invaluable when they encounter the tribe. Through her intercession, the Shoshones literally save the expedition from certain doom. The facts of this historical event are well known, including Sacagawea 's reunion with her brother, a tribal leader. Rita Cleary's fictional rendition is a lively spin on history; a compelling account of an extraordinary event in American history.

Gerald T. Burke

THE UNBROKEN HARP

David Craig, Whittles Publishing , £8.99, pb , 34 7pp, I 904445 I 95

The Unbroken Harp is a sequel to Craig's King Cameron, and takes up the shameful tale of the Highland Clearances through the eyes of Flo Campbell, evicted from her home in the Outer Hebrides to become a kitchen maid in a great house , a herring girl, artists' model and finally, a painter herself. Flo is an attractive character, an indomitable spirit in the face of betrayal, indifference and misunderstanding, and the people she meets in the course of this picaresque novel are also subtly drawn. Despite Craig's strong sympathy for the plight of the Highlanders, he never allows the English, who instigated the clearances, or the people whose callousness compounds Flo's misfortunes, to appear as one sided villains. He has a commendable awareness of the complexities of history and human nature.

Craig is also a poet, and has a wonderfully poetic ear for language. At times, I found this hindered the narrative drive , leaving me - a reader who knows very little about this period - confused about what was happening . This is a pity, as Craig's knowledge and understanding are obviously extensive. On the other hand , his relish for words - as, for example, when he lists the dishes required for the presentation of meals in the great house, "tureens, ashets, porringers" etc. - is a joy.

Food is a strong linking theme throughout the novel, which begins with Flo's fear of starving after her village has been destroyed and her family killed, and ends with her recalling that feeling many years later for a newspaper interview. There is also much food for thought here, in a world still characterised by tribal struggles for land But Craig serves up a rich dish which left me feeling somewhat overfed. Sarah Bower

98 REASONS FOR BEING

Clare Dudman , Sceptre , 2005, £7.99, pb, 34lpp,0340823070

A 23 year old Jewish girl named Hannah Meyer is admitted into a Frankfurt Institute for the Insane apparently suffering from nymphomania. There she is to be treated by Dr Heinrich Hoffmann - the famous author of Struwwelpeter, the children's cautionary tales.

Douches , ice blisters, purgatives, emetics and electric shocks all fail to cure

her. Then Dr Hoffmann begins to talk to Hannah, to tell her anecdotes about his life and work. Slowly Hannah responds, revealing the truth about her illness. Hers is a story of love and betrayal.

Although Hannah Meyer never existed, Clare Dudman used Hoffmann 's case notes on his treatment of a young woman suffering from a similar disorder as a guide. 98 Reasons for Being is an exploration of madness and sanity and the fine line that separates the two Hannah's illness and cure are seen through her external actions intercut by her inner thoughts. This underlines the truth that what is seen by others is rarely the whole picture

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the novel is not Hannah's sufferings, but her unintentional influence over Hoffmann. As he struggles to understand her condition so his understanding of how to treat other patients is enhanced. 98 Reasons can be read as a straightforward examination of the birth of modem psychiatry, or as a complex study of the human condition. Either way it is exceptionally poignant.

Sara Wilson

NAPOLEON: The Immortal of St. Helena

Max Gallo, Macmillan 2005, William Hobson), £10.99, pb , 0333907981 (trans. 319pp,

The fourth and final volume of Max Gallo's quartet of novels opens in June 1812 with Napoleon marching into Russia at the head of his mighty arrny of 500,000 men. The expectation is that Tsar Alexander I will buckle under this extreme military pressure. Events do not go according to plan when the harsh winter conditions bring the Grand Arrny to its knees.

In a gesture of defiance Europe turns against Napoleon and he is imprisoned on Elba. Even now he will not bow his head but plots a return to power. Sadly for the Little Corporal there will only be a brief respite before Waterloo conclusively seals his fate.

The Immortal of St Helena charts the French Emperor's fall from grace with pathos and almost compassion It is a story of betrayal and ill fortune. Max Gallo has built his novel around a structure of impeccable research and creative imagination. It's a winning combination that gives full justice to the life of one of the most fascinating soldier/politicians in history.

Final praise must go to William Hobson 's translation that is spot on and conveys all the poetry and verve that must be present in the original French version. Sara Wilson

HANNAH

ROSE

Louise M. Gouge, River Oak , 2005, $12.99,pb,319p~ 1589190408

Gouge follows Ahab's Bride with this sequel. Hannah Ahab wants to escape her dead husband's notoriety, and travels to

Boston to visit friends before embarking on a tour of Europe. She instructs six-year-old Timothy that their last name is now Jacobs But abolitionist acquaintances draw her into their circle, leaving her torn between wanting to right the wrongs of slavery and the possibility of putting her son in danger if she is caught breaking the law. She also becomes torn between two suitors, one a dashing slave-owning naval captain, whom Timothy adores, and the other an old friend who is a secret abolitionist.

Readers needn't have read Moby Dick in order to enjoy this book Christian fiction fans will appreciate Hannah's moral struggles in having to choose between two sides, each of which has disadvantages The climactic "battle" between the two suitors is rather low-key: they have a log-rolling contest! The author provides a list of questions to guide book discussion groups. I saw one minor error: three different dictionaries disagree with the author's assertion that "galley" is a sailor's terrn for a dining room

B.J Sedlock

LOVE'S MEASURE

Maisie Hampton , Robert Hale, 2005, £17.99, hb , 207pp, 070907817X Guy inherits the Earldom, a dubious Steward, ruined finances, and a ward, Sophie. This Regency has all the right ingredients: a spirited heroine , handsome hero constrained by his guardianship from declaring his love, several other suitors, intrigue, French spies, a risky wager and high adventure.

Unfortunately the ingredients have not been combined successfully. The plot is predictable, though some potentially exciting epi odes are not followed through with sufficient boldness, and therefore are disappointing. The language is at times rather obviously formal, attempting to convey period navour, yet is unconvincing. Much of the dialogue is pedantic and unreal, and most of the characters speak with the same voice instead of having distinctive ones.

Marina Oliver

THE SHORT DAY DYi G

Peter Hobbs, Faber & Faber 2005, £ I 0.99, pb, 196pp, 057121715X

Charles Wenmouth is a lay preacher in the south west of England. It is the I 870s and life is harsh and austere for the poor folk who gather to hear his preaching. Charles' life is punctuated by his weekday work as a blacksmith and his ministering work on the Sabbath

The only highlight of his week is the time he spends visiting Harriet French. Although she is blind by an illness that is crippling her body, Harr's faith maintains her spirit and lifts Brother Wenmouth's lonely heart

Peter Hobb 's debut novel beautifully captures a sense of time and place His is a dreamy story of a love that is as quiet as it

is passionately real. These are vulnerable characters whose souls are laid bare to the reader. The Short Day Dying is a literary work that is totally accessible.

Sara Wilson

THE LINNET BIRD

Linda Holeman, Crown, 2005, $24.95, hb, 416pp,01400097398

Pub. in the UK by Headline, 2004, £6.99, pb,0755324633

In 1820s England, young Linnet Gow is forced into prostitution by her stepfather. Using her wit and courage, Linnet survives life as a child prostitute and becomes canny enough to capitalize on a stroke of luck that lets her jump from the lower into the middle class After learning to act like a lady, Linnet voyages to India, seeking a new life But in India, her dark past catches up with her , and Linnet is faced with a series of agonizing choices and daring adventures before she finds peaceful fulfilment at last.

While the writing is adequate, the plot and historical work are less than stellar. As she climbs the social ladder from the gutter to the ballroom, Linnet suffers through every cliche in the "whore to lady" genre and coincidences beyond counting - and endures anachronistic historical detail. (For example, India in 1830 was not yet in full Raj mode; there were only thirty houses in Simla at the time.) The book reads as if it were supposed to be set in the 1890s, rather than the I 820s-30s.

India Edghill

THE RIOT AT BUCKSNORT AND OTHER WESTERN TALES

Robert E. Howard. University of Nebraska Press, 2005, $14.95, pb, 256pp, 0803273541

Robert E Howard (1906-36) lived and wrote in Cross Plains , Texas. From 1924 until his death he sold hundreds of stories to pulp-fiction magazines such as Action Stories, Argosy and Cowboy Stories. A prolific writer, arguably better known for his Conan of Cimmeria stories, he turned to comic and dialect Western tales only late in his career, but he found an immediate and continuously successfully market for them. The sixteen stories collected here are "tall tales" featuring larger than life characters such as Breckinridge Elkins, Pike Bearfield and Buckner J Grimes. Told in dialect, these tales are a combination of slapstick and action. Should you read this book? If you are looking for subtlety or wry, understated humour then this collection of tales is not for you However, if you can suspend your sense of disbelief and your taste runs to over the top characters, where the hero regularly uses a bowie knife to extract bullets from various parts of his body then sit yourself down with a jug of com juice - "half a gallon is enough for any man" - and enjoy.

Mike Ashworth

THE END OF THE TRAIL

Robert E. Howard. University of Nebraska Press, 2005, $17.95, pb, 321 pp, 0803273568

The End of the Trail is one of five Robert E Howard books in the Bison Books edition produced by The University of Nebraska Press. This book is a collection of twelve stories and four articles. These western stories, written in the 1930s were unlike anything that had been written in the genre until then. Many of the central characters are merely the best of a bad lot - Howard had a particular fascination with outlaws, notably John Wesley Hardin and Billy the Kid - and the stories were grimmer, more violent and without happy endings. The western has changed over the years as tastes have changed. Aficionados of the genre will undoubtedly welcome the opportunity to revisit these tales, however I fear that these stories may seem a little dated for modem tastes.

Mike Ashworth

LORD OF SIN

Madeline Hunter, Bantam, 2005, $6.95 / C$ l 0.99, pb, 406pp, 0553587307

Madeline Hunter is not content to plumb the safe territory for the historical romance set in 1800s Great Britain. In addition to a great deal of amorous activity, she pushes the edge of polite society. In another one of her books, the protagonists engaged in extramarital relations. In lord of Sin, the hot topic is erotic art. The new Earl of Lyndale, an "art" collector and rake by reputation, follows up on a last dying request and finds - a forger of bank notes as well as art prints, including racy drawings, in one of those chains of coincidence that made fiction seem slightly fantastic. This forger is, naturally, a gorgeous woman of independent spirit, engaged in the forgery to keep her estate afloat and help her Scottish country folk being chased off their land in the Highland Clearances. This gives plenty of opportunity for spinning a great deal of sexual tension and release, with the Earl's modem attitudes leaning not to the debased exploitative material we now call pornography, but the exaltation of sexuality through art that is still appreciated, although still debated, today. If these topics are not to your taste, choose a different author , but the dialogue and intrigue are quite pleasing if you find the subject matter just another interesting plot element.

Mary K. Bird-Guilliams

THE WELFARE OF THE DEAD

Lee Jackson, Heinemann 2005, £12.99, hb, 357pp,0434012483

In a bedroom of the Knight's Hotel, an upmarket London brothel, Mr Smith looks down at a fair-haired young woman reclining on a bed of cushions. He sees her milk-white skin and dainty hands and thinks 'it's a shame'. The next day Inspector Decimus Webb is called in to investigate her death.

What is the connection between this murder and Jasper Woodrow, the owner of the Holbom General House of Mourning? And have they anything to do with the disappearance of a body from the Abney Park Cemetery? Inspector Webb will have his work cut out to prevent the wrong man from being executed for murder.

This second novel featuring Inspector Webb revolves around the Victorian obsession and, to modem eyes, morbid fascination with death. It is another Victorian gothic extravaganza, where gaslights and smog-filled alleyways seem to be characters in their own right. The Welfare of the Dead establishes Lee Jackson's place in the forefront of historical fiction.

Sara Wilson

THE TRAFALGAR CONNECTION

Gillian Kaye, Robert Hale, 2005, hb, £17.99, 192 pp, 0709078080

This is a well written light romance which takes place in 1805. Carolyn Hadleigh's brother, Robert, is serving on board HMS Victory under Lord Nelson's command. The Hadleigh family who live on the edge of Romney Marsh, are a happy, close knit group who anxiously await letters from Robert. Carolyn is engaged to a local lawyer about whom she has niggling doubts. She insists (much to her fiance's annoyance) that the wedding should not take place until Robert is home on leave. Robert returns bringing with him his friend Lieutenant Maxwell Forbes. The wedding is set to go ahead. Carolyn' doubts are strengthened by her immediate attraction to Maxwell. When the day of the wedding arrives, Carolyn is left at the altar and a shocking scandal ensues.

The family hardly has time to get over this before the battle of Trafalgar takes place. They are consumed with worry until they hear that although wounded Robert is safe. Maxwell is not as lucky - he loses a leg. During the celebrations of the victory and the spectacle of Nelson's funeral Carolyn finally is able to make up her mind what she wants to do with her life.

Pamela Cleaver

JERICHO'S ROAD

Elmer Kelton, Forge, 2004, $23.95, hb, 304pp,0765309556

Jericho 's Road is a cow trail on the border between Texas and Mexico that's ruled by cattle baron Jericho Jackson. The Texas Rangers and the Mexican landowners are in the midst of a border war. Big Jim McCawley marries the daughter of Mexican rancher Don Chavez to preserve her land from Jericho after he has Don Chavez killed. The son, Lupe, takes refuge in Mexico and becomes Jericho's archenemy. Big Jim tells Andy the war will be over "when nobody is left who remembers what the trouble was all about." Andy, who has grown up among Comanches, sees both sides, keeps things to

himself, and plans to survive. He is both a warrior and a diplomat.

Characters are portrayed at middle distance, and descriptions are sparse. Andy, Len and Farley report to Sergeant Donahue, an unscrupulous bigot who doesn't bother to sort out who deserves to live or die

There is moral ambiguity in the border war: working for Texas Rangers, Manuel kills unarmed prisoners. Kelton's writing isn't flashy , but honest and wise. He draws upon the history of early Texas and the lives of real people in his saga of the Texas Rangers He shows how things were done in Ranger camp, and it feels like the truth. Characters act as we would suppose they should act under the circumstances. If you like Westerns, this is solid entertainment and a keeper.

Marcia K . Matthews

ASHES OF DREAMS

Ruth Ryan Langan, Berkley Sensation, 2005, $5.99/C$8.99, pb, 278pp, 0425201511

Excellent characterizations set this historical romance apart. ln 1887 Kentucky, widowed Amanda Jeffrey struggles to keep her husband's dream of a thriving horse farm alive. But she finds going it alone difficult , especially while caring for three small boys and an ailing father-in-law who can't help out. Salvation arrives in the form of Cole Donnelly and his son Dev , Irish immigrants willing to work for room and board. Local suspicion of drifters and something mysterious about the Donnellys' past make Amanda wonder if she's done the right thing in taking them in. But their knack for horse handling makes them almost indispensable , and Amanda begins to feel a tug of attraction for Colin. Matters are brought to a head in an ending in which a covetous neighbor, a dangerous stallion, and a horse race all come together.

Even the secondary characters in this book are rounded, with the exception of the relentlessly bad villain. The main characters' motives and actions are logical. The bedroom scenes are sexy without going into clinical detail. The dialogue is well written. The ending had a few contrived elements, but the rest of the book balances out that small drawback. A sterling romance.

B.J. Sedlock

FOR THE LOVE OF THE LAND

Bonnie Leon, Revell , 2005, $ I 2.99, pb , 313pp,0800758978

Part two of the Queensland Chronicles opens in 1872 with Rebecca and Daniel Thornton expecting their first child. They are struggling to run the family cattle station, and the responsibility doesn't sit well. Even though the man is dead, Daniel feels he can never live up to his autocratic father's expectations. Will Daniel 's workaholism or the harsh Outback conditions threaten their marriage first?

The first book incorporated excellent characterizations, but this one doesn ' t live

up to that promise. Plot complications take precedence. Leon throws the whole gamut of pioneer disasters at the characters: snakebite, childbed fever, drought, a flood , sick livestock , a cyclone, fire , and a lost child. Perhaps there were extremely unlucky settlers in real life who encountered all those problems within a year, but as fiction Leon doesn't quite pull it off. Compared to the first book's engrossing character study, part two reads more like a disaster chronicle I did like the refreshing subplot of a romance for Rebecca's middle-aged aunt. I hope the next book in this Christian fiction series will come closer to the more satisfying first volume.

B.J. Sedlock

MURDER ON OLD MISSION

Stephen Lewis, Arbutus Press , 2005, $15.00,pb,296pp,0966531698

To answer the question posed by your collective raised eyebrows first, no, the Stephen Lewis who wrote this novel is not me. He's written five other mysteries in two previous series, but this is a standalone based on an actual incident that occurred in the mid-I 890s on the Old Mission peninsula that juts into Michigan 's Grand Traverse Bay. The story Lewis tells is a dark affair, one that could be easily hidden in anyone's black-and-white photo album of their ancestors. People were flesh-andblood people then, and we tend to forget it; they had problems and worries in many ways not unlike the problems and worries that people have today.

Margaret Cutter is the charming but naive girl who is found dead , murdered perhaps by an older and twice-divorced lover. She is also pregnant, and Sam Logan's only alibi is the word of his son, Isaiah, who also secretly loved the girl. It is Isaiah, therefore, who becomes the focus of the story. ls he willing to lie for his father? His father's fate is in his hands.

The characters are extremely well drawn, but Lewis errs by placing his Author's Note at the beginning of the novel , not the end. The true story is told first , followed by a detailed list of the changes he made for the sake of the story. With the outcome known in advance, all of the suspense is gone. It's a handicap few authors could overcome, nor does Lewis manage to do so here, sad to say.

Steve Lewis

THE LADY SOLDIER

Jennifer Lindsay, Hale, 2005, £ I 8.99, hb , 223pp,0709078250

1812: Young Jem Riseley is serving in Wellington's army in Spain. Riseley is an excellent soldier serving in the 95 th Rifles and is promoted to ensign then transferred to D Company. The young soldier has a secret which handsome Captain Tony Dorrell uncovers. When the pair are trapped behind French lines , they embark on a series of adventures and eventually reach

an understanding. Back in London , the two face further perils, both in the drawingroom and at the theatre

This novel has been penned by two authors, though it is difficult to tell as there is no change in the writing style throughout The focus is firmly on Jem and Tony's relationship, though this reader would have liked to see the story start with Jem 's army life before meeting the Captain. Fans of romantic adventure will enjoy this novel.

S Garside-Neville

DIE LIKE A HERO

Clyde Linsley, Berkley Prime Crime, $6.99,pb,256pp,0425200035

Canny New England farmer Josiah Beede seems equally at home in the murky politics of 1840s Washington, DC, and in the village entanglements of New Hampshire In Washington , famed orator and dictionary compiler Senator Daniel Webster calls on Beede to investigate the sudden death of President William Henry Harrison after only thirty days in office. Harrison , known as Old Tippecanoe after his exploits in a famous battle against the Shawnee tribe and their great chief Tecumseh , was the first American president to die in office. He was succeeded by John Tyler, a pro-slavery states-righter mistrusted by nationalist Whigs like Webster. Harrison's age and poor health make the historical diagnosis of pneumonia more credible than Webster 's conspiracy theory , but Beede agrees to find out what he can.

Very soon, however , Beede must abandon the Harrison case and rush back to New Hampshire on the n ew railroad to search for the missing husband of a woman he once hoped to marry This murder case is further complicated with a sub-plot involving a slave-catcher enlisting local bigots to try to kidnap and re-enslave Randolph and Louisa, a free African-American couple farming near Beede's home

Although the idea of a murder plot against Harrison is unconvincing and not well-integrated into the other plots, it is a laudable attempt to enliven the story of one of the more forgettable presidents in US history Linsley's dry , unemotional style and his historical note convey much information on political and racial attitudes of the 1840 s Third in series.

Nina de Angeli

LOUISA AND THE COUNTRY BACHELOR

Anna Maclean, Signet, 2005, $5.99/C$8.99, pb,282pp ,04512 147l4

This is second in a series of mysterious adventures involving author Louisa May Alcott. In this installment, Maclean (a.k.a. Jeanne Mackin) packs Louisa and her family off to visit relatives and enjoy a much-needed vacation in bucolic Walpole, New Hampshire It's the summer of 1855 , and the usually peaceful village is

THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

33, AUGUST 2005

simmering with hidden secrets and hostilities. Louisa and the rest of the Alcotts are soon plunged into events surrounding the death of an immigrant named Ernst Nooteboom. Was it an accident, or murder? Was he killed for his very desirable land holdings? Suspects and motives abound , implicating everyone from the overbearing village storekeeper to the victim's sister Lilli to the much-married Mr s. Ida Tupper and her son Clarence Hampton As other attacks and deaths occur, Loui sa realizes just how far this murderer will go Although only moderately suspenseful, the generous mix of oddly assorted characters and the village setting make this a pleasantly diverting outing. Fans of Alcott and period mysteries in general will enjoy it.

Michael I. Shoop

PASS ION: A Novel of th e Roma ntic Poets

Jude Morgan, St Martin's Press, 2005 , $24 95 , hb , 536pp , 03l20343682

Reviewed in Issue 30 (November 2004)

THE

H

INTE R LANDS

Karen Mercury, Medallion, 2005 , $9 99/ C$12.99, pb , 389pp, 1932815112

My first glance at the cover art for The Hinterlands suggested that I was in for a humorous reading experience : there is a map of Africa , surrounded by a leopard print border, and a man stands in the foreground , wearing traditional African garb plus a widebrimmed hat. It seemed a bit like Indiana Jon es meets Roman c ing th e Ston e The comparison is not far off: this is a story of adventure and romance , with dashing yet un schooled (and occasionally roguish) legendary leopard hunter Brendan Donivan as its hero and intrepid American anthropologist Elle Bowie (who is more than she seems) as its heroine Their story takes place during a tumultuous time. In 1897 , British colonial expansion in the Niger Coast Protectorate was underway Kingdoms such as Benin were coveted for their palm oil and other commodities , but establishing trade occasionally required force The British " Punitive Expedition" against Benin is not well known today , but it is during the year leading up to this event that Brendan and Elle come to know each other. Brendan is brave and dashing , on e of the few outsiders to have traded with the ancient kingdom of Benin Ell e is fei sty , brazen , and determined not to fall for another good-for-nothing man. Will she ov e rcome her reluctance to rely on Brenda n? Will Brendan accept who she really is? Will the impending fight between the British and the Benin warriors separate them ? It 1s during the scenes leading up to the actual arrival of British forces that this story gains momentum and tension. Mercury's research is thorough, and it was refre s hing to read about this lesser-known chapter of history The writing style is occa s ionally awkward, particularly during the many intimate encounters between

Brendan and Elle. (This reader had a hard time not giggling over one too many references to mushy honeypots.) Best enjoyed with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

L. K. Mason

T H E WHITE N IGHT OF ST. PETE R SBURG

Prince Michael Monthly, 2004 , 0871139227 of Greece, $24, hb , Atlantic 335pp,

One expects certain things in novels about the Romanovs: a glittering backdrop of immense wealth and privilege, impossibly beautiful protagonists, and , of course, a story of passionate romance that leads ultimately to tragedy The latest historical effort by Prince Michael of Greece , whose grandmother was a Romanov, has all this and more. However, despite having the right ingredients, the end result falls flat.

ln 1998 , at the ceremony for the reburial of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, Prince Michael meets a distant cousin, Natalya, for the first time She tells him the story of her grandfather, Grand Duke Nicholas, whose existence was erased from family records. Possessing more arrogance than intelligence, Nicholas follows the pattern of all male Romanovs by taking a mistress His choice of Hattie Blackford, an American courtesan who calls herself Fanny Lear, scandalizes his family. They flit from place to place throughout 19 th century Europe, scattering money as they go , until his liberal politics and penchant for women catch him in a trap. Accused of helping finance a revolution with stolen family jewelry, Nicholas is banished to the far reaches of the empire , yet his story doesn ' t end there.

Poor Nicholas indeed . It is hard to feel sympathy for a character with so little common sense, and whose amorous declarations sound more embarrassing than romantic. The narrative uses exclamation points in odd places, and some parts read more like travelogue than novel. One senses this isn't the translator's fault. Though it's earnestly written from an insider's viewpoint, perhaps nonfiction would have been a better choice.

Sarah Johnson

SHALL WE DANCE?

Ka sey Michaels, HQN , 2005 , $6 99/C$8 50 , pb, 379pp , 0373770383

1820 England: King George III has died, and his son , King George IV, intends to enjoy his coronation day without his hated wife , Queen Caroline. In seeking a divorce , the King ' s allies have dispatched spies to Hammersmith , where the Queen resides , seeking proof of her rumored infidelities, including the contents of a secret box The Queen, however, has her own allies, including Amelia Fredericks , an orphan the Queen adopted as a child-or did she? ls it possible that there is a secret heir to the throne ? The retired Minister of the Admiralty, Sir Willard Humphrey,

dispatches his nephew , Perry Shepherd, to Hammersmith to uncover the Queen's secrets Though he despises working for his uncle and using the talents he acquired during the war with Napoleon , Perry carries on with his mission in the hope of protecting the lovely Miss Amelia from the dangers surrounding the Queen. In this novel with more political intrigue than romance , the author has provided readers with a cast of thousands , each character quirkier than the next. The plot plods along at first as everyone is introduced one by one , but the story slowly picks up pace once the threat against the Queen is revealed and the whodunit begins Debra Rodensky

MCKETTRJCK'S CHOICE

Linda Lael Miller, HQN , 2005 , $16 95 / C$19 95, hb , 345pp, 0373770294

In 1888 , Holt McKettrick, the oldest son of Angus McKettrick, sets out from his biological father's ranch in the Arizona Territory to head back to Texas to rescue his friend and former Ranger, Gabe Navarro, from hanging and to prevent his foster father and sister from losing their ranch. After arriving in San Antonio, he ' s treated to the sight of the lovely Lorelei Fellows burning her wedding gown in the middle of town after finding her fiance with another woman Sparks fly as Holt is forced to bring Lorelei , who has never ridden a horse before, along for a cattle drive She hopes to start her own ranch and divorce herself from her domineering father; he hopes to rejuvenate his foster father's own cattle business , clear his friend , and drive off an unscrupulous land baron.

Along the way Holt and Lorelei battle both renegade Comanches and each other as their journey takes them through the noman ' s-land that stretches between San Antonio , Loredo, and Mexico They fight their attraction to each other to the bitter end, as do all good romance couples, but the ending to this romance doesn ' t come without its tears as one beloved character doesn't survive

Linda Lael Miller spins a fine romantic story in this entry in the McKettrick Cowboys series. Though it is a fourth instalment , this story can stand on its own without knowledge of the previous books The characters are lively and interesting , and there is lots of action, light moments, and deep emotion

Debra Rodensky

THIEVES OF ME RCY

James L. Nelson , William Morrow , 2005, $26.96/ C$37.95 , hb, 463pp, 0060199709

This is second in a series following Glory in the Name. In June of 1862, Lt. Samuel Bowater , Confederate States Navy, arrives in Memphis to assume command of the future ironclad ship Te nnessee, the building of which will never be completed. Out of boredom and an overpowering urge to join in the struggle,

Bowater falls in with the decidedly unmilitary River Defense Fleet, a ragtag group of Mississippi river men and their cotton-clad, lightly armed riverboats. These rowdy, brawling drunkards prey upon Union boats any chance they get. Bowater, at first disgusted and appalled at the lack of discipline among the riverboat crews , nonetheless finds himself drawn to the only means of doing battle available to him.

