Historical Novels Review, Issue 78 (November 2016)

A PUBLICATION OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY

HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW Issue 78, November 2016

Needling Women Needlework’s Transgressive Power now is the time hnsoxford16 being “on the ground” felicity pulman’s novels noblewomen of 1066 survival during regime change writing the legend anew james wilde’s hereward series ron hansen’s billy the kid legend versus reality a new heroine for ya fantasy robert beatty’s serafina series

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE publisher’s message | historical fiction market news | red pencil | new voices

Historical Novels R eview

ISSN: 1471-7492 | © 2016 The Historical Novel Society | |

pub lis h er

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Richard Lee Marine Cottage, The Strand Starcross, Devon EX6 8NY United Kingdom <richard@historicalnovelsociety.org> |

edit o r ial boa r d

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Managing Editor: Bethany Latham Houston Cole Library, Jacksonville State University 700 Pelham Road North Jacksonville, AL 36265-1602 USA <blatham@jsu.edu> Publisher Coverage: Simon & Schuster (all imprints) Book Review Editor: Sarah Johnson 6868 Knollcrest Drive Charleston, IL 61920 USA <sljohnson2@eiu.edu> Publisher Coverage: Bethany House; Five Star; HarperCollins; Henry Holt; IPG; Penguin Random House (all imprints); Severn House; Trafalgar Square; university presses; and any North American presses not mentioned below Features Coordinator: Lucinda Byatt 13 Park Road Edinburgh, EH6 4LE UK <textline13@gmail.com> |

review s edit o r s , u k

Features Editor: Myfanwy Cook 47 Old Exeter Road Tavistock, Devon PL19 OJE UK <myfanwyc@btinternet.com> |

Elizabeth Hawksley <mail@elizabethhawksley.com> Publisher Coverage: All UK children’s historicals Edward James <busywords_ed@yahoo.com> Publisher Coverage: Arcadia; Atlantic Books; Canongate; Head of Zeus, Hodder Headline (inc. Coronet, Hodder & Stoughton, NEL, Sceptre); John Murray; Robert Hale | Alma and The History Press (interim) Doug Kemp <doug.kemp@lineone.net> Publisher Coverage: Allison & Busby; Little, Brown & Co (inc. Abacus, Virago, Warner); Random House UK (inc. Arrow, Cape, Century, Chatto & Windus, Constable & Robinson, Harvill, Heinemann, Hutchinson, Orion, Pimlico, Secker & Warburg, Vintage); and Transworld (inc. Bantam Press, Black Swan, Corgi, Doubleday) | Quercus (interim) Karen Warren <worldwidewriteruk@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Birlinn/Polygon; Bloomsbury; Duckworth Overlook, Faber & Faber; Granta; Pan Macmillan; Penguin; Short Books; Simon & Schuster | Accent Press; HarperCollinsUK; and Knox Robinson

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Rebecca Cochran <CochranR95@gmail.com> Publisher coverage: Amazon Publishing; Hachette; Hyperion; Pegasus; and WW Norton Bryan Dumas <bryanpgdumas@gmail.com> Publisher coverage: Algonquin; Kensington; Other Press; Overlook; Sourcebooks; Tyndale; and other US/Canadian small presses Arleigh Johnson <arleigh.johnson@att.net> Publisher coverage: US/Canadian children’s publishers Ilysa Magnus <goodlaw2@optonline.net> Publisher Coverage: FSG; Grove/Atlantic; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Minotaur Books; Picador USA; Poisoned Pen Press; Soho Press; St Martin’s Press; and Tor/Forge |

e d i tori a l pol i cy & copy ri g h t

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Reviews, articles, and letters may be edited for reasons of space, clarity, and grammatical correctness. We will endeavour to reflect the authors’ intent as closely as possible, and will contact the authors for approval of any major change. We welcome ideas for articles, but have specific requirements to consider. Before submitting material, please contact the editor to discuss whether the proposed article is appropriate for Historical Novels Review.

In all cases, the copyright remains with the authors of the articles. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the authors concerned. |

m e m be rs h i p d e ta i l s

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THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY was formed in 1997 to help promote historical fiction. We are an open society — if you want to get involved, get in touch.

MEMBERSHIP in the Historical Novel Society entitles members to all the year’s publications: four issues of Historical Novels Review, as well as exclusive membership benefits through the Society website. Back issues of Society magazines are also available. For current rates, please see: https:// historicalnovelsociety.org/members/join/ HNS WEBSITE: www.historicalnovelsociety.org |

confe re nce s

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The Society organizes biennial conferences in the UK, the US, and Australasia. Contact Richard Lee <richard@historicalnovelsociety.org> (UK), Vanitha Sankaran (USA), or Elisabeth Storrs <contact@hnsa.org.au> (Australasia).

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Historical Novels R eview

I ssue 7 8 , N o ve mbe r 2016 | I SSN 1471-7492

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ed itor ia l r ich a rd le e

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histor ic a l fic tion market n ews s ar a h joh nson

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n ew voic e s p r of ile s of debut his torical f iction authors k a te h ow a rd , e lle n pr entis s camp bell, an n a mazz o l a & a lix r ic kloff | m y f anw y cook

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r ed pe nc il t h e da rkn e ss kn o ws | cin dy vallar

| features & interviews |

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NEED LI NG WOM E N n e e d lewor k ’s tr a nsg res s ive power | b y s arah bow er

11 n ow is the ti me HNSOxford16 | by jenny barden 13 bein g “on the gro u nd” fe lic it y pulman ’s n ovels | b y elis abeth sto rrs 14 n ob lewom en o f 1 0 6 6 s ur v iv a l dur ing r eg ime chan g e | by carol mcgra th 15

writin g the leg en d a new j ame s wilde ’s hereward | by g ordon o’ su l l i va n

16 ron han s en ’s b illy the k id le ge nd vers us realit y | by my f anw y co o k 17 a n ew heroin e f or ya f a nta sy r ob e r t be a tt y ’s se r af in a s eries | b y arleig h jo hnso n | reviews |

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book r e v ie ws e d ito rs’ c h oic e & m ore

PUBLISHER’S MESSAGE we nt y years a go I wa s worki ng part - ti me i n a b o okshop. My home wa s s em i - dere l ic t , but on ly t wo of u s l ived there, and it s ee med huge compared to the 5 0 m2 flat we h ad lef t i n Pari s (we d id not h ave ch i ld re n the n) . I d reamed of w riti ng a novel, but to b e hone st , I wa s not go o d e nough at w riti ng f ic tion the n : I h ad sp ent to o long i n u n ive rsit y hon i ng critici sm. Wors e, wh at I wanted to w rite wa s an h i storical novel , a gen re th at e ve r yone said wa s dead . Or if not dead , it wa s at the n ad i r of f a sh ion . Pe rh aps the re wa s a s o c ie t y to j oi n , I thought ? I d i s cove red th at there wa s not .

The correc t deci sion , g ive n my d ream , wou ld h ave b ee n to kee p worki ng at my w riti ng. In stead I st arted s ome th i ng w ith the g rand title of the Hi s torical Novel S o cie t y – b ecau s e I wanted it to b e ab out novel s , pri mari ly, not f i l m s or TV or short storie s . It i s a strange th i ng, st arti ng a l iterar y s o cie t y : not s ome th i ng I wou ld recom mend . You can i ma g i ne the le tte rs th at e n sued . “ You h aven’t heard of me, I h ave no backe rs , the re are no memb ers and ye s , I l ive i n De von – but … “ Wou ld you featu re me, plea s e, Daily Te le g rap h? Wi l l you s e nd me s ome f ree g iveaway b o oks , plea s e, Pe ng u i n , Harp er Coll i n s , L ittle Brow n , Head l i ne ? Wou ld you s end me £ 8 and j oi n th i s non - ex i ste nt th i ng, plea s e, Melv yn Bra g g, Joan n a Trol lop e, B e rn ard Cornwel l , Wi lbu r Sm ith?

The y al l d id , of cou rs e, a s it tu rned out .

I hop e you w i l l forg ive me th i s nost alg i a . It wa s the most e normou s leap i n the d ark for me. Wh at h app e n s whe n you b e g i n s ome th i ng i s th at most p eople ig nore you , one or t wo are cruel , and a gene rou s fe w b ecome fel low travel le rs . There are to o many to l i st he re ( h i nt , s ome are on the pa ge op p osite) , but I want to say th an k you e sp ec i al ly to thos e fel low travel le rs .

And I sti l l d ream of w riti ng th at novel .

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RICHARD LEE subverted a promising academic career by choosing to write a thesis about John Buchan when given a research bursary at Merton College, Oxford. Since then, he has spent many years as a bookseller, founded the HNS, and has established a successful property business near his home in Devon.

HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Columns | 1

H I STO R I C AL FICTION MAR K ET NE W S

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ould you like your latest publishing deal to appear here? Email me at sljohnson2@eiu.edu.

New publishing deals Sources include author and publisher submissions, Publishers Marketplace, Publishers Weekly, The Bookseller, and more.

Randi Samuelson-Brown’s debut novel, The Beaten Territory, sold (unagented) to Tiffany Schofield at Five Star for expected publication in fall 2017. The Beaten Territory finds Annie Ryan running a second-rate brothel in 1890s Denver with an eye toward expansion. By chance she encounters a society woman suffering from a laudanum habit and a bad marriage, who also owns a prized property on the infamous Market Street.

Ken Czech’s debut Beyond the River of Shame, in which Victorian-era explorer Sam Baker frees Florie, a young slave girl, only to have her follow him on a dangerous journey to discover the mysterious source of the Nile River, sold to Deb Harris at All Things That Matter Press.

East Tennessee native Janet Beard’s The Meter Girl, the story of a girl on the brink of womanhood in 1942 who joins the numerous outsiders pouring into the overnight city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take the mysterious wartime jobs at the Clinton Engineering Works, part of the Manhattan Project, sold to Lucia Macro at William Morrow by Rayhane Sanders at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin.

Judithe Little’s debut, Wickwhythe Hall, which goes behind the blackout curtains of a British country house in 1940 where the American wife of a wealthy Brit, a French refugee desperate to find her brothers, and a mysterious champagne vendor all turn up the weekend Winston Churchill comes to visit and collide with England’s desperate struggle to survive, sold to Lauri Wellington at Black Opal Books, for publication in 2017,

by Kimberley Cameron at Kimberley Cameron & Associates.

Sawbones author Melissa Lenhardt’s new book about a gang of female outlaws, pitched as Thelma and Louise meets The Magnificent Seven, sold to Lindsey Hall at Redhook, for publication in 2018, by Alice Speilburg at Speilburg Literary Agency.

Winner of the Planeta Prize Marcos Aguinis’s Against the Inquisition, the harrowing, inspiring true story of Francisco Maldonado da Silva, a respected, erudite physician in 17thcentury South America who was persecuted by the Inquisition, defending to the death the right of freedom of conscience, sold to Gabriella Page-Fort at Amazon Crossing, in a two-book deal, for publication in Fall 2017, by Diane Stockwell at Globo Libros Literary Management.

HNR reviewer Linda Harris Sittig’s Last Curtain Call (Book Two of Threads of Courage), following the Canavan family into the violent 1894 coal mining strike of western Maryland, where 2 | Columns |

HNR Issue 78, November 2016

a young woman fights a ruthless coal company preying on the most vulnerable women in the village, sold to Eric Egger of Freedom Forge Press.

Bestselling author of Moloka’i Alan Brennert’s Daughter of Moloka’i, about a woman, sent away as an infant from the leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka’i and living through a shocking episode in American history, before finally learning the mystery of her parentage is like nothing she ever imagined, sold to Hope Dellon at St. Martin’s, for publication in Winter 2019, by Molly Friedrich at Friedrich Agency.

Anna Lee Huber’s next 19th-c Lady Darby mystery, Shadows on the Moor, in which the sleuth and her investigative partner and husband travel to Dartmoor in response to his ailing grandfather’s urgent summons to look into the disappearance of a family member and heir to the grandfather’s fortune, sold to Michelle Vega at Berkley. In addition, the author’s An Endless Echo, first in a new historical mystery series, in which a widow of the Great War joins a former Secret Service agent to investigate allegations that her late husband committed treason, sold to Wendy McCurdy at Kensington, in a three-book deal. Both deals were arranged via Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

The Girls of Ennismore by Patricia Falvey, set in 1900-1918 Ireland, in which the unlikely friendship of two girls from different backgrounds eventually triumphs over the barriers of class distinction and prejudice, sold to John Scognamiglio at Kensington and Louise Cullen at Corvus in UK for publication in March 2017, by Denise Marcil and Anne Marie O’Farrell of Marcil-O’Farrell Literary.

Orange Prize winner (for The Song of Achilles) Madeline Miller’s Circe, a reimagining of the life and unexpected love story of The Odyssey’s sorceress in ancient Greece, sold to Lee Boudreaux at Lee Boudreaux Books, for publication in 2018, by Julie Barer at The Book Group.