Meanwhile, back in Portsmouth, Virginia , Wendy Atkins, Lt. Bowater's fiancee, decides she can no longer wait for him to return to her and heads west to find him Along with her aunt, Molly, who happens to be a spy for the Confederates , Wendy embarks on a torturous journey to join her Lieutenant. Along the way they share lemonade with Abraham Lincoln, and then the story really gets interesting.

Like the paddle-wheeled riverboats so prevalent in this story, the plot here takes a while to build up a good head of steam. But once it does , it's unstoppable. A few more maps and diagrams would go a long way toward helping landlubbers follow the story better, but that is a very minor nit-pick in an otherwise excellent novel.

Mark F . Johnson

LOVING S0REN

Caroline Coleman O'Neill, Broadman & Holman, 2005, $14.99, pb, 294pp , 080543089X

This elegantly written first novel about Regina Olsen , the young woman jilted but never forgotten by Danish philosopher S0ren Kierkegaard , should quickly lift the author to the top ranks of literary Christian novelists In Copenhagen in 1837, Regina first meets S0ren at a party given by a schoolfriend's family. The lanky young man intrigues her with his sense of irony , his earnestness , and his refusal to conform to polite society. A lthough Regina fonns an understanding with Fritz Schlegel, her former history teacher , S0ren rarely escapes her thoughts He pursues her in return. When S0ren proposes, Regina accepts , perhaps partly to save him from his own melancholia. However, S0ren's occasionally rude , selfish behavior towards her remains a source of shame. He ultimately breaks off their romance to serve God through his writing, which devastates them both and overshadows their lives from that point forward. Over the years , neither forgets the other. Can Regina ever forgive him for leaving her , and can she forgive herself for loving him despite everything? The author ' s carefully chosen language vividly describes the drawing rooms and byways of historical Copenhagen and the heartfelt emotions of her characters. Nearly all quotes and letters are taken from original sources. The gorgeous pastel cover, depicting a snowy Copenhagen street scene , is a perfect complement to this lovely book . Sarah Johnson

HEARTS OF STONE

Audrey Pembroke, Robert Hale, 2005 , £18.99 , hb,240pp, 709077734

The story opens in 1815 Napoleon has escaped from Elba and the British pressgangs are at full strength. William Freer is caught just as he is planning to elope with Amelia Warren who has already spumed Simon Maltravers, her father's choice of suitor in favour of William Her refusal is a deadly blow to Maltravers's pride, an insult he will neither forgive nor forget. Eventually William and Amelia marry and raise three children in poverty. But the heroine of this book is Charlotte, their second child, who is exactly the type of feisty, courageous character beloved by readers and editors alike. Maltravers has married and his wife's barrenness fuels his hatred of Amelia ' s family , whom he is determined to ruin. The background is wellresearched but information doesn't intrude. An engrossing read.

Margaret Crosland

LONG SPOON LANE

Anne Perry, Ballantine, 2005, $25.95 / C$35.95, hb,323pp , 0345469275

Pub in the UK by Headline , 2005 , £6.99 , pb , 0755320573

In this Victorian historical , Perry reminds us that acts of terrorism are not limited to the 21st century The novel starts off with a bang: a bombing of several row houses, a chase of the anarchists, a standoff with the police and finally the shooting of the underground cell's leader, the son of a prominent lord Questions arise as to whether the fellow was murdered by his comrades or by a corrupt policeman. In Perry's follow-up to Seven Dials (2003), we find Thomas Pitt, a member of the Special Branch, ready to take on this investigation. He is not only eager to uncover the murderer but also any corrupt activity occurring in London's police force Interwoven in this mystery is a political twist, through which the police would be granted extraordinary powers. These changes in the law would allow police to be armed and given liberal rights with search and seizure, as well as to question citizens. It all sounds very similar to the USA Patriot Act, another law created to deter terrorism. lf you're into a light suspense story with home and social life added in , grab this book and enjoy it. For those into more intense mysteries , this may disappoint you.

Carol

Anne Germain

THE HOPE WITHIN

Tracie Peterson , Bethany House , 2005 , $12 99 , pb , 398pp, 0-7642-2772-6

Dianne and Cole Selby moved to Virginia City, Montana , after their ranch house was destroyed by fire in 1886. The move was very unsettling to Dianne; she longed to go back to her ranch where she found the beauty of nature and the solace that comes with living in the country. Cole, however , does not share Dianne's need to go home ;

he delays their return with one excuse after another. Dianne ' s dream is further prolonged when Cole's father takes ill and Cole insists that they go to Kansas to care for his father. Cole's father dies, leaving Cole the family farm; Cole's mother insists that Cole and Dianne stay in Kansas to run the farm Dianne believes that she will never return to her ranch in Montana ; her situation made worst by the ill treatment of Cole ' s mother toward Dianne and her children. Dianne finally decides to take the children by train back to Montana , even if it meant the end of her marriage In the end, it is faith in God that brings Dianne through many difficult decisions in her life

The Hop e Within is the 4 th in Tracie Peterson's Heirs of Montana series It is Christian fiction and should be of interest to readers who find spiritual uplift in stories from the heart But The Hope Within falls short of being historical fiction. lt is not enough to place a story in the 19th century and drop the names of real towns and real people on the reader. There is little sense of what it was like to live in Montana in 1886, especially in the mining camp and once capital city , Virginia City.

Sue Schrems

A LOVE WOVEN TRUE

Tracie Peterson and Judith Miller, Bethany House,2005,$!2.99 , pb, 349pp, 0764228951 Jasmine Houston, the widowed mother of two-year-old Spencer, is living comfortably in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1849 when her father commands that sh e return immediately to The Willows. Her mother and her Mammy are both near death Nolan , Jasmine ' s brother-in-law , accompanies them on the trip south to Mississippi, and along the way , romantic sparks fly between them. Jasmine makes a deathbed promise to Mammy to buy and free her son, Obadiah The owner of Harwood Plantation had forced Mammy not only to leave the child but to remain silent about his existence The process of locating and freeing Obadiah, along with his wife and son, leads to Jasmine ' s active involvement in the Underground Railroad The later abduction of Naomi , Obadiah's wife , and Spencer is presumed to be an act of retaliation for permitting runaways to stay on Jasmine's property

This story presents multiple perspectives on slavery. Abolitioni s ts risk both their life and property if they are found associating with runaway slave s, and the plot thickens when family members take opposing sides A sprinkling of mystery with a touch of suspense enhances the smooth writing This easy-to-read tale will carry readers right along to the last page , where a surprise awaits in the last few lines . This is the second title in the lights of Lowe ll Seri es

Jetta Culpepper

THE CURSE OF CAIN

J. Mark Powell and L. D. Meagher, Forge, 2005, $24.95 / C$34.95, hb, 316pp, 0765310880

Most observers agree that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln damaged the very real possibility that postwar reconciliation between North and South would have been handled with far less tension CNN journalists Powell and Meagher use this as the basi s of their fast-paced and intriguing novel of the assassination Rather than have John Wilkes Booth play a central role as the leader of the conspiracy , they portray him as the reluctant pawn of a professional killer , Basil Tarleton, hired by a Confederate congressman to kill Lincoln. Confederate agent Jack Tanner is ordered by President Jefferson Davis to stop Tarleton and keep Lincoln alive Interweaving historical figure s from both North and South with fictional players who are cleverly drawn makes for a thrilling 19th century version of John Le Cami' s 20'h century world of shadowy figures and back alley treachery and violence

John R. Vallely

THAT ANVIL OF OUR SOULS

David Poyer, Simon & Schuster, 2005, $25 00 , hb , 432pp , 0684871351

David Po yer has written some twenty-five novels to date and is widely respected for his fi c tional accounts of the modem U S. navy Hi s present work is the third of an ongoing series on the naval aspects of the American Civil War. Although Poyer populates his work with a number of civilian s, th e main action consistently re volv es around the naval officers and seamen wh o wa ge war with a combination o f traditional sailing ships and revolutionary ironclads The Union " Monitor" and Confederate "Virginia" (" Merrimack") are described with such an eye for detail that in many ways they are more interesting to the reader than an exslave turned Union sailor, Confederate and Union ship designers , a Confederate wife struggling to survive, and the officers and men who serve during the battle regarded as the beginning of modem naval warfare. Although the result of the day long battle is well known, Payer ' s minute-by- minute recreation of the drama and stress of a legendary sea battle sets this novel apart from others in the genre

John R Vallely

LIE BY MOONLIGHT

Amanda Quick , G.P. Putnam's Sons , 2005, $ 24 95 /C$36 00, 400pp , hb , 039915288 I Pub in the UK by Piatkus, 2005, £10.99 , pb, 074993591 X ; also hb , £ 18.99 , 0749907223

Concordia Glade must help the four orphaned young ladies she is tutoring e sc ape from the castle-turned-prison where they live . She recently changed their lessons from English and geography to chemistry and architecture . This enabled

them to set explosives to aid in their escape. As the house is burning around them , they are confronted by Ambrose Wells , who was planning to investigate the same castle for his own reasons . Concordia, a woman of strong character, and Ambrose , a typical Alpha male, are soon teamed together to protect the innocent young ladies and solve the mystery that surrounds them. Chemistry and explosions rebound throughout the novel , but change to the physical sort as these two characters share more than just clues. Amanda Quick , master of humor and wit , once again successfully launches two strong-willed, original characters at each other; this time in Victorian England Ms. Quick excels at crafting independentminded characters whose circumstances cause them to form an uncomfortable partnership. As her fans know, the sparks that fly as a result are the trademark of this outstanding author.

Nan Curnutt

DEATH ON BEACON HILL

P. B Ryan, Berkley Prime Crime, 2005, $6.50/ C$9 99, pb, 259pp, 0425201570

This is the third in the Nell Sweeney mystery series set in Boston just after the Civil War. Nell is a governess for the Hewitt family, part of Boston's Brahmin society, though her own antecedents are very different. Virginia Kimball, now retired but once the city ' s premier actress, is murdered, seemingly by her new maid, who is also found dead. The police , more known for their acceptance of bribes than their detective work, have no interest in investigating what truly happened. The maid ' s uncle , however , refuses to beli e ve that she is the murderer , and Nell vows to determine the truth Nell is aided by Will Hewitt, eldest son and black sheep of the Hewitt family Boston's society and its mores are brought to life in this engaging addition to the series. Nell's and Will ' s relationship is taking an interesting tum , and I look forward to further developments in the next book I highly recommend the whole series for those who enjoy historical novels, but the books are best read in order (starting with Still Life with Murde r)

Trudi E Jacobson

THE CHASE

Cheryl Sawyer, Signet Eclipse, 2005 , $6 99,pb , 448pp,0451215664

With her latest release , Cheryl Sawyer solidifies her reputation for romance that weds emotional conflict and historical events. As Napoleon Bonaparte escapes Elba , a French-born soldier is undergoing a court martial in England Jacques Decemay serves m the Chausseurs Brittanniques, a British regiment of captive French soldiers. His activities first aroused suspicion on the other side of the world , in Sydney, where some of his compatriots deserted and escaped.

A witness - Sophia, the widowed Lady Hamilton- testifies on his behalf, saving

his life Both she and Jacques recall that brief early encounter, and not only because it coincided with a crime. Sophia , a devoted mother to her young son, lost a husband to warfare and yearns for peace . Moreoever, she fears that facts about her husband ' s death were concealed from her. His officer cousin Sebastian is her staunch admirer and occasional confidant- but a woman from his past poses as much a threat to their relationship as Sophia ' s attraction to Decemay. Mystery leads her to the Prince Regent's pleasure palace at Brighton , and scandal forces her back into seclusion at her country estate After Decemay unleashes her passion, all happiness is slain by his subsequent betrayal of her trust. The lovers are unexpectedly reunited in Brussels, where Sophia hopes to solve the mystery and Decemay must carry out the mission to which he dedicated his life. The battle of Waterloo, depicted in vivid detail , seals their fate , and Sebastian's.

Hardly the standard Regency spy romance , Th e Chase will appeal to fans of fine writing , vivid characters , and welldrawn history.

Margaret Barr

STORM BAY

Patricia Shaw , Headline, 2005, £ 18 .99 , hb , 440pp,075530375X

It is 1832 and a load of prisoners is being transported to Yan Dieman ' s Land (now Tasmania) None of them has committed more than trivial offences, and they are going from poor, even wretched conditions in Britain to something hellish far from their families The book follows several of them and we learn their stories as th ey suffer severe mental and physical cruelty , and yet many have the courage to rise above their tribulations

The stories are well told , the descriptions of the countryside - sometimes harsh, sometimes beautiful - is graphic. The characters of the prisoners, those who oversee them and the people to whom they are assigned as free labour are well drawn, fully rounded people It would have been better had there been a main character for the reader to focus on: as it is there are so many participants that one's interest and sympathy are at times diffused. It is nevertheless an absorbing read and lifts the comer of a rug under which the dirt of history has been swept.

Pamela Cleaver.

THE BARON HONOR

Jory Sherman, Forge , 2005 , $26 95, hb, 334 pp,0312867360

In the latest installment of the Baron Ranch saga, Matteo Aguilar has just burned down the Barons' Texas ranch in a land feud Rather than taking part personally in the rebuilding, Martin Baron joins the Texas Rangers and fights alongside the Confederacy; Anson takes his friend Peebo to pursue El Diablo Blanco, a mysterious , giant white bull.

Meanwhile, Aguilar's former associate Mickey Bone lusts after Aguilar's wife Luz and her twin sister Lucinda , destroying his own family in the process.

Will Anson and Peebo survive the twisters, rainstorms , and Apache raids , capture El Diablo Blanco , and return Anson to his sweetheart, Lorene? Will Martin bring Aguilar to justice , reconcile with Anson , and get over the death of his wife enough to be with Millie, the waitress with a heart of gold at the Longhorn Saloon ?

This western is fast-paced No prior knowledge of the Baron Ranch novels is necessary However, although Sherman is a talented writer of action sequences , there are certain grating elements in this novel that I can ' t overlook. The dialogue is frequently wooden, and because the many non-English-speaking characters speak as if their sentences have been literally translated into English, they sound stilted, less intelligent , and more "over the top" than the English speakers. It's not "Tontospeak ," but the effect is similar and unfortunate . Most of the narrative style is spare and no-nonsense , but a handful of descriptions are jarringly, eye-poppingly purple, like they've been imported from a very different novel. I didn ' t find some characters' choices or reactions credible, given the background that Sherman had provided in previous chapters. This one may be for Sherman fans only.

Andrea Bell

THE TRJUMPH OF THE SUN

Wilbur Smith , Macmillan 2005 , £ I 8.99, hb, 600pp, 140500570X Pub in US by Thomas Dunne Books, $25.95 , hb , 624pp , 0312318405

Masterful Wilbur Smith returns with another epic adventure that unites the Courteney and Ballantyne families.

Sudan 1844 , a rebellion is brewing after decades of brutal misgovernment from Cairo by the Egyptian Khedive . The religious leader, the Mahdi, declares a Jihad, a holy war , against the infidel, leaving hundreds of British citizens helpless in Khartoum

Amongst those stranded is the English trader, Ryder Courteney and the British Consul, David Benbrook with his three beautiful daughters Along with Captain Penrod Ballantyne of the IO' h Hussars they must all fight for survival in this foreign madhouse.

Against the vivid and bloody backdrop of the siege of Khartoum , Smith writes a compelling novel in his particular style, resonant with historical detail.

The reader needs an open mind as the story is thought provoking and deeply disturbing at times. Set during a period of fundamentalism where there is little justice and failure brings its own reward of harshness and unmitigated cruelty

It is stirring stuff of Empire and Victorian values The characters are plausible and well defined. Real historical

personages who played a key role in the factual events are authentically portrayed and with precision interwoven into the story. Historical fiction relies upon accurate research and imaginative writing and the scope shown here is astonishingly assured, providing a compulsive page-turner that seldom falters It is totally convincing with far-reaching echoes into our present tumultuous world

Gwen Sly

OPAL

Lauraine Snelling, Bethany House, 2005, $12 99,pb,348pp,0764222201

Fourteen-year-old Opal Torvald is taking a break from work in the Dakota Territory in 1886 A tomboy, she reacts to a stranger ' s threats with what she thinks is a clever idea , but which later leads to the beating of a friend and the murder of a neighbor. Opal is banished to New York , where it is hoped she will escape further harm , but she deeply yearns to return to the West and her dream of becoming a horse trainer. At the same time, Jacob Chandler, a minister, has a tortured soul with a past memory he cannot release When he is forced to begin a new life with his son , he heads west to find acceptance and peace In this story, character development takes precedence over historical fact, and Opal is portrayed as being older than she really is , but all in all , Opal is a quick , inspirational read about the western world of the nineteenth century .

Viviane Crystal

MISFORTUNE

Wesley Stace, Little, Brown , 2005 , $23 95 , hb , 544 pp, 0316830438

Pub in the UK by Jonathan Cape, £12 99 , 2005 , hb,352pp , 0224072765

In his debut novel , Stace, better known as musician John Wesley Harding, effectively and entertainingly emulates a Victorian picaresque novel. The twist: his heroine is really a hero Wealthy landowner Lord Loveall rescues an abandoned baby and takes it home to Love Hall , his country estate Effeminate and style-conscious , the young aristocrat requires an heir. As homage to his beloved and long-dead sister Dolores , he decides to adopt the infant, naming her Rose. When his mother points out that the child is male, Loveall not only decides to ignore this fact, but he takes the household librarian as wife and passes the baby off as their offspring

Rose grows up in the most privileged of circumstances , surrounded by luxury , affection , and fanciful parents. As she ages , she is perplexed by the differences between herself and her playmate Sarah , and certain similarities shared with Sarah ' s brother Stephe n With adolescence and budding sexuality come even greater awareness of physical and emotional differences- and considerable pain Rose's mother has her own reasons for supporting the deception , until Loveall ' s death incites change The discovery of Rose's secret within the wider

family results in a reversal of fortunes. Cast off as the Loveall heir, her/his search for self takes the character to exotic lands, and brings her/him back to a London depicted in all its Dickensian richness and grim misery The private struggle towards acceptance of a dual nature is supported by the durability of friendships and love of all sorts.

This highly imaginative tale is stuffed with oddities- bizarre situations , unusual characters, memorable incidents. Although the world-building at times seems heavyhanded and sometimes takes the story offtrack , more often it serves to enhance In format and in flavor , Misfortun e succeeds overall , and will likely appeal to a variety of readers.

Margaret Barr

SALT OF THE EARTH

Michael Taylor, Hodder, 2005 , £6 99 , pb , 440pp,0340830573

When Lucy Piddock meets stonemason Arthur Goodrich it is hardly love at first sight. A young man with a bad case of diarrhoea is not a very romantic proposition. Nevertheless Arthur is determined that Lucy is the one for him and almost manages to persuade her, until Dickie Dempster arrives on the scene. Dickie is a dashing guard on the newly built railway and he sweeps Lucy off her feet. With Arthur heading off for a new life in Bristol it seems that Lucy has made her choice . Then a tragic accident brings her to her senses. Lucy realises Dickie was not all he seemed and that Arthur really was the one for her.

Salt of th e Earth is set in the Black Country during the heyday of the Victorian railways It is based a round a real train crash, but us es mostly fictional characters to explore the aftermath of tragedy

Michael Taylor is an established writer of romantic sagas and it is ea s y to see why he is so popular with fans of the genre His wntmg is warm - hearted and intelligent, drawing the reader into the heart of the action. The skilful blend of plot and strong characterisation make this a high quality saga

Sara Wilson

ROUGH HERJTAGE

Janet Thomas, Robert Hale, 2005, £19 99, hb , 223pp,0709077823

Ros e Vidney first meets Jos s Pencarrow when she is very young Joss is moved to pity for the girl and begins teaching her to read , but tragedy breaks them apart It is many years before they meet again Rose has married a miner and Joss has quarrelled with his father , the mine owner, over his desire to learn more of how the mine works They fall in love but it is an impossible dream and another tragedy parts them once more Rose has to learn to know herself before she can reach a safe haven . An authentic Comish background !ills this book but at times it seems rushed , covering long periods too quickly

Enjoyable enough, the story follows a wellworn path and cliches of plot are too often used. The Comish background is excellent. Linda Sole

TO KINGDOM COME

Will Thomas, Touchstone, 2005, $22.95 /C$3 l .50, hb, 277pp, 0743256220

Will Thomas is a Sherlock Holmes buff who makes his home in Oklahoma. Resident in an area known more for cowboy hats and pickup trucks, Thomas is the creator of Victorian-era British agents Thomas Llewelyn and his thoroughly eccentric employer, Cyrus Barker. Their second adventure finds them charged with hunting down the Irish nationalists who have blown up Scotland Yard ' s Special Iri s h branch. The Irish Republican Brotherhood of 1884 is as difficult to investigate and infiltrate as the Irish Republican Army of the next century. Their task is made easier owing to Cyrus Barker's detailed knowledge of bombs and bombmaking and his skills in passing himself off as a German terrorist willing to support his Irish counterparts. The author's "feel" for the England of 1884 serves to compensate for the far too perfect and all-wise Cyrus Barker character. The rather simplistic Irish figures are also forgotten when contrasted with the far more skillfully developed Thomas Llewelyn.

John R Vallely

MURDER ON LENOX HILL

Victoria Thompson, Berkley Prime Crime, 2005, $23.95 /C$35.00, hb, 304pp, 0425202607

ln this instalment of the Gaslight mysteries , Sarah Brandt continues working as a midwife, defying the niceties of late 19 th century society and the wishes of her powerful father. When Sarah agrees to help the parents of a pregnant mentally challenged girl find out who raped her, she unofficially investigates again with Det. Sgt. Frank Malloy Sarah and Malloy, an honest Irish-American cop at a time when police are largely corrupt and mistrusted, center their enquiries on the pastor of a wealthy East Side church. Meanwhile, Sarah's father requests that Malloy return to the four-year-old investigation of the murder of Sarah's husband, Dr. Thomas Brandt. While interesting, this subplot does not reveal new information regarding the identity of his murderer nor allegations about the doctor's unsavory secret life

Victoria Thompson does an admirable job in presenting an "unofficial enquiry" in Victorian-era New York City. She tackles a grim topic, pedophilia , which resonates only too easily of our own time Sarah's and Malloy's persistence uncovers depravity which was unimagined and certainly unspoken about by the upper crust of that time. The narrative flows quickly to the surprise ending , with Sarah and Frank unraveling multiple confessions for the murder of the despicable pastor. Sarah and

Frank are engaging characters whose friendship deepens in this book. The author hints that their relationship might someday overcome their class differences and blossom into romance. An enjoyable, easy read; recommended.

Pamela Ortega

LIFE STUDIES: Stories

Susan Vreeland, Viking , 2004, $24.95, hb, 304pp , 067003177I

In Paris of 1876, a young father reluctantly accompanies his wife and four-year-old daughter, Mimi, to his sister's garden party in Montmartre. Reluctantly , because Jerome suffers from a malaise of dullness and a disappointment in life, as he puts it. At the afternoon gathering , his sister's upstairs neighbor, Auguste Renoir , finds Jerome's little girl enchanting as she joyfully sprinkles the garden with a small tin watering can. When Renoir asks if he might paint Mimi, Jerome agrees , his heart changed by his daughter's innocence and joy as she pursues her task, and by Renoir's unadulterated grand passion for his own tasks, his work , his art.

Jerome's transformation, titled "Mimi with a Watering Can," opens this collection of vignettes and stories , divided into three parts , "Then," "Interlude," and "Now." The first section , "Then," includes eight fictional portraits- the studies of the title----of artists like Manet, Monet, Berthe Morisot, and van Gogh , and the impact they had on the people in their lives. On the whole , while beautifully written, these studies left me feeling as dissatisfied as Jerome before his transformation At the end of each, I felt a bit like I had licked the frosting off the top of a marvelous dessert only to discover nothing substantial beneath , which is to say, they felt incomplete

Vreeland writes with a clear concise voice and rare compassion for her characters. Several of the short stories included in the latter part of the collection are truly wonderful (the funny and blazingly intelligent "The Adventures of Bernardo and Salvatore" and "The Things He Didn't Know," whose construction worker protagonist, visiting an art gallery for the first time , comes to terms with himself in a way that made me want to give him a rousing cheer). While I put this book down feeling oddly unfulfilled , from time to time Vreeland absolutely hit the mark. For me, in the end , that was enough.

Alana White

AN OBITUARY FOR MAJOR RENO

Richard S. Wheeler, Forge, 2004 , $24.95 / C$34.95 , hb , 318pp, 076530708 I On May 17, 1876, Colonel George Custer led the Seventh Cavalry out of Fort Abraham Lincoln with orders to seek out and subdue one of the last villages of hostile Cheyenne and Sioux who had failed to report to their designated reservation by the US government's deadline. With him were officers Major Marcus Reno, Captain

Frederick Benteen, and over 600 enlisted men, plus seventy-odd civilian herders, scouts, etc. What happened on that march immediately became the talk of the nation and even today stirs controversy At issue is the question of who to blame for the subsequent massacre of over 200 men at the battle of the Little Bighorn, as it has come to be known , which many consider to be the worst disaster in US Army history.

The novel begins thirteen years after the event. Reporter Joseph Richler, Washington correspondent for the New York Herald , reluctantly goes to interview Marcus Reno, who is scheduled for surgery to remove his cancerous tongue. Richler sees his assignment as a no-win situation. In the intervening years , Reno's reputation has been further smeared, his honor tarnished , by a series of accusations apart from the notorious battle. Knowing that he will be dead soon, Reno convinces Richler to set the record straight.

Richard Wheeler is such a solid writer of the western genre . His pacing and characterization are nearly flawless. Having been to the Little Bighorn Memorial in Montana, I can say that the battlefield is exactly as he describes it. Details of the events leading up to, during, and after the battle are gripping. He doesn't try to tum Reno into a hero who unjustifiably wound up on the wrong side of public opinion. I would definitely recommend this book.