Elizabeth Wein’s The Pearl Thief, a prequel to Code Name Verity, set in 1938 and featuring a girl solving a mystery on her grandmother’s estate in Scotland, sold to Emily Meehan and Julie Rosenberg at Disney-Hyperion, to Amy Black at Doubleday Canada, and to Ellen Holgate at Bloomsbury UK, for publication in May 2017, by Ginger Clark at Curtis Brown.

The Forgotten Room authors Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White’s multi-period novel set against the backdrop of the final voyage of the Lusitania, sold to Rachel Kahan at William Morrow, for publication in Summer 2018, by Alexandra Machinist at ICM for Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig, and Amy Berkower at Writers House for Karen White.

Jennifer Robson’s next book set in post-WWII London, telling the story of the women involved with the joyful preparations for Princess Elizabeth’s 1947 wedding, sold to Amanda Bergeron at William Morrow, in a two-book deal, by Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

Giles Kristian’s epic adventure novel set in post-Roman Britain, Lancelot: The Betrayal, a new retelling of the celebrated Arthurian knight, along with a second novel, sold to Transworld’s Simon Taylor (UK & Commonwealth rights) via Bill Hamilton

Dutch author Simone Van der Vlugt’s Midnight Blue, set in the 17th century, about a young widow who leaves behind her home village to seek a new life as a housekeeper in Amsterdam and trains to paint the famous and highly prized pottery, to Lynne Drew at Harper Fiction, for publication in Spring 2017,

by Laura Susijn at The Susijn Agency.

Imogen Hermes Gowar’s The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, in which two unlikely people come together in extraordinary circumstances, prompted by the arrival of a mermaid to 18th-c London, sold to Liz Foley at Harvill Secker for publication in February 2018, by Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown UK. New transatlantic editions: Jane Thynne’s The Winter Garden, part of her Clara Vine series set in pre-war Berlin, has been retitled Woman in the Shadows for the US market (Ballantine, Sept ´16). In the Editors’ Choice review (HNR 71), Claire Cowling called it “a gripping and fast-paced historical spy thriller, yet it also manages to incorporate the most tender and revealing of moments, and a dangerous love story that I hope runs the course of the trilogy.”

New and forthcoming titles: Vol.1 of In Jane Austen’s Time: Crime and Justice by Ken Methold (Regency Matters, Oct.) is the first in a series of short background books intended for readers of Regency fiction who would like access to readable non-fiction about the period. Vol. 2 , The Performing Arts, is due early 2017.

To her family Catherine is lost in time, lost to her friends and lost to the 21st century. To herself she is a Tudor woman with a new husband, a business to run and no memory of who she really is. Liah S. Thorley’s dual-narrative time-travel romance, Hidden Doorways, was published in September.

Cindy Thomson’s Pages of Ireland, a sequel to Brigid of Ireland (reviewed in HNR 39), was published in July. Set in 6thcentury Ireland, it features Aine, a young woman unwillingly pledged to marry who believes a book has the power to change her circumstances; when she steals it from her betrothed’s clan to help her mother’s impoverished people, events tumble out of control.

Avraham Azrieli’s Deborah Rising, published by HarperLegend, HarperCollins’ new digital imprint, in September, tells the dramatic story of a young woman in ancient Israel, who defies authority, escapes a forced marriage, and goes on a quest to win back her murdered father’s land and fulfill her dream of becoming a prophet and liberating her people from oppression.

For more forthcoming titles, see: https://historicalnovelsociety. org/guides/forthcoming-historical-novels/

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at A.M. Heath.

Dawn Patitucci’s The Queen’s Prophet, inspired by Diego Velazquez’s baroque masterpiece, “Las Meninas,” an imagined account of the dwarfess Maribarbola of Spain, sold to Stephanie Beard at Turner Publishing by Mark Gottlieb at Trident Media Group.

The Jewel of Medina and Four Sisters, All Queens author Sherry Jones’s Savage Dance: The Life of Josephine Baker, about the famous performer, spy, and civil-rights activist, sold to Kate Dresser at Gallery, for publication in Fall 2017, by Natasha Kern at Natasha Kern Literary Agency.

Susanna Kearsley, C.S. Harris, Anna Lee Huber, and Christine Trent’s historical mystery anthology The Jacobite’s Watch, spanning two centuries from the mid-1700s until World War II, in which an infamous pocket watch crosses the lives of four unlikely inheritors who seek to contain its mysterious force, sold to Deb Werksman at Sourcebooks, by Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency, on behalf of Shawna McCarthy at The McCarthy Agency for Kearsley and Helen Breitwieser at Cornerstone Literary for Harris and Trent.

Jennifer Kincheloe’s The Secret Death of Elizabeth Bonsour, in which a police matron has to solve the murder of Elizabeth Bonsor after finding her body squashed into a truck in Los Angeles’ Chinatown in 1908, sold to Dan Mayer at Seventh Street, in a two-book deal, for publication in Fall 2017, by Josephine Hayes at The Blair Partnership.

Pineapple Press has acquired Robert N. Macomber’s 13th installment in his Honor Series titled An Honorable War, with a release date set for February 15, 2017. “Remember The Maine!” is a clue to the opening scenes in this action-packed thriller, first of a trilogy set during the Spanish-American War in the Caribbean, when America changes forever into a global power.

Rosalind Brackenbury’s The Lost Love Letters of Henri Fournier, about the passion of the novelist Fournier and his lover, just before the outbreak of World War I, and the effect this story has on his biographer, sold to Miriam Juskowicz at Lake Union Publishing, for publication in 2017, by Kimberley Cameron at Kimberley Cameron & Associates.

The late Michael Crichton’s Dragon Teeth, about the rivalry between real-life paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh in the American West of 1878, the manuscript for which was found in the Michael Crichton Archives by his widow, Sherri, sold to Jonathan Burnham and Jennifer Barth at Harper, for publication in May 2017, by Sherri Crichton’s CrichtonSun via Sloan Harris and Jennifer Joel at ICM, and Michael S. Sherman of Reed Smith.

Paula McLain’s Lovers and Exiles, based on Martha Gellhorn, the war correspondent who was also Ernest Hemingway’s third wife, sold to Susanna Porter at Ballantine, for publication in 2017, by Julie Barer at The Book Group.

Windigo Moon by Robert Downes, set more than 400 years ago among the Ojibwe Indians of the Upper Great Lakes and centering on a 25-year blood feud between two rival warriors over the love of a woman, to Donna Essner at Blank Slate Press, for publication in 2017, by Evan Marshall at the Evan Marshall Agency.

SARAH JOHNSON, Book Review Editor of HNR, is a librarian, readers’ advisor, and author of reference books. She reviews for Booklist and CHOICE and blogs about historical novels at readingthepast.com. Her latest book is Historical Fiction II: A Guide to the Genre.

HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Columns | 3

NEW VOICES Dark secrets, deadly deeds and beauty are tightly interlaced in the novels of debut novelists Kate Howard, Ellen Prentiss Campbell, Anna Mazzola and Alix Rickloff.

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llen Prentiss Campbell, author of The Bowl with Gold Seams (Apprentice House Press, 2016) believes that: “Historical fiction is an alchemist’s mixture of fact and imagination, a past event, a person, a time, a place, attracts the author to become researcher, archaeologist, anthropologist — a time-travelling storyteller.” These ideas are key in her novel, which, she explains, “is set at the renowned resort, Bedford Springs, during the summer of 1945 when the secluded hotel in rural Pennsylvania served as detainment camp for the Japanese ambassador to Germany, his staff and their families.”

Campbell, who has spent her holidays near this hotel for more than fifty years, says, “The detainment is little spoken of; I learned of it during the uneasy months following 9/11. I had not suffered a personal loss when the Twin Towers went down, but soon afterward my parents died, my twin towers. Aware that death silences voices and stories, I began writing stories of my own, after years listening to others’ as a psychotherapist.”

Having retreated to her Pennsylvania farm to work, Campbell used her breaks, she says, “to read my father’s wartime letters to my mother — one-sided correspondence; she saved his every letter and v-mail, while hers were lost. I walked the grounds of Bedford Springs. The shuttered buildings — closed since 1985 — intrigued me; I visited the local historical society and learned of the hotel’s surprising role as prison in 1945. Fascinated, I continued researching at the National Archives.”

It was at this point that Campbell began to write. She notes, “A voice demanded to tell the story: imagining local newlywed Hazel Shaw, working at the hotel while waiting for news of her husband, missing in the Pacific Theater. Hazel’s wartime experience shatters her life. War ends; the Japanese are deported.

One of them leaves something for Hazel: a bowl — kintsugi, broken porcelain intentionally mended with golden glue; damage made beautiful. This bowl with gold seams becomes emblematic for Hazel of her task: to mend her life, to make her own Bowl with Gold Seams.”

In a strange twist of fate, Campbell explains, “Over the years I wrote this story, my grief mended, and — miraculously — the Bedford Springs Hotel was restored. Life is at least as strange as fiction; historical fiction blends both.”

Kate Howard’s The Ornatrix (Gerald Duckworth UK / 4 | Columns |

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Overlook US, 2016) is set in Renaissance Italy, but as with Campbell’s novel, Howard also investigates the nature of “flawed beauty.” There is a passage in the novel, Howard says, “where the central character Flavia, a Renaissance beautician, questions the merits of applying successive layers of thick white lead paint to the skin of her clients (at least one of whom has never entirely washed off her cosmetics).” Finally, Howard notes, “Flavia has to conclude that ‘a plasterer who covered rotten walls without scraping the mould off first would not keep his job long.’ This is a fair analogy, since many of the cosmetics in Renaissance Italy relied on the same base ingredients and recipes as the paints used in frescoes — the vibrant wall paintings that still adorn so many churches and houses across the country — and there is something not just of the make-up artist, but also the building contractor in the roles Flavia has to perform for her wealthy clients. Whether as a plasterer of rotten skin or a scaffolder of towering hair, she must make something both structural and beautiful from frequently unsound materials.”

Howard continues, “Much has been made in the last few weeks about Italian building techniques in the light of the most recent devastating earthquake to hit the central region of that country. It’s an area I know well, and where I worked restoring an old house that had once been a Roman lookout nesting high above the Via Flaminia — one of the main routes up the spine of Italy. The house was a collage of time: a collection of Roman and medieval up to its most recent restoration by the previous owners. Not one of its many occupants had scraped it back to its origins. They had merely added layer upon layer of plaster and cement and tile, shoring up the threatened rock fall and patching over the cracks.”

At the time, Howard notes, her partner “found all this quite infuriating. He dug out the ancient crumbly cement and repointed walls, built extensions that didn’t quite match the existing building … My methodology was more like Flavia’s — and the generations of indifferent builders who had gone before.

I chipped off what was obviously bad then mixed a big bucket of something thick enough to scrape an approximation of flatness back over the surface. It wasn’t very pretty but it felt like the house knew what I was doing and didn’t altogether disapprove.”

It was the “mixing and spreading plaster” Howard says, “that helped me into the role of writing about my very own ‘Ornatrix,’ Flavia: both of us givers of a flawed kind of beauty to beings who had suffered many years of imperfect attentions, but who nonetheless still stood tall.”

Even though Howard no longer owns “the ancient cobbledtogether house,” she says she’s “painfully aware that it has survived the latest in a string of seismic disasters that have felled much newer buildings. And so it is in The Ornatrix…that the

photo credit: Lou Abercrombie

older, the rotten and re-plastered women, often seem to endure life with greater resilience than their younger counterparts.”

Alix Rickloff ’s Secrets of Nanreath Hall (William Morrow, 2016), unlike Howard’s novel, involves a different kind of “plastering” — the lies that are told in the name of love.

Rickloff ’s says her novel began as “a collision of circumstance and inspiration and ended as a book of the heart.” She found herself between publishing contracts, and then during a phone call with her agent, Rickloff was asked a fateful question: what do you really want to write about?

Rickloff explains, “I’d been interested in the 1940s ever since I watched Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver back in college.

I started reading military histories, social memoirs, collected letters, journalistic accounts, and novels set during the era. But for twenty plus years and nine plus books, it remained a side interest.”

She adds, “Now, I was being asked if I wanted to set a book during this tumultuous time period. It was a dream come true and, better yet, I already had the seeds of an idea. You see, I’d been watching a certain popular BBC series set on a fictional British country estate and, while the adults’ melodramas kept me glued to my set, it was the seldom-seen children on the show who sparked my writer curiosity.”

“The fatherless heir to an earldom” and “the daughter of a scandalous elopement,” says Rickloff, “screamed out for stories of their own. I began to wonder who these characters were, how their lives might have been shaped by their contrasting upbringings, and how WWII would have affected them as young adults…By the time I typed ‘The End,’ it grew to encompass two wars, two women, the struggles we endure to find our place in

the world, and the lies we tell in the name of love.”

The Unseeing (Headline UK, 2016 / Sourcebooks Landmark US, 2017) by Anna Mazzola was inspired by a murder, which she first came across while reading The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.

She says, “the crime is mentioned only briefly, but grabbed my attention because it took place in Camberwell, not far from where I live. It was known as the ‘Edgeware Road Murder’ as the first body part was found beneath a paving slab off the Edgware Road in December 1836. A grisly treasure hunt led officers of the Metropolitan Police to James Greenacre, a cabinet-maker.”

However, Mazzola continues, “when the police arrived to arrest Greenacre, they found a woman sitting up in his bed: Sarah Gale. They noticed that she was trying to hide some jewelry … so she too was arrested and taken to the cells with her young son. Amid great public excitement, the case proceeded to trial.

Greenacre was found guilty of the murder of Hannah Brown, Gale of aiding and abetting him. During the trial, Sarah Gale gave only a short statement, read by her barrister, saying that she knew nothing of the crime. That was what really interested me when I first read into the case: why, when faced with the death sentence and accused of helping to conceal the most heinous crime, did Sarah Gale fail to fully defend herself?”

Mazzola explains, “The Unseeing begins with the appointment of the lawyer who will investigate Sarah’s petition for mercy, Edmund Fleetwood. Over the course of the novel, Edmund – and the reader – must determine whether Sarah is telling the truth when she says that she knew nothing of the murder. That reflects the process I myself went through when investigating the scant evidence that still exists: could she really have been blind to what had happened, or did she know and keep quiet?”

The quest to investigate history, interweave it with speculation and create seamless historical fiction, is an admirable aspiration, and one pursued by Howard, Campbell, Mazzola and Rickloff in their debut novels.

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MYFANWY COOK admires the ingenuity of debut novelists and their ability to share new stories to entertain readers of historical fiction. Please email (myfanwyc@btinternet.com) or tweet (twitter.com/MyfanwyCook) about debut novelists you recommend.

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Left to right: Kate Howard, Ellen Prentiss Campbell, Alix Rickloff & Anna Mazzola

HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Columns | 5

THE RED PENCIL Cindy Vallar analyzes the work behind published manuscripts. In this issue, she profiles Cheryl Honigford’s The Darkness Knows (Sourcebooks, 2016).

Tension engages the reader. It stirs our emotions and makes us care about what happens to the story’s characters. Romantic tension involves the interactions between two main characters.

The spark igniting it riles or bonds them in some way. While they may not recognize that this initial encounter promises to draw them together throughout the story, we see it and connect with it. Our curiosity is aroused and we wonder: Will they or won’t they? Discovering the answer to that question is what compels us to read the book from cover to cover.

In The Darkness Knows by Cheryl Honigford, Vivian Witchell is a young, upcoming star at a Chicago radio station.

Late one night in October 1938, she stumbles over a dead body. When a letter threatens the character Vivian plays, the station manager hires Charlie Haverman, a private detective, to protect her. As the investigation unfolds, the attraction between Vivian and Charlie grows even though they live in two different worlds. As Cheryl explains, “The romance is the backbone of everything and the only reason two such disparate people in both class and character would ever be in each other’s company for more than a few moments. That attraction binds them together and it gives a depth to their relationship that they wouldn’t have if they were somehow platonic partners solving murders.”

Romantic tension requires two types of conflict: internal and external. The former involves emotion, while the latter emerges from the circumstances in which the two characters find themselves. Raising the stakes in a scene heightens the characters’ feelings, and, in doing so, the reader focuses on what happens next, rather than how the scene is written. The author’s goal is not to pour gasoline on the fire and strike a match to it; the flames would consume the fuel too quickly and once the fire’s out, why should we stick around? Instead, the writer creates situations where the characters attempt to act on their desires, only to have another character or situation prevent the consummation.

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murder victim’s apartment and Vivian insists on coming along.

He doesn’t want her there, but she’s not about to wait around for the killer to get her. Besides, she’s intrigued because they shared a kiss earlier in the story, but then Charlie tells her it was a mistake. She knows he’s fighting his attraction for her, which begs the author to create a scene to force him to act. Since this isn’t the end of the story, Cheryl also needs to insert a barrier to prevent them from completely fulfilling their desire. What better way to do this than to have them sneaking around the murder victim’s apartment only to be interrupted by another intruder, which forces them to hide somewhere in the bedroom?

Without answering he disappeared into the darkness of the bedroom closet and pulled Viv in behind him. He pulled the door almost completely shut, leaving only a crack of gray light. . . . The closet was tiny, the air stifling. Viv found herself pressed against Charlie, his holster pressing uncomfortably into her forearm. She tried to shift her stance, but it only served to bring them into even closer quarters. . . .

Viv heard a key scratch the lock of the front door and she felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

Someone was coming in. She was unable to breathe against the fabric of Charlie’s lapel. She sucked in a breath along with the cloying odor of mothballs.

She moved her face to the side and stifled a cough against the back of her hand.

While being confined in close quarters provides an ideal opportunity, the draft fails to heighten the tension. Cheryl explains: “The first version was too light and Vivian’s reaction wasn’t really appropriate to the situation she and Charlie were in. Vivian should be afraid of getting caught by a possible murderer rather than feeling mild annoyance at smelling mothballs.” To correct this, she revised the scene and employed a more ominous sound than “scratching.”

Without answering, he disappeared into the darkness of the bedroom closet and pulled Vivian in behind him. He pulled the door almost completely shut, leaving only a crack of gray light.

“Someone’s coming, but Trask said there wouldn’t be police here for an hour,” he said, his

voice low. . . . The closet was tiny, the air stifling. Vivian found herself pressed against Charlie, his holster pressing uncomfortably into her arm. She tried to shift her stance, but that only brought them closer together. . . .

Then Vivian heard the click-thump of the front door unlocking and felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Someone was coming. The front door swung open with an ominous creak.

Vivian sucked in her breath and held it. She heard nothing for a long moment except the pounding of blood in her ears, then the floor creaking under shuffling footsteps. Someone lingered just inside the front door. Her mind flitted over what Charlie had just said. The police weren’t due for an hour.

So if they weren’t in the front room, who was?

Eventually, they learn the answer to this question, but it doesn’t solve their problem. They are still in the apartment illegally and the other intruders have settled in to listen to a football game, trapping them in the closet.

Charlie finally removed his hand from Viv’s mouth, and she breathed in deeply . . . Her hands still rested on Charlie’s broad chest, but neither one of them made an effort to move . . . There wasn’t an inch of her body that wasn’t touching his. She blushed at the thought and the feel of his thigh against her hip. A fur coat tickled the back of her neck and she resisted the urge to brush it away. She didn’t want to move her hands from his chest, so solid and comforting under her fingers. She saw the corner of Charlie’s mouth twitch slightly as he looked down on her. Nervous energy or something more? Vivian bit her lip and raised her eyes in a question. What were they to do now? . . . . Charlie’s eyes drifted slowly down to her mouth, paused, then drifted just as slowly back up. A not unpleasant tingle made its way up Vivian’s spine. Not dropping her gaze, he leaned down . . . as if he were about to say something terribly important. Instead he licked his lips, slowly and methodically. She could feel Charlie’s warm breath on her face. Butterflies stirred in Viv’s stomach, and not just for fear of being found out.

He was going to kiss her . . . and she wasn’t going to stop him.

He continued to lean forward and she raised her chin automatically toward him. When his lips

were just inches from her own he tilted his head suddenly to the right. His lips brushed her ear, and he whispered so quietly she almost couldn’t make out the words, “We have to go.”

There is romantic tension in the draft, but it occurs too quickly. “I wanted to show that Charlie’s still irritated with her and their situation, and he’s a little harder to win over.” It’s also Vivian’s chance to have Charlie admit he wants to kiss her again. “I wanted the reader to be thinking ‘kiss already!’”

Charlie gave Vivian a warning look and took his hand away from her face. She hitched in a great gulp of air, immediately regretting it as she gagged on the thick scent of mothballs. Her hands still rested on Charlie’s broad chest, but she didn’t move away. There was nowhere to go inside the tiny closet. Besides, his solid nearness was comforting. . . . Her eyes traveled down to stop almost involuntarily on his lips. That kiss – she’d been thinking about it all day . . . how easy it would be to pop up on her toes right now and repeat it. She was acutely aware that there wasn’t an inch of her body not in contact with his.

She shifted uncomfortably . . . He looked down on her with a frown of disapproval, and she scowled back. A fur coat tickled the back of her neck, and she brushed it away with an irritated flick of her hand.

Vivian raised her eyebrows at Charlie in a question: So what now? . . .

He raised one eyebrow in response, his shoulders rising in a halfhearted shrug. She clenched her fists against his chest in frustration. Charlie’s eyes narrowed. He glanced down at her hands, and then his eyes slid slowly back up, pausing at her mouth before locking with hers again. One corner of his mouth quirked up as his hand brushed down her side, his palm coming to rest on her hip.

It was a subtle move, but its effect was immediate . . . She melted into him and lowered her forehead to his chest. She hitched in a breath, taking in the smell of him – a hint of spearmint chewing gum under the musky citrus of his aftershave. She slipped her hands higher over the woolen lapels of his jacket, her head still bowed. Then she brushed the tip of one index finger lightly against the side of his neck. He started slightly at her touch, as if it had surprised him, and then she felt his other HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Columns | 7

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Charlie’s back hit the wall of the closet with a thump. He dropped Vivian to the floor, and she had to grasp a handful of mink coat to stay upright. Charlie held one finger to his lips and cocked his head to listen. Vivian held her breath, heart pounding. . . .

Charlie blinked and shook his head as if to clear it. He leaned down again, grim-faced and businesslike this time, positioning his lips next to her ear. He whispered so quietly that she almost couldn’t make out the words: “We have to get out of here.”

Cheryl succeeds in the final version of this scene because she focused on the characters’ emotions. She also accomplishes her goal of making us “feel like shouting, ‘Kiss already!’” before allowing us to get want we want.

The Darkness Knows – a play on “The Shadow’s” famous opening, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows” – is the first in the Viv and Charlie Mystery series. Book two will be released next year, and Cheryl has “so many ideas of the trouble those two can get into!” For readers who would like to learn more about Cheryl, her books, and old time radio, she invites you to visit her at: http://cherylhonigford.com/ https://www.facebook.com/CherylHonigfordAuthor https://twitter.com/CherylHonigford

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hand glide around her waist to rest at the small of her back.

Vivian didn’t move, didn’t breathe. She was almost glad for this ridiculous predicament, because it meant she couldn’t talk. And if she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t say anything to ruin the moment. His warm breath ruffled the hair at the top of her head, and she shivered – all of her nerves on fire. His hands moved lower to cup her bottom, pressing her into him. She lifted her head at the urgency in his touch to find Charlie’s face, his mouth, was inches from hers.

She slid both hands up to clasp together at the base of his neck and held his gaze, stroking his neck with her thumbs until his mouth twitched into a smile. There was a clank from the hall, and Charlie’s head jerked toward the sound. He tensed, automatically alert. His grasp tightened, his fingertips digging into Vivian’s flesh. They stood silently, not breathing for a long moment, listening for any sign that they were about to be discovered.

Vivian waited for the closet door to be flung open behind her . . . But there was nothing . . .

She smiled and used her fingertips to gently nudge Charlie’s chin back in her direction. She raised her eyebrows again in a silent question: Well?

Charlie’s half-closed eyes flicked down to her mouth again, the smirk returning to his lips. He leaned down until his forehead touched hers and rested it there a moment. Then he inched forward and nudged her nose with his. Vivian lifted her chin and nuzzled into him, the sandpaper of his cheek stinging her lips. She stood on tiptoe to reach the soft spot where his neck met his ear and breathed him in again. Now she smelled the soapy clean scent of the pomade in his hair. Her lips wandered and found his earlobe. Impulsively, she pulled it quickly into her mouth and released it. He sucked in his breath sharply in a mixture of surprise and pleasure. She dragged her lips back down his cheek and then finally, decisively, caught his mouth with hers.

They fumbled silently in the darkness of the closet, mouths hungrily searching, hands roaming.

Then Charlie lifted her up, and Vivian squeaked in surprise as her feet lost contact with the floor.

She leaned too hard against him, making both of them lose their balance. They stumbled, and

A freelance editor and historical novelist, CINDY VALLAR also presents writers’ workshops and writes nonfiction articles about maritime piracy and historical fiction. Her historical fantasy “Rumble the Dragon” appears in Dark Oak Press’ anthology A Tall Ship, a Star, and Plunder. You can visit her at www.cindyvallar.com.

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the transgressive power of needlework

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Needling W omen

O ne of the epigraphs to my novel, The Needle in the Blood

own notions of what constitutes masculinity and femininity.