Alice Logsdon

HOSACK'S FOLLY: A Novel of Old New York

Gillen D'Arcy Wood , Other Press , 2005 , $25.00 , hb , 385pp, 159051 I 62X Set in the 1820s, Hosack's Folly is an engaging tale that combines themes of political, journalistic , and mercantile skullduggery with a gentle romance. Doctor Hosack was, in his day, a well-known and often controversial figure on the City scene. Today he is occasionally remembered as the physician who was present at the famous duel in which Alexander Hamilton lost his life Hosack was also responsible for the founding of Bellevue Hospital, Columbia University Medical School , and the first botanical garden in New York , but it is his youthful protege, Albert, and a privileged girl who secretly loves him (and whose father is Hosack's deadly enemy) who are the center of the story. There is plenty of action provided by a gubernatorial election , water politics, and a yellow fever epidemic. In the great tradition of the Victorian novel, there is an ample amount of lovingly rendered setting to showcase well-rounded, believable characters. The author has an ear for the language of the 1820s, so the dialogue has a wonderful period flair that T particularly enjoyed. The last few chapters seemed a trifle formulaic, but overall this was an enjoyable novel , combining history, mystery and romance with great success.

Juliet Waldron

19TH 120TH CENTURY

THE LOVE APPLE

Coral Atkinson, Black Swan, NZ$27.95, 336pp

A historical romance set in New Zealand and Ireland between the 1880s and 1902. It opens on the west coast of New Zealand's South Island and covers a range of historical events: the Fenian troubles in Ireland, the visit of John Dillon, Parnell's man and his enthusiastic welcome by many west coasters, and the Boer War. Many historical references come in solid, expository paragraphs, which disturb the flow of the romance. The author does not quite know how to show rather than tell.

Geoffrey Hastings, and Anglo-Irish photographer, guilt-ridden since the death of his wife, becomes enamoured of Huia, a part-Maori girl of 16 while on a photography trip in the mountains. I found it hard to relate to Hastings, a wishy-washy , almost camp, figure who never became real to me. The dialogue in the opening chapters seemed stilted. However, when the second protagonist, PJ, enters, the pace quickens and the characters come alive, as if the author is more comfortable in the Irish setting.

The glimpses of life with a travelling roadshow were entertaining, and the incidents from the Boer War interesting, but Atkinson's New Zealand bush seemed more like English woodland, without the wild grandeur of the uninhabited parts of the west coast.

If you enjoy a light historical romance, the book should entertain, but l could not lose myself in the story.

Kath O'Sullivan

DESERTION

Abdulrazak Gumah, Bloomsbury 2005, £16.99, hb, 262pp, 0747577560/Pantheon, $15.64,hb,272pp,0375423540

In 1899 in a small town in Mombasa an Englishman staggers, exhausted out of the desert and falls at the feet of Hassanali who takes him to his home to recover. The Englishman, Martin Pearce eventually meets Hassanali's sister, Rehana who has been deserted by her husband. A mutual attraction soon leads to a passionate love affair and the pair set up house together.

Part two introduces Rashid , (who takes up the story), his brother Amin and sister Farida and moves to Zanzibar in the 1950s. At first these characters appear to have no connection with what has gone before until Amin has an illicit love affair with Jamila. When their liaison is discovered Amin 's parents forbid him to see Jamila hinting at her questionable parentage. While Rashid is studying in London Zanzibar gains independence and the tumultuous events that follow prevent him from returning. Eventually, the threads of these stories reaching across three generations and continents are finally drawn together.

This is a convoluted tale of forbidden loves, culture clashes and, desertion. At times,

the writer meanders off the point, in fact it is often difficult to see exactly what the point of it all is until the final pages when the story comes full circle and all is revealed.

Ann Oughton

NO PLACE FOR A LADY

Ann Harries, Bloomsbury 2005, £10.99, pb, 374pp,0747578710

Two nurses, Sarah and Louise, go to work in South Africa during the Boer War and encounter the horrors of the concentration camps where women and children struggled, often unsuccessfully, to survive. They had been inspired by Emily Hobhouse who is trying, against much opposition, to rouse public opinion in England and who eventually goes to inspect conditions herself.

Copiously researched and told through letters, diaries, official despatches and straight narrative, it is a powerful indictment against the political and military events in South Africa. The book is well written so far as language and research goes but I was not satisfied with it as a novel about a few central characters. That element of it seemed to have been overwhelmed by the author's need to concentrate on the dire conditions and the failings of the high command.

We catch glimpses of Emily's broken engagement that brought her back to England before the war started. Louise, prominent at first, drops from view when she marries and only briefly returns at the end. Sarah, working in some of the worst conditions, falls in love with Patch, a common soldier. He had been raised in an orphanage and when he went to work on a leper's island before he enlisted he felt drawn towards one female patient. These strands in particular I could not fully believe in. The sudden blinding realisation of passionate love, when two people have nothing in common, was unconvincing, so was the subsequent development of their relationship. It seemed incidental to the central theme. Patch's eventual discovery of his parentage was equally incredible. It is, nevertheless an interesting account of an inglorious Imperial adventure

Marina Oliver

20 th CENTURY

DIEA LITTLE

Megan Abbott, Simon & Schuster, 2005 , $23.00, hb,256pp,0743261704

There are works of crime fiction that come along, every once in a while, which belong almost in a category of their own, and this is one of them. Call it Southern California "noir," unless that conjures up Raymond Chandler in your mind, since this is a book that I cannot imagine Chandler could possibly have written. The story is a reflection of the darker side of 1950s Los Angeles, that is true, but one told from a strictly female point of view. The

underlying current is that of fascination and frustration, worry and envy. When Lora King's brother Bill, who works for the L.A. district attorney's office, marries Alice, a victim of minor automobile accident, her world turns upside down and inside out. Alice is flamboyant, glittery, coarse (in a refined way), loud, trashy, with a mysterious (or even worse, dishonorable) past, with uncouth (and couth) friends and associates. Bill is enchanted, Lora is protective, and Lora (although she never says so) fascinated. There is an eerie sense of mystery that envelops the three of them, so massively that at times there seems to be no room to breathe, growing all the more pervasive as Lora begins to investigate Alice's past, and the hold she has on her brother.

In a book like this, it is the men who are the fragile ones. Alice is obviously the strongest of the three, but Lora, as it turns out - but that would be telling. If you 're fan of noir literature, this is it, at its finest.

Steve Lewis

ARTICLES OF WAR

Nick Arvin, Doubleday, 2005 , $17.00/ C$24.00, hb, I 76pp, 0385512775 [n Nick Arvin's first novel, George Tilson, called "Heck" for his reluctance to swear, arrives at Omaha Beach just after the DDay landings. His first military experiences encompass boredom , avoiding the attention of one's superiors, and the "hurry up and wait" mentality that pervades the army When he is finally sent into battle, he panics and runs away, recognizing himself as a coward. •

The novel invites obvious comparisons with Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, and Heck might even be called the twentieth century's answer to Crane's Henry Fleming. Both protagonists are na'ive, untried boy-men who panic when con fronted with combat and eventually prove themselves by being wounded. Even Heck's nickname, however Arvin cares to derive it, is a diminutive of Henry.

Arvin's narration is episodic and disconnected. "Impressionist" was a term applied to Crane's novel. But where Crane laid on every emotional tool in his literary palette, Arvin chooses instead to keep his prose spare and to reach for resonance by underplaying Heck's experiences. For me, this minimalist style meant that I never really understood Heck and, instead of Everyman, he became No Man. The lack of cohesive plot and general sense of disorientation while reading was probably intentional on the part of the author, mirroring Heck's own lack of direction and general cluelessness, but I found Articles of War to be a less than satisfying reading experience.

Lessa J. Scherrer

EMPIRE OF THE SUN

J G Ballard, Simon and Schuster, 2005, $13 00/ C$19.00, pb, 279pp, 0743265238

Pub in the UK by Flamingo, 1994, £7 99, pb , 352pp , 000654700I

I had not read this book (originally published in 1984) or seen the Spielberg movie and thought it was about time I did one or the other ; it should be done

Ten-year-old Jim lives a privileged life with his British expatriate parents in Japaneseoccupied Shanghai He loves airplanes, and his world is a jumble of newsreel images of war. The day after Pearl Harbor, everything changes He is separated from his parents and survives for a month , a ghost- like existence, among the empty, ransacked houses of the European community , living on cocktail crackers and olives, drinking from swimming pool s. From there he goes on to ingratiate himself with an exploitative American cabin steward , Basie, by undertaking any menial job , and finally ends the war in a prison camp on rations that get slimmer and slimmer.

I can't say that this is a triumph-of-thehuman-spirit sort of story, told with a brutally unflinching eye as it is Jim grows cynical and adopts a tough , self-protective shell as his childhood lengthens to the brink of adulthood in the constant face of death and hunger. When he sees the flash of the atomic bomb across the Chinese Sea and Communists flood into the place vacated by the Japanese , he remains confused about where one war ends and the other begins-as we all may rightly be . Jim, who lies almost dead himself next to a dying kamikaze pilot about his age, prophetically warns : "One day China would puni s h the rest of the world" for what had been done to it during thi s time . Ann Chamberlin

TEARS OF THE DRAGON

Holly Baxter, Poisoned Pen Press , 2005, $24 95 / C$34 95, hb, 228pp , 1590581466

This is the first in a new series featuring Elodie Browne , career girl in 1930s Chicago Elodie works as copywriter at an advertising agency and wins her company's competition to come up with an idea for their client , Leatherlux Luggage , by propo s ing a radio show. Winning the competition puts her as a staff writer on the show , where she works with two fastquipping writers who would not be out of place in any 1930s movie starring Rosalind Ru ss ell or Eve Arden. Elodie's enjoyment of her new good fortune is tempered by her anxiety by what she thinks she heard when s he got off on the wrong floor of her office building one night and by what she witnesses when working as a waitress at a private party hosted by the Chinese employer of her friend Bernice. In true plucky Girl Friday fashion , Elodie, with the reluctant assent of Lieutenant Archie Deacon and her newspaper reporter cousin Hugh , pursues the mystery and uncovers not the Capone mafia but Chinese gangsters

who are driven to foment the coming revolution in China.

Baxter is the pseudonym of Paula Gosling , a well-known mystery writer who is adept at cozies, thrillers, and police procedurals. Here , she brings a cozy sensibility to 1930s Chicago , a locale which is better known for hard-boiled mysteries. Baxter is on to something , because she deftly mixes Elodie's comfortable though financially straitened home life with her forays into the world of gangsters and mean streets The era comes to life rather than appearing quaint and dated , and I look forward to Elodie's further adventures, accompanied , I hope, by Lieutenant Deacon Ellen Keith

GLIMPSES OF PARADISE

James Scott Bell , Bethany House , 2005 , $12 99 , pb, 41 lpp , 0764226487

Zee Miller, a minister ' s daughter, dreams of becoming an actress and rejects a marriage offer because she knows that although she'll have love , she'll never attain her dream Doyle Lawrence, who expected to enter a prestigious university and become a lawyer, is crushed by Zee's rejection. Escaping this small-town Nebraska setting in I 916 , he joins the army after being caught up in the prevalent patriotic fever. Later, scarred by his military experiences in World War I, he returns to the Ii fe of a vagabond at the same time Zee is beginning her career as a star. Miles apart on the economic and social ladders of success , Zee and Doyle meet the brutality and disillusion caused by war and the more abhorrent values behind the road to riches Doyle discovers comfort in faith after several exposures to the famous preacher, R A Torrey , and finds closure with Zee in a most unexpected fashion. An excellent portrayal of social , military , theatrical , and spiritual life in the early twentieth century, this novel is a great read!

Viviane Crystal

MAN OVERBOARD

Tim Binding , Picador 2005, £12.99, hb, 244pp,0330487477

In 1956 Commander Lionel 'Buster ' Crabb, disappeared whilst spying on equipment fitted to Russian ships anchored in Portsmouth during the visit of First Secretary Nikit a Kruschev Crabb was a war hero noted for his daring underwater feats in Italy, Gibralter and Pal es tine during WWII: did the British government use the navy's greatest frogman as a spy during the Cold War? The government at the time refused to answer questions raised in the House and the files on the politically sensitive case will not be released until 2057.

The cause of Crabb's disappearance remains a mystery to this day but Tim Binding has taken the bare facts and woven a fascinatingly believable account of what might have happened. Binding allows Crabb to tell the story from his capture by the Russians , his transformation to

Commander Korablov employed in training Russian divers and frogmen and his final days in a sanatorium. The character of Crabb is vividly brought to life as is the atmosphere of the 1950s. It is an easy read but none the less enjoyable for that.

Ann Oughton

THE MAGIC HOUR

Charlotte Bingham, Bantam Press 2005 , £l2 .99,hb , 364pp,0593054237

The 'Magic Hour' is, 'when the sky meets the sun's setting , and should two people embrace at this moment they will be together forever.' Thus , Charlotte Bingham describes this magical time.

Alexandra Stanford is made to feel the poor relation when she visits her wealthy cousins who live at Knighton Hall. Shortly after , she is no longer wanted when her father re-marries. Becoming a maid of all work in a Regency house on the south coast, she is determined to succeed and this she does in surprising ways

Here is a story of loss, betrayal , love regained and the upheaval of momentous discoveries of place and birth. The characters are well rounded , endearing and annoying by tum , but it is the setting,, ' sometime in the fifties' that is vague Parts of the novel are headed, 'England Before WWII' and, 'Many Years Later '. From hints within the narrative , the story must cover a quarter of a century, but it is all guesswork . More detailed and accurate proof reading of the text would have been helpful; I thought that 78s were called gramophone records when played on wind up machine s before the War.

This is an easy to read novel that will please Ms Bingham's many fans Gwen Sly

THE POET OF TOLSTOY PARK

Sonny Brewer, Ballantine , 2005, $21 .95 /C$29.95, hb , 254pp, 034547631 X

In 1925, when Henry Stuart learns that he is terminally ill with tuberculosis , he proceeds to do a most natural act: he takes off his boots and feels the earth between his toes and then walks home barefoot in the rain. The novel , based on a true story , progresses as follows. In the style of Stuart ' s strongest influence , Tolstoy, the sixty-seven-year-old man leaves his two sons , friends , and ample home in Idaho in search of a more simplistic life in Fairhope , Alabama. His journey to this unknown area is meant to help him spiritually face the reality of his impending fate After Stuart arrives in Fairhope, he is inspired to build a round cottage by himself. This back-to-basics project opens up the opportunity for Stuart to be more self-sufficient and focused on finding his true inner feelings Brewer, in his first novel , eloquently creates a touching and compassionate story about an elderly man who wants to learn a peaceful way to embrace death Brewer teaches and inspires us to do just that.

Carol Anne Germain

A CERTAIN FREEDOM

Evelyn Hood, Time Warner Books 2005, £17.99,hb,0316860867

Scandal hits the small Scottish town of Saltcoats in 1909 when , after the funeral of his wife, ironmonger Hamilton Forsyth decides he has had enough of family life . He leaves his three adult children - plain but efficient Belle, idle Walter and spoilt Moma - to cope with their home and the shop unaided , and disappears . No sooner has the gossip-ridden town taken this on board than Walter dumps his fiancee, the bani,. manager's daughter, and marries his pregnant servant, Sarah, all unknowing that the coming baby may not be his . Unable to tolerate the thought of the servant becoming mistress , Belle leaves home to live with an elderly aunt and Moma , her own romance inevitably spoilt by the scandal, moves out too, to become a servant in a poor lodging house near the docks.

This is a readable book, and while everything turns out for the best in the end, there are some fast-moving and unpredictable chapters to enjoy before the end.

Val Whitmarsh

TODA Y'S EMBRACE

Linda Lee Chaikin, WaterBrook, 2005, $ I 3.99/C$20.99, pb , 386pp. 1578565154

This is the third volume in a series set in southern Africa during the second AngloBoer War at the tum of the 20 th century. Ms. Chaikin writes historical romance series for the Christian reader. Therefore, the motivations and beliefs of the characters are part of the narrative . It was not difficult to pick up the plot thread in this third volume, which begins in England and ends in what is now Zimbabwe. These are people the reader can relate to, caught up in the events of the period. I liked the differing reactions of the English natives to the African land and culture. It was a whiff of"White Mischief' done in a gentler style, but the elements of greed, ambition and love are all present in the cast of characters. Accompanying the action of a lost fabled diamond , the African tribal tensions, the struggle between the Dutch Boers and the British , and the work of the missions, is domestic drama of two marriages , and one new romance. The new couples are struggling to balance their own desires and their care for each other. My favorite character is Darlinda, the daughter of an unscrnpulous diamond magnate, who revels in her abilities and strength, but has to choose whether to follow her father's ways or her heart. Although this series is written for the Christian fiction audience, if you enjoy South Africa and early 20 th century settings, you will enjoy this , too Mary K . Bird-Guilliams

A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND

Mitch Cullin, Doubleday , 2005, $23.95/C$33.95, hb, 253pp, 0385513283 In 1947, ninety-three-year-old Sherlock Holmes embarks on a final journey to

postwar Japan and ends up drawn into another mystery : helping Mr. Umezaki discover the fate of his long-lost father. Meanwhile, back in England, the son of Holmes's housekeeper finds an incomplete manuscript , Holmes's own account of one of his unpublished "adventures," which he reads over and over to try to gain some insight into the great detective's mind and heart. Cullin interweaves the threads of these two narratives with a third, that of the relationship between the boy and his fathersurrogate Holmes. This triptych provides the reader with good, believable insight into the mind of one of the most enigmatic characters in literature .

Cullin pays obvious homage to Conan Doyle's literary style at times : the sweeping landscape of Sussex Downs is rendered vividly and beautifully, and the tension builds at a good pace throughout the first two-thirds of the book The narrative itself is more modem, shifting back and forth between England and Japan , past and present, though Holmes's perspective dominates We get several insights into Holmes's psyche, his ambiguous sexuality, his views of himself, friends and family, and the world around him. Yet the conclusions we draw from these aren't much more enlightening than what comes through in Conan Doyle's original tales; it's like Cullin has turned up the volume on Holmes, but not really taken him apart. The "mystery" of Umezaki Sr. as well as Holmes's long-ago case of "The Glass Armonicist" seem to unravel to dissatisfying conclusions, after such strong and captivating beginnings No doubt this is intentional , significant not only to Holmes's life but to ours as well: the conclusion very often isn't as good as the beginning, and only in one of Watson's fictionalized tales can we expect a neat and happy ending.

Val Perry

NEW MERCIES

Sandra Dallas, St. Martin 's Press , 2005, $23.95,hb,304pp,0312336195

The first character we meet in this new Nora Bondurant novel is not a person, but a house Nora, a character familiar to readers of Sandra Dallas novels , unexpectedly inherits a decaying Southern mansion in Natchez, Mississippi The year is 1933. Befitting a main character, the mansion has a name: Avoca, or "a shady restful place filled with friends. " Quite to the contrary, and aside from the fact that Nora had not even known of her great-aunt's existence, the antebellum house is also filled with mystery and a murder - the murder of her great-aunt by the fiance she had jilted. To this disturbing place , Nora brings tragedies from her own life in Denver : a divorce from her husband and his recent death Few murder mysteries ever told their tale more gently. Dallas writes tenderly of a South where the Civil War remains a living memory and regional idiosyncrasies make us feel like anthropological voyeurs. Dallas

provides not only an excellent murder adventure , but a well-told lesson m tolerance and acceptance

Chuck Curtis

WITHOUT SIN

Margaret Dickinson , Pan 2005, £6.99, pb, 400pp , 1405049111

At the tum of the twentieth century, Meg Kirkland's father leaves her, her expectant mother and little brother at the gates of the workhouse and vanishes from their lives. Meg thinks that it is all her fault that they have lost their place at Middleditch Farm and is convinced that if she could only speak to her friend, Alice , the daughter of the house, all will be well.

The workhouse is run by Isaac Pendelton and his sister. Conditions are not so bad and Meg could settle in but for the hostility of Ursula Waters, once an inmate, now employed. Meg's brother dies as does the baby and her mother becomes Isaac Pendleton's mistress Disgusted , Meg leaves the workhouse , she meets her father and Alice, but things did not tum out as she hoped Gradually, Meg changes from a high spirited girl into a cold, manipulative woman who lets nothing and no one stand in her way.

This is a well-written book that holds the reader 's interest. If you like the saga formula this story will hold you.

Mairead McKerracher

SOME STRANGE SCENT OF DEATH

Angela J. Elliott, Whittle s Publishing , £7.99, pb, 226pp, 1904445152

In December 1900, the lighthouse keeper of the Flannan Isles light and his two assistants go missing. No bodi es are recovered, and Joe Moore, the keeper's emergency replacement, a young man prey to superst1t1ous fantasies, suspects supernatural intervention. At the same time, Cal Robinson, an American journalist in search of a good story, believes the Flannan Isles mystery will be the making of him. Angela Elliott's haunting book follows both men on their quest for the truth.

Elliott has researched her subject thoroughly , and has helpfully included many of the original documents relating to the disaster. Her sense of place is faultless, her evocation of the islands and the sea surrounding them vivid and poetic, though for read e rs like myself who are unfamiliar with the loc a l topography , a map would have been helpful.

The story s tarts well. Ideal , I thought, for a winter's night with a good fire and the wind raging outside. I was, however, disappointed by the time I reached the end. It is to Elliott's credit that she has been so punctilious in sticking to the known facts of the case, but as a consequence, some storylines, such as Joe's romantic interest in the widow of one of the assistant keepers, remain underdeveloped. Cal's story has more vitality, though he never becomes much more than a caricature seedy

THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

newshound. The strongest character in the book is Annabella, the dead keeper's daughter, who is beautifully drawn and whose exclusion from the adult circle as they try to protect her from news of her father's death feels true and poignant.

A mixed blessing, but worth the effort for fans of maritime mystery.

Sarah Bower

CROSSING BULLY CREEK

Margaret Erhart, Milkweed Editions, 2005, $24.00,hb,328pp,9781571310422

Crossing Bully Creek is likely to be mentioned in the same breath with Faulkner because they share some commendable commonalities: a rich ability to evoke a sense of the South, an incredible fluidity of language, and a deep sensitivity and ability to perceive. However, to dismiss Milkweed Editions' National Fiction Prize winner as "a Faulknerian novel" does it a grave disservice, because it is no imitator or wanna-be; instead, it is a memorable experience of a network of Southern lives in times of amazing change.

The novel takes place in southern Georgia, near the Florida border, mostly on and around the plantation of Henry Detroit. Henry is dying in I 969, when most of the action takes place, but it is barely adequate to call Henry the "mai n character." The chapters are divided into impressionistic sketches that occur between 1929 and 1969, told through the eyes of at least twelve different characters, with their own stories and perspectives. Erhart does a brilliant job of actualizing all of these people in only a few pages, but two favorites were Cole Jones , a white plantation employee who falls for Detroit's married daughter, and Roosevelt Davis, an intelligent, epileptic black boy who comes to work in Detroit's kennels, and may be destined for more. The changing nature of race relations is certainly an overarching issue in the novel; the death of white plantation owner Detroit at one high point of the Civil Rights Movement may be interpreted symbolically, but many of the most engaging ideas and exchanges happen on a n individual, not archetypal, level. Many stories contain murky questions that are only clarified later, in another character's story thread, as Erhart weaves the disparate impressions into a whole picture. Crossing Bully Creek demands a bit of attention, but the experience is well worth it.

Andrea Bell

A DREAM TO SHARE

June Francis, Allison & Busby, 2005, £ I 8.99, hb, 360pp, 074908359X/ to be published in the US October 2005

The second in June Francis' exciting trilogy set in early twentieth century Chester. We have a mix of the same characters as in the first book, plus Emma Griffiths and her family, and David Davis . Alice is still working for Miss Victoria, and Hannah's brother, Bert Kirk, has returned to terrorise

them all. He is as vicious as ever, and his crimes include murder as well as rape and theft.

This is a nice mix of middle and working class folk with a sprinkling of the Women's Movement and the politics of the time deftly woven in. However, the plot is almost irrelevant. What we have here is a slice of life in the early I 900s. The book is character led and reading it is like sitting up there with the gods, spying on the people below through a gap in the clouds. Real people. Real emotions. Another excellent book from one of our best saga writers. Linda Sole

NO PEACE FOR THE WICKED

Pip Granger, Corgi 2005, £5.99, pb, 384pp, 0552150673

Lizzie Robbins is trying to get over the death of her young daughter and relies on her friends from the Old Compton Street cafe for support. Maggie, Bert and Rosie are always on hand with a cheery word and a shoulder to cry on. Lizzie's loneliness is lifted when Peace comes to stay with herthe beautiful half Chinese niece of the local drinking club landlady, Bandy Bunyan

When Peace disappears, rumoured to have been kidnapped , Lizzie turns to expoliceman, T.C for help. Together they brave the seedy dock lands around Limehouse searching for clues and as they are drawn deeper into a murky plot they begin to fall in love.

This is the latest offering from the author of Not All Tarts Are Apple and it certainly lives up to expectations. Once again Pip Granger has served up an appetising slice of life from I 950s Soho. Her characters are always colourful and three-dimensional, her plots intimate and satisfying. This author certainly knows how to breathe new life into the East End saga.

Sara Wilson

RUDDY GORE

Kerry Greenwood, Poisoned Pen Press, 2005 , $24.95, hb, 216pp, 1590581180

Glamorous Melbourne heiress Phryne Fisher made her debut into the mystery fiction world with Ruddy Gore, originally published in I 995, but available in the US market for the first time in this edition. Miss Fisher lets us know who's in charge from the opening scene, when she whacks a mugger and re scues an elderly lady on her way to the opera to see a Gilbert & Sullivan production. Her enjoyment of the performance ends abruptly when the actor playing Lord Ruddigore collapses on stage, poisoned. Phryne's friends on the police force and in the theater allow her free rein to help investigate two mysterious deaths and several unexplained ghostly sightings of a long dead G & S star.

When a locket identifying a foundling orphan enters the plot, Phryne feels that she is caught up in a Gilbert & Sullivan plot. Suspects abound in the company, each more melodramatic than the next. Will the

murderer be caught before the Ruddigore Curse closes the play?

An intriguing subplot introduces Phryne to exotically handsome Lin Chung, a silk dealer whose Chinese immigrant family is feuding dangerously with another wealthy merchant clan . Greenwood's silk stocking whodunit combines detailed research into 1920s Australian theater history with a freewheeling and witty amateur sleuth, termed by one reviewer "Miss Marple 's naughty niece ." It's about time this delightful series came out in American editions.

Nina de Angeli

LEEWAY COTTAGE

Beth Gutcheon, Morrow, 2005, $24.95 / C$34.95, hb, 432pp, 0060539054

Gutcheon's newest novel spans most of the 20 th century, following the life of Annabelle Sydney Brant, her parents, and to some extent, her children. We also follow the story of the rescue of the Danish Jews, as Sydney's husband Laurus is a Danish musician doing war work on Denmark's behalf in London. Laurus's mother is Jewish, and his family is amongst those at risk when the Nazis plan to round up all Danish Jews on Rosh Hashanah in 1943.

Sydney's mother does not much care for her daughter, making Sydney's childhood, particularly after her father's death , a less than happy one. She and her mother spend most of the year in Cleveland, but this book focuses on the summers spent in Dundee, Maine. Through this geographical len s, we see changes in society, particularly that of the well-to-do, from the 1920s through the end of the century. After the war and a separation of several years, Sydney and her husband find they do not have as much in common as they initially seemed to. Laurus is the most engaging character in the book, and the extended section that takes place in Denmark during World War II is the most vivid. The actions of Laurus's sister and brother, and those of many other Danes who are reacting to the increasingly hostile Nazi regime, are inspiring and heroic.

Better editing would have helped this book Blunders and missteps kept pulling me out of the story, particularly in the first few chapters. In the end, though, I was glad that I persevered.

Trudi E. Jacobson

THE CHOIRING OF THE TREES

Donald Harington , Toby Press, 2005, $l4.95 / C$24.95 /£9.99/€l8, pb, 447pp, 1592641032

The Choiring of the Trees, set in 1914 in an Ozark town , opens at sundown as Nail Chism is being led to the electric chair for the brutal rape of a thirteen-year-old girl. As he 's plotting a final terrifying act, he notices two things - the trees seem to be singing to him , and the woman named Miss Monday 1s sketching his last

moments. Narrated by Latha, the victim's best friend, the saga of Viridis Monday, an artist who's traveled the world and come back home, and Chism, a shepherd, unfolds. Monday works for Nail's freedom, believing him innocent.

Be warned that the first fifty pages of Harington's latest work to be set in the fictitious town of Stay More, Arkansas, are rather off-putting: there is much talk of eleven-year-olds having sex, five-year-olds only being virgins if they can outrun their brothers, and other charming things. However, once I got past those bits , the book took off and was absolutely brilliant! Harington's depiction of his native Arkansas almost makes you feel as though you can see the smoke rising some illicit still far off in the distance. The characters are well fleshed-out and honestly presented. Despite the somewhat stomach-churning descriptions of the brutality the prisoners suffered at the hands of guards, the story is so well crafted that it's impossible to not tum the page. This book is recommended for the heartwarming quality of the depth of feeling between Viridis and Nail and the lengths to which they are willing to go in order to be together.

Dana Cohlmeyer

LIGHTNING BUG

Donald Harington, Toby Press , 2005, $14.95/C$24.95/£9.99, pb, 226pp, 1592641024

It's July , 1939, when Every Dill returns to Stay More, Arkansas, to reclaim his true love, the town's attractive postmistress, Latha Bourne. No one is as surprised at his return as Latha , because she rejected Every years earlier. As a result, Every raped her and robbed the bank before leaving Stay More. Now he's back , claiming to be a preacher, and wanting to make an honest woman of Latha. Latha , however , has other ideas. She wants to have sex with him.

Five-year-old Dawny, the sometimes narrator of this story, is in love, or possibly lust , with Latha. He resents the return of a rival for her affection. In fact, most of the men in the town resent Every's return. Many of those men are also rivals for Latha's affection, and quite a few have experienced it.

Donald Harington , the five-year-old Dawny in the story, has crafted a sensual novel peopled with fascinatingly imperfect characters, reminiscent of Drake's Creek, the Ozark hamlet where he spent his childhood summers. Lightning Bug is the first of several books he wrote about Stay More and its people . Nan Curnutt

THE AMBASSADOR'S SON

Homer Hickam, St. Martin's Press, 2005, $24.95/C$34.95, hb , 337pp, 0312301928

Bestselling author Homer Hickam's latest work blends JFK, Nixon and Michener's Tales of the South Pacific into a tasty tropical mix of what might have happened

during the two "missing" weeks of John Kennedy's life immediately after the infamous PT 109 incident. In the Solomon Islands during WWII, Lt. David Armistead, cousin to FDR, goes missing and is last spotted heading into Japanese-held lands with the beautiful, young native wife of a colonist swearing revenge. Josh Thurlow, sent to track him down , gathers round him a motley crew, including a battered and reluctant JFK. Along the way, Kennedy must play poker with Nick Nixon (aka Richard Milhous, already well on his way to being tricky) and James Michener in order to procure a gunboat for the mission. The men fight their way across several islands and encounter Japanese soldiers and native cannibals in their search.

The book starts off great, but I must admit I developed a major case of "oh, come on" when Kennedy and Nixon and Michener all appeared. (The endnotes say the coincidental meetings actually happened.) In spite of that, I persevered and ended up hooked. Stocked with all the required WWII-types - preppy, redneck, Brit , friendly native - the story is captivating and addicting. In addition to the beautiful native wife, there's a beautiful English plantation owner to stir things up, though it felt a bit obvious to have the woman gazing at Kennedy and knowing he's destined for great things Getting past the schmaltziness of some parts, The Ambassador's Son is a good war story worth reading Dana Cohlmeyer

7,000 CLAMS

Lee Irby , Doubleday , 2005, $23.95 /C$33.95, hb,355pp,0385511892

The starting point here - based on fact, or so l'm told - is that in I925 a gang of cutthroat gamblers have in their hands an IOU signed by Babe Ruth for $7000, which in today's world would still be a lot of money. It could be true. Ruth was making more money than the President. He was also a man with prolific vices. Besides gambling, there was carousing, womanizing, and overeating. He was a man with a profane tongue and a lust for life (if not his wife).

Not that Ruth has a leading role. That falls to Frank Heam instead, a bruiser, a hustler, and a would-be bootlegger who gets possession of the note. Loving him is Irene Howard, a beautiful rich girl who drops out of college only to be with him Also in the cast is a luscious looker named Ginger DeMore , on the run from Al Capone's gang, plus assorted hoodlums , killers, cops (crooked and otherwise), mothers and wives, all headed for St. Petersburg, Florida, where the Yankees train . It's all beautifully choreographed, but if coincidences bug you, you may think the converging plot lines all too calculated. Very entertaining, but allow yourself a sense of wonder to go along with your sense of humor. Until the ending, which falls flat , squelching the intensity of the

climax that seemed to have been prepared for perfectly. What I also really think authors ought to do is finish one book before setting things up for the sequel, and let the follow-up book take care of itself.

Steve Lewis

DEADLY ILLUSIONS

Brenda Joyce, MIRA , 2005, $7.50, pb, 377pp,077832138X

Deadly Illusions, the latest offering in the Francesca Cahill series, continues Joyce 's penchant for combining mystery with sensual romance. The Slasher is murdering poor young Irishwomen in tum -of- the-century New York, and amateur sleuth and wealthy socialite Francesca is determined to find the killer. Her sleuthing throws her in with her former love interest, police commissioner Rick Bragg, who also just happens to be the half-brother and implacable rival of her fiance, semi-reformed libertine Calder Hart . Sparks and jealousies fly as Francesca tries to unmask the killer before he strikes again, this time at those she holds dear.

The dialogue often feels anachronistic, the main characters seem too modem, and imbuing the setting with a genuine historical feel is not Joyce's forte. However, the driving force behind this and the other novels in the series, namely the character relationships, is well-done and will definitely hold the reader's attention. Though not particularly thoughtprovoking , the mystery subplot is interesting and fast-paced, and it provides the perfect foil to set up the interactions between the characters. Overall, Deadly l/lusions is a fun and entertaining novel that will leave the reader eagerly waiting for the next instalment to see how the characters' relationships progress.

Bethany Skaggs

THE LIMITS OF ENCHANTMENT

Graham Joyce , Atria, 2005, $22/C$32, hb, 263pp,0743463447

Pub in the UK by Gollancz, 2005, £14.99, hb ,256 pp , 0575072318

Fem Cullen is brought up by Mammy, a midwife and healer, in a small English village. When we meet Fem, she is listening to a pregnant woman's stomach, rather as a test of her corning of age as Mammy 's assistant. She concurs with Mammy's pronouncement that the baby will be a girl, and when the baby is born just a short time later, they are proved correct. Fem values all that Mammy has taught her, but is pu zz led by Mammy 's refusal to divulge her own background Fem is an unworldly young woman, due both to Mammy's strict upbringing and to ostracism by local children. When she and Mammy find their situation becoming precarious , Fem must adapt to the outside world quickly Although Joyce sets The Limits of Enchantment in the I 960s (a group of rather shifiless hippies plays a part) , it is a timeless story set in the claustrophobia of a small-minded village,

THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

and leavened by just a hint of magic. It might just as easily have been set in the 1600s or the 1700s.

Fem has some prescient advice for us in a prologue: "If I could tell you this in a single setting, then you might believe all of it, even the strangest part. Even the part about what I found in the hedgerow. If I could unwind this story in a single spool, or peel it like an apple the way Mammy would with her penknife in one unbroken coil, juice a-glistening on the blade, then you might bite in without objection." You can feel the power of Fern's storytelling, but mind you pay heed to her counsel. Halfway through the book, I stopped reading for the night. The next day, it took a bit of effort to fall back under her spell. I was the loser for not taking Fern's advice seriously. Learn from my mistake, and enjoy this captivating tale in one sitting.

Trudi E. Jacobson

ALIBI

Joseph Kanon, Henry Holt, 2005, $26.00, hb,415pp,080507886X

World War II is considered by many to be our last good war, as we know without doubt who the good guys and bad guys were. Or do we? Joseph Kanon has spent his career exploring the gray areas between "good" and "bad." In his new historical suspense novel, Adam Miller, a former US Army war crimes investigator, has come to Venice in I 946 to visit his socialite mother and try to forget the horrors he witnessed in Germany. Nothing has changed in Venice, a city still as serene as the waters of her canals. But when Adam falls in love with Claudia, a Jewish woman scarred by her wartime experiences, he finds the dream of Venice is a fa9ade. There is more than enough guilt to go around. Everyone has been compromised by the Occupation: the local police, the hospital staff, even the international set drinking at Harry's. Then an impulsive murder could tear Adam from everyone he holds dear.

Through Adam's relationship with his mother, Kanon accurately portrays the disconnection between the Bright Young Things of the 1920s and '30s and their children who went to war. Through his meticulous research, Venice herself becomes a character-flirtatious behind a Cami vale mask, hiding both physical decay and the equivocal morals of people who did what they had to survive. One leaves this book with a deeper understanding of the Nazis' most pervasive and insidious effect- the ugly little ways each survivor was irretrievably corrupted.

Lessa J. Scherrer

FIRE WHEN READY

Kate Kingsbury, Berkley Prime Crime, 2004, $5.99/C$8.99, pb, 2 l 7pp, 0425199487

The English villagers of Sitting Marsh do not want a munitions factory ruining their town and making them targets of the Luftwaffe. With protesting housewives on

one side, and Lady Elizabeth of the Manor extolling duty and well-paid jobs on the other, disaster strikes. A fire results in two dead bodies behind a locked office door and wartime authorities rule it an accident. Lady Elizabeth believes otherwise and searches for clues to murder, partly to distract her broken heart from lurching every time she sees a Yank jeep parked in the village. This story is a light confection of a mystery, tinged with romance, albeit set in a dramatic, earnest time. Readers of Kingsbury's previous Edwardian mysteries at the Pennyfoot Hotel will enjoy similar characters in this current series of wartime amateur sleuthing.

Tess Allegra

A LAND OF SHELTERED PROMISE

Jane Kirkpatrick, WaterBrook, 2005, $13.99, pb, 444pp, 1578567335

It was known as the Big Muddy Ranch in 190 I when sheepherders inhabited the Antelope Valley in north central Oregon. But by 1984 little was left of the Big Muddy. A newcomer to the area, Bhagwam Shree Rajneesh, found the land along the John Day River an ideal place to establish his commune, Rajneeshpuram. Scandal, attempted murder, and the first bioterrorism in United States history marked the commune, and eventually members of the cult abandoned Rajneeshpuram. Ten years later it was renamed Wild Horse Canyon, and Young Life Camp for teens was established. It is against this historical backdrop that Jane Kirkpatrick writes A Land of Sheltered Promise. The author researched the lives of three women who occupied the land: a sheepherder's wife whose life is changed by her husband's conviction for murder; a mother who seeks to rescue her granddaughter from the Rajneeshpuram commune; and a woman who helped to reshape the land into something positive, a Christian camp for kids. From the historical record, Kirkpatrick crafts fictional accounts that have one underlying theme. Each woman finds herself on a personal journey where she is placed in the situation of having to accept the charity of others. By so doing, each of them realizes that reaching out is done out of strength, not weakness, and ultimately leads to "Someone larger, who has brought about this magnificent place where even silent prayers are heard and answered."

A Land of Sheltered Promise is historical Christian fiction at its best. The reader comes away with a clear vision of the land, of the people who occupied the land, and of a Supreme Being who ties it all together. Sue Schrems

SMALL ISLAND

Andrea Levy, Picador, 2005, $14.00, pb, 448pp,03l2424671

Pub. in the UK by Review, 2004, £7.99, pb, 544pp,075530750X

In 1948, Hortense Joseph arrives in London to join her new husband, Gilbert, who has

promised her a bright future there. They have both come from Jamaica. He had served in the Royal Air Force during the war, but has found that England quickly forgot about his service to the country, and minorities have returned to their status as second-class citizens at best. She arrives with dreams of teaching because of her training and certification in Jamaica, but in London, those credentials are useless. A great deal of tension quickly develops between Hortense and Gilbert. To complicate matters, the landlady, Queenie, has befriended Gilbert, which makes the situation even worse. Finally, Queenie's husband Bernard, who has been missing in India and presumed dead, reappears, adding to the chaos. The story is told through the shifting kaleidoscope of these four characters. Levy's prose is astonishingly fresh and varied. Through her skillful narrative, the drama of the era in all its diversity and conflict is fleshed out. This is an exceptional novel of poignant emotions and vivid history.

Gerald T. Burke

FOR ALL OUR TOMORROWS

Freda Lightfoot, Hodder, 2005, £6.99, pb, 4l0pp,0340830034

Life is very quiet in Sara Marrack's sleepy Comish hometown in 1943. Her marriage is far from ideal and her husband Hugh is jealous and moody. Then the US Marines arrive and she meets a young officer named Charles Denham. Suddenly Sara sees what she has been missing all her life, but how can she get away from Hugh and what exactly does Hugh do all those nights he is away from home.

Her sister, Bette, has no such worries. She is young, free, single and determined to enjoy the attentions of the newly arrived Gls. That is until she is swept off her feet by Chad Jackson and finds herself pregnant. Soon she's bound for the United States and looking forward to meeting her new family. But if she's expecting to be welcomed with open arms she is to be sorely disappointed.

Freda Lightfoot always writes with such vitality and passion that her characters lift right off the page and really come alive for the reader. She is a consummate storyteller who delivers the perfect blend of drama, romance and historical detail. For All Our Tomorrows is another great entry in her ever-increasing output.

Sara Wilson

THE EARTH AND SKY OF JACQUES DORME

Andrei Makine, Sceptre, 2005, £16.99, hb, l83pp,0340831251

Every Saturday night a young boy goes to the home of Alexandra, a Frenchwoman stranded in war-tom Russia. The boy lives in an orphanage, condemned there because of his father's disgrace. Along with the other children he survives by constructing escapist dreams of his heroic parents.

Alexandra teaches him to read French, opening a door into another world

In 1942 Alexandra's own life is transformed with the arrival of Jacques, a French pilot. His presence awakens her memory of the life she led in her native France. They are two people sharing their experiences of two countries, casualties of war, doomed to a brief but intense love affair. Alexandra conveys something of this to her young friend and in adulthood he feels driven to expiate his feelings of failure. He must write the story of Jacques Dorme. In this strangely constructed novella, a vehicle for recounting the love affair of Alexandra and Jacques, Andrei Makine paints a series of cameo portraits. The writing is rich and poetic, expos ing the reader to events that he cannot help but experience For me , however, the splintered glimpses into the young boy's own life are the real story. A Russian writing in French, then translated into English, this memorable book feels raw and vibrant. It has an intensity that stays with the reader long after the last page.

Janet Mary Tomson

SILENT LIES

M. L. Malcolm, Longstreet Press, 2005, $24 95, 324pp , hb, 1563527502

Silent Lies begins in 1910, when ten-yearold Leopold Hoffman, son of a Jewish Hungarian blacksmith, meets the new schoolmaster. Leo's special gift, an intuitive understanding of foreign languages , earns him a ticket out of his backward village to Budapest, where he receives an education and is exposed to refined society. Leo is taken into the army to serve as a soldier in World War I. He returns home to find his family penniless. He becomes a concierge at Budapest's finest hotel, where he meets important men who hire him as an interpreter for their business in Paris. All is not as it seems: the trip is disastrous , and Leo flees to Shanghai, but not before meeting Martha, the love of his life. In Shanghai, Leo makes a fortune and sends for Martha. They are happy until the stock market crash of l 929. Now destitute with a child on the way, Leo resorts to working for a gangster. As America is poised to enter World War II, Leo is recruited by the OSS. This is just a precis of Leo's adventures. Ms. Malcolm paints a vivid picture of the time and place and gives an excellent characterization of a complicated hero. Leopold Hoffman is at once an opportunist, pragmatist, outlaw, loving husband, and caring father. Despite the coy last line, this is an excellent first book. Audrey Braver

FIGHTING WITH SHADOWS

Beryl Matthews, Penguin 2005, £6.99, pb, 400pp,0l4l0l958l

This is an undemanding but well-paced novel set in the immediate post-war period. The outstanding feature is the strong story line The heroine is bringing up her

orphaned nepkew and returns to the village where she was evacuated during the War. People are kind and friendly and problems are sorted out gradually. The 'shadows' of the title refer to her lasting bitterness towards the Germans who were responsible for her parents' death in an air raid. This clouds her relationship with a former POW who also returns to the village.

Beryl Matthews has been compared with Catherine Cookson but social realism does not figure in this novel. The post war period was a time of serious shortages and stringent rationing of food, clothes and petrol. Rationing is mentioned but it seems to have no effect on the life style described. The complete absence of class distinction is also a fantasy. However , this is intended to be an escapist romantic novel and these inaccuracies will not spoil it for many readers. I found that the strong writing carried me along in spite of them.

Ruth Nash

TWILIGHT

Katherine Mosby, HarperCollins, 2005, $24.95 / $C34.95, hb, 304pp, 00662127 l 5

The publisher calls Katherine Mosby's third novel a love story, but I believe it is more an exploration of a significant period in one woman's life. When Lavinia Gibbs reaches her mid-thirties without receiving a proposal of marriage, her well-to-do New York family despair of ever seeing her secure with a husband. But men find Lavinia attractive, and she does become engaged - only to break it off with her fiance and flee for Paris. It is the late 1930s, and conditions prove difficult there, but Lavinia receives a monthly income from her father, and she finds employment assisting Gaston Lesseur, who needs her to clear out his dead uncle's apartment. As Europe moves toward war, Lavinia is increasingly drawn to Gaston, despite the fact that he is married and appears reluctant to share secrets with her.

I found the ending of this novel unsatisfying, but perhaps this is because Lavinia's later life plays a part in the author's second novel, The Season of Lillian Dawes , which I have not read. Lavinia is a likeable protagonist, even when we are shown her less admirable side. And Mosby moves the story along well, and succeeds in portraying a Paris beaten down by privation. An interesting commentary on how and why we love Claire Morris

MARIE BLYTHE

Howard Frank Mosher, Univ. Press of New England,2004 , pb,455pp, 1584653647 Originally published in 1983, Marie Blythe is a captivating tale of the titular character's life experiences, a modem Bildungsroman. Marie is a French Canadian child who immigrates to Vermont's Northeast Kingdom (to the unfortunately named Hell's Gate) in 1899. Orphaned soon after she anives, Marie must find her own way

in the world; as she does, she joins a gypsy family, finds and then loses love, suffers a miscarriage, cooks for various work camps, survives a tuberculosis epidemic, then becomes a nurse, and finds herself once again in Hell's Gate, shortly after the end of the Great War. There, she learns to read, goes to school, and settles down as a teacher. But there is more danger in store for her as she confronts past enemies and loves. Though the storyline may sound a bit sensational, the telling of it is anything but. Mosher has created a truly sympathetic character in Marie; stubborn, determined , and spirited , she is deftly portrayed . Mosher's descriptions of Hell's Gate are evocative and lushly detailed as well, bringing the village to life once more This was a pleasure to read , and I was sad to finish it. Recommended .

L. K. Mason

WHERE THE RIVERS FLOW NORTH

Howard Frank Mosher, Univ. Press of New England, 2004, $ l 4.00, pb, 205pp, 1584653639

This reissue of Mosher's l 978 story collection was my introduction to the author's work; it deserves a much wider audience outside New England. The six short stories and title novella take place in Kingdom County, Vermont , in the early or mid-20th century, as do many of Mosher's other works The stories are "regional writing" in the sense that they masterfully evoke a sense of time and place- Mosher is gifted enough that he can transport the reader to Kingdom County in merely a handful of sentences- but the characters and stories transcend geography.

Readers expecting cozy New England tales should beware : Mosher's Kingdom County is a harsh , rural area , filled with resourceful but weary characters who have had more than their share of hard luck and must decide how to handle their lots in life The dying ex-basketball player and his wife are resigned and numb in "The Peacock," after joy deserts them. The title character of "Burl" is at peace , oddly so, since she claims to have used hate to survive her fascinating misfortunes "High Water" (possibly my favorite story, excepting the novella) concerns young Waterman's refusal to surrender his dream to become a stock car racer, when everything surrounding him (from his father to the weather) is clearly trying to hold him back - and may succeed The title novella is a McCab e & Mrs. Mill e r-esque masterwork that tells of old Noel Lord's refusal to leave his ancestral land in l 927 when the Northern Vermont Power Company decides to build a dam. Each piece in this collection could merit a full review; each one is a lesson in storytelling , and it makes me look forward to reading all ofMosher ' s work . Andrea Bell

THE ICON

Neil Olson, HarperCollins, 2005, $24.95/C$32.95, hb , 353pp, 0060748389 Pub . in the UK by Piatkus, 2005, £17.99, hb ,386 pp ,07 49907606

A very old image of the Holy Mother is taken from a Greek church during World War II to be traded to a Nazi officer for guns. But the plan goes awry: people get killed and the icon disappears. Nearly sixty years later, a Swiss banker dies in New York, and Ana, his granddaughter, decides to sell a piece of his art to pay for expenses . Enter Matthew Spear, expert from the Metropolitan Museum and grandson of the andarte behind the original theft. Add in the icon's mystical power, and the possibly connected truth that men will commit murder to possess it, and we have a smart and complex thriller.

While only a fraction of this novel is set in the past, the events unfolding in it are wholly dependent on that past. The story and its characters came across to me as completely believable; the word pictures are artfully drawn . As I read Th e Ico n, l could see it as a film. This is not just another thriller to toss in the " read" pile Beyond the plot are commentaries on degrees of religious belief, obsession with objects when lives are at stake, and the ability of art to move us.

Claire Morri s

DEATH AT BLENHEIM PALACE

Robin Paige , Berkley Prime Crime, 2005, $23.95/C$35,hb,30lpp,0425200353

In the summer of 1903, Charles, Lord Sheridan, and his American wife, Kathryn , a writer, are guests of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. The palace is an unhappy place for the Duchess, the former Consuelo Vanderbilt , who was forced by her domineering mother to marry the Duke. He , in turn , is fascinated by another American woman, Gladys Deacon , an unconventional beauty who is also a guest at the palace Charles is an amateur forensic detective of some renown, and when Gladys disappears after a formal dinner , the Duke demands that Charles find her During their search, the body of a young serv ing woman is discovered in th e lake. The authors, the husband-wife team of Susan Wittig Albert and Bill Albert, have s ucces sfu lly blended history with mystery in their 11 th novel in this series. Several reallife people help with the investigation, most notably Winston Churchill and T .E Lawrence , who appears as a young man. The authors' attention to historical detail and fact is impeccable ; they are well respected for their research and fine writing

Lorraine

Gelly

IN THE SHADOWS OF THE SUN

Alexander Parso ns , Doubleday, 2005, $23.95/C$33.95, hb , 272pp, 0385512449 Ross and Baylis Strickland, brothers , built every piece of their ranch in New Mexico on land leased from the federal government.

Their wives, Sara and Alida, and their children also contribute to the family projects of farming and managing a cattle herd. News reports suggest the horror of war, so far only imagined in the faraway Philippines until its impact hits this American family. Ross's son, Jack, enlists in the army. Their lease is suspended because the War Department needs land for testing bombs. Losing both their livelihood and home agitates their already decaying family relationships. Havoc continues as Alida divorces Baylis , who dares a relationship with his sister-in-law, Sara. Then an inaccurate report of Jack's death arrives.

The horrific description of Jack's struggles through the Bataan Death March fills the novel's opening pages It continues with the vivid years following September 1942, when Jack, as a prisoner of war on Palawan Island, builds an airfield for the Japanese. In returning home, Jack is confronted with rejoining family members who face the challenge of recreating their lives , as their beloved ranch has been extensively damaged.

The action-filled narrative switches back and forth between the war and troubled family lives at home This is an exemplary war story containing elements in American history too often quietly ignored. The author presents with sensitivity and emotion the personal damage that war brings to both soldiers and civilians.

Jetta

Culpepper

THE PORTRAIT

Iain Pears, Riverhead , 2005, $19.95/C$29.00, hb , 21 lpp, 1573222984

Pub in the UK by Perennial , 2005, £8.99, hb,224pp,0007202776

If this short novel doesn't capture the reader's attention, then little else will. Scottish painter Henry MacAlpine welcomes his old friend William Nasmyth, England's foremost art critic, to his tiny cottage on Houat, an island off the coast of France. Nasmyth has come to sit for a portrait. This will not be any portrait, but part of a triptych, showing the critic as he was, as he is and as he will be. MacAlpine's is the lone voice in the narrative As he chats with Nasmyth , filling in the details of his life since abruptly leaving England at the height of his career, reminiscing about their youthful days in Paris and later years pursuing wealth and fame in London, it becomes obvious that MacAlpine holds deep-seated anger toward the critic. Over the course of several days , his moods swinging from chatty camaraderie to open hostility and back, the suspense builds, much like the storms that form and surge over the sea around MacAlpine's home.

One of the many themes explored in this multifaceted novel is that of the relationship between art, the artist and the critic. Can one exist without the other? Can honest judgment exist untainted by personal ambition? Further, the setting of this novel,

sometime before World War I, was a time of great change in the art world , with new trends and philosophies challenging the established elite. How does the artist manoeuvre such change without being either derivative or dated? Great questions Gripping novel.

Alice Logsdon

THE SERPENT ON THE CROWN

Elizabeth Peters, William Morrow, 2005, $25.95/C$36.95, hb, 350pp, 0060591781

Pub. in the UK by Constable & Robinson , 2005, £16.99, hb, 1845291638

This is the seventeenth instalment (that alone is an accomplishment) in Peters ' Amelia Peabody mystery series. This time, we're taken to 1922 Egypt as the Emersons return to the Valley of the Kings A wellknown writer, Mrs Petherick , appears one day at the door of Emerson and Amelia with a golden statuette of an unidentified Egyptian king The provenance of the priceless relic is unknown; all the Emersons learn is that she wants nothing to do with it because she believes it is cursed and an untimely end comes to anyone who possesses it. Naturally, Mrs. Petherick becomes one of the casualties. Who - or what - is responsible for her demise ? Amelia , Emerson, Ramses and the usual cast of characters arc ready to find out.