(Snowbooks UK, 2007 / Sourcebooks Landmark US, 2012), The true history of the Opus Anglicanum, the early medieval which was inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, reads: ‘Has the pen golden age of embroidery, was obscured, leaving us with the or pencil dipped so deep in the blood of the human race as the persistent image of woman as both image and creator. The world needle?’ Olive Schreiner’s answer to her rhetorical question is of Ivanhoe is full of ladies at their needlework, producing images an unequivocal ‘no’.1 Writing has been confined, for most of of other ladies, flower gardens, myths and biblical scenes for our history in the west, to women from very narrow sectors altar cloths. This vision ignores the fact that, in the early Middle of society – principally the religious and those enlightened Ages, when the Opus Anglicanum was the haute couture of elements of the aristocracy which believed in educating their embroidery, women worked in, and even ran, professional daughters. Although women writers ateliers. Women’s needlework was were rare, women as storytellers were not just a domestic craft, but high not. Old wives told tales designed art with an international reputation, to guide young women through the and women played a full part in thorny knots of courtship, marriage, spinning the yarns of the great child-rearing and how not to alienate narrative embroideries of which your mother-in-law. Mothers spun the Bayeux Tapestry, although cautionary tales for the children at incomplete, is the finest and most their knee, just as they spun their comprehensive surviving example. yarn. In his play, The Old Wives’ It was a woman who inspired Tale, written around 1590, George me to write my novel – not the Peele says, ‘A woman without a mysterious Aelfgyva, who stitched tongue/Is as a souldier without his her way into my story later, but weapon.’ In English, we speak of the anonymous woman fleeing a spinning yarns and weaving plots. burning house, dragging a child by Because storytelling is perceived as a the hand. I heard Simon Schama female occupation (as Liz Lochhead assert that this image was the first in A tattoo artist at work has it, ‘Women waffle and witter/ western art to show what war does Men talk.’), because it takes place when women are gathered to civilians and, with ‘reconstruction’ in Iraq in full swing in the together as they are when doing their needlework (one thing early years of this century, similar images were on the TV news Schreiner, in a letter of 1898 to Mary Sauer, says she could still most nights. His words, and the image which inspired them, do while pregnant and ‘mentally so lazy’), the two activities have brought the Tapestry to life for me. become intimately associated in our narrative and linguistic Very little is known about the origins of the great embroidery consciousness. we call the Bayeux Tapestry, which makes it, of course, an even Embroidery, and needlework of all kinds, has been perceived more attractive proposition for the novelist. We do not know for many centuries of western history as feminine, and largely a who commissioned it or for what purpose, nor who made it, domestic activity. There is an implication here that needlework although it was almost certainly made in England rather than is undervalued, not high art, but practical craft. In the Middle Normandy. From the 1720s, when it was re-discovered by Ages, as now, however, the picture is more complicated, and the Bernard de Montfaucon, until the 1950s, when the art historian complication arises – as so often – from the cultural vortex of Francis Wormald proposed a monastic atelier, it was assumed the Victorian era into which the medieval art of embroidery has the work had been made by William’s queen, Matilda, and been sucked. The first histories of the craft of embroidery were her ladies, or by Harold’s sister, Edith, the Confessor’s widow. written by the Victorians, who imposed upon the narrative their While both theories are now thought to be unlikely, the personal

by Sarah Bower

W omen’s... stories are subversive. They are all about cheating husbands, dodging dictatorial fathers, stealing the march on wicked stepmothers.

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Tapestry. You can find its images reproduced on mouse mats, ties, tea towels and cushion covers. I once possessed a makeup case featuring Harold with the arrow in his eye and still own a mug on which Odo is displayed presiding over the feast at Pevensey. More interesting is the way its threads connect to more contemporary works. Narrative embroideries have been made to record the evacuation of Dunkirk (by John Craske) and the D-Day landings (the Overlord Embroidery, designed

by Sandra Lawrence and made by a team of women embroiders from the Royal School of Needlework).

Most significant to my mind, however, is what some critics have described as the ‘appropriation’2 of embroidery by Tracey Emin. The sense that she has appropriated these ‘domestic’ forms arises from her status as a serious artist. Her needlework – which is made not just by her but by an atelier, exactly as the Bayeux Tapestry was – is exhibited in art galleries, not so much because it is perceived as high art, but because its creator falls within the Young British Artists movement. Never mind the provocative beauty of her work or its unflinching story-telling, its status remains troubling, transgressive and much argued about. Well, good. If needlework becomes absorbed into the artistic establishment, it will be in danger of losing the power it derives from the margins.

Needlework itself has its margins. In 2014, a survey concluded that there were now more tattooed women in America than men. One of the most sought-after tattoo artists at work today, Kat Von D, is female. The designs for the Overlord Embroidery were applied to the virgin linen using pouncework, a system of inking and hole-punching which is exactly the same as tattooing.

Tattoo art is needlework, and it is also vividly narrative. To have the name of your child or your lover tattooed on your body tells a story. To be prepared to go through the hours of pain and discomfort needed to transform your back into an artwork or sheath your arm in a sleeve tells a story. This is a triumphant appropriation, in which the pricked finger moves centre stage and the needleworker becomes her art. She is no longer making art in the service of the domestic, but in the service of her own body, for her own pleasure. For the tattooist and her ‘canvas,’ the needle is truly and literally in the blood.

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Notes: 1. Schreiner, Olive (1982). From Man to Man, or, Perhaps Only.

London: Virago, p323.

2. Hemmings, Jessica (2002). http://www.jessicahemmings. com/tracey-emin-stitching-extreme/

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engagement of both women – their amateur rather than professional status, if you like – illustrates the chameleon power of narrative embroidery. For one queen, it is a celebration of her husband’s triumph, for the other a memorial to her dead brother.

Because of the frequency with which he is portrayed in the Tapestry and the flattering nature of these portraits, Odo of Bayeux, William the Conqueror’s uterine brother, is now widely supposed the most likely patron of the work and, once I began reading what little biographical material there then was about Odo, I was captivated. A man of such violent contradictions seemed tailor-made for the kind of psychological examination which is the novelist’s privilege and which the Tapestry, in its margins, also attempts. As for the conditions under which the work was done, however, I took greater liberties. Power, we know, is all about sex. Gender politics is specific but all politics is sexual. So, while the smart money is on the Tapestry having been made in the atelier of Saint Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, by male monastic embroiderers (more talk than waffle), I decided to give the worldly and attractive Bishop Odo a workshop full of women, headed up by a lesbian nun, and see what would happen. Quite a lot did.

Women’s stories are subversive. They are all about cheating husbands, dodging dictatorial fathers, stealing the march on wicked stepmothers. They are full of deceit and trickery, sharp wit and rumbustious bawdiness. And it is these aspects of the Bayeux Tapestry – what Andrew Bridgeford has called its ‘hidden history’ – that makes it most enticing to this 21stcentury woman storyteller. Even today, women remain liminal to history. When Christine Lagarde became Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund in 2011, the press was more interested in her synchronised swimming than her professional credentials. Margaret Thatcher is defined by her handbags and Theresa May by her shoes. There is still a sense of patronising establishment amazement whenever a woman takes a top job in industry or the City.

The margins are where the Bayeux Tapestry becomes interesting. Its main narrative is one of male power, conventionally exercised through military and diplomatic means. In places, it is literally a parade of big swinging dicks. In the top and bottom margins of the work, however, very different stories unwind.

Here there are hymns to the life lost in the trauma of war, the ploughing and sowing and harvesting. Various representations of Aesop’s ‘Fable of the Fox and the Crow’ tell a cautionary tale that runs counter to the narrative of conquest, expressing a mischievous resistance to the new regime. There are bodies broken in battle, but also priapic lovers whose jolly lewdness testifies to the indomitability of life. Even though the Tapestry is undoubtedly a narrative of conquest, it is so much more. It is a rebellious and transgressive work that defiantly thumbs its nose (and other parts of its anatomy) at the establishment. It’s clever, rude and funny, teeming with life even while it treats of death. This is no work of domestic piety, but the most powerful account we have of a seminal moment in our history.

Today, a massive heritage industry surrounds the Bayeux

SARAH BOWER is the author of The Needle in the Blood (Susan Hill Award, 2007) and Sins of the House of Borgia (Toronto Globe and Mail bestseller). Her latest novel, Love Can Kill People, Can’t It?, was inspired by the history of Palestine since 1948. sarahbower.co.uk

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the gods smiled on HNSOxford16

he patterns on Melvyn Bragg’s notepad were a revelation.

T More random than the intersecting arcs that shimmered over the forecourt of Oxford University’s Mathematical Institute, venue for this year’s HNS conference, there was a rhythm to the jottings nonetheless. They pulsed around names and the date of the Peasants’ Revolt, the subject of Lord Bragg’s most recent novel, Now is the Time, and of his keynote address on ‘Fact into Fiction.’ The year ‘1381’ was identifiable, but the rest of his preparatory scribbling bore more resemblance to abstract art than bullet points. To me the notes were unintelligible, but in the dashes and swirls I saw the excitement which lies at the heart of the genre, when history fires imagination and begets compelling story. The notepad was testament to Melvyn Bragg’s skill as a speaker, his power of memory and his grasp of detail. Not for him a comprehensive aide-memoire. This is an author who has history at his fingertips, who delivered a memorised passage from Chaucer in Old English as effortlessly as he drew a link between the Peasants’ Revolt, Kett’s Rebellion, the Civil War, the Chartists, suffragettes and (in response to a later question) the Brexit vote. ‘There’s an undercurrent of radicalism in this country which is constantly pulling power back to the people.’ He laid his cards on the table as regards the political message in his storytelling, and that was not all he revealed.

In speaking to us at Oxford, Melvyn Bragg was returning to his roots. He had studied Modern History at Wadham College a few streets away, but modestly declared he was not a historian. He could be a historical novelist, he said, able to use the greatest gift of imagination to envisage and make sense of the past. ‘History and fiction have always been intermingled,’ from as far back as Herodotus, who made up the great speeches, through Shakespeare, who ensured, at least until recently, that the myth of Richard III overtook the real man. Not for Melvyn

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Now Is The Time... the ‘oxymoron’ of historical fiction as identified by Michael Caines in his TLS blog on our conference (a conference happily described as ‘lively, friendly and engaging’). Our speaker had no qualms about conjoining ‘what was’ (history) with ‘what might have been’ (fiction) to use the terminology of the article. Indeed, he took great care to set out exactly where he had begun in developing his novel, both in terms of the context of the late fourteenth century and the main historical characters, and then to show where he had used invention to tell the story, from the rebellion’s small beginnings to its terrible conclusion, as if the known past was the uncertain present playing out before our eyes.

We came to appreciate that the Peasants’ Revolt occurred at a time when the population of England had been halved by the Black Death, the people were overtaxed and foreign campaigns no longer victorious, the circumference of all knowledge was God and the preservation of the soul all important, when what mattered most in life was death, and English was re-emerging as the dominant national language despite the fact that the fourteen-year-old Richard II spoke mainly in French. 1381 was a year in which Chaucer was writing The Canterbury Tales and Wyclif was producing the first English translation of the Bible.

Instancing where he had used invention, Melvyn Bragg focused on four characters pivotal to the events. In each case their fictional padding-out gave plausible motivation for their recorded actions. What transformed the idealism of the poet and radical preacher John Ball into a force that came close to toppling Church and State? Melvyn speculated that it was Ball’s deep friendship with the strong and earthy Wat Tyler that gave them both power.

What made the king’s mother, Princess Joan, leave her first husband, Thomas Holland, despite the fact that she clearly loved him? The story gives an explanation: she was threatened

by Jenny Barden

Every Author... can describe for his or herself what to do with historical characters when they get in the way of a good story.

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buzzing. I’m pleased to say the buzz stayed with us all weekend.

Tracy Chevalier, on a post submission high, gave a warm, witty and candid account of the appeal to her of writing about the past: ‘Because it takes me away from writing about myself.’

Kate Williams, Margaret George and Manda Scott had a lively conversation about faith and morality in historical fiction and biography, probing the delicate dividing line between accurately portraying the mind-set of earlier eras, when religion permeated everything, and giving characters overly modern sensibilities.

Margaret memorably observed that ‘Nero has had a terrible press because of the Christians.’

At the Reception, Fay Weldon and Jo Baker discussed ‘the Big House Story,’ ably compered by Carol McGrath. ‘Books start to be historical when the clothes start to be vintage,’ said Jo Baker. ‘The problem with the “coming of age” novel,’ quipped Fay Weldon, ‘is that men come of age when they’re thirty; women come of age when they’re eight.’

Leading agents and editors spoke about the ‘Next Big Thing’ in the genre, and if you can write a sweeping WWII saga, a riveting story set in Ancient Greece, or a cross-cultural historical novel, then chances are you’ll be set to please at least one member of the panel. There were popular breakout sessions on subjects ranging from building a shield wall to influences of the afterlife and spirit world; real-life heroes and heroines; a masterclass on point-of-view; medieval women; the Great Fire of London; ‘Going Digital,’ and streets through the ages – to mention just a few. We heard expert debate on creating battle scenes, using servants as protagonists, 1066, reader appreciation, ‘Going Indie,’ ‘Far and Strange,’ the future of the genre and writing the historical thriller. (‘If it’s easy, you’re not trying hard enough,’ said Rory Clements about the latter.)

At the Gala Dinner, Christopher Gortner gave an uplifting and passionate speech, and we were treated to an exceptional reading by CC Humphreys. The conference concluded with Jon Watt putting some of our stars through their paces in the Histfictionist Quiz. (Put an eyeball, a van and a garden implement together and you get the name of a famous novel...)

So ended another fabulous conference. Roll on HNS Portland and HNS Melbourne 2017!

Note: I am indebted to Lorna Fergusson and Ruth Downie for their blogs on the conference and descriptions of sessions I was unable to attend.