What is wonderful about this particular instalment is not merely Amelia's aging ungracefully into doting grandmother-hood, but the sheer fun and madness - and devotion - of the characters that people this family and their friends It often seems like a bit of a Keystone Cops vaudeville act but , of course, the mystery is always solved and the Emersons and their clan move on to the next adventure. A light, fun and enjoyable read . Ilysa Magnus

THE FAT MAN'S DAUGHTER

Caroline Petit, Soho, 2005, $24 00, hb, 288pp, 1569473870

The fat man's daughter of the title is Leah Kolbe, a beautiful, young, half-American, half-Russian woman, born and raised in Hong Kong [n 1937, when the story begins, she is nineteen years old and her father has just died. Theo Kolbe was a quasi-legitimate dealer in Chinese antiquities. He trained Leah well, and she is qualified to continue in the trade , but his business was not always as it appeared. A mysterious Chinese man named Chang speaks to Leah at Theo 's funeral and suggests they do business together. The deal he presents has Leah traveling to Manchukuo (Manchuria) to meet with the Emperor Henry Pu Yi Ostensibly, she is to get his permission to arrange a visit from a team of British entomologists who are studying ants, a particular passion of the emperor. In reality, her mission is to meet with the Chief Eunuch, who has been systematically robbing the Imperial City of

its treasures. These treasures are to be used to finance the Nationalists, whom Mr. Chang claims to represent. Circumstances force Leah to take the assignment. The trip is full of interesting characters and events including dangerous encounters, betrayals , murder, Japanese bombing raids, and lovers.

Ms . Petit is a new Australian writer, and in this , her first book , she has written a vivid account of a tragic period in China's history Her descriptions put you in the time and place with a heart-pounding sense of accuracy. We are in the heroine's head most of the time, but do not feel her emotion. Her effect is flat throughout the story, perhaps a deliberate ploy of the author to express Leah's grief. This is a minor criticism and does not detract from the story. The Fat Man's Daughter is definitely a cannot-put-down book.

Audrey Braver

BY THE GRAND CANAL

William Riviere, Grove, 2005, $24.00, hb, 266pp,0802117937

Pub. in the UK by Sceptre, 2005, £7.99, pb, 272pp,0340770414

This novel, set in Venice following World War I, echoes the grief and disillusionment of the war years, and the anxiety that this was not indeed the war to end all wars. Hugh Thome, a British diplomat involved in crafting the post-war peace treaties, returns to his second home in Venice to escape a withered marriage. His friends, Giacomo and Valentina Venier and their two teenage children, observe Hugh's life and play their own key role in this tale They live in a crumbling palazzo, and Giacomo's failing health is likened to Venice's own decaying nature. Hugh indulges in an affair with a young singer, but is unable to decide if he should try to make the affair more permanent or break it off entirely. Into this situation comes Violet the widow of a dear friend of Hugh'~ and Giacomo's, along with her teenage son, providing the possibility of Violet and Hugh moving forward once the period of grieving is over. However, it is the younger generation that holds the hope for something better, for a chance to escape the past. Rivicre's novel captures not only the feel of Venice, but the lingering effects of the war and of Venice's history.

Trudi E. Jacobson

THELETTERSTHATNEVERCAME

Mauricio Rosencof, trans Louise 8 Popkin, Univ. of New Mexico Press , 2005, $19.95,pb, 120p~0826333737

Mauricio Rosencof spent thirteen years as a political prisoner in his native Uruguay. Eleven of those years he was in solitary confinement in a three-by-six cell with only spiders to keep him company and the image of his neighborhood postman to keep him sane. The postman and the letters he brings-a nd doesn't bring-become the metaphor linking his parents' disconnect

from their family back in Hitler's Poland and his own estrangement from them.

The body of the novel is a pair of stream-of-consciousness monologues First, the author as a young boy, "Moishe," takes us on a breathless tour of his family and neighborhood to introduce the characters of his story: his idolized older brother, Leon, the only one who can bridge the language gap between their parents ' Yiddish and Moishe 's Spanish; his distant father who sews all day and writes letters at night; his mother who only speaks in questions ("How comes you're not eating?" "Who does that?" "Co me here, will you?"). Moishe's story is interspersed with imagined letters from the Polish relatives in the Lublin Ghetto, then Treblinka and Auschwitz.

The bulk of the novel is Mauricio from his dungeon , composing a letter to his father in his head, as his captors allowed him neither pencil nor paper. The narrative spirals through past, present and future events, linking, as Ilan Stavans writes m the introduction, "five generations of Rosencofs, the Old World to the New, the plight of a Uruguayan to that of Hitler's victims, and his own struggle to theirs." The Letters That Never Came is Rosencofs manifesto against silence, particularly the silence that muffles the cries of the innocent.

Lessa J. Scherrer

PINKERTON'S SISTER

Peter Rushforth, MacAdam/Cage, 2005, $26.00, hb, 729pp, 1-931561-99-0

Pub. in the UK by Scribner, 2004, £ 18 .99, 2005, 735pp,hb,0-743-25235-7

For some people, a love of reading becomes a grand passion. Alice Pinkerton, housebound madwoman in tum-of-thecentury New York City, lives entirely for books In this erudite, compelling novel , Alice reflects on her life and all the people in it , from neighborhood characters and family members to Annie, her friend and housemaid, whose mysterious disappearance Alice understands all too well.

Alice doesn't come across as insane. In fact, she seems to sound a voice of truth compared with the ignorance and hypocrisy of her neighbors, doctor, and family. But as she reveals more about herself and the experiences that have shaped her, all synthesized through the literary works that mean so much to her, the reader realizes that Alice has been driven mad. Finding out what happened to Alice makes this substantial novel fly by. Readers should be aware that the novel has nothing to do with the Pinkerton Detective Agency. All Alice shares with the detectives is their catchphrase: "We never sleep." Alice is also vigilant, unable to ignore terrible things, unwilling to look away.

Bone up on your Bronte s, and your Poe, Whitman, and Robert Louis Stevenson, for although the reminiscences of a traumatized madwoman on the brink of a brutal new therapy sound depressing, this

novel is very sly and witty. Readers won't want to miss any of the funny allusions and references that make this harrowing, tragic story such a joy to read.

Colleen Quinn

CAVALCADE

Walter Satterthwait, Minotaur, 2005, $23.95/C$33.95, hb, 354pp, 0312339747

Cleverly using Pinkerton agents to investigate crimes in various locales , Satterthwait sets this third installment of the Phil Beaumont and Jane Turner mystery series in post-World War I Germany. Germany is shattered and Hitler is slowly gaming popularity. An assassination attempt on his life brings th e team of agents to Germany to investigate. They are soon saddled with a list of suspects, real and fictitious, some of whom are close to the Nazi leader.

If you can buy the premi se that Hitler would resort to a foreign agency to uncover who is behind the attempted murder , and are willing to abide a tendency to namedrop, you will enjoy this mystery. The complex setting of 1923 Germany is exploited ni ce ly by the author: the highlighting of Hitler 's rise from his popular roots in Bavaria, the state of the German people after the war, and their reactions, pro and con, to Hitler, the political maneuverings of the "reds," and the extreme right. Told from dual viewpoints, Phil's first person account and Jane's letters to a friend, the book is wellstructured and contains some splendid passages like Hitler's speech to a crowd. While it may be difficult to consider Hitler neutrally, Satterthwait manages to pull it off. After this escapade, the sympathetic sleuths are heading for Greece, and I intend to follow them there.

Nicole Leclerc

THIS DAME FOR HIRE

Sandra Scoppettone, Ballantine, 2005, $21.95, hb, 272pp, 03454781 OX

Two blurbs by other authors on the cover of this one call it "noir" and " pulp ," but I beg to differ. Just because a book takes place in wartime Manhattan does not make it noir. And just because the leading character is a fledgling female private eye named Faye Quick does not make it pulp. There is no overriding sense of impending doom or disaster that characterizes what I think of noir. And Faye is pretty chipper all the way through, on her own for the first time, with her boss off to war overseas. The war is definitely part of the background, but that's everyday living, and Scoppettone captures that aspect well-ration books, USO dances, the lack of available men, and so on - but that's not noir, nor pulp there's too much self~awareness in Faye Quick's chatter to be authentically pulp.

After finding a body of a young girl on a snowy Greenwich Village street in the prologue, Faye is hired four months later by ISSUE 33, AUGUST 2005

the girl's parents to find the killer, the police not yet having been successful. It isn't Hammett, nor even Chandler, but Scoppettone is smooth, witty and charming, all at once in a peculiarly unique way, taking us back as she does to an America in its adolescent years, only slowly becoming aware of the terrors of the world. The killer, to report on that, is relatively easy to spot-which means that I did-but the pleasure entailed in reading this book lies elsewhere: in the sheer pleasure of reading.

Steve Lewis

ICE ROAD

Gillian Slovo, W.W. Norton, 2005, $15.95, pb, 544pp,0393327205

Pub. in the UK by Virago Press, 2005, £7.99,pb, 560pp, 1844080595

Set in the Soviet Union prior to and during World War II, Ice Road makes personal the terrors of Stalin's era. It also makes clear how lives can be changed by a single, seemingly inconsequential act. Irina Davydovna, a cleaner, takes a job on the ship Chelyuskin, which is making a scientific expedition to the Arctic Circle. Boris Aleksandrovich, a high-ranking Soviet, had offered her the job, and when the ship is trapped for months on end, in the ice of the Arctic, Boris feels responsible for Irina when she returns to Leningrad, and in tum, she becomes a friend to his daughter Natasha, a housekeeper to his friend Anton Antonovich and then a guardian to Anya, the orphan that Anton adopts. All of these lives are, in tum, affected by the harshness of the Soviet regime when purgings were commonplace, standing in line for hours on end to be told to come back the next day was accepted and not questioned, and standing out in any way was to be avoided at all costs.

Slovo perfectly captures this nowunthinkable way of life. Irina, who narrates in the first-person, is the conscience of the tale, maintaining her own thoughts while navigating through Stalin's repressions and keeping those she loves alive. What is more chilling is to see the thought processes of others as they calculate who can be sacrificed so that they can be saved. The author also recreates the Siege of Leningrad, a grim reminder of the effects of war on civilians. Despite its subject matter or perhaps because of it, the book does not end on an irredeemable note, testifying to the enduring human spirit. I could not put this book down.

Ellen Keith

HOLY SKIRTS

Rene Steinke, William Morrow, 2005, $24.95 /C$34.95, hb, 360pp, 0688176941 "I cannot bow-I can only fling myself"The Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Rene Steinke's gorgeous second novel is a fictional biography of the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven-Dada poet, artists' model, performance artist, eollagist and Greenwich Village eccentric. While THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

WWI raged in Europe, The Baroness stalked the streets of Manhattan with a flashing red light attached to her bustle or a brassiere made of tin cans and green twine. As Marcel Duchamp once said, she was " not a futurist. She is the future."

After leaving her home in Swinemilnde in I 904, a succession of jobs-performing in a nude tableau vivante in a Berlin cabaret, poor repertory actress, artist's model, poet-and three thieving husbands gradually strip Elsa down to her essence: a survivor who lives with her passions plastered on her forehead. Holy Skirts gives us the picture not only of her "larger than life" life but also her bewildered struggle with syphilis, which she contracted from her mother at birth. Syphilitic dementia is both her muse (whispering poems in her ear) and her tormentor, providing no sane counterbalance to her impulsive and outrageous behavior. The line between genius and madness was her tightrope.

Despite occasional anachronisms (i.e., Elsa ponders Mount Rushmore fifteen years too early), on the whole Steinke's narrative is as sensual and delicious as her subject. She tells us immediately that the Baroness "had a theory that she simply had more heat in her limbs, more blood than most girls ... so her body's chemistry gave her these pleasures other girls were not so lucky to feel." Luckily for us, Holy Skirts is pulsing with this heat and blood, so we can finally feel what the Baroness feels.

Lessa J. Scherrer

WIVES AT WAR

Jessica Stirling, St. Martin's Press, 2005, $26.95, hb,475pp,0312340249

Pub. in the UK by Coronet, 2003, £6.99, pb,480pp,0340818506

The latest offering from Jessica Stirling follows the Glasgow-born Conway sisters first encountered in Prized Possessions. As the book opens, Glasgow is waiting for Hitler's bombers, and the sisters are coping with the changes war brings. Babs evacuates her children to the country and works in an office only to have a charming American photographer appear. Hearingimpaired and unhappy, Rosie works in a factory and worries about starting a family. Wealthy Polly is still managing her gangster husband's empire while he and the children are living in New York. He surfaces again with a plot involving the OSS, the Italian Resistance, and spiriting a fortune out of Scotland.

Although this is the second book featuring this family, it was easy enough to jump right in without having read the first one. Wives at War is an enjoyable, wellwritten read. The Conway sisters are so real that it's dead easy to imagine your Nan as Babs, or the old lady on yesterday's bus as Rosie. Stirling's mastery of setting the mood brilliantly captures WWII-era Glasgow and the well-documented stoicism of the British. A clean, honest story of life. Dana Cohlmeyer

THE YEAR THE MUSIC CHANGED: The Letters of Achsa McEachern-lsaacs and Elvis Presley

Diane Thomas, Toby, 2005, $22.95/£14.99, hb,246pp, 1592641229

It is 1955 when fourteen-year-old Achsa McEachem hears "That's All Right Mama" on the radio, sung by the as-yet-unknown twenty-year-old Elvis Presley. She writes to him to tell him that she can pick hits better than anyone, and this song "deserves to go all the way to number one on Your Hit Parade." However, she doesn't think it will, unless it is played on rock and roll radio shows, rather than on the hillbilly station where she heard it. Elvis writes back, expressing his appreciation for her confidence in him, believing her to work at a radio station. When he finds out that Achsa is actually a young and very intelligent girl (she skipped grades three times in elementary school), he asks her to continue writing and to give him grammar lessons in her letters, so he won't sound stupid.

What follows is a heartwarming and enchanting epistolary novel between two young people feeling their way through the minefields of adolescence on her part, and growing recognition on his. Achsa is selfconscious of the way she looks (a harelip corrected by surgery still leaves some deformity) and her status as a "gimp" or loser at high school. Things aren't right between her beautiful and loving mother and her repressive father. Elvis is coping with increasing fame and the demands it brings. They vow to tell each other everything in their letters, even things they haven't told another soul. Achsa's instructions to Elvis so that he can avoid grammatical errors continue throughout their correspondence, whether the news surrounding the lessons is celebratory or tragic. These instructions are a delight to read. I am amazed that this is Ms. Thomas's first novel: the writing is so assured. I will be widely recommending The Year the Music Changed, while keeping a tight hold on my copy for future rereadings.

Trudi E. Jacobson

Owing to the enthusiasm of Toby Press and a failure of transatlantic communications, I also read this book with a view to reviewing it, and endorse everything Trudi has written. A fabulous read. Diane Thomas is a gifted novelist and definitely one to watch.

I would add that it might also be of interest to a teenage readership.

Sarah Bower

EVENING FERRY

Katherine Towler, MacAdam/Cage, 2005, $25.00, 378 pp, hb, ISBN 1-59692-124-2

The second installment of the Snow Island trilogy continues the story of the inhabitants of this isolated island off the New England coast. Rachael, the daughter of Nate and Phoebe Shattuck (who were minor, yet intriguing characters in the original novel), has lived most of her adult

years on the mainland. At the age of thirtythree, she endures a lonel y, reclusive life, trying to adjust to her divorce and the recent death of her mother. When her cantankerous, obstinate father is injured in the summer of 1965, she decides to return to Snow to take care of him and there discovers her mother's diaries. This discovery leads her on an inner journey to understand Phoebe's life and her family's history and to discover her own future.

The focus of Evening Ferry is the Shattuck family, and readers who hope to see the stories of other familiar islanders resumed will be disappointed. Alice Daggett, George Tibbits and other oldtimers make brief appearances, but they play no substantial role. Rachael's melancholy story creeps along interspersed with Phoebe's engaging diary entries of her struggles as wife and mother on this isolated and insulated island during the 1930s and 40s. The gent le quietness that characterized the first book has, in my opinion, metamorphosed into a somber gloominess that penetrates this novel. I believe this atmosphere perfectly matches the characters' stories; however, I found this novel too depressing for my taste.

Andrea Connell

THE OCCUPATION

Guy Walters, Headline, 2004, £6.99, pb, 404pp,0755320662

The Occupation is an edge-of-seat thriller, set in the Channel Islands during World War II. It highlights the deprivations felt by both is lander and invader, when food and other commodities were in sho1t supply, even by standards in mainland Britain.

The moral face of the Nazi regime is personified in Lieutenant-Colonel Max von Luck, a high ranking officer with great power. His benign regime enables him to befriend several islanders and he falls in love with Pippa, whose mother is caught shelteri ng two British officers. He also discovers that forced labourers are dying in the production of a secret weapon.

The novel shifts to the present day. A Jersey reporter learns builders are mysteriously falling ill whilst working on a new luxury hotel constructed over the site of a concentration camp. Past and present converge in a very dramatic manner.

The drawbacks to this book are an overuse of four-letter words throughout, together with salacious depiction of violence, and the old chestnut, beloved in films, of a lengthy conversation when A is threatening to shoot B, in order to allow time for a rescue or other action to take place! Apart from this, The Occupation is a thoroughly gripping read.

Ruth Ginarlis

CANAAN'S TONGUE

John Wray, Knopf, 2005, $25, hb, 352pp, 1400040868

Set on a crumbling plantation, Canaan's Tongue centers on the Redeemer, a

charismatic leader dead but hardly forgotten. Most of the story is told through Virgil Ball, one of the Redeemer's gang whose claim to fame is his prophetic, sooth-saying eye. The gang poses as abolitionists eager to help slaves to their freedom. What the unfortunate people who trust them find is duplicity and death. As the battles of the Civil War come to them at their outpost on the Mississippi River, the surviving gang members realize that an avenging angel is in their midst, preying on their fears and beliefs to cut a swath of death until a new Redeemer is found among them.

Based on the world of notorious John Murrell and his murderous gang, Wray weaves a gothic grotesque . Canaan's Tongue is infused with highly charged language and memorable set pieces, like Vigil's leading of a coffle of slaves through the middle of a yellow fever epidemic, and a prostitute's view of the war's iron ships with men aboard who looks "like maggots on a chop." But the novel's many viewpoint shifts diffused impact and its complex theology sometimes proved more confusing than intriguing.

Eileen Charbonneau

MULTI-PERIOD

NATIVES AND EXOTICS

Jane Alison, Harcourt, 2005, $23.00, hb, 256pp,0151012016

This novel explores these questions: Where are we from? Where do we belong? Where is home? And, if our forebears originated somewhere other than where we are living, can that place become our home?

Focusing on episodes in the lives of three characters, Natives and Exotics draws the comparison with the plants and trees that have been transported from their native setting to grow elsewhere: cabbage palms in the Hebrides, banyans in the Azores. In the 1970s , Alice lives for a short period in Ecuador; her stepfather is an American diplomat encouraging destruction of the natural habitat so that an oil pipeline and highway can be built. Thanks to her restless mother, Alice has had several homes in her nine years and will apparently have many more. In the I920s, Alice's grandmother, Vi, works with her husband to shape a home in rural Australia, but she dreams of hopping a ship in nearby Adelaide and visiting other places, especially England, which her mother spoke about as "home." In the 1820s, George, Vi's great-great-grandfather, is evicted from Scotland with his employer; they flee to the Azores to grow oranges and escape the brutality of the Clearances, only to find themselves caught up in the Portuguese royal family's internecine war.

This is very much a theme-driven novel. Thought-provoking and at times extremely sad, Natives and Exotics will resonate with anyone who has ever questioned the true location of their home.

Claire Morris

THE LOST GARDENS

Anthony Eglin, Constable & Robinson 2005, £16.99, hb, 27lpp, 1841199516

This is the new mystery featuring Lawrence Kingston with aspects of history, a war time trade in looted art that is carried on to the present day and the discovery of an old priory in the grounds of a stately home.

Jamie Gibson, a Californian, is mysteriously bequeathed Wickersham Priory and hires Kingston to restore the gardens to their former glory. Their lives are threatened as they discover the secrets contained in the overgrown wilderness.

This novel does not really engage the reader. Jamie spends much of her time being petulant and saying, 'Awesome', and Lawrence Kingston has a very high opinion of himself, but is, in fact, rather dreary. If you are fanatical about horticulture and wine production there are pages of detailed description to keep you happy. Otherwise, the amount of alcohol consumed by the characters is likely to give the reader a hangover by proxy. A so-so read.

Ruth Ginarlis

AN ACRE OF BARREN GROUND

Jeremy Gavron, Scribner 2005, £14.99, hb, 342pp,0743259718

That Jeremy Gavron is a master of voice was demonstrated in his second novel, The Book of Israel, the story of several generations of a Jewish family. In An Acre of Barren Ground, Gavron has attempted an even more ambitious project, the story of Brick Lane, refuge and home to generations of Huguenots, Jews, Russians and Bangladeshis. The book leaps across centuries, seemingly at random, weaving fiction and non-fiction, short story and strip cartoon.

The fascination develops when we see connections between families and generations Nothing unfolds in linear fashion, however. The clues appear, satisfyingly, like an archeological find. I found one of the most touching chapters that of a young woman who uses Joseph Bazalgette's new sewage system as a means of making a living, picking through the filth for cash and valuables. A few chance words, dropped like a halfsovereign down a grating, link her with a chapter 50 pages earlier, and the whole backstory becomes apparent. Wonderful! An engaging book, witty and inventive. Janet Hancock

A TAINTED RELIC

The Medieval Murderers (Bernard Knight, Ian Morson, Michael Jecks, Susanna Gregory/ Simon Beaufort and Philip Gooden). Simon & Schuster 2005, £17.99, hb, 502pp, 074326794X (Simon & Schuster, September 2005, $14.95, 0743267958)

This is an interesting set of long short stories spanning time to the present day, by five experienced and competent authors, each in tum taking over the story.

The prologue tells of the horror of the sack of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, seen through the appalled eyes of Sir Geoffrey Mappestone He meets a strange old man called Peter, who tries to give him a relic of the True Cross to take to the Pope. When Sir Geoffrey refuses to do so, Peter passes the relic to a monk traveling to Rome but does first tell him the history of the Relic and the curse upon it.

In 1194 the Relic reaches Exeter, where John de Wolfe, England's first coroner, investigates the mayhem it brings with it. Next it surfaces in the fledging university of Oxford where it is William Falconer's tum to investigate its baleful effects upon those who handle it and passes it to a Knight Templar, with devastating results. The next story features Simon and Sir Baldwin ; then moves to Cambridge and Matthew Bartholomew and Brother Michael; and finally to the actors of Elizabethan England and Nick Revell. The epilogue is set in the present day

Does the tale work? Indeed it does - the writing is so good that you suspend disbelief, and I enjoyed it very much Mairead McKerracher

THE HISTORIA

Elizabeth Kostova , Little , Brown, 2005, $25.95, hb , 656pp, 03160 I 1770 Review appeared in Issue 32 (May 2005), p.43.

A DARK DIVIDI G

Sarah Rayne , Simon & Schuster imprint Pocket Books 2005, £6.99, pb, 535pp, 0743450906

If possible, thi s novel should be read at I 00 pages per sitting and finished within a week, otherwise it will not be easy to hold onto the twisting threads of a complex, multi-view pointed plot extending over nearly a century.

The parents of two pairs of conjoined ' Siamese' twins have to make frightenin~ decisions. At the beginning of the 20' century Catherine knows how the dangerous surgery required to achieve the physical separation of her beloved Sorrel and Viola may end in the death of one, or both, but must be attempted. Her husband 's feelings and intentions are otherwise. Before the operation can take place, Catherine learns that her tiny babies have not survived.

Much later in the century, Melissa's desperate struggles to protect Simone and Sonia from her husband are shockingly successful. But she has made a more dangerous enemy that that loathsome hypocrite : one who will mis-shape her life for years while Simone grows to adulthood haunted by the presence, at once sinister and pathetic of her lost twin. Meanwhile, the mansion called Mortmain, for so long witness to perversion and cruel usage of the helpless, achieves a monstrous life of its own.

This author has a tremendous talent for presenting horrors that shift from the apparently impossible but terrifying

supernatural, to an equally frightful reality, until the connection between the four little girls that has festered unrecognized for so long is revealed.

Nancy Henshaw

HISTORICAL FANTASY

THE FOOL'S PATH

Nancy J. Attwell, Bowman's Press, 2005, $22.95, hb, 30lpp, 193314212X

A fantasy story must have a king , queen , prince, and princess to enchant the reader with the magical belief that wrongs will be righted and fair maidens will rightfully be restored to their knighted lovers. The time and place of our present story is the 13th century in what today is Belgium. An adult audience knows that life does not always complete lovers' dreams, but that doesn't stop Nancy Attwell from crafting an intriguing tale in which loss makes the loving sweeter and more riveting Sebastian, heir to the duchy of Westfeld, and his best friend, Raynar, sacrifice much to maintain the integrity of Lohemia's kingship First, Raynar is imprisoned so that Sebastian may complete his father's mission for malicious revenge Sebastian then fathers a child with Katrina, the woman he loves. Due to numerous ill-fated circumstances, he believes she has died , and so he marries her sister, Eleanor. Haunted by his lost love , he ignores his wife , children, and even his duchy. It is Raynar , who also loves Eleanor, who fiercely confronts Sebastian with his immaturity and neglect. As Sebastian assumes his rightful responsibility , a young girl appears; she carries a bejeweled slipper and key that will unlock her mystery and bring her to her rightful regal state. The kingdom is threatened as well by a traitor, and Sebastian must decide whom he will serve and defend. Nancy Attwell is a highly talented, creative, and pleasing writer whose book is soon to be relished by many readers. Delightful!

Viviane Crystal

GLORIA: THE MERLIN AND THE SAINT

Ann Chamberlin, High Country, 2005, $24.95, hb , 448pp, 1932158618

Yann and his milk brother Gilles de Rais follow the old religion, a persecuted practice in 1428 AD. Craft priest Yann disguises himself as a Dominican priest while the Lord of Rais serves Charles the Dauphin Together, they must aid La Pucelle , the maid prophesied to lead France out of a hundred years of war, in her mission to crown the Dauphin King of France. First they must reclaim Orleans from the English and then convince the Dauphin, who is manipulated by unscrupulous advisors, to journey to Rheims for his coronation. Gilles loves La Pucelle, astonishing because of his preference for men, and is her appointed

bodyguard. However, La Pucelle 's virginity is key to her strength and to her guiding voices. Yann, Merlin's heir, forms a coven to give magical aid by means of potions, incantations, and animal sacrifice when needed.