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with Holland’s disgrace and execution. Joan went on to marry her cousin, the Black Prince, who fathered Richard by her. The Prince died early and Richard was crowned at the age of ten. In Now is the Time we see a boy in thrall to a mother who controls his every move to ensure their mutual survival.

What made Wat Tyler into a great leader, someone with the authority to achieve the unthinkable: assail London and take control of the White Tower? He was known to be an artisan and a soldier; Melvyn Bragg gave him three sons lost to the Plague and made him a veteran who had fought for the Black Prince.

Tyler’s knowledge of military strategy helped him lead the rebels to early success, driven by his love for the king and a desire to free the throne from the tyranny of corrupt ministers.

In the story, the dynamics between these characters lead to the single amazing act which brought the uprising to an end: not Tyler’s cowardly murder when he sought to treat with the king at Smithfield, but the young king’s reaction – to ride alone and in the open towards the ranks of rebel bowmen and declare he was now their leader. Their response was to kneel. In this ‘still point of a turning world,’ English history so nearly changed course.

What gave Richard the courage to do this? Melvyn Bragg’s stroke of genius, using his imagination, was to have the incident preceded by the delivery of a ring from the king’s mother with a note to tell Richard that the ring had been worn by his father in his first battle, the famous victory at Poitiers. Thus Richard was inspired to take the initiative. At Smithfield, he proved himself brave, but the aftermath was reprehensible. All the promises given to the rebels were broken; John Ball was hung, drawn and quartered, along with the other leaders of the uprising. In its objectives the rebellion failed, but it sent out a message to the ruling elite which still resonates to this day: you can only push the people so far.

In answering questions, Melvyn Bragg was forthright: every author can describe for his or herself what to do with historical characters when they get in the way of a good story.

Lord Salisbury was a reasonable and prudent adviser to the king, though it would have suited the story to portray him as villainous. Instead, Salisbury was used to provide balance against the likes of William Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, who advocated slaying all commoners on the streets at the height of the rebellion.

As for writing dialogue, Melvyn said he had to think himself into what the characters might have said to one another.

Conversations in a formal setting were helped by the fact there would have been conventions to observe; intimate dialogue was more difficult. He tried to use a plain, non-anachronistic style of spoken English that would not let anyone down. As the author of The Adventure of English, Melvyn Bragg could, probably better than anyone, have produced dialogue authentic to the place and age, but a glossary would have been needed and the language would have come across as ‘lumpen and pedantic.’

The address was a triumph, and by the end everyone was

More about JENNY BARDEN, HNSOxford16 programme advisor, can be found at www.jennybarden.com

an interview with Felicity Pulman, author of the Janna Chronicles

Australian historical novelists face challenges when writing

about places thousands of miles away and centuries in the past.

Felicity Pulman’s passion is English medieval history, which she’s explored in her time-slip Shalott Trilogy (Children’s/YA) and Arthurian books, and her six-book mystery series, The Janna Chronicles (Momentum, 2015). I asked her about overcoming the problem of distance in order to walk in her character’s shoes.

“The challenges are many, and huge.

Before writing The Janna Chronicles I did as much research as I could in Australia. Because the series is set in the 1140s during the civil war between King Stephen and his cousin, the Empress Matilda, I read various biographies, and tracked down translations of annals written by sources contemporary to the time. My ultimate goal was to travel to Britain and follow in Janna’s footsteps.

To know where to go, I consulted my (annotated) copy of the Domesday Book for a medieval forest, a farm and an abbey all within proximity to Winchester, knowing that Janna’s search for her unknown father would take her to those places. Fortunately, my guesswork paid off! Being ‘on the ground’ provided the chance to photograph and experience the landscape as Janna would have seen it almost a thousand years ago, to walk in a forest and even visit a working water mill.

And because Janna is schooled in herbal healing by her mother, I was never without field guides for wild flowers, trees and birds.”

Accessing written sources is also difficult for Australian novelists because of limited library catalogues and the cost of buying books. Felicity found the internet was not a sufficient substitute.

“Google is a great tool, but I found that being in the UK gave me access to museums and wonderful medieval artefacts as well as numerous books, old documents, maps, pamphlets and guides not available in Australia. I could visit medieval buildings – or the ruins thereof – and there were often ‘artist’s impressions’ and models to help me envisage their former glory and layout.”

Sharing Janna’s experiences helped Felicity inform her novels and add veracity, but it also provided unexpected delights. “On

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Being “On the Ground”

one occasion I visited the ruins of Shaftesbury Abbey and found their guided tour excellent. (In Unholy Murder, Janna spends a year taking refuge in an abbey and learns to read and write.)

While there I discovered Aethelgifu’s Anglo-Saxon herb garden tucked away at the back. The gardener explained the properties of various unfamiliar herbs and allowed me to pick and taste some of them, which was magic!”

Chance encounters with people on Janna’s trail also proved beneficial to Felicity. “I met an American scholar while visiting the remains of Hyde Abbey (virtually destroyed after the dissolution of the monasteries on the order of Henry VIII). He allowed me to photocopy documents housed there.

As he was an expert on the siege of Winchester (featured in Devil’s Brew) our talk was invaluable.”

Serendipity also played a factor in Felicity’s travels which led to further inspiration. “I’ve definitely learned to pay attention to the ‘visions and voices’ that sometimes visit me. I visited an abbey at Amesbury and made a side trip to nearby Stonehenge. I knew it was important when I ‘saw’ the bleeding body of a man stretched out on one of the fallen monoliths – and so it proved when I came to write Pilgrim of Death.”

Felicity offers encouragement and advice to those facing similar challenges from lack of proximity to their setting.

“Grants and writers’ residencies are available to overcome the expense of travelling from distant shores. I was lucky enough to be awarded a three-month writer’s residency in the UK which helped to defray travel and living expenses, so look out for those sorts of offers from various writing and arts institutions.”

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More details about Pulman and all her books are available at www.felicitypulman.com.au Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the Tales of Ancient Rome saga and co-founder of the HNS Australasia chapter.

by Elisabeth Storrs

Google... is a great tool, but I found that being in the UK gave me access to museums and wonderful medieval artefacts as well as numerous books, old documents, maps, pamphlets and guides not available in Australia.

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fter the Battle of Hastings, the flower of the fighting English nobility was dead or exiled. Their wives were widowed and their daughters were fatherless. English noblewomen had few choices as to how to live following regime change.

Legal land rights were of great interest to King William, who liked to think that his conquest of England was a crusade to bring England into the fold of the reforming church and honour his legal right to be England’s king. Women could marry with the enemy, disappear into a convent, or choose exile. The Godwin noblewomen provide examples of the choices for survival facing aristocratic English women after conquest.

Dowager Queen Edith, Harold’s sister, pragmatically chose to support the new regime, yet she had a biography scribed, The Vita Edwardii, that praised her husband, King Edward, and did not allow her brothers to be forgotten. When William arrived in Winchester, an ancient royal city, Edith handed over the keys and its treasury without a whimper. William’s biographer, William of Poitiers, called Edith more man than woman on account of her good sense. She lived with honour for the remainder of her life, spent between Wilton Abbey and Winchester.

Edith had been highly educated at Wilton and was respected for her intellect and conversation. Known throughout Europe for her embroidery skills, Carola Hicks makes a convincing argument that Edith was involved in the creation of The Bayeux Tapestry, suggesting that panels of the tapestry were embroidered in Wilton’s workshops.1 Edith’s pragmatism paid off. When she died, William granted her a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, and The Domesday Book indicates that she had retained her full household and most of her lands.

Wilton also features in the story of Gunnhild, King Harold’s younger daughter, who eloped from Wilton with Alan of Richmond, William’s second cousin. After Alan’s death, she formed a relationship with his half-brother, who inherited Alan’s wealth, including lands belonging to Gunnhild’s mother, Edith Swan-Neck. In 1090, Archbishop Anselm ordered Gunnhild back to the abbey. Their correspondence exists to this day, although the outcome is unrecorded.

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Carol McGrath considers female survival during regime change

Harold’s mother, the aged, indomitable Countess Gytha, retired to her dower city of Exeter in 1066. By 1068, Exeter refused to pay King William’s tax, and for three weeks Normans tunnelled under the Roman walls, created blockades on the river and attacked with siege weapons. The city capitulated.

The countess and her noblewomen departed for Flanders and Denmark, with a great Anglo-Saxon treasure.

Harold’s elder daughter, Gita, also sailed into exile, and King Sweyn of Denmark brokered her marriage to one of the wealthiest princes in Europe, Vladimir of Kiev. Three of their sons became Russian Grand Princes.

Edith Swan-Neck, Harold’s handfasted wife, as recorded in The Waltham Chronicle, identified Harold’s body after The Battle of Hastings by marks known only to her. Hand-fasting was a legal form of marriage, but Harold set Edith aside in 1066, when he married a northern noblewoman for political reasons. Their youngest son, Ulf, was taken as a child hostage into Normandy and not released until after William’s death, by which time he was knighted and more Norman than English. It is probable that, after 1066, Edith, like many other noblewomen, retired to a nunnery.

Much changed for women following the conquest. Anglo-Saxon women could own property and make wills. After conquest, a woman’s property became that of her husband. However, Anglo-Norman inter-marriage contributed to the fact that the English language continued to be widely spoken.

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Notes: 1. Carola Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry: the Life Story of a Masterpiece, 2006.

2. Of further interest, the Opus Anglicanum embroidery exhibit is currently on now through 5 February at the Victoria & Albert Museum. https://www. vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/opus-anglicanum-masterpieces-of-english-medievalembroidery Carol McGrath’s debut novel, The Handfasted Wife, first in a trilogy about the royal women of 1066, was shortlisted for the RoNAS 2014. The SwanDaughter and The Betrothed Sister followed to complete this best-selling trilogy. Carol was the co-ordinator of the Historical Novel Society Conference, Oxford in September 2016.

by Carol McGrath Battle of Hastings, the flower of the fighting English nobility was dead or exiled. Their wives were widowed and their daughters were fatherless. English noblewomen had few 14 | Features |

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James Wilde’s Hereward series

James Wilde’s aim was clear from the very beginning of his

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Writing the Legend Anew author a “clear psychological map from book one to book six” for Hereward’s journey.

Now that he has paused the Hereward series, what mythic treasures will James Wilde proffer to his reading public? Here, the author’s excitement is clear. Leaving behind the constraints of writing about the “story of one man’s life,” Wilde is creating a new three-book series set in England’s Dark Age, concentrating on “an idea, not an individual,” something that the author feels has offered him much greater freedom.

The Dark Age in England means King Arthur, doesn’t it? Wilde dismisses that idea straight away: “Pendragon – which is the working title of the first Dark Age book and won’t make the final cut – is NOT about King Arthur.” The new book, which will be published in early 2017, is about the broader legend, “the bloodline which eventually leads to the characters and events that helped shape the King Arthur myth.”

Wilde’s new series will contain “many of the core elements of Arthurian lore, but seen from a unique angle,” and he adds that the novels to come are “epic in scope” with a story that “reaches from Britain to Gaul to Rome, includes a huge cast of characters, and covers a hundred years of history.”

James Wilde may be stepping away from the Hereward saga, but for the author there is a clear connection between the old and the new series. His Dark Age series will allow him both to explore “another of the great English foundation myths” and to continue along the path that he has already marked out with his examination of the growth of Hereward the legend. Wilde can consider afresh how “legend arises out of history” in his new Dark Age series, something fans of the Hereward series can look forward to with some excitement.

Hereward series, set in England in the bloody aftermath of the Norman invasion of 1066. As the author underscored in his recent interview with me, his intention was always to help bring the English medieval legend, Hereward, back from the fog of myth and forgotten history and “to show the creation of both the man and the legend.”

In that ambition, he has succeeded with the creation of the six terrifically gritty novels that make up the Hereward series.

Unfortunately for fans who have lapped up the latest adventures of Hereward in The Bloody Crown (Bantam UK, 2016), this is the last instalment for quite a while.

Devoted fans may find it hard to believe, but James Wilde says that he “didn’t want Hereward to outstay his welcome with readers.” Thankfully, though, this is not the last novel featuring Hereward; Wilde reassures readers that there is “one more story to tell, about Hereward’s return to England.” That narrative will, he promises, deliver “a closing of the circle of the themes” about which he’s been writing.

Hereward has evolved considerably through the series, transforming from the almost feral animal of the first book, a man who reacted to “situations on instinct, usually in the most violent way possible,” to the far cannier operator of this newest tale, The Bloody Crown.

Hereward now brandishes his sharp strategic mind almost as pitilessly as his customarily deadly weapons, his fists and his sword, in the political snake pit of Byzantium.

How did Wilde manage that character transition over the course of the six book series? “I knew from the outset what each book was about, and what it would take for Hereward to overcome each obstacle.” That knowledge underpinned the character throughout the series, with Wilde plunging into psychological research, spending time “looking at how people More information about James Wilde can be found at react to similar upbringings” and asking questions such as www.manofmercia.co.uk “What are the stages of his growth? What particular experiences developed his character?” That in-depth research gave the Gordon O’Sullivan is a freelance writer and researcher.

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by Gordon O’Sullivan

Hereward...

has evolved considerably, transforming from the almost feral animal of the first book...to the far cannier operator of this newest tale.