Chamberlin's superb imagery and writing style keep the reader engaged in the battles and the relationships. While enjoyable, a better apprec1at1on is inevitable if the Joan of Arc Tapestries series is read in order. This account of Joan of Arc will satisfy most readers seeking fantasy-filled historical fiction.

Suzanne J Sprague

THE CARDINAL'S HEIR

Jaki Demarest, Medallion Press, 2005 , $6.99/C$9.99, pb, 350pp, 1932815104

The infamous Cardinal Richelieu is dead , poisoned by one of his many enemies. But who? Long the defender of France and its monarchy , his death creates not only havoc but a mystery for his dearly loved but basebom niece Franc,:oise de Palis, Comtesse de Pau , and the unprofessed, closeted leader of his legion of moles and assassins known as The Cardinal's Eyes. Franc,:oise swears revenge and aligns herself with her adversary, Captain Jean de Treville of the King's Musketeers. To complicate affairs she must also reveal she is a potent Sorciere with the ability to shape-shift. Together with the help of Musketeers and Cardinal's Eyes alike, they risk danger in pursuit not only of a murderer but a famous jewel that could well be the key to an entire conspiracy. I thoroughly enjoyed Demarest's witty and sarcastic style, which added a brilliant originality and vivacity to the tale. At times , Franc,:oise seemed lacking in the cleverness one would think would be vital to her position, yet still the author manages to use this flaw in a positive way to illustrate the comtesse 's womanly side. Th e Cardinal's Heir was a brisk, compelling and humorous read that I would heartily recommend to readers of both historical fiction and fantasy alike.

Wendy Zollo

THE WOUNDED HA WK

Sara Douglass , Tor, 2005, $27.95, hb, 528pp,0765303639

Pub. in the UK by Voyager, 2002, £6.99 , pb ,6 10pp,0007l08478

Brother Thomas Neville , a warrior for God, has left the priesthood in order to stop the devils that are threatening to topple England. But he is never sure of who is truly evil. ls there a demon in his wife , the Lady Margaret, or in King Richard II, or in Hal Bolingbroke, the son of the Duke of Lancaster? In Lancaster himself? Or in other notable historical figures? In Douglass's fantasy novel , characters are driven by angels and demons who frequently shape-shift in order to escape detection and destruction.

"I am a wounded hawk, Arundel, fluttering defenseless about the ground.

King Richard will see to it that my wings be permanently crippled," Bolingbroke confesses to a peer whose loyalty is needed.

King Richard possesses a chest that contains information to help complete the mission of purifying and saving England. Indeed, the quest is so precarious that both men sacrifice their wives to the worst possible brutality of the depraved king and Robert de Vere.

Sara Douglass depicts the treachery, intrigue, and brutality of Richard's court and that of his opponents in France King Charles of France is weakened by the declaration of his mother, Isabeau de Baviere, about his bastard origin She in tum uses her daughter, Catherine, to entice Philippe of Spain to seize the French throne At the same time , Joan of Arc is drawing more and more popular support for her divinely inspired military campaign against England. Revolution within England, as well, threatens to topple the English crown.

Who will become king, and is he angelic or demonic?

Douglass's perspective is drawn partly from history, and substantially from her own imagination If the reader can keep the multiple characters straight and is accepting of this alternate history, The Wounded Hawk is an intriguing tale.

Viviane Crystal

WHAT ROUGH BEAST

H.R Knight, Dorchester, 2005 , $6 99 /C$8 99 , pb , 374pp, 0843954566

During a 1903 London visit , Sir Arthur Conan Doyle attends a Houdini performance and finds himself defending Houdini from a vindictive audience member. Houdini shows his gratitude by inviting Doyle to a seance at the home of infamous occultist Maximillian Cairo, whom Houdini is preparing to expose as a charlatan. The attendees are invited back to witness a dark ritual where a dangerous entity is accidentally released. Later, when Doyle is asked to vindicate a seance participant of a heinous crime, he finds that the two events are likely related and asks Houdini to help.

Knight portrays Doyle as a man obsessed with guilt over his wife's illness because he did not diagnosis it sooner. Houdini is shown as bold and impulsive, quick to protect his friends and enamored with his wife Bess. The remainder of the characters provide the necessary evil counterparts and suspects. Greek mythology is introduced as Doyle and Houdini are stalked by a chilling supernatural being that they must eventually defeat if civil society is to remain.

Readers sensitive to disturbing imagery or offended by debauchery may find the content too intense. Bolder readers wishing to explore the potential of the friendship between Sir Conan Doyle and Houdini that never was will enjoy the thrill.

THE LAST COMPANION

Suzanne J Sprague

Patrick McCormack, Robinson 2005, £7.99, pb, 40lpp, 1845291506

This is a post-Roman, post-Arthurian novel told from different points of view. It is mainly the story of Budoc, the hermit, as he witnesses raids on Britain by Irish and Anglo-Saxon warriors he remembers his own past as a companion in Arthur's war band.

The story is a slow bum , but stick with it. It is almost impossible to remember all the Welsh names or even who some of the characters are, just go with the flow. By the end it will all seem worth while. The battle scenes are excellent as is the atmosphere of decay and danger in this period of transition For anyone who doubts that the Dark Ages were all that dark , read this, or go back and live then

This is the first of the Albion chronicles and I certainly wish to continue with the trilogy. There are drawbacks, the names and the unlikely panoramic overview of history possessed by some characters in a largely illiterate society devoid of source material. A good read.

Ruth Ginarlis

GUARDIAN OF THE FREEDOM

Irene Radford, DAW , 2005,

$24.95 /C$36 00, hb, 532pp, 075640 l 78X

Georgie Kirkwood's family derives from the union of Merlin's and King Arthur's descendants All have magical powers , but only one acts as Pendragon , advisor to the king and protector of Britain. Georgie's brother Drake is the current Pendragon and patriarch When Drake arranges to marry Georgie to an elderly relative, Georgie disguises herself as a man and fights as a mercenary alongside Roderick Whythe, a future ally in the American colonies. Meanwhile, Cousin Milton Marlowe is determined to become the next Pendragon in order to avenge his son's death. Threatened by Georgie's strong magic, he maneuvers to have her sent to the American colonies, where she reunites with Roderick and observes the family magically.

Radford populates this novel with many original characters as well as historical figures like Paul Revere and Lord George Sackville , considerately providing a glossary to keep everyone straight. Spanning from 1753 to 1775, the novel juxtaposes the growing rift between England and the colonies with the Kirkwoods ' struggle to keep the encroaching evil from conquering Britain and the Kirkwood family

Fifth in the Merlin's Descendants series , this novel has graphic action and fantasy along with some components of romance. Don't expect a lot of Arthurian lore, but be prepared to enjoy being privy to the Pendragon's inner circle.

Suzanne J Sprague

BEFORE THE DAWN OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT Faye Turner, Ki-Eea Key Press, 2005, $26.95,hb,416pp,0976250012

Daneion Pelos is a Greek physician and peddler. In his travels, he meets Olympias, a princess of Epirus and descendant of Achilles, who lives in an armed camp. Her mother was killed by the priests, and Olympias is told that after she marries and gives birth, the priests will also kill her. Renamed as Wallis, Daneion acts as Olympias ' s advisor and doctor.

When Olympias decides to marry Philip of Macedon, Wallis, who loves Olympias, is distraught and leaves her camp. He starts a journey with his sidekick Palo and their trusty donkey, Spitter, wandering far to the north , to the original home of his people near the Danube River. There he meets members of a tribe called The People of the Trees who foretell Wallis's pivotal role in the future of civilization. Wallis becomes increasingly sensitized to his own visions, and although he does not understand them, he realizes he must return to Olympias.

This is the first installment in Turner's planned trilogy about Alexander the Great, a prequel if you will. Turner has done her research, and she succeeds in the formidable task of melding historical fact, fiction and fantasy into one cohesive storyline. Suspension of disbelief is an absolute requirement. However , even if the reader is tolerant of alternate history , there are other problems in the book I found Turner's use of Greek spelling for places and people distracting. Also, there are many tangential characters in this book that do nothing to advance the plot. I found myself liking Spitter, the donkey , more than I liked any of the human characters He is smart, insightful and dependable. This is probably not a good sign. Ilysa Magnus

ALTERNATE HISTORY

THE SEVEN HILLS

John Maddox Roberts , Ace, 2005, $23 95 /C$35 00, hb, 362pp, 044 IO 12450

The jumping-off point for this alternate history series occurred five generations ago , when Hannibal succeeded m conquering Rome and making the Mediterranean a Carthaginian Sea Defeat obliged the Romans to carve out an exile for themselves in the cold , dark woods along the Danube The Romans are back in Italy now, seeking revenge Old families reclaim their lands, rebuild the paternal home along carefully remembered lines. On the way they've not only picked up blondhaired, blue-eyed Aryan genes but have also stopped to tum Alexandria's Museum and philosophers to practical technical application rather than the mere parlor tricks of waterwheel and Hero's steam engine. Winged men fly reconnaissance

instead of falling to Icarus's fate, lateensailed boats zip as messengers across Mare Nostrum, submarines sink Carthaginian ships, a bronze-hulled, steam-driven navy is not far below the horizon.

All in all, the First Reich is poised to sidestep the fall it suffered in real history and carry on until the Third and even to surpass it. Aside from my uneasiness with the racial overtones that go along with any empire, magnified, and the fact that there are no Roman women (or they stay at home and are virtuous}--what women there are are exotic sirens to be subdued-I cannot fault the fast-paced action of this tale that reads Iike more of the same in the on-going saga of our heroes, scholarly Marcus Cornelius Scipio from the old family and hot - headed Titus Norbanus from the new. Roberts clearly knows and loves Rome, mourns its fall, and gives us gladii galore and phalanxes in adoring, eternal detail. Ann Chamberlin

TIMESLIP

THE MERCY OF THIN AIR

Ronlyn Domingue , Simon & Schuster October 2005, pb, 256pp, £ I 0 .99, 0743275896. Pub in US by Atria 2005, hb, $24.00/C$33.00, 074327880 I

In 1920s New Orleans, sparky, beautiful and progressive Raziela Nolan , who distributes illegal birth control pamphlets and dreams of becoming a doctor, has a fatal accident. Her fiance, Andrew, is devastated Razi's spirit is unable to move on and she hovers in an inbetween world. Seventy years later, she haunts Amy and Scott, a young couple whose troubles echo her own. Razi is desperate to unravel what happened to her beloved Andrew after her death , but she is concerned, too, to help the disturbed Amy , whose first love also died in an accident. Razi and Amy must learn to accept the past, mistakes and all, and move on.

The story moves backwards and forwards in time as we follow Razi and Amy's emotional quests The social mores of the 1920s are nicely captured, allow in g us to see the gender pressures con fronting Razi - nice girls don't know about birth control, have sex or rate going to university above marriage Unfortunately, a multiplicity of characters, some of them in the past, some in the present , some in both , and some hovering in between, sometimes make it difficult to know what is going on. Still, an interesting debut. Elizabeth Hawksley

LABYRI TH

Kate Mosse, Orion Books, 2005, £9.99, hb, 544pp, 0752860534 (to be published in US in 2006)

The history of the Cathars has fascinated me since university when I read an extraordinary book called Montaillou, by the French historian Le Roy Ladurie who

used inquisitorial records to recreate a picture of everyday life in a Cathar village. In Labyrinth, Mosse draws extensively on secondary works, as well as on her own local knowledge This is a gripping story centred on events that took place between 1209, on the eve of the Albigensian Crusade and the siege of Carcassonne, and 1244 when the Cathar stronghold of Montsegur surrendered to the French forces. It is paralleled by a modem-day intrigue involving Alice Tanner, a young archaeologist who accidentally discovers a secret cave, containing two corpses and a labyrinth carved into the stone wall, in the Sabarthes mountains outside Carcassonne. Mosse skilfully links the layers of overlapping detail and succeeds in creating a tense plot , separated by nearly 800 years, in which Alais struggles to save the three books of wisdom from her evil sister, Oriane, while her modem counterpart, Alice , pieces together the puzzle of the rediscovered cave, the Cathar trilogy and the Grail itself, hidden by the mysteries of the labyrinth she has discovered.

The novel underwent a very public gestation and was featured on the Orange Labyrinth website, together with vignettes of the main characters, places and historical events One danger of a timeslip novel of this nature is that the pairing of characters, past and present, may lack subtlety. On the whole , however, Mosse avoids this trap and I found the Cathar Alais and the 21 "-century Alice equally convincing. This is a compelling story with a mysterious message

Lucinda Byatt

NON-FICTION

THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF KING ARTHUR

Mike Ashley (ed), Robinson 2005, £9.99, pb, 648pp, 1841 l 9249X. Pub in US by Carroll & Graf, $13.95, pb, 670pp, 0786715669

The study of King Arthur is a minefield of conflicting sources. In this jam-packed book Ashley attempts to bring together as many aspects as possible, including legends, historical documents , film and modem day interpretation and novels. Some readers may find that his overly matey style grates. It's fine for spoken lectures but on the page it jars. However, this book is what it says on the cover, mammoth in scope. An excellent place for beginners to start their investigations. S. Garside-Neville

REVOLUTIONARY MOTHERS

Carol Berkin, Knopf, 2005, $24/C$34, hb, l 94pp, 1400041635

Americans tend to think of the War for Independence as a revolution, but in reality it was a civil war. Many men participants are well known, but not so the women.

Berkin rectifies this oversight by examining first the role women played in that period's society, then showing how they protested English policies, what challenges they faced, why some became camp followers, what effect the generals' wives had on the soldiers, what loyalist women endured, how the war impacted Indi an and AfricanAmerican women, and who fought for and against independence. This well-paced, even, and insightful examination of eighteenth-century women is a worthy resource for learning about ordinary women of the past in their own time period rather than today ' s.

Cindy Vallar

WITH BILLIE

Julia Blackbum, Jonathan Cape, £17.99, hb, 354pp, 0224075896/ Pantheon , $25.00, hb,368pp , 0375406107

During the 1970s , Linda Kuehl recorded interviews with more than 150 people acquainted with Billie Holliday , but committed suicide before she could complete her planned biography of the iconic jazz singer. Kuehl's tapes provide Blackbum with her source material for her own experiment in biography.

A multi-layered account, as much of Blackburn's own life, as well as Kuehl's and those of her interviewees, all refracted through their memories of Billie, this is an intriguing, but ultimately unsatisfactory, book. I came to it with little knowledge of Billie Holliday's life, and would have welcomed a list of key dates to help guide me through this inevitably repetitious and circuitous work. While I enjoyed the voices of the interviewees, in the long passages of transcription which make up most of the book, J did come away feeling somewhat cheated. Blackburn gives Kuehl full credit for her research, but I wonder if, ultimately, she has written a lazy book , entirely reliant on work which may have cost another writer her life.

Another unsatisfactory feature of the book is its almost total absence of photos , apart from the cover and frontispiece. At several points in the narrative Blackbum makes reference to specific photos, but does not include them in the book , which is very frustrating , and seems especially perverse when dealing with a subject whose appearance was important to her, both personally and as a tool of her trade.

Sarah Bower

A PERFECT RED: Empire, Espionage and the Quest for the Colour of Desire

Amy Butler Greenfield, Doubleday 2005, £14.99, hb, 388pp, 0385605153. Pub. in US by Harper Collins, $26.95, hb, 352pp , 0060522755

For those who knew its secrets, the colour red was a source of wealth and power. To obtain it men sacked ships , turned spy, courted death. As gripping a tale as any historical thriller this exactingly researched book is a riveting read

Ann Oughton

AT DA Y'S CLOSE: A History of Nighttime

A. Roger Ekirch, Wedenfeld&Nicolson, 2005, £20, hb , 446pp, 0297829920/ WW Norton & Co, £25.05, hb , 0393050890

This is an academic work that looks at the way the night has been perceived by and affected We stern thought up until the industrial revolution , when darkness was effectively banished by gas, then electric, light. Darkness brings many things with it, fear of attack, fear of the unknown, the fear of not seeing and Ekirch explores all these thoroughly through literature and other arts Whilst it is good to be reminded of how recent and how artificial is our current re s ponse to darkness, it seems an awfully long book to say little more than that. Some of his statements ve rge on the obvious. "Low levels of light, whether from candle or lamp, brought couples closer together , physically and emotionally." Or, " Preindustrial folk, in facing the natural world, drew on a deep reserve of rural culture, one fed by many wellsprings, including both pagan and Christian traditions ." And we don't today? However , historical novelists should be aware of how different the darkness seemed to our forbears without the ability of flicking a switch when something goes bump in the night.

Sally Zigmond.

THE GIRL FROM BOTANY BAY

Carolly Erickson, Wiley, 2004, $24.95 / C$35.99, hb , 234pp, 0471271403

A crime has been committed: a young woman on foot, journeying alone on the road , has bee n accosted by three highwaywomen She's been robbed, assaulted and left bleeding in the roadway Her assailants are later captured and brought to justice

In The Girl from Botany Bay, Carolly Erickson follows the journeys of the convict Mary Broad , whose 1786 death sentence for highway robbery in the West of England was commuted to transportation to New South Wales. We've all heard of transportation to Australia, but likely few of us have given much thought to what such an exercise might actually have entailed. Erickson supplies plenty of often gory details

In this account of Broad 's life, the narrative doesn ' t fill in the blanks with fictionalized scenes and dialogue, rather it takes the reader somewhat into the biographer 's process of underpinning the framework of what would be an otherwise obscure bygone life. Most appealing of all is that it uncovers the life a female convict in the late 1780s , an extremely rare glimpse for the time. Clearly Erickson knows her subject and the period, for Broad 's story is well supported by historical records; the gaps are filled in by likely surmise and speculation in a way that's anything but dry chronicle. A fascinating book.

Janette

King

WITCHFINDERS. A SEVENTEENTHCENTURY ENGLISH TRAGEDY

Malcolm Gaskill , John Murray , 2005, £20.00, hb, 364 pp, 07 I 9561205

Matthew Hopkins, the fanatical 'Witchfinder General' , has featured in novels and a cult film, but this is the first full account by a modem historian .

Gaskill uses the trial records to create a detailed account of the most brutal witchhunt in English history ( I 645-4 7). The events of the Civil War and a growing sense of anarchy were important ingredients in the hysteria that affected parts of Suffolk and Essex. The enemy on the battlefield appeared to have forged an alliance with an even more fearful enemy that stole into men's souls.

The "witches" were mainly women, often widows too poor to pay taxes. In most cases they had fallen out with their neighbours: trivial disputes led to threats, recrimination and fear. Dreadful weather conditions combined with the war to make food increasingly scarce. Gaskill even suspects that some cases of witch-hysteria may have been caused by the toxic ergot fungus. The arrival of the witchfinders, Hopkins and Stearne, offered an opportunity to settle grudges , frequently tinged by factional hatred.

Once a suspect had been denounced, she was searched for ' teats' - where her familiars, known as 'imps', sucked bloodand then 'watched' until the imps arrived, usually in the form of pets, or even insects or flies. Watching the victims routinely involved sleep deprivation and beating in order to extract a confession. About 300 women and a few men were imprisoned and tried, and about half were either hung or died in prison before the tide of fear and increasing exactitude demanded by the courts eventually turned on the witch finders themselves. Gaskill offers a powerful picture of how fanaticism, fear and ignorance can wreak havoc on society.

Lucinda Byatt

LADY HESTER: Queen of the East Loma Gibb, Faber & Faber 2005, £14.99, hb ,209pp,05712 17532

In I 8 I 0, Lady Hester Stanhope, niece of Prime Minister William Pitt , chose a life of travel rather than live the quiet life of a spinster in polite London society. After losing all her possessions in a shipwreck she adopted male Arabic dress, became Queen of the Bedouin and the first European woman to enter Palmyra. Relying on new source material Loma Gibb brings to life an extraordinary woman.

Ann Oughton

THE RATTLESNAKE: A Voyage of Discovery to the Coral Sea

Jordan Goodman, Faber & Faber 2005 , £18.99, hb ,394 pp ,057 1210732

In 1846 a 24-year-old obsolete frigate, the Ralllesnake was chosen to be a survey vessel, charting the contours and coastlines,

islands and sandbanks of Australia's Coral Sea under the command of Captain Stanley. The written word apart this book is a delight because of the many watercolours and sketch maps - a joy to read

Roger S. Harris

RESTORATION: Charles II and His Kingdoms 1660-1685

Tim Harris, Allen Lane 2005, £25.00, hb , 460pp ,071399 1917

In 1660 Charles II returned triumphantly to a kingdom ready to bid goodbye to the austerities imposed by Puritanism However , in reality, Charles was not the charming, merry monarch of popular belief. Always nervous of meeting the same fate as his father he had to contend with a growing tide of anti-Catholicism whilst secretly being sympathetic. His inability to father a legitimate , Protestant male heir meant that his brother, the Catholic James would be seen as an unpopular successor.

Charles' reign was beset by conflict and he reacted with a policy of repression , violence and imprisonment. Tim Harris ' in depth study of this many-faceted character, his subjects and their era is an enlightening read . Ann Oughton

THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Peter Heather, Macmillan 2005, £25.00, hb, 400pp , 0333989147

This book was difficult to assess as I was sent an advance reading copy which included only the text and note s. Missing were critical aspects such as maps, bibliography and index. The contents li st also promised a dramatis personae, timeline and glossary.

Heather builds his scene carefully, detailing the rise of Rome as a superpower and also looks at the cultures that conflicted with the acquisitive Empire. Heather has a readable , chatty and wryly amusing writing style. This modem inte rpretation of Empire's disintegration gathers together recent research as well as re-assessing older evidence.

S. Garside-Neville

NOT REALLY A HISTORICAL, BUT A FASCINATING SIDESHOW TO THE REGENCY!SB

JANE AUSTEN'S GUIDE TO DATr G Lauren Henderson, Hyp e rion , 2005, $12.00/ $17.00, pb , 287pp, 1401301177 In the back of Jane Austen's Guide to Dating, Lauren Henderson has formulated a questionnaire to determine which Austen heroine you most closely resemble Apparently, I' m like Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudi ce, who isn't much of a drinker, likes Viggo Mortensen, prefers card games to Twister, and admires the Bronte sisters. Just for fun , I did the test again, identifying with Tinkerbell, preferring Colin Farrell, and making myself

an easy pick-up at a bar. Well, now I was Elizabeth's wild and unthinking sister, Lydia Bennet, and the author suggested I forget commitments altogether and go hook up with Willoughby (Sense and Sensibility) or that oily soldier Lydia ends up with, Mr. Wickham.

Jane Austen aficionados, beware! Though Lauren Henderson has the bona fides-she wrote her dissertation on courting rituals in the novels of Jane Austen, and she clearly understands the subtleties of Regency ways-this frothy relationship guide is not for you. It's meant for those who have seen the movies but haven't read the books, and who appreciate the appendix in the back that summarizes each work. The complexities of Austen's oeuvre are reduced to ten dating commandments. Be honest (like Elizabeth Bennet). Be discreet (like Elinor in Sense and Sensibility). Trust your instincts (as Anne initially failed to do in Persuasion). Be witty but not cruel (unlike Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park), and six more examples of common sense and polite social behavior desperately needed in these days of relationship game-playing.

Alas, if only Ms. Henderson had had the courage to resist the seduction of that wicked rogue, Mr. Modem Sensibilities! With each analysis of an Austen relationship, the author writes a parallel, current-day situation, where the modem gal is rewarded for following Austen's dictums. What's that reward? Well, she might find herself involved in a relationship that lasts six months or so. Maybe she ' ll move in with her own Mr. Darcy. If she's really lucky , she may have a child out of wedlock. Ah, Lord Love-so-Lightly has claimed another victim! If only this charming dating guide had included more of Austen's vital lessons, the ones every single woman needs to know, like: value yourself; don't settle for half measures; and expect a real commitment.

Lisa Ann Verge

ASPIRIN: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug Diarmuid Jeffreys, Bloomsbury 2005, £8.99 , pb , 322pp, 0747570833. Pub. in US by Bloomsbury, USA, 2004, $26.05, hb, 352pp, 158234386 l The commonest, cheapest drug available today was known to the ancient Egyptians. Originally derived from the bark of the willow now chemically manufactured it seems that almost every day another use for what has recently gained acclaim as a true wonder drug is discovered. Invaluable in alleviating fever, the effects of heart attack and stroke as well as the prevention of some cancers and Alzheimer's disease; yet it is still not fully understood how aspirin works , why it should dramatically reduce a fever but have no effect on the body's normal temperature.

The historical background connected with the development and uses of aspirin through the ages until the present day is fascinating. Extensive notes and a comprehensive bibliography complete this outstanding work. A valuable reference tool for any writer.

Ann Oughton

HISTORICAL FICTION: A GUIDE TO THE GENRE

Sarah L. Johnson, Libraries Unlimited, $75.00/ £42.99, hb, 813pp, l 59 I 58 l 29X

The latest addition to the Genretlecting Advisory Series of guides for librarians, Sarah Johnson's weighty reference work is a marvellous achievement. Her survey of historical fiction written in, or translated into, English, covers everything from Biblical novels to timeslip pseudoscifi, African sagas to Regency romances, civil war and genocide to the Renaissance and the Age of Reason. Comprehensively cross-referenced, with a useful set of symbols to indicate books which are classics within their sub-genre, such as A.S. Byatt's Possession (British Isles, literary), or recommended for reading groups (Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red), this book is an invaluable resource for librarians. As a writer and teacher of creative writing, however, I also found the introductory chapter on what constitutes an historical novel thought-provoking . An impressive work

Sarah Bower

ATTILA: The Barbarian King Who Challenged Rome

John Man , Bantam Press 2005, £20 00 , hb , JI0pp,0593052919

Once again, Man triumphs in bringing to life one of the most notorious barbarians in history. Clever enough to finely judge the strengths and weaknesses of his enemies and inspire loyal devotion from millions, for a brief period Attila posed a serious threat to Rome. Like many despots before him and since, it was overweening ambition that hastened his fall. A well researched , absorbing read .

Ann Oughton

ANCIENT MARINER

Ken McGoogan, Bantam 2005, £8.99, pb , 592pp, 05538 l 642X Pub. in US by Carroll&Graf 2004, $25.00, hb, 336pp, 0786713046

Samuel Hearne boarded the HMS Torbay as a midshipman in 1757. This was his introduction to life in the Royal Navy and he was only twelve years old. It was the start of a life of adventure during which Hearne was to become the first European to reach the Arctic coast of North America and spent many years searching for the North West Passage As well as being an adventurer, naturalist and anthropologist, Hearne was also the inspiration behind Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Ken McGoogan goes a long way to reestablishing Heame's status as pioneering explorer.

Sara Wilson

IMPRESSIONIST QUARTET

Jeffrey Meyers, Harcourt, 2005, $26 00, hb, 352pp,0151010765

Meyers explores the lives and artistic careers of these four Impressionist painters working in Paris in the second half of the 19•h century. He shows the links between them, particularly between Manet and Morisot (interested readers might also want to read With Violets by Elizabeth Robards, a fictionalized account of their relationship} and Degas and Cassatt. The women are often seen through their connection with the men, yet the author clearly explains the struggles and sacrifices Morisot and Cassatt (indeed, all four of them) endured in order to follow their muses This book is best read with books illustrating their paintings at hand--0nly a tantalizing few of the pictures described are reprinted in the book Trudi E. Jacobson

ROCK ME GENTLY

Judith Kelly, Bloomsbury, 2005, NZ$35.00, 275pp/ Bloomsbury , £16.99, hb , 288pp,0747576297

When Judith Kelly was eight , her mother took her from New Zealand to an orphanage in England and left her there. Judith believed her stay would be temporary, while her widowed mother found suitable accommodation for them She did not hear from her mother again for a long time.

In 1971 , as an adult, Kelly went to work on a kibbutz in Israel, where a concentration camp survivor befriended her, helping her to come to terms with her childhood trauma The kindness she experienced from this friend helped her to seek entrance to the Chelsea College of Art. At the end of her training, she was appointed Keeper of Collections at the Tate Gallery in London. She later moved into television production, where she remained until her retirement. She now runs a support group for those who have been abused by the Catholic church.

The book alternates between life on the kibbutz and in the orphanage In this way, the author is able to tell us how she overcame her horrific childhood and recovered her self-confidence She describes the cruelty of an existence where little girls were bullied and beaten into submission. She survived because of the loyalty and friendship of other maltreated orphans. When a terrible tragedy occurred, the nuns convinced Judith that she alone was to blame She remained haunted by guilt into her adult life, even though her mother did eventually remove her from the orphanage and send her to a good school. Although it is wrong to judge history by today's standards , events such as those in this story should never be condoned . Kath O'Sullivan

THE TRJBES OF BRJT AIN

David Miles, Weidenfeld&Nicolson, 2005, £20 (£36.44), hb, 480pp, 0297830864

Subtitled 'Who are we? And where do we come from?' one would expect this book to try and answer the fundamental questions about the origins of the various inhabitants of the British Isles. It doesn't. As a summary of current archaeological and sociological thought, it is excellent - as far as the Norman Conquest. The author follows current wisdom in that the British Isles has always readily absorbed, rather than was invaded by, alien cultures. There were battles and slaughter but not constant war. From 1066, the tone changes and the book becomes a quick gallop through subsequent British history, including the rise and fall of the British Empire, picking up on the most significant waves of immigration; the Jews, the Huguenots and latterly people from the Asian subcontinent and now post-communist eastern EUiope, The message is that these islands are constantly enriched and re-invigorated by the successive waves of people who have chosen to live here without affecting their essential 'Britishness.' Although I agree with this view - and it would be a brave man to argue - it isn't new. Francis Prior, another eminent archaeologist, covers the same ground more comprehensively in his recent books, Britain BC and Britain AD. Then again, it's worth repeating every so often. As to the question of who we are and where we came from, the jury's still out.

Sally Zigmond

BRITANNIA'S EMPIRE: Making a British World

Bill Nasson, Tempus (distributed in the US by Trafalgar Square), 2004, $37.50/£20.00, hb,254pp,0752429582

Larger-than-life figures such as Wolfe, Rhodes, Drake, Gordon, Clive, Raffles, Brooke and Roberts occupy center stage in histories of the Empire upon which the sun never set. Balancing these amazing personalities and the benefits that came with the Union Jack are squalid examples of callous disregard for ancient customs and traditions and a disturbing emphasis on race and religion. A balanced view of this astonishing empire is provided by South African Bill Nasson in a work which provides a finely crafted introduction and refreshingly unbiased look at a fascinating phenomenon.

John R. Vallely

THE CRUISE OF THE SEA EAGLE

Blaine Pardoe, The Lyons Press, 2005, $22.95,hb,304pp, 1592286941

This rollicking yam stars a runaway nobleman who learned his trade as a common sailor, befriended an emperor and sailed the seven seas. It's not Haroun al Rashid or Sinbad; it's the true story of German count Felix von Luckner. Commanding a refitted windjammer, he ran the Royal Navy's blockade and went on to

capture fourteen merchant ships. He was a World War I-era Henry Morgan, except he tried not to shed blood, and love of the game motivated him instead of money. With his ship disguised as a Norwegian merchant, he sailed in close, then revealed his crew in uniform and ran up the Imperial German flag. He captured over 200 prisoners, and allowed them free run of the ship except for areas that were off limits. He evaded capture by rounding the Hom, and when his ship ran aground on Mopelia, sailed 2,500 miles in an open boat to raid again.

Pardoe does a great job of sifting facts from the accretions of legend. Count von Luckner was a larger-than-life character with faults and virtues. He lied about his own actions and it takes a skilled biographer to reach pay dirt. There are some digressions but the main narrative compels one forward. Paragraphs of exposition make the beginning hard going, but when von Luckner comes on stage there isn't a dull moment.

Marcia K. Matthews

THE SANCY BLOOD DIAMOND

Susan Ronald, Wiley, 2005, $27.95, hb, 338pp,0471436518

The centuries-long fascination with diamonds, especially large ones, has progressed well beyond an attraction to shiny objects. Like others before her (see Marian Fowler's Hope: Adventures of a Diamond), Ronald capitalizes on this fascination with a popular history. Her diamond of choice is the Sancy, once the largest white diamond in the Western world. Ronald follows the Sancy through the hands of royalty, revolutionaries, and more to its eventual repose on display at the Louvre. Regrettably, Ronald continually loses focus, delving into side and back stories so deeply that pages go by without any mention of the diamond. She also has an unfortunate penchant for sensationalism, as evidenced by her melodramatic subtitle, and her assertions sometimes border on outlandish. Ronald credits the Sancy with more power and importance than is actually the case, often skewing historical perspective to do so. For instance, Napoleon's victory at Marengo was accomplished in part by a skilful use of cavalry; Ronald plays up the Sancy's connection in providing funding to buy the horses, but in actuality, it was only one of many gems used as security for the loan. Overall, an interesting history, if one can ignore the digressions and exaggerations.

Bethany Skaggs

THE HOLLOW CROWN

Miri Rubin, Allen Lane 2005, £25.00, hb, 400pp, 071399066X. Pub. in US by Allen Lane,$47.77, hb,400pp,071399066X

This account of British History from I 307 to 1485 is lively, informative and comprehensive. Rubin looks at the lives of monarchs and other personalities of note as well as key events. She also offers a

considerable amount of information on the social conditions affecting ordinary people. She pitches the right level of detail, giving well structUJed accounts of events such as the Great Famine and the Wars of the Roses An inviting writing style keeps the reader involved and makes the period memorable. Mary Andrea Clarke

FOLLOWING THE DRUM

Annabel Venning, Headline, 2005, hb, £20, 360 pp, ISBN 0-7553-1258-9

The subtitle of this book is "The lives of Army wives and daughters, past and present". Focussing on the British Army, the author has completed a massive amount of research, including interviews with contemporary women about their experiences of following the drum. The book is both a broad and deep account, often moving, sometimes amusing and where possible, allows the women to speak for themselves. In such a masculine world as the army women are often marginalised or just plain forgotten, especially in historical accounts, so this bringing together of a wide range of women and an equally wide range of experiences and sources makes this an important work. Taking an historical perspective from the seventeenth century to the present day, each chapter develops a theme such as marriage, travelling with the army, scandal, mothers and children. The women's voices ring loud and clear and the author, an army daughter herself, tells their stories with considerable empathy. There is a slightly formulaic air to the chapters, which some judicious editing could have softened. Thal said, I recognise the difficulty of allowing the voices to speak, connecting them in a coherent way and also retaining reader interest. It is a tall order and the extraordinary breadth of research is evident on every page. This is a valuable resoUJce for those writing both fiction and nonfiction in this subject area and the bibliography is astoundingly comprehensive. The book is an excellent reference and an interesting read into the bargain.

Geraldine Perriam

HELL-HOLE OF THE PACIFIC

Richard Wolfe, Penguin, 2005, NZ$35.00, 240pp. To be published in the US and the UK in December 2005.

As whalers from Europe and North America, traders, m1ss10naries, land speculators and escaped convicts rub more than shoulders with the indigenous shipgirls, warriors and cannibals, Kororareka, a Maori settlement in the Bay of Islands, becomes known as the "hell-hole of the Pacific." As Marianne Williams, the wife of a missionary, laments, it is impossible to keep servants because "as soon as the girls become useful they are carried off [to visiting ships] and the reward for this iniquity is more than the mission can afford to pay for their services." lntertribal warfare leads to post-battle scenes

described by Pompallier as "reminiscent of a butcher 's shop in which human limbs hung from the victors' fences."

This book gives a new perspective on familiar aspects of New Zealand history such as Hone Heke's attacks on the flagstaff and the roles of the early governors such as William Hobson and Captain Robert Fitzroy. Wolfe also uses the accounts of contemporary visitors such as Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley

Wolfe lets the facts speak for th emse lves , leading to a book which is refreshingly free of polemic Human behaviour - good, evil, saintly or venal - is not the prerequisite of any race or creed. For all the entertainment, this is wellresearched history , yet there are no distracting footnotes. For the serious hi s torian , there is a useful reference section at the back of the book , as well as a full bibliography and index.

John Hicks

AD 500: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE DARK ISLES OF BRITAIN A D IRELAND

Simon Young, Orion, £14.99, hb , 259pp, 0297848054

In the year of the title, the Geographer to the Emperor of Byzantium was commissioned to write a guide for an embassy from the court at Constantinople embarking on a journey to the northern islands of Britain and Ireland . Striking a pompous, self-satisfied tone which makes for an amusing read, because you just know the diplomats who followed his advice were bound to come to grief among the eccentric and ira scib le natives of these islands, the Palace Geographer produced the document here "translated" by Simon Young, full of tips about native customs and how a civilised man should conduct himself in the benighted north . Whether you read AD 500 from cover to cover, or dip in to look up your home region or a place you are visiting, you are bound to find some nugget to fascinate and entertain. From the origins of the duffel coat, to drunken orgies on the South Bank or the sealing of alliances by nipplesucking in Ireland, this book has something for everyone. My personal favourite is the wonderfully poetic belief that the souls of dead Gauls were rowed across the Channel to pass eternity hiding in the sand dunes of Thane!, or Tanatos as our Byzantine Greek guide calls it, using his own word for death.

A delightful conceit and an entrancing read. Happily , a paperback edition is due out in February next year.

Fully indexed and annotated.

Sarah Bower

THE PIRATE COAST

Richard Zacks, Hyperion, 2005, $25.95, hb, 448pp, 1401300030

Th e war between the Barbary Pirates and the United States lasted from I 801-1805 and remains largely unknown and forgotten, save

for the line in the U.S. Marine Corps hymn " to the shores of Tripoli ." Corsairs based in Tripoli had preyed on American merchant ships since the U.S. had achieved independence. The fledgling U.S. Navy had attempted to eliminate the menace but was only partially successful. Frustrated by this lack of success through traditional means , President Thomas Jefferson instructed onetime U.S. Army Captain William Eaton to undertake a secret mission to overthrow the government in Tripoli The colorful and imaginative Eaton, accompanied only by a small force of U.S. Marines , marched across the desert and, after convincing a number of Bedouins and Arabs to join him , captured the stronghold of Deme The author manages to highlight the drama and uncertainty that lay at the foundation of all SAS-type operations to bring an early 191h century contest into the equally uncertain stage of 21 st century national decision-making.

John R Vallely

CHILDREN'S & YOUNG ADULTS'

THE LADY GRACE MYSTERIES: DECEPTION

Jan Burchett and Sara Vogler, Doubleday, 2005, £6 .99, hardback , 234 pages. 0385608497/Delacorte books for Young Readers , 2005, $7.95, hb, 224 pp , 0385733216

This is the fourth book of the fictional diaries of Lady Grace Cavendish, Maid of Honour and private investigator - or Lady Pursuivant - to Queen Elizabeth. This book has different authors from the first three in the series but the format and style is still the same.

There is the Frost Fair on the frozen Thames and Grace is excited about it. The celebrations, however, are interrupted by the discovery, in a boat on the ice , of a body with counterfeit coins on the eyes. But with her friends Ellie the laundry maid and Masou the tumbler, Grace sets out to unmask the villain.

This book throws light on yet another aspect of Elizabethan life. The coinage had been debased by Henry VIII and Elizabeth was determined to stabilise it again. The reader even learns about how the coinage was minted in these times because Grace manages to wangle an invitation to see over the Royal Mint in the Tower of London

There is much information about the age just trickled naturally into the story. The difference between the life of luxury of the wealthy Grace and that of the downtrodden and bullied Ellie is clearly brought out - along with the fact that Ellie has the spirit to rise above the hardships forced upon her. And when Grace dresses as a poor spit boy she realises how inadequate his thin clothes are for the winter.

The book is also highly atmospheric

We really enjoy Grace's first visit to the Frost Fair. This is winter at it best. But later on we shiver with her when she sets out poorly clad on her night time adventure.

Despite the detailed background the story is exciting and really holds the interest. And it is even lighten ed by some touches of humour in the constant bickering between Lady Jane and Lady Sarah who delights in Jane's pitiful attempts to skate.

Grace is a resourceful and resilient heroine who writes her diaries in a cheerful, racy style.

Informative, Enjoyable and above all exciting. Very highly recommended.

For ages I 0-14.

Mary Moffat

RIDDLE IN THE MOU TAI

Daryl Burkhard, Nomad Press, 2005, $ I 6. 95, hb, 240pp, 096682895X

Kathy and David Henley have just moved to Boulder, Colorado. They have become acquainted with a boy their age, Frank Kessler. A neighbor , Mrs. Acheson, noticing their interest in local history, and sensing Kathy's special gift of hearing what others can't, fills them in on local legends, including tales involving tommyknockers, little men who live in the mines and know where the gold is Hearing of this , Frank mentions he knows a place supposedly haunted by ghosts. He challenges Kathy and David to meet him at midnight so they can explore the site.

The children meet and crawl beneath the porch of a house up the street. They move further and further back, until a voice speaks out of the darkness. Seeing a small man with sparkling black eyes, they try to leave, but he tells them they must solve his riddle before returning home. That becomes trickier when they step out of their refuge to find no houses, no lights, just the much smaller town of Boulder down the grassy hill.

I enjoyed this young adult novel, filled with fictional and real characters and settings from Boulder's past. Each child has to work out his or her part of the riddle, moving the action along to a satisfying conclusion. My ten-year-old son wasn't quite as enthusiastic. He thought the beginning chapters were "too long and boring ," but agreed that it got better the more he read Alice Logsdon

VICTORIA AND THE ROGUE

Meg Cabot, Macmillan, 2004, £5.99, pb , 200pp, 0330415182/ Avon, $5.99, pb , 256 pp, ISBN 0060753218

The novel is set in London, in the early 1800s. Lady Victoria Arbuthnot has just arrived in London , from India to stay with her aunt , uncle and their children. Victoria's mother and father both died when she was young, and left her to be raised by three young bachelors. She soon falls in love with the handsome Lord Malfrey, only to discover he has many dark

secrets. When she arrives in London, Victoria soon sets about trying to boss everyone in her aunt's family aroundfrom the youngest child to the most senior cook - and trying to find her cousin Rebecca a suitor. Captain Jacob Carstairs (a man who Victoria thought was arrogant and rude) sets about to try and prove that Lord Malfrey is telling lies to her, and that he is only after her parents' money. However, when Victoria attempts to prove this, and succeeds, Lord Malfrey and his mother hold her hostage She escapes through a bedroom window, and gets a message to Jacob Carstairs to come and rescue her. In the end, she realises that she loves Captain Carstairs, and was wrong about her negative opinion of him, and they end up getting married

I was quite disappointed with ' Victoria and the Rogue ' because I have read other books by the same author and really enjoyed them However I felt that this book was too predictable, and the ending was too clear the whole way through the book. I thought the character of Victoria was not convincing - she seemed too stuck up and snobbish for someone who had spent most of their life living with three young bachelors. r would recommend this book to girls aged 11 or 12.

Charlotte Kemp age 14

THE DRAGON'S HEAD COMPANY

Alan Childs, Anglia Young Books , 2004, £4.50, pb, 64pp, 1-871 I 73-95-7 Tudor England. Edward Makepiece is a young actor in the Dragon's Head touring theatre company. They are visiting Hever Castle and hoping for permission to perform there. On the way, they are helped by a friendly pedlar and , later, are forced to wait while an important procession passes. It is Henry VIII and his entourage on his way to visit Anne Boleyn , whose father owns Hever.

Back in the castle, Bridget is helping her mistress Anne Boleyn to dress for the important occasion. Later, she meets Edward, who is frantically rehearsing his part in St George and the Dragon , which is chosen to be performed before the king. However, there is trouble for the Dragon troupe . The jewel Henry has given Anne is stolen and the theatre folk arc suspected. Edward and Bridget between them unmask the villain - the friendly pedlar and his side-kick.

This story is a simple introduction to various aspects of life in Tudor England: the traveling theatre companies; how a Tudor castle worked - kitchen , gardens ; and the daily round of the nobility. It has virtually no plot and the characterization is minimal. However, there is an excellent glossary and an epilogue which gives an outline of the rise and fall of the Boleyns , and the tale is enhanced by the lively and carefully accurate drawings of Robin Laurie. My personal feeling was that it was dull; the theft was somewhat contrived and THE HISTORICAL NOVELS

the excitement-factor distinctly lacking. It is obviously aimed at school libraries and the National curriculum. For 7 plus.

Elizabeth Hawksley

Although it took me until the second chapter to get into it, I liked this book because it was an adventure story with good illustrations and glossary. I could imagine the characters, how they spoke, and what they were like. The plot was good and unpredictable, except that the Traveller was sly and smug, so I suspected that it would be him as soon as the crime was committed. The dialogue was easy to understand and there's a good epilogue which tells you about the setting and the real story of Tudor times. Anyone learning about the Tudors could benefit from it, though it's more adventure than history.

Rachel Beggs ,

Age I0

SHADES OF RED

K.C. Dyer, Dundurn, 2005, $8.99/C$12.99, pb, 270pp, 1550025457

This is the third installment of a time travel trilogy written for young adult readers. In this episode, Darrell returns to Eagle Glen School after a holiday break and rejoins her friends for more back-to-the-past adventures. She is feeling very guilty over the loss of her schoolmate, Conrad, who disappeared during one of the historical trips. Darrell is eager to rescue him and bring him back to the present.

So, with her friends and dog, she ventures into the Inquisition in Portugal and then on to King Henry VIII's court. During the latter journey, Darrell receives a notebook written by Conrad during his many years trapped in the 1500s . In his notes, Conrad describes the severe violence of the era and states that even after observing such atrocities "that everyonebe they Catholic Christian or heretic, Jew or Moor - everyone bleeds the same shade of red ." Stark reality for teenagers, yet an interesting strategy for introducing diversity and tolerance.

Young readers will appreciate many aspects of Dyer's novel, such as the interesting way the characters' clothes and accessories are retrofitted to the respective time period after going through the time tunnel. Darrell 's prosthesis , for example, turns into a bound wooden ankle.

Carol Anne Germain

UNDER A WAR TORN SKY

L.M. Elliot, Usborne, 2005, £5.99, pb , 295 pp, 0746067313/Hyperion Paperbacks , ISBN 078617240

This novel is about an American fighter pilot called Henry who, during the Second World War, is sent to destroy a German munitions factory During the flight, however, he and his crew find themselves in the worst situation - attack from several enemy fighters. The plane is shot down and Henry is the only known survivor, but he does not know where he is or where home is. As the reader, you travel alongside

Henry, when the Gestapo interrogates him as well as when he meets the kind civilians who risk their lives and his to try to get him safely to Portugal.

It is a book of multiple genres; action, horror and romance The characters are so realistic that it makes you feel like you are with them throughout the whole story and you share their pain and dismay when problems occur. This book is a fantastic read for anyone interested in the Second World War and the Third Reich Annmarie Simmons , age 15

THE GAME OF SILENCE

Louise Erdrich, HarperCollins, 2005, $15.99,hb,256pp,006029789I

Louise Erdrich is wonderful! This talented author thoughtfully crafted this tale that acquaints the reader with the warmth, care and intricacies of Native American culture. In this juvenile historical novel, the author highlights the day- to-day lives of the Ojibwe community in the mid-19th century. In this sequel (The Birchbark House, 1999), Omakayas and her family return for a cycle of the seasons.

The reader may once again rejoice in the growth of Omakayas as she moves from childhood play to the edge of womanhood. Erdrich weaves a beautiful, heartwarming story about Omakayas and the relationships in her life These include challenges with her impish brother, Pinch; contests with the not-so-womanish Two Strike ; and the earned respect from Old Tallow Omakayas becomes more self-confident and mature in this follow-up. She will need this strength over the next succession of seasons since the white settlers will push her people west from their home on Lake Superior.

A glossary, with pronunciation s, allows the reader to learn more about Ojibwe terms, which are attentively used throughout the book This is a wonderful aadizookaan, which readers of every age will appreciate.

Carol Anne Germain

THE LADY GRACE MYSTERIES: CONSPIRACY

Patricia Finney , Doubleday , 2004, £6.99, hb, 233pp, 0-385-60646-X/Delacorte Books for Young People, $6.95, 208 pp , hb , ISBN 038573 I 533 I 1569. Lady Grace Cavendish is Maid of Honour to Elizabeth I in this, the third Lady Grace mystery. The court is on its usual summer progress They are v1s1tmg Kenilworth , the home of the queen's favourite, the Earl of Leicester. He has arranged a spectacular programme of events: hunting expeditions, a fireworks display and so on. But there is a political agenda, too. The unmarried Elizabeth is a matrimonial prize and a suitor, Prince Sven of Sweden, has arrived.

The visit is supposed to be a time of pleasure , with dancing , flirting and courtly entertainments, but things go worrying wrong. There are a number of unexplained

'accidents' and it looks as though somebody is trying to sabotage the royal visit, perhaps even endanger the queen's life. Elizabeth asks Grace to investigate.

I enjoyed this. Patricia Finney skilfully entices her readers inside the Elizabethan court , a place with very different assumptions from our own. It is not easy to convey a world in which servants regularly expect to dress up as naiads and fauns as part of their duties ; where elaborate masques with fantastical monsters and spectacular scenery and costumes are popular courtly entertainment , but it all comes alive through the first person narrative of Grace's'daybooke'.

The story also demonstrates how an Elizabethan great house was run . As Grace tracks down the villain, we follow her behind the scenes and see the huge numbers of seivants , the laundering , cooking, running the stables, creating the huge , elaborate sugared confections that graced a banquet, and so on And there is a useful glossary at the back to explain unfamiliar terms.

This book will appeal to girls of 11 plus; they will certainly end up knowing about the splendours of the Elizabethan court Recommended Elizabeth Hawksley

I enjoyed this book . It educated you about Elizabethan times, focusing mainly on the royal court in progress, yet it had a similarity to nowadays, shown generally through the characters' emotions. For example , Lady Grace was sweet, kind and thoughtful , yet had a mischievous streak, which meant that the reader could relate to her I also liked the way the queen was portrayed - unexpectedly kind and understanding - showing another side to what I had previously thought was one of our more ruthless monarchs.

The book was slightly hard to get into, over 60 pages before the first suspicious incident , however , its light tone made sure that it was not unreadable When the plot proper started it proved to have quite a few original twists and turns. However, I did predict the ending

The author used some Elizabethan words and phrases , and, as they were in context, they were easy to understand There was also a glossary at the back, as well as an explanation of what a "progress' was , though that might have been more useful at the beginning

Over all , I thought it was a wellwritten , reasonably light read , aimed at 11 to 14 year olds, not too taxing and not overloaded with facts Lucy Beggs, age 13

THE EDUCATION OF PATIENCE GOODSPEED

Heather Vogel Frederick, Simon & Schuster, 2004 , $ l 6 .95 / C$24 .50, hb, 3 l 4pp , 0689864116

Patience Goodspeed ' s second adventurous outing finds the young mathematician

installed aboard her father's whaling ship as assistant navigator, but not for long. Young Patience is soon dry-docked on one of the Sandwich Islands for her own safety. Perhaps a merciful termination to her voyage, for Patience didn't like to be at such close quarters with their uninvited shipboard guest, Nantucket socialite and etiquette disciple Fanny Starbuck-aspiring bride to Patience's widowed father.

But Patience has a lot to learn. She is enrolled in a girls' boarding school for the duration of the whaling expedition. Worse luck, it's run by a dour clergyman, Reverend Titus Wiggins , whose adopted personal mission seems to be the abolition of fun. With Patience's aunt and the frivolous Fanny Starbuck as newly appointed teachers, and- consistent with the expected role of women in 1836Patience is to be educated m the housewifely arts along with Reverend Wiggins' daughter and two Hawaiian girls.

Leaming is definitely the theme at the heart of The Education of Patience GoodJpeed. No stone walls- if any lessons were lacking (and all of the students seemed to agree the most interesting ones were) , whoever possessed the knowledge sought, taught. If no one did, there were always books , even if they weren't ones that Reverend Wiggins would approve. This is a delightful novel, the feel of which I thought was somewhat reminiscent of the Amelia Peabody mysteries Perhaps it was the immediate ease with which the characters made themselves known and their relationships to one another unfolded. Heather Vogel Frederick has created a lovely young heroine whose mathematical gift is balanced with the emotional impulsiveness of a young teen. Bigger than life, yes , but she still rings so true (Ages 8-12) Janette King

DIVIDED LOY AL TIES

Phyllis Hall Haislip, White Mane Kids , 2005 , $7.95,pb,210pp, 1572493690

Eleven-year-old Teddy finds himself caught between two factions right in his own home in Williamsburg , Virginia His father works for the Continental Congress and spends much of his time in Philadelphia, which leaves Teddy without a guiding hand at home His pregnant mother, descended from an English lord, vows to live as a loyal British subject even in this revolutionary town. To further complicate the tense situation, Teddy must deal with a creepy tutor and the fact that his father disagrees with Teddy ' s wish to become a cabinetmaker. While he can do nothing about the latter, Teddy plots to get rid of Mr. Grum instead. The attempt backfires, and as a result his father arranges for Teddy to become a fifer in the militia. He accidentally enlists in the wrong unit , and finds himself participating in the Battle of Camden in South Carolina in August 1780.

Teddy is a typical boy with a sense of humor and a determination to succeed. His

fear surfaces from time to time but never stands in the way of doing his duty. Although he doesn't age much from the start of the book to the end, he matures in mind and spirit. A poignant and heartfelt depiction of the War for Independence, this coming-of-age novel highlights the hardships and struggles even the children of colonial America had to endure.