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on Hansen’s novels illustrate his reinvention of Western Rhistorical fiction by painting a more factually realistic interpretation of it. That has certainly been the approach of his latest novel, Billy the Kid (Simon & Schuster, 2016).

Billy the Kid was born Henry McCarty in 1859, later changing his name to become William H. Bonney. He died in 1881, after reputedly having killed at least eight men in gunfights. His brief life has been the subject of over forty films, numerous novels and comics, but what attracted Hansen to write about this enigmatic tearaway? The idea originated, Hansen says, “after reading Stephen Tatum’s Inventing Billy the Kid, in which he demonstrates that each generation has its own conception of the outlaw. The journalists of his day, who’d never met or even seen [Billy], depicted him as a vicious, satanic half-animal, whereas those who did interview him were disarmed by his good looks, jocularity, and pleasantness. Memoirs about him by friends like Dr. Henry Hoyt and George Coe also paint a sympathetic portrait of a rootless orphan caught up in a Wild West civil war and eking out a life just as many others did – even Sheriff Pat Garrett – by rustling cattle and horses from the vast herds roaming in the still raw and unfenced New Mexico Territory.”

The only authenticated photo, Hansen explains, shows the Kid “looking slovenly and somewhat effeminate in his ill-fitting clothes and semicrushed hat. All the very rare photographic portraits of the period feature ordinary people in their finest duds, usually with weaponry on display.” On seeing this photograph, Hansen realised that “this reportedly natty dresser purposely went the other way in his pose, choosing to be unlike the others in queue for the cameraman, his melancholia and frail self-esteem insisting that he be noticed in whatever way was easiest.”

Another dimension to the Kid’s personality was revealed through his letters. Hansen says,“I was particularly impressed by the letters the Kid wrote to Governor Lew Wallace in his effort to have Wallace honor his earlier promise and give him clemency

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Billy the Kid Ron Hansen weighs legend versus reality

for testifying against himself. Billy had only a few years of formal schooling, yet the handwriting and the thoughtfulness in the letters are those of a smart and earnest twenty-year-old seeking a way out of crime.” Hansen then read everything available about the Kid, and says he found himself “liking him more and wishing he’d had a father or mentor – which he persistently sought – in order to show him the right path.”

Being shot dead by Pat Garrett at the age of twenty-one made the Kid, Hansen notes, “a more romantic figure and a kind of misunderstood, all-American swashbuckler of the type boys play at in the yard. A half-year before the Kid died, a journalist alluded to the folktale Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in trying to illustrate the public’s rapt perception of him. The Kid was, in fact, what we’d call a petty thief, but one who … killed, for sure, four men – two of them in self-defense and two when he was escaping jail two weeks before his ordered execution.”

“The Kid,” Hansen says, “has become an internationally known personality because of the power of myth and creative imagination. We certainly see that when we note that newspapers in Chicago, New York, and London all carried articles about his sudden death, and when we count no less than four dime novels soon playing off his life. It was primarily in response to them that Pat Garrett, with his friend Ash Upson, wrote The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, the Noted Desperado in 1882, only to have it sell far worse than the outright fictions about Billy.”

Hansen’s novel addresses the enigma surrounding the Kid’s life. However, the author also reminds us of a quote from a journalist in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “This is the West, sir. When the fact becomes legend, print the legend.”

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Myfanwy Cook, an HNR Features Editor, is an Honorary Fellow at two universities in the UK and has published numerous short stories and articles.

by Myfanwy Cook

The Journalists... of his day, who’d never met or even seen [Billy], depicted him as a vicious, satanic half-animal, whereas those who did interview him were disarmed by his good looks, jocularity, and pleasantness.

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for young adult historical fantasy

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A NEW HEROINE R obert Beatty’s new series featuring Serafina, a twelve-year-

As for the historical aspect, George Washington Vanderbilt old girl living in the basement of the famous Biltmore Estate in II, his wife, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser Vanderbilt, and the North Carolina during the Gilded Age, has ignited the world of estate’s landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, are all Young Adult fiction and is quickly becoming the next big thing real historical figures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In within the genre, as well as crossing over to an older audience. Serafina and the Twisted Staff, there is even a scene with Consuelo Serafina and the Black Cloak (Disney Hyperion, 2015) received Vanderbilt, a prominent member of the Vanderbilt family who its much anticipated follow-up in 2016 with Serafina and the was a fashion icon and married to the 9th Duke of Marlborough.

Twisted Staff, which carried over seamlessly with an action-packed Robert Beatty is a regular visitor to the estate and has minutely introduction and fresh mystery for the beloved protagonist. detailed his story to match the setting as it was in the late Serafina, the proverbial underdog, is at 19th century. The rooms and grounds are once a relatable, awkward pre-teen girl and described accurately, including statues, a mysterious, otherworldly creature with secret passages, and even props that exist questionable ancestry. What, other than to this day. this magnificent characterization, has made Beatty has been forthcoming in her such a hit? interviews about the fact that this series is An impressive mix of history and heavily influenced by the opinions of his folklore, this series borders on a subgenre wife and daughters. They are his sounding which has been quite prolific in the board for ideas and suggestions, and have industry: historical fantasy. While many also been involved with the making of the of these novels have vague settings with book trailers. With such a thorough and imaginative storylines rather than factual kid-inclusive process, it’s no wonder the ones, the Serafina books stay true to both series has received overwhelmingly positive the era and the history of the Biltmore reviews and occasioned much excitement Estate, which is a major tourist attraction among school-aged readers. in scenic Asheville, North Carolina. As The immensely brave and good-hearted such, the books have historical integrity Serafina has found her place among the while also delving into Appalachian lore, ranks of popular children’s series and albeit with a magical twist. is cornering the market on local lore in The folklore, in particular, has opened the South. With a packed author event this series to many readers — those who love Harry Potter- schedule and opportunity for avid fans to explore the Biltmore type books, as well as Southern and local enthusiasts, who Estate first-hand, Serafina is finding her way into the hands — are interested in the background and history of the Blue and hearts — of eager audiences. What’s next for our admirable Ridge Mountains. Serafina’s father, a mountain man and the Chief Rat Catcher? After revelations at the end of Serafina and chief mechanic at the Biltmore Estate, speaks in Appalachian the Twisted Staff, the third book — as yet untitled — can’t be dialect, giving his character credibility and the added charm of released soon enough! resembling Hogwart’s groundskeeper, Hagrid. In addition, there are catamounts, along with other wildlife of the region, and eerie Arleigh Johnson has worked in the book industry for more than a places such as an overgrown graveyard, an abandoned town, decade and is an active member of the book blogging community and miles of dark, though beautiful, forests. Mention of haints, with her websites www.historical-fiction.com and www.royalshape-shifters and creatures of the night bring this series fully intrigue.net. She has been reviewing books online for nine years, into the ranks of Young Adult Gothic novels. and for the HNS since 2011.

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by Arleigh Johnson

WHILE... many [historical fantasy] novels have vague settings with imaginative storylines rather than factual ones, the Serafina books stay true to both the era and the history.

HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Features | 17

Reviews |

online exclusives

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Due to an ever-increasing number of books being reviewed and space constraints within HNR, many reviews are now published as online exclusives. To view these reviews and much more, please visit http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/ reviews/?type=online

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prehistoric

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SUN BORN Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear, Tor, 2016, $25.99/C$36.99, hb, 444pp, 9780765380616 Sun Born takes readers on an historical and mythical journey back in time 1,000 years to the vast and booming metropolis of the Cahokia Indians. Here, tribes gather, trade, make war and love, and channel the gods in a way at is at one with daily life. Within this cultural mecca, two incarnate gods battle for the future of their people while dealing with the sudden appearance of a threatening enemy mounting a violent overthrow that may see the people of Cahokia wiped off the face of the earth.

This is the second book in a trilogy (after People of the Morning Star), but it can be read on its own.

This masterpiece of historical fantasy should be read slowly, to best be able to savor the rich detail and live vicariously through the well-drawn characters, who take readers on an adventure into a civilization unlike any commonly known. The depth of research done by the authors is clear even from the early pages, and despite the imposing length, the epic plot is well-paced. While it takes a while to get used to the unusual names of the large cast of characters, they eventually resolve into realistic representations of a mysterious people.

The immersive nature of the story is reminiscent of modern classics such as The Mists of Avalon and Kushiel’s Dart, albeit in a totally different culture.

Having grown up and lived for 37 years in 18 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 78, November 2016

the shadow of Cahokia, Illinois, and visited the famous mounds myself on many occasions, I can attest to the beauty and accuracy of this work. I also appreciated the incorporation of the legendary Piasa, whose image adorns the cliff walls in nearby Alton, Illinois. The next time I visit, I will have a whole new appreciation for this sacred site and its long-deceased people, thanks to Sun Born. Very highly recommended.

Nicole Evelina

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biblical

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DELILAH: Treacherous Beauty Angela Hunt, Bethany House, 2016, $14.99, pb, 347pp, 9780764216978 Canaan, 1200 BCE. When Delilah’s Philistine stepfather dies, his son Achish sells her mother into slavery and keeps Delilah to abuse and rape.

Delilah seizes her first chance to flee, and finds sanctuary with a Hebrew widow who teaches Delilah to weave and to rebuild her life – even when Delilah learns she is pregnant by her rapist, although Delilah cannot love her child. Delilah never stops hoping to find her mother someday, and when she learns her mother’s dead, she realizes what she needs to avenge herself on Achish: Samson, the Hebrew hero. But Delilah doesn’t count on falling in love with Samson, nor on the strength of Achish’s own lust for power over her.

When Achish threatens Delilah’s painfully-rebuilt life, in fear and panic she makes a disastrous choice.

To save her new family, she betrays Samson to the Philistines, a decision that leads to Samson’s ultimate tragedy – and triumph.

While sticking closely to the Biblical account (without spoilers, I’ll just say that nothing in the Bible says that Delilah is a Philistine), this is also a fresh, intriguing retelling of the familiar tale.

Both Delilah and Samson are appealing characters, and Delilah’s desperation and the impossibility of any choice she makes being right make her betrayal of the man she loves seem understandable, even inevitable. Enjoyable and poignant. Also recommended are the other books in the Dangerous Beauty series: Esther and Bathsheba.

India Edghill THE PRINCE’S PSALM Eric Shaw Quinn, DSP Publications, 2016, $21.99, pb, 480pp, 1634768353 The Prince’s Psalm is, simply put, the story of the biblical David, who slew Goliath; and Jonathan, eldest son of King Saul. But this novel is so much more than that. It is the story of David’s early life in Bethlehem. We see his formative years, that he was the favored youngest child of a large family, the one who could do no wrong and who seemed

to be blessed with all the gifts. His first love of his youth, Micah, was a sweet and painful episode and paved the way for his eventual fateful meeting with Jonathan.

The story begins with David taking the field in opposition to Goliath. Naturally, everyone thinks he’s going to get slaughtered, and we get varying perspectives on that theme. The story moves backwards in time from there to David’s childhood, alternating times from his youth to the fight with Goliath until he kills the giant, at which point the narrative moves forward, about halfway through the book.

In this beautiful novel, Quinn captures the entire spectrum of human emotion with sensitivity and truly gorgeous prose. There isn’t enough room to list the many examples of his vivid writing. I liked that the book was sexy without being dirty. I would easily be able to recommend this as a good starting place for anyone wanting to diversify their reading, as this is an M/M romance. I also wish this was the version of the Bible story I’d been taught when I had to go to Sunday school. It was beautiful, tolerant, and loving, and we would all be a lot better off if this is what we were taught from infancy. Love is love.

Kristen McQuinn

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classical

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RIVALS OF THE REPUBLIC: The Blood of Rome, Book 1 Annelise Freisenbruch, Overlook, 2016, $26.95/ C$34.95, hb, 288pp, 9781468312799 / Duckworth, 2016, £18.99, hb, 288pp, 9780715650998 Hortensia is the daughter of a renowned orator and lawyer. She has been taught by her father in his art and utilizes this skill to help defend a woman whose lying husband is slandering her name in an attempt to claim her dowry. After winning the case in dramatic fashion, Hortensia is called upon by the chief vestal to help clear the name of a young priestess who was recently found dead. The chief vestal does not believe the priestess took her life in shame after an impious love affair, and evidence suggests the temple’s sanctuary was illegally accessed –however, nothing is missing.

A servant named Lucrio aids in Hortensia’s investigation, but he has his own agenda. He seeks revenge for the death of his family years earlier at Prehistoric — Classical

the hands of a Roman soldier. As Hortensia and Lucrio begin to piece together the clues behind the vestal’s death, they quickly discover that the Republic itself may be in danger if the perpetrators are not identified in time.

This is a debut novel from Freisenbruch, originally self-published in 2014 as Blood in the Tiber. The historical atmosphere is engrossing.

Additionally, fantastic fictional characters stand alongside historical people (namely Crassus, Cicero, Julius Caesar, and Pompey). I relished the rich details in this story, like the creation of wills and the equipment of scribes.

Hortensia moves plausibly within the constraints of her time. Her mindset is slightly progressive but also historically accurate, and her strong voice immediately pulled me into the story.