Cindy Vallar

GENERALS DI E I N BED

Charles Yale Harrison, Definitions, 2004, £4.99, pb 0-099-43990-5 / Annick Press , •$7 95, pb, 175 pp , ISBN 1550377302 /New Canadian Library , $7.95, pb, 152 pp. ISBN 077 I039557

Written in 1930, this is the story - based on the author's personal experience - of a young Canadian who is sent to fight on the Western Front during the First World War. It is so utterly convincing that it gives the illusion of having been jotted down in a diary at the time. There is a particularly horrific scene in which the main character kills a young Gemrnn soldier. But the narrative is also full of small realistic details: burst eardrums and nose bleeds caused by the noise of bombardment; finding lice hiding in the seams of newly laundered clothes ; precise descriptions of the sounds of shells and gunfire There are good moments, too: in particular the care and genuine affection of the prostitute with whom the young man shares the whole of a precious ten days' leave in London.

The book is subtitled 'a novel of the trenches ' but, although it is fiction , it is scarcely a novel. The main character is nameless and we know nothing about his life and learn almost nothing of his feelings. There is no plot as such, other than a gradual build-up of horror and the realisation , at the end , of the lies being told to soldiers by the generals.

The story is written in a terse style with very short sentences and stark but vivid images. When first published, in 1930, it must have been intended for adults rather than teenagers, but I think many young people today would find this a compelling read.

Ann Turnbull

CASA AZUL: An E ncounter with Frida Ka hl o

Laban Carrick Hill , Watson-Guptill , 2005 , $15.95 , hb , 160pp, 0823004112

Cas a Azuf, a new book in a historical fiction series aiming to bring great artists to a young audience , boldly mixes facts and " outright lies." The author's purpose, stated in the preface, is "to uncover the essence" of the artist's motivation to create. The book begins as fourteen-year-old Maria and her Iittle bother Victor leave their small town to go to Mexico City, looking for their mother from whom they have not heard in a while. In the next chapter, we meet the painter Frida Kahlo in the middle of her divorce from muralist Diego Rivera. The author also introduces a wild array of chatty

secondary characters-a nimals and inanimate objects-that fret and humorously argue about Frida's troubles.

Carrick explains the goings-on at Casa Azul: "Az tecs believed in a shared consciousness among all beings. Through this power, people could communicate with things not human." The plot then alternates between this fantastic house and the children's quest for their mother.

In spite of the fascinating subject and approach, Casa Azul is di sa ppointing. The storylines meet late and awkwardly; the ending is forced. Some parents might object to the account of the artist's behavior: "My next conquest will be a woman," Frida proclaims unhappily after her divorce. Carrick l lill also points out that she had "numerous scandalous affairs," and that she was bisexual, which, while true, adds nothing to the book. More disconcerting is Frida teaching Maria the Aztec concept that good and evil must achieve a balance Not that they do-unhappily all too often-but that they should. (Ages 12+)

Adelaida Lower

GONE TO TEXAS

Louise A. Jackson, Eakin Press, 2003, $l2.95/C$l8.95, pb, 162pp, 1571687750 Jackson based this young adult novel on her great-grandfather's experiences going West in 1850. Recently -o rphaned Ephraim Da,ter, 14, is bored working the family farm and longs for adventure. He teams up with Finis Whitefield, an ex-university boy down on his luck , leaving college to take a teaching job in Texas. Their adventures include having to leave Ephraim's elderly dog behind with strangers, helping to find a lost child, and an encounter with a medicine-show man. Then they fall in with slave-catchers, who are searching for a runaway slave boy hiding in the medicineshow wagon.

The book could easily serve as supplementary material for middle- or junior-high-level students who are reluctant studiers of the Westward Movement. The boys in this tale only reach Texas in the afterword, but the book brings one particular westward journey to life more fully than a textbook could. The author anticipates the book's use in schools by including a glossary, bibliography, and a recipe for food cooked en route.

B.J. Sedlock

STELLA

Catherine Johnson, Oxford University Press, 2002, £4.99, pb, 149 pp, 0-19275231-6

This tale is really something different. Stella, the heroine, is a young woman of mixed African and British parentage who has earned a living since she was quite small on the stage of Music Halls in the days of Queen Victoria. With the aid of her old grandmother who listens in the queue for clues from the waiting 'punters' to hear what they will ask, Stella, dressed as a

foreign 'Medium' brings comfort to the bereaved who flock to hear her amazing pronouncements.

Then disaster strikes when the grandmother, sitting among the audience, dies. The perforn,ance is cancelled and the theatre manager is so enraged at hav ing to refund money to the audience cancels any further work for Stella.

Left alone and friendless except a young assistant from the undertaker who volunteers his help when he sees her plight at the theatre Stella searches through grandmother's things and discovers a bankbook showing a total of £500 in the account. However, when she goes to the bank to claim the money the manager claims that the Grandmother made a bad investment and the money is gone. Stella refuses to believe this and, with the aid of her young undertaker friend, she sets out to discover her true parentage and what has become of the money. Jan Shaw.

CHINESE CINDERELLA AND THE SECRET DRAGON SOCIETY

Adeline Yen Mah, HarperCollins , 2005, $15.99,hb,256pp,006056734I

Pub. in the UK by Puffin, 2004, £5.99, pb, 0141314966

Adeline Yen Mah is the author of the critically acclaimed Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter. Now she brings a new companion story to her fans, a fascinating blend of historical fiction and martial-a,ts adventure. Set in China during World War [[ , Ye Xian or as she is known, Chinese Cinderella, is thrown out of her house and onto the cruel streets of Shanghai, where Japanese soldiers patrol every inch. She takes refuge at the Martial Arts Academy, where Grandma Wu introduces her to a new family. She makes friends with three boys who arc acrobats and soon finds herself on a secret mission that will change her life forever. The gripping text is followed by a historical note, glossary of Chinese words, Chinese zodiac, and bibliography, which make this a wonderful accompaniment to a World War II curriculum or study of China.

Like Donna Jo Napoli's Bound (reviewed above), this novel is not your typical Cinderella story, but they both arc intriguing examples of how our beloved fairy talc can be interpreted by skilful authors. And they make great additions to a collection of Cinderella talcs. (Ages 9-12)

Nancy Castaldo

THE GLADIATORS FROM CAPUA Caroline Lawrence, Orion Children's Books, 2004, £7.99 hb, (£5.99 pb) 214pp, £7.99, 084255252X/America $ I 0.99 l84255252X

This is the eighth in Caroline Lawrence's Roman Mysteries series, aimed at 9-12 year olds and with the National Curriculum in mind.

March , AD 80. The friends Flavia, Nubia and Lupus are ostensibly in Rome for the games to celebrate the opening of the Flavian Amphitheatre (the Colosseum). Their real objective is to find their friend Jonathan, whom they had believed d ead. But there arc rumours that he is alive and a gladiator. Their mission is to rescue him , and that means braving the dangerous subterranean world of the amphitheatre, where gladiators, condemned criminals, and wild beasts are bein g prepared to face death to amuse the populace.

The author does not pull her punches about the horrors of the various forms of staged deaths on show: gladiatorial combats, some even featuring young children; criminal executions which reenact some Greek legend; or the sadistic, not to mention voyeuristic, flinging of pretty girls to crocodiles and hippos in a specially-flooded arena. The children arc horrified - and so was I. A further disturbing feature is the 'lottery balls' which arc thrown to the audience. Nubia 'wins' a gladiator.

But there are moral lessons here, loo. For one thing , the story provides a welcome counter-balance to the current glamorisation of gladiatorial combats in such films as Gladiators. Nubia, too, faces an agonizing moral choice. 1-ler lottery win means that she can save one gladiator: will it be Jonathan or her gladiator brother Taharquo, whom she believed dead?

As always with Caroline Lawrence, the research is impeccable and the ancient Rome she depicts is very real, not some modem fantasy in fancy dress. Children who read this book will learn what really did go on during the games Elizabeth Hawksley

I really liked this book, though it was hard lo get into because I had not read any of the other Roman Mysteries. You had lo read between the lines to get a clear picture of the characters. For example, Flavia Gemini was not described as a wealthy girl but you just seemed to figure it out.

The history side of things was good because it told you a lot about Roman times but in a fictional way so you didn't actually realize when hi story got in, but it stuck in your head. In one of my other I INS review books, it said that at the amphitheatre all the family sat together. What this one tells you is that slaves, women and children sat at the back and men at the front - I think that sounds more realistic. You le arn what the Romans looked like and what they did. There was one unrealistic part where Nubia asks her brother, a gladiator, if he wants to be free, and he says no. Gladiators are fighting for survival, surely he would want lo be free?

Rachel Beggs age I0

A BRIDE FOR ANNA'S PAPA : A Novel of Finnish Immigration

Isabel R. Marvin, Milkweed Editions, 2004 (cl994), $6.95, 136pp, pb, 1571316507

In 1907, thirteen-year-old Anna and her ten-year-old brother Matti live with their widowed father, who works on the Chisholm iron-mining range in Minnesota. Partly out of concern for their father's happiness and partly out of a desire to evade housework, the children secretly plan to import a Finnish mail-order bride to serve the family as a wife, mother and drudge. The emotional elements that could have redeemed this story seem to be missing: the children often appear selfish, hateful little brats, and Papa is a cold, frequently-absent figure who does not return Anna's slavish devotion. Matti's repeated brushes with disaster quickly cease to rouse any pathos in the reader , and become simply irritating. There's no suspense and no conclusion, as the action abruptly cuts off at an extremely unsatisfying moment. Despite its relatively recent publication date , this book offers scant edification on the issues it flirts with, including gender roles, workers' rights and the " melting pot" immigrant experience. Lest we forget that this novel deals with a Finnish family, the word "Finnish" occurs with numbing regularity throughout.

Val Perry

MY TRAVELS WITH CAPTS. LEWIS A D CLARK, BY GEORGE SHANNON

Kate McMullan, illus. by Adrienne Yorinks, HarperCollins, 2004, $15.99 'C$23 99, hb , 266pp, 006008099X A deli gh tful coming-of-age adventure for boys as well as girls. George Shannon, a young man sent off to help his strict, overbearing uncle, finds the opportunity to join the infamous Lewis and Clark expedition across America. Though much younger than the other lads of the crew , he works as hard as they do to be a part of the team and grows with the praises from Lewis and Clark, and the love of the journey dog, Seaman.

Throughout this long adventure, George has to endure many hardships, including illness, the death of close friends, and getting lost in the wilderness. The group also struggles through many treacherous situations, such as encounters with hostile Native Americans, rough waterways and snowy, cold mountains. Young Shannon must also learn how face acquiring new skills, such as learning how to hunt , shoot and forage for food. Even though he has much trouble with getting his first kill , he is persistent with the task and in the end becomes quite a marksman

Through all of these experiences George learns about perseverance , respect, and courage. This book is a fictional log of George's exploration and includes many delightful hand-drawn maps and pictures that enhance the story. McMullan does a

fine job with a tale many young readers will appreciate. (Ages 9-12)

Carol Anne Germain

BOUND

Donna Jo Napoli , Atheneum , 2004, $ I 6.95, hb, 192p~0689861753

Don ' t expect the typical Cinderella story, with a fairy godmother, two stepsisters, and a glorious ball in Donna Jo Napoli's Bound. And why would you? Napoli never offers anything typical in her young adult fairytale retellings She once again offers a complex story, combining actual history with fairytale elements. Bound tells the story of young Xing Xing, a girl bound to her stepmother after the death of her father in northern China during the 17th-century Ming Dynasty. She is bound to a life of servitude, alone and unmarried, while her stepsister, Wei Ping, is prepared for a suitable match. While Wei Ping is having her feet bound, Xing Xing is left to dream about a life unbound by the laws of her family and the Chinese society.

I read this book with my mother/ daughter book club. Donna Jo Napoli 's exhaustive research helps create a tale that opens the doors to the discussion of ancient Chinese society and the value of women. While the " daughters" in the group were a bit disappointed with the lack of fairytale romance, they appreciated the sense of hi sto rical accuracy that Napoli maintains in her tale when Xing Xing seeks a royal marriage to become independent. Fans of Donna Jo Napoli will happily add this tale to their growing list of favorites. (Ages 12 +)

Nancy Castaldo

BETSY AND THE EMPEROR

Staton Rabin , Margaret K. McElderry , 2004, $16.95, hb, 304 pp, 0689858809

It is the fall of 1815 on the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean when Napoleon Bonaparte arrives there as England's most notorious prisoner after his defeat at Waterloo. While the French dictator awaits incarceration in gloomy Longwood prison , he is temporarily quartered with the East India Company's Superintendent of Public Sales, the superintendent's wife, and their two daughters. Thus begins the true account of Napoleon's three -yea r relationship with Betsy Balcombe, the fourteen-year-old English girl who, although initially repulsed by the former Emperor of France, learns to respect him and, ultimately , to love him as a cherished friend.

Although the intriguing situation presented in this young adult novel is rooted in fact, the author has embellished it with a colorful back story, as she explains in the Author's Note, to tell the story in her own way. Toward this end, she chose not to read the real Betsy's autobiography (Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon, by Betsy Balcombe Abell). While vivid and intelligently written, I felt the growing bond

between Betsy and Bonaparte would have made a lovely and enlightening book without the addition of several, almost ridiculous, plot points. For me, the protagonist's wholly fictional and frivolous attempts to help Bonaparte escape the island-in a hot-air balloon sewn from her sister's silk dresses, and without Bonaparte's knowledge , for example-was not only distracting, but also served to diminish the otherwise engaging central story. (Ages 10-14)

Alana White

THE RING OF THE SLAVE PRINCE Bjarne Reuter, translated by Tiina Nunnally, Anderson Press , 2004, £7.99, hb , 373pp , 1842703706/ Dutton Children's Books , 2003, $14.52, pb, ISBN 0525471464

In 1639 on the Caribbean island of Nevis, Tom O'Connor, a fourteen-year-old boy is about to change his life forever. He seeks treasure to rescue his mother, Spanish halfsister and himself from the drudgery of life working at the inn of Senor Lopez, who is an ungrateful brute

Tom is an accomplished sailor, who can swim like a fish and seeks to find a treasure to free the family from their endless life of toil. Instead he finds two castaways. One a Spaniard, Ramon the Pious who is as adept at spinning a convincing tale as Tom is himself and, with him , a skinny black youth. Ramon convinces Tom that the youth is a Prince from a far off isle who is worth his weight in gold. Ramon promises Tom a half share in this gold if he saves their lives Tom does this , and when the two disappear, he sets out to find his investment and reclaim his share of the fortune. This will change the course of his life as he embarks on a two year adventure.

The book has a mystical quality to it as Tom 's destiny has been foretold by an old hag. Tom's life changes dramatically after saving Ramon and the boy. Nevis is visited by Father Innocence of the Spanish Inquisition. Tom leaves but their paths are destined to cross once more.

The author has not shunned describing the horrendous conditions so many people suffered during the slave trade or their miserable lives on the plantations as Tom grows and has to make life changing decisions. His journey continues encountering the brutal world of pirates before he finally finds the truth behind his treasure

This is an unusual , intriguing and interesting read , packed with adventures , morals and vibrant characters. It is an excellent read and well worth its cover price

Val Loh

BLITZED

Robert Swindells, Corgi Yearling, 2003 £4.99, pb, 044086397X

Georgie is fascinated by World War II especially the Illitz - but his ideas about war are nothing like the reality On a school trip to

a museum, he is suddenly plunged back into October 1940 in London and finds out what the Blitz was really like for a child with no home and no-one to care for him. He experiences cold, hunger and terror - not only the hardships of war but fear at his own displacement in time. Will he ever get back? Could he die before he is born? He can't explain his predicament to anyone because he would not be believed; and his strange 'American' way of speaking draws unwelcome attention to him.

He is taken in by a gang of children living rough, led by a 14 year old girl they cal 1 'Ma' because she looks after them all. Mixed in with the harrowing details of wartime life and death is a mystery about a possible spy, but the real focus of the story is the horror of the Blitz and the courage of Ma . Short chapters and a lively style create pace and suspense. This is a wellresearched re-creation of wartime London but also a gripping story in its own right.

Ann Turnbull

HORSE OF SEVEN MOO S

Karen Taschek, Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2005, $14.95 pb, 184 pp , 0826332153

A horse is the link between his two teenaged keepers throughout this young adult historical set in 1880s New Mexico. The pinto, called Moon-that-Flies by a young Apache renegade and Moon Dancer by Sarah, a settler, seems to visit each when most needed, and finally becomes the source of a showdown between them and their cultures. Bin-daa-dee-nin, with what's left of his raiding band, is struggling to survive outside the reservation. Sarah and her family are adapting to a life very different from their more genteel existence. Both find comfort, solace, and inspiration from the horse they share. While respectful and realistic while contrasting both cultures, I found Bin-daa-dee-nin 's story the more compelling, due to his strong character and desperate circumstances. Sarah seemed less of her time as she contradicts her parents and makes foolish choices and doesn't seem to learn from them. Still , the choice detail of animal, landscape and weather, combine with a galloping story and wonderful bonus of an epilogue to make for a delightful reading experience.

Eileen Charbonneau

WINTERI G WELL

Lea Wait, Margaret K. McElderry , 2004, $ I 6.95/C$24.50, hb , I 86pp, 0689856466 Wintering Well tackles the issue of physical disability in rural Maine around 1820. Twelve-year-old Will Ames loses a leg in an accident just as he is happily on the brink of joining his father and brothers to work the family farm. Will is disgusted by his new condition, and feels every inch as helpless as everyone says he must be Even Will's own father thinks he'll only be a

drain on the family 's resources. Largely through the compassionate care of his eleven-year-old sister, Cassie, Will is encouraged to consider new goals for his life. As he becomes more able to navigate with the use of a wooden leg, he begins to see that there are things that he is capable of doing. Author Wait floats several possibilities Will's way, even ones he doesn't appear to notice.

Though the tale sometimes verges on a contemporary story set in historic times, Wintering Well draws a realistic glimpse into domestic life in the 19th century. I love that some of the characters used- though not the central family - were actually based on real people of the same name living in Wiscasset, Maine. (Even the bullies' comeuppance is based on a historically true event.) But what this book docs best is show that seemingly insurmountable problems can have creative solutions.

(Ages 8-12)

Janette King

SOUND

From Geraldine Perriam

Two whodunits for this issue, one Mediaeval and the other Victorian :

THE HARPER'S QUINE

Pat McIntosh, read by Kenny Blyth, Soundings, I 0hrs 30 minutes, 8 cassettes, ISBN 1-84559-057-0

Set in Medieval Glasgow, this is a tale of murder near Glasgow Cathedral. The victim is the harper's quine, or mistress , the runaway wife of an aggressive and churlish nobleman. Gil Cunningham, a trainee lawyer and son of the Cathedral Close (destined, as his relatives seem to think, to become a priest) investigates, ably assisted by the wise and perceptive Maistre Pierre , master mason.

The story is both entertaining and fascinating. The author (and reader) creates a private world within the Cathedral precinct and manages to keep the tale fresh and interesting while at the same time providing plenty of historic detail (some of whose accuracy I am not qualified to judge but it is entertaining, come what may) The reading by Kenny Blyth is subtle and draws the listener on. Recommended for those who like dark tales of medieval murder and ecclesiastical machinations and also for those who like a good whodunit.

DEATH AND THE JUBILEE

David Dickinson, read by Peter Wickham, Soundings , 14 hours, 12 cassettes, ISBN 184559-026-0

As Britain prepares for the celebration of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1897, a body is found floating in the Thames Lord Francis Powerscourt is called in to investigate and he is immersed in the world of the City. A second body is found and Lord Francis is under pressure to solve the mystery before the Jubilee when security will be of utmost importance. When a second body is found, the tension mounts and Powerscourt must wade through the unfamiliar terrain of the City and its workings. The story takes a while to get going and is not nearly as atmospheric and intriguing as Goodnight Sweet Prince. It will still be of interest to readers who are fond of Victorian whodunits.

LA TEST RELEASES

Rennie Airth

Tide

Boris Alamin

Ann Barker

The Blood-Dimmed Turkish Gambit The Wild Marauder

Ronan Bennett Havoc, in its Third Year

Iris Bromige Farewell to Winter

Irene Carr Rachel

Winston Churchill My early Life (nf)

Barbara Cleverly The Palace Tiger Diney Costeloe The Ashgrove

Sarah Diamond The Spider's House

David Dickinson Death of an Old Master

Anne Doughty The Woman from Kerry

Katie Flynn The Cuckoo Child

Alan Furst Night Soldiers

Amanda Grange Har sta irs Hou se Philippa Gregory The Wise Woman

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles The Black Pearl

Anna Jacobs Hallam Square

Jeannie Johnson Just Before Dawn

Joan Jonker When Wishes Come True Deryn Lake Death in the Setting Sun

Philip McCutchan Ogilvie Under Fire

Kitty Neale Outcast Child

Cole Moreton Hungry for Home : A journey from the edge of Ireland (nf)

Gwen Raverat Period Piece (nf)

Claire Rayner Seven Dials

Candace Robb A Cruel Courtship

Judith Saxton The Love Gift

Tim Severin Viking: Odin's Child

Sarah Shears The Sisters

Nevil Shute Slide Rule (nf)

Olga Sinclair An heir for Ashingby

Nicola Thome The Little Flowers

Janet McLeod Trotter The Hungry Hills

Janet Woods A Handful of Ashes

Sally Worboyes Jamaica Street

nf denotes non-fiction

If you would like to receive the regular Update brochure from Isis with the full list of new titles , please call (0 I865) 250 333. Isis are also happy to e-mail the full audio update to blind or visually impaired customers. To

request this service, please peter.jol1nson(@isis-publishinR.co.uk. update is also available in Large Print

To contact Isis/Soundings, or to obtain a full catalogue contact the publishers at: Isis Publishing Limited

7 Centremead

Osney Mead

Oxford

OX2 0ES

Tel: 01865 250 333; E-mail: audiobooks@isis-publishing.co.uk Website: www.isis-publishing.co.uk

AND VISION

VERA DRAKE

Certificate 12 (contains an abortion theme)

Director: Mike Leigh, starring: Imelda Staunton, Phil Davis, Peter Wight Available on DVD

Mike Leigh has a very unusual style of film making. In the documentary which comes as a special feature on the DVD of Vera Drake, Imelda Staunton (Vera) describes the elaborate process of rehearsals which included details such as staging a marriage between Vera and her husband , Stan (Phil Davis ,) despite the fact that when we first meet the couple, they've been married for over twenty years. It would be tempting to call this eccentric and indulgent if the end result weren't so good. Vera Drake has been labelled one of Mike Leigh's best and there's very little in it to make anyone disagree The plot revolves around a working class family in 1950s London, Stan and Vera and their grown-up children, Sid and Ethel, especially the loveable Vera, who makes it her business to see everyone who lives around her is looked after, and furnished with enough cups of tea to sink a battleship.

Unknown to her family, she also visits girls who need to be "helped out" , performing illegal abortions for free, with the same cheerful care as when she visits the old, lonely and needy who live around her.

Leigh has described the film as one which 'concerns' abortion, not a film 'about' abortion, and the difference is crucial to the film 's success. Vera Drake has none of the qualities of an 'issue' film. It favours neither side, dramatising the issue of pro choice/no choice in a way that engages rather than preaches Importantly , the film is just as entertaining as it is heart breaking, as light as it is heavy going. The mannerisms of the characters become instantly familiar, and the dramas in their lives seem more like an old episode of Coronation Street than a hard hitting drama of social issues. Even when the issue of abortion comes crashing into their lives and differences of opinion surface, none of the actors loses the endearing quality of their characters by strai~ing for over-the-top emotion. Instead Reg, Ethel's fiance, sums it up in his usual , matter-of-fact way by saying, "If you can't feed 'em, you can't love 'em."

The film has a very English feel, which will add to its endearing quality for some, while perhaps irritating other viewers. However, it never goes too far as to slip into ridiculous stereotypes and cringeworthy cliches, and its quiet air (as opposed to a more brooding European style of film, or a heart-on-its-sleeve American production) is its strength. Take, for example, the abortion scenes, potentially quite graphic and polarising, yet Vera simply walks in, puts the kettle on, ask the 'pa tient ' to remove her knickers, and carries on just as she would when cleaning the house or making the dinner. When the first scene is over, you almost don't even realise it has happened

The conclusion, which sees Vera arrested in front of her whole family, perhaps strains too much to floor its audience with emotion. Staunton's performance is excellent (especially if you see her interview in the documentary on the DVD) but she comes across a little too weak in the dock , and frustration at her character taints an otherwise brilliant, highly recommended film.

Guy Charles

HNS BOOK ORDERING SERVICE

UK Members

The HNS Book Ordering Service can supply any book reviewed in Historical Novels Reviews , including books published abroad. Please contact Sarah Cuthbertson at sarah 76cuthbcrt(roaol.com or 0 1293 884898 with the title(s) you want and she will give you a quote from the cheapest Internet source, to include postage and packing. Customers can benefit from discounts on many titles, and will usually pay only UK postage on overseas books. Books will be delivered directly to the customer whenever possible. Please note, this service is only available to members who do not have internet access.

Alternatively, the US Reviews Editors will buy books for you in the US to trade for UK titles: please contact Sarah Johnson (cfsln@eiu.edu), Trudi Jacobson readbksra,localnet.com or Ilysa Magnus (goodlaw2(waol.com). Sarah Cuthbertson can contact them on your behalf if you don't have email.

Overseas Members

The following UK members are interested in trading books with overseas members, including wishlists and secondhand books: Rachel A. Hyde, 2 Meadow Close, Budleigh Salterton, Devon EX9 6JN, Tel: +44 1395 446238, Email: rachelahydc@ntlworld.com (Rachel will also trade Fantasy & SF). Sarah Cuthbertson (contact details above). Please let Sarah know if you would like to join this list.

OUT OF PRINT BOOKS

The following deal in out of print historical fiction:

Boris Books , Market Place, Sturminster Newton, Dorset DTI0 IAS , UK www.borisbooks.co.ul,.,

Diaskari Books, 7 Southmoor Road, Oxford OX2 6RF, UK chris.tyzack(dJbtintemet.com Forget-Me-Not Books, 11 Tamarisk Rise, Wokingham, Berks RG40 1WG, UK Judith ridley(it;hotmail.com

Rachel Hyde, 2 Meadow Close, Budleigh Salterton, Devon EX9 6JN rnchelahydefcl)ntlworld.com

Karen Miller, Church Farm Cottage, Church Lane, Kirklington, Nr. Newark, Notts. NG22 8NA, UK Karen(wMillcrl 964freeserve.co.uk

Rosanda Books, 11 Whiteoaks Road, Oadby, Leicester LE2 5YL, UK dbaldwin @t hemutual .net

David Spenceley Books, 75 Harley Drive, Leeds LS 13 4QY davidspcnccley(a)email.com