While the book is about solving a mystery, it’s also about Hortensia rising to new challenges and making a path for herself. This book transports readers to the streets of ancient Rome. It is an extremely satisfying blend of fact and fiction with plenty of surprises. Highly recommended.

J. Lynn Else THE SILK AND THE SWORD Ron Singerton, Penmore, 2016, $21.50, pb, 461pp, 9781942756385 This book’s title reflects Rome’s desire to control the silk trade, which meant destroying its primary competitor in the 1st century BC, the Parthian Empire. Triumvirate member Crassus championed this campaign as an opportunity to add to his already vast wealth. Caesar and Pompey saw the campaign as a way to get rid of Crassus, so the deal was on. The militarily incompetent Crassus leading several Roman legions to annihilation in the deserts of Mesopotamia was one of history’s greatest blunders. This novel’s storyline revolves around the handful of survivors who flee the Parthian victors not by turning west towards Rome, but by trekking thousands of miles east to the great wall of China. The major subplot centers on the mutual hate between father and son: head centurion Gaius and new recruit Tacitus, the primary protagonist. The reluctant Tacitus eventually becomes the soldier he never wanted to be as their relationship evolves.

As should be expected in an historical novel of this magnitude, there are a lot of interesting historical tidbits along the way. The germinating idea came from Chinese stories about a group of light-skinned foreigners with superb military skills who settled in northwest China near the same time as Crassus’s debacle in the Syrian desert. The author’s research into Roman military equipment and tactics is excellent. However, there are minor blunders when he ventures outside that area (equating the Nabataens with Arabs, for instance).

The main complaint I had with this book is that there is a dearth of use of the five senses early on, making it difficult to get a sense of place. However, sensory details begin to appear about a quarter of the way in.

Barry Webb

Classical — 3rd Century

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SAVIOUR OF ROME Douglas Jackson, Bantam Press, 2016, £18.99, hb, 378pp, 9780593075937 The seventh novel in the superb Hero of Rome series, Saviour of Rome, brings Roman hero, Gaius Valerius Verrens, to Spain, the homeland of his right-hand man and former gladiator, Serpentius. Dispatched

by Emperor Vespasian on a mission vital to the financial well-being of the Roman Empire, Verrens has no choice but to leave his new bride behind as he embarks on a dangerous mission to discover why the course of Spanish gold no longer runs smooth. Can Verrens find out why the normally fecund Spanish gold mines are delivering only a fraction of their former levels before he is assassinated by one of the many enemies that seem to oppose him? And can he still depend on his Spanish comrade Serpentius?

This is another satisfying adventure that will delight the Roman historical fiction fan. Douglas Jackson has once more placed his one-handed war hero in a desperate fight against seemingly overwhelming odds, trying to save his own life and to safeguard those he loves best. Jackson never lets the pace of his story falter while keeping the scrapes his hero gets into realistic and believable, and fully germane to the twisty narrative. As you would expect from the seventh novel in such a series, the author is fully comfortable with the intricacies of the Verrens character. As readers have also come to expect, Jackson marshals his research with a beguiling ease and an impressive authority but always in support of the story. The sense of place is particularly strong in this Verrens instalment, and much is revealed about the events that marked the character of Serpentius as the adventure progresses to a finale in his homeland. With battle scenes as strong and intense as ever, this series gets better and better, ageing as well as a good Falernian wine.

Gordon O’Sullivan GALBA’S MEN L.J. Trafford, Karnac Books, 2016, £12.99, pb, 430pp, 9781782202653 This is the second book in the Four Emperors series. Book One – Palatine – ended with Nero’s demise and was written not from the point of view of the great and mighty, but from that of the lowly slaves and freedmen who kept things going.

This book has almost the same cast of characters, who keep the Empire functional through the interregnum and Galba’s astonishingly swift reign during AD 68 – it took him only three months to be decapitated in the forum!

There’s a complex weave of sub-plots, but the one

that most appealed to me took small, hard-working, shy Tiberius Claudius Philo from terrorised exslave, locked in an abusive relationship with the slave overseer, to someone very much in love with his chosen lady. Along the way, he manages to run the Emperor’s office with quiet efficiency, despite the best efforts of his boss (Galba’s lover) and a half-baked plot to put Otho on the throne, which really shouldn’t have succeeded. Philo is tortured to reveal what he knows of the plot – nothing – and loses his job at the palace; but love conquers all. Throughout, L.J. Trafford effortlessly immerses us in ancient Rome. I’ve probably learnt more from reading this book than from any history lesson, and far more enjoyably. For instance, Imperial slaves were dressed in a white uniform; how did they keep them clean? I want to know more about this underbelly of the empire, and how it functioned. I think I shall have to buy the rest of the series!

Nicky Moxey BEN-HUR: A Tale of the Christ Carol Wallace, Tyndale, 2016, $15.99, pb, 409pp, 9781496411068 As a Roman procurator rides through Jerusalem, a loose tile falls from a rooftop and hits him. This accident leads to the Jewish Judah BenHur’s betrayal by his Roman friend, Messala; his mother and sister are dragged away, and he’s sent to the galleys. But instead of dying chained to an oar, he survives to become the adopted son of a noble Roman, reclaim his fortune, to find his mother and sister, and find true love. And yes, to triumph over the vicious Messala in a chariot race. But without the touch of the man some call the Messiah, BenHur’s mother and sister, now lepers, will die.

Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace is one of the all-time best-selling novels, never out of print since it was first published in 1880. This modernization, written by Wallace’s great-great-granddaughter, aims to make the story accessible to today’s readers.

It succeeds in that aim, although it feels oddly unbalanced. So I got a copy of the original BenHur to compare the versions. There’s no denying the modern version is easier to read, and moves the story along at a cracking pace. However, a lot is lost with this update, and most of what has been lost is the Christ – including an extremely long prologue about the three Wise Men (or Magi) and their search for the infant Jesus. Since the iconic chariot race is nowhere near the end of the story, the last portion of the book, in which Ben-Hur and his new wife become Christians and decide to use his immense fortune to support fellow followers of Jesus, seems tacked on. Carol Wallace has written a readable and compelling modernization, but you’ll only really know why it’s subtitled “A Tale of the Christ” if you read the original.

India Edghill

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3rd century

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THE EARTHLY GODS Nick Brown, Hodder & Stoughton, 2016, £20.99, hb, 323pp, 9781444779196 HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 19

273 AD. Imperial Agent Cassius Corbulo is about to throw away a promising career. His bodyguard, Indavara, has been kidnapped, and after weeks of frantic searching Corbulo has no indication of where Indavara is being held, or why.

His superiors are keen for him to return to duty.

When an old ally’s daughter is taken by slavers, he feels obliged to repay a long-standing debt.

He joins with the nomadic chieftain, Kabir, and a trio of warriors determined to rescue the missing girl. Operating outside the law, they travel across the plague-ridden hinterland of Asia Minor, until they find themselves facing a mysterious group of powerful men calling themselves “The Earthly Gods”.

This is the sixth volume of the Agent of Rome series, and it’s very enjoyable. The plot is strong and the main characters well defined. The story is fastpaced and gripping, while the action sequences are well-written and exciting. Will they succeed in their quest? Will Corbulo find his missing bodyguard?

Read and find out! I was not familiar with Nick Brown’s work – but I am off to my local bookshop to rectify that! Recommended.

Mike Ashworth

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6th century

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BETWEEN TWO FIRES Mark Noce, Thomas Dunne, 2016, $25.99/ C$36.99, hb, 325pp, 9781250072627 Wales, 597 AD. The marriage of 16-yearold Lady Branwen, the only legitimate child of Vortigern, the King of Dyfed, to Morgan, the King of South Wales, is no love match. It marks the alliance of two warlords against a common enemy: the Saxons invading Wales.

Wrenched from her childhood home by Morgan on his way to a battle, Branwen lands at the castle of her surly brother-in-law, where she’s surrounded with strangers. She dreams of a real home and a true love someday, while trying to adapt to her new family. She’s flattered when Morgan sends her on a secret mission, but someone close betrays her plans to the Saxons, who try to kill her. Branwen trusts no one now – not even her half-brother – until a handsome young hedge lord enters her life.

Although Noce uses way too many “grins,” “halfgrins,” “cackles,” and “smirks,” the author is very good at describing Branwen’s innermost worries, fears, and yearning in the words of a naïve young woman. When Branwen speaks her mind – in a way that no 6th-century teenager would have dared – her intelligence and strength of character are appealing. Between Two Fires is recommended for those who enjoy historical romance with an unusual backdrop, ancient Wales. Two sequels are in the making.

Jeanne Greene

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11th century

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HNR Issue 78, November 2016

THE CONSTANT QUEEN Joanna Courtney, Pan Macmillan, 2016, £20, hb, 462pp, 9781447281962 Elizaveta is the daughter of the Grand Prince of Kiev and betrothed to marry the dispossessed prince Harald Sigurdsson of Norway, also known as Harald Hardrada (the Ruthless). The marriage is a love match, but headstrong Elizaveta is unaware that in Norway another woman, Tora, is also betrothed to Harald and waiting keenly for him.

Courtney tells the story of Harald’s contention for the favour of Elizaveta’s father, for wealth and fame, and then for the throne of Norway, from the perspectives of the three protagonists.

This is the second in the series of Courtney’s Conquest Queens novels, describing the leadup to 1066 from the perspectives of the women married to the three contenders for the throne of England: Harald Godwinsson, Harald Hardrada and William, Duke of Normandy. This is a richly imagined and well-researched story. Courtney evokes the sibling jealousies and affections of Elizaveta’s large family and the atmosphere and appearance of her father’s court in Kiev. She movingly describes Elizaveta’s struggle to bear Harald sons, and her relationship with her rival, Tora. The story is told in simple prose, which often feels rather over simplistic, but Courtney has a nice line in similes: “her dress creased as an ancient’s neck”; “winter lay over Kiev like a kitchen dog over a rat”. Her female characters ring truer than her men, and the story lingers overlong with Elizaveta’s childhood, when it could have effectively spent more pages on her adulthood years with Harald.

Courtney creates plausible historical contexts and has a nice sense of place. An enjoyable book, aimed at historical romance readers.

Tracey Warr

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THE VARANGIAN: Book Three of Odd Tangle-Hair’s Saga Bruce Macbain, Blank Slate, 2016, $16.95, pb, 358pp, 9781943075249 Odd comes to Miklagard – the Norse name for Constantinople – with the sole purpose of seeking out Harald, a former friend turned nemesis, and killing him. However, just as he had feared, not only is Harald the seemingly indomitable warrior he always was, but he’s become thoroughly ensconced in the city’s Varangian Guard. These doughty warriors are all of Norse or Rus stock, fearsome, and oathsworn to the Emperor. Harald is one of their officers.

Through reluctant intriguing and (un)lucky contacts in the court, Odd gets tangled not only with the deadly scheming of Byzantine politics and power-brokering, but also finds himself among the Varangian ranks. As always, he must keep his wits about him to stay alive, determine what he must do with Harald, and somehow carve a new life out for

himself on these distance shores.

This is the third and final of Macbain’s Odd Tangle-Hair novels. All three have been spellbinding in their storytelling, though this one may be the best. Odd’s journey takes us around the Mediterranean and eastern European world, and all the way north back to Iceland. The characters are wonderful, the story intriguing, the combat real but never superfluous, and Odd makes for the perfect protagonist. Highly recommended.

Justin M. Lindsay HEREWARD: The Bloody Crown James Wilde, Bantam Press, 2016, £12.99, hb, 330pp, 9780593071878 1081. Within Constantinople, a weak emperor is circled by three families, each determined to place their candidate, however feeble, on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. No method – corruption, murder, even treason – is too extreme to gain the prize. The city seethes with plots, betrayal and assassination while the population struggles with hunger and a growing fear of invasion. From the east, the Seljuk Turks are threatening; from Italy, the powerful Norman, Robert Guiscard, advances to extend his own empire. Driven from England by William the Conqueror, Hereward and his spearbrothers in the Varangian Guard must not only protect the Emperor from his vicious rivals and the city from attackers but also deal with ambitious enemies in the Guard.

Because this is the sixth of the Hereward series, the new reader is plunged into a collection of previously established characters, but the pace of the action and the momentum of the plot soon compensate for any initial confusion and occasional frustration. As so often, the baddies are the more lively characters. Hereward and his gang are “heroes”, brave and indomitable, if lacking the charisma of, say. Sharpe and his Riflemen (although this may be unfair as I have read only the one book). Wilde brings Constantinople to detailed, colourful life, from palaces to alleyways, with wonderful descriptions of weather and landscape to enrich the story. Always exciting, the novel is violent and bloody enough to suit those who want it. The plotting brings the history of a not-so-well-known period to life on the page with a couple of clever twists at the end, while leaving the reader to wonder if the city will survive the menacing armies. Highly recommended.

Lynn Guest

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12th century

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ORDEAL BY FIRE Sarah Hawkswood, Allison & Busby, 2016, £19.99, hb, 285pp, 97880749020873 Sarah Hawkswood’s second outing for the detecting duo of Bradecote and Catchpoll means a change of publisher, but readers shouldn’t worry about having to read the books in order as this story works just as well as a standalone. The setting is Worcester in 1143 during the anarchy of the reign of King Stephen and features undersheriff Hugh 3rd Century — 12th Century

Bradecote and Serjeant Catchpoll investigating a series of fires in the town. While the first fire could have been an accident, the Serjeant’s suspicions are raised when a second fire results in a death.

Catchpoll is fearful and enraged that a killer seems to be attacking his neighbours while Bradecote is more pragmatic.

The pairing is an enjoyable one for the reader, as we see the experienced Catchpoll bristle at the restraint of the recently appointed undersheriff, while Bradecote struggles to assert his authority and also deals with a family tragedy. This book also sees the appointment of Walkelin; a bright if at times overly enthusiastic young man, whom Catchpoll raises up as his apprentice. The author’s detailed research is obvious without ever overwhelming the narrative, and the details of everyday life in medieval Worcester provide fascinating background and the hint of many future outings for the duo. Ordeal by Fire is an ideal choice for fans of Ariana Franklin, Peter Tremayne and S.D. Sykes.

Lisa Redmond

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13th century

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THE DEATH OF ROBIN HOOD Angus Donald, Sphere, August 2016, £19.99, hb, 416pp, 9781405525909 After the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, King John reneges on his promises and his barons rise against him. Amongst these is Robin, Earl of Locksley, the former outlaw Robin Hood, and his companion in arms, the aging Sir Alan Dale. This novel is set during the French invasion of 12161217.

Initially Robin and Alan side with the rebels and their French allies, led by King Louis and the White Count, a man who wears gauntlets made from the skin of his victims. Angus Donald gets full marks for characterisation. From Robin of Locksley, Alan, through whose voice the tale is narrated, their sons, Matilda Giffard, Alan’s witchy lady, loyal Thomas, to the Comte du Perche who is suitably evil and ruthless, the central character depictions are vivid, human, believable and engaging. Not to be missed, too, are vignette portraits of King John and the young Prince Henry.

The novel opens with the siege of Rochester; a more detailed siege depiction one will not easily discover. After a period of incarceration Locksley and Alan join forces with King John, causing conflict within their own ranks. This first siege is mirrored by the final siege of the story, the siege of Lincoln, when after an unputdownable adventure both history and story find pitch-perfect resolution. During the finale, the real historical custodian of Lincoln Castle, the resolute Nicola de la Haye, takes up arms against the French and for the new King Henry.

The personal entwines with the history and that imagined conclusion is moving and wise.

The narrative drive, pace, and character depth are masterfully handled. This accomplished novel mixes carefully researched history, storytelling and legend, and it has heart, with apt comments 13th Century — 14th Century

on power, fairness and loyalty. Reader, I loved this book.

Carol McGrath THE POWDER OF DEATH Julian Stockwin, Allison and Busby, 2016, £19.99, hb, 383pp, 9780749019303 Julian Stockwin is an author usually associated with exciting adventures at sea. However, this novel focuses on a different type of voyage – a voyage of discovery. The opening scene is set in Oxford in 1261 with a discussion about a deadly secret, which a Flemish Franciscan stumbled across in China. The plot revolves around the central character Jared of Hurnwych, a blacksmith from Warwickshire, and his quest for revenge following the brutal murder of his young wife, Aldith, which leads him to undertake a pilgrimage. By using his skills as a blacksmith, he eventually arrives in Acre in 1291. Captured and enslaved, his ability at the forge enables him to survive, but also to learn about ‘huo yao’, the powder of death. Eventually he returns home, but his obsession with the possibilities of the explosive powder lead him into a partnership with Rosamunde of Coventry, whose commercial connections with Italian merchants take him to Tuscany to perfect the ‘gunne’ powder that will eventually lead him to play a vital role in King Edward III’s battle with the Scots at Stanhope.

In a novel brimful of characters, Perkyn Slewfoot stands out. This is partly because of the way in which Stockwin has used this character to paint a vivid picture of the life of a villein during the late 13th century. Another interesting feature is the way in which Stockwin seamlessly introduces the background to how the guild system worked and the craft and skills that a blacksmith had to master from the basic making of simple tools to those of the sword maker. The sea voyage from England to Malta is particularly memorable and is an excellent example of using factually historical detail to create a sense of period and atmosphere.

Myfanwy Cook

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14th century

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THE PLAGUE CHARMER Karen Maitland, Headline, 2016, £13.99, pb, 559pp, 9781472235831 Porlock Weir, Exmoor, 1361. The story takes place thirteen years after the Great Plague, and there are rumours that it has returned to London.

The local community is a very rural one, living by the harvests of both the sea and the land, and their lives are ruled by the seasons, the weather, and everything that can be explained as an omen, for good or ill. A total eclipse of the sun is not understood and is considered a bad omen, and then there is a shipwreck with one woman rescued from it. When the plague arrives she claims to be able to save the village from it but at a tremendous cost.

This is a very dark, chilling story full of folklore, superstition, magic and the many beliefs dominant in the 14th century. Sadly, from the first chapter I knew it would not be my kind of book and found

it extremely hard to read. However, the historical notes and riddles at the end of it were fascinating, and I learned a lot from these.

The characters are many and varied and certainly had many secrets to unfold. The conditions they lived under were graphically told, and their lives were certainly not bundles of joy, but I found it very uncomfortable reading and would certainly not want to read it again.

This author has had excellent reviews for her other books, and I am sure that those who enjoyed reading those will receive this one with delight, but it is not for me.

Marilyn Sherlock THE BREATH OF PEACE Penelope Wilcock, Lion Hudson, 2016, $14.99/£7.99, pb, 204pp, 9781782641735 The story jumps right into the middle of a marriage in crisis. William, a former monk, and Madeleine, a woman wise in herbs and healing and practical matters, have been married one year and are at an impasse. Both accustomed to taking charge; they clash over small misunderstandings and ill-chosen words. At first, it seems like petty bickering, and it’s easy to get impatient with their apparently short fuses. Yet as Wilcock unpacks the passions and scars behind the words, we see not just the troubled marriage but individuals contending with the aftermath of trauma and crises of identity.

While the conflict is universal in some ways, the setting is 14th-century Yorkshire, and Wilcock never forgets the medieval context. The couple seems isolated on their farm, but when they reach out for help, it is to the monastery where William had previously lived and where Madeleine’s brother is the new abbot. There we encounter a community with its own history, conflicts, and failures to communicate. William disturbs the peace when he seeks respite there, but he also has skills and experience that can benefit them. As the abbot reorganizes his community, he also listens to William and then to Madeleine. In the end, the solutions for the monastery and for the couple overlap, in a web of spiritual and interpersonal threads.

Part of the Hawk and the Dove series, The Breath of Peace would surely be enriched in the context of the series, but it does not rely on earlier installments for its depth. The author drops a few hints about Madeleine and William’s future, but, in the end, she is less interested in resolving the story than in exploring its rich relationships, both monastic and secular.

Martha Hoffman

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medieval

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THE PRODIGIOUS PHYSICIAN Jorge de Sena, (trans. Margaret Jull Costa), Dedalus Euro Short, 2016, £7.99, pb, 119pp, 9781910213384 A Portuguese poet and novelist, de Sena chose exile in Brazil, then California, rather than live HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 21

under the Salazar dictatorship. To make a classic of Portuguese literature, published in 1978, the novella combines two short stories in a vaguely medieval setting. The first, an erotic fairy tale, concerns a young, handsome virgin, a physician, lured by maidens to a castle where their mistress, Dona Urraca, pines away. Not a virgin for long, the youth and Dona Urraca fall in love but their sensuous dalliance, which includes the maidens, attracts the Inquisition. In the second story, the youth and Dona Urraca are tortured and tried for witchcraft and high treason by the corrupt Inquisitor.

No short review can possibly do justice to this complex, fascinating parable of the brutal, puritan Salazar regime, not just because this reviewer is not sure how much she really understands. A greater acquaintance with Portuguese history and literature would be useful. But every event, every character, all the wonderful language has multiple interpretations. Is the Devil an endearingly lovesick, very funny shadow or is it Dona Urraca? Is the youth, prodigious not just in healing, a physician or a magician? Does he represent sexual freedom or is he an evil revolutionary? Only the Inquisitor is reasonably straightforward: Salazar. De Sena’s technique is brilliantly original. Often he uses two dialogues printed side by side, complementary or contradictory. The novel is as ironic and funny as it is erotic and cynical. The marvellous linguistic word-play is superbly translated, no easy task, I suspect. There is an excellent introduction which is very helpful. This is a novel to be re-read. Highly recommended.

Lynn Guest

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15th century

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THE WITCH OF EYE Mari Griffith, Accent, 2015, £8.99, pb, 383pp, 9781783759507 This novel weaves together the stories of three women from three different levels of 15th century English society: dairymaid, Jenna, who has run away from a violent husband in Devon; Margery Jourdemayne, wife of a prospering tenant-farmer in Westminster, and Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, who is married to King Henry VI’s uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.

Jenna progresses in Westminster from dairy maid to become Margery’s assistant in her business providing herbal remedies for the court and in particular to the Duchess of Gloucester. Jenna and Margery’s husband fall in love with one another and know that their love must remain unrequited.

Margery has previously been accused of witchcraft and narrowly avoided conviction on that occasion, but hungry for greater wealth and status, she rashly decides to use dubious means to help the 22 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 78, November 2016

Duchess conceive a child.

Until the pimply, adolescent and weak-willed king marries and produces an heir, Eleanor’s husband, the Duke of Gloucester, is heir to the throne. Eleanor revels in her position as the most important woman in the kingdom, but she has a deadly enemy in her husband’s kinsman, Cardinal Henry Beaufort. In a society where misogyny is constantly lurking, seeing witches and whores in all females, sinister intents gather to threaten the three women.

The villains are occasionally a little too villainous and some plot resolutions are a little too pat; nevertheless, this is a thoroughly enjoyable read. A very well-researched story, where the narrative licks along irresistibly.

Tracey Warr

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ACCESSION Livi Michael, Penguin, 2016, £8.99, pb, 407pp, 9780241977637 Accession concludes Livi Michael’s Wars of the Roses trilogy, begun in Succession (HNR 71) and Rebellion (HNR 74). We begin in the aftermath of the Lancastrian defeat at Tewkesbury in 1471. Jasper Tudor flees England with his nephew, Henry.

Margaret Beaufort, only in her twenties but thrice married, twice widowed, reluctantly negotiates her fourth marriage to the slippery Thomas Stanley. Meanwhile, the bereaved former queen, Margaret of Anjou, is placed under house arrest.

The Yorkists are in the ascendant, and young Henry Tudor grows to manhood in dangerous exile while his mother schemes for what she sees as her son’s birthright – the crown of England. Fraternal rivalries undermine the House of York, setting in motion events that take us to the inevitable climax at Bosworth Field in 1485.

As in the previous volumes, Livi Michael skilfully splices her chorus of narrative voices with contemporary chronicles and other accounts of the times. The focus of this final volume inevitably shifts so that this becomes centred on Margaret Beaufort and her son. Some of the best scenes are with the lesser known players in incidents imagined rather than documented – learned Alice Chaucer, Queen Margaret’s reluctant gaoler, attempts to console the royal prisoner; Jane Shore, left without a protector after the death of King Edward, submits to Lord Hastings and Thomas Rivers out of necessity rather than love.

Occasionally there is a touch of the history lesson when characters sit down to explain a particularly tortuous situation to each other, but mostly this moves with the pace of a thriller, though one suffused with a sense of loss and impending tragedy. We, of course, know the outcome – the characters do not and their futures, and the future of England are convincingly on a knife-edge. A

grand and stirring conclusion to a fascinating trilogy.

Mary Fisk

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16th century

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MURDER AT FONTAINEBLEAU Amanda Carmack, NAL, 2016, $7.99, pb, 304pp, 9780451475701 Murder at Fontainebleau is the fifth installment of Carmack’s Elizabethan Mysteries. The novel opens just after the death of Kate Haywood’s father. Kate, a young noblewoman, is a courtier and sometime spy for Elizabeth I. In this novel, Kate is charged with figuring out the next move of Elizabeth’s rival, Mary Queen of Scots, and is sent to France as part of a diplomatic retinue. Kate struggles to learn the labyrinthine politics of the French court, who is an ally or enemy, and if there is a way she can really help her Queen with the task she was sent to do. When a member of her party is murdered, Kate has to find out if it is a case of jilted love or if Elizabeth’s enemies are making a step toward making a play on the English throne.

When I started reading Murder at Fontainebleau, I knew it was one of a series. It didn’t make a difference to my ability to follow the narrative.

Carmack did a good job of providing enough history that not having read the previous books wasn’t a detriment to this one. I would like to read the other books so that I can get the history of all the characters, because they are intriguing and I quite liked Kate and her love interest, Rob Cartman.

The history within the novel kept my interest as well. However, I was a solid three-quarters of the way through the book before the murder actually took place. After that, things moved very quickly and conveniently. There was a lot of lead-in and relatively little payoff. As a straightforward work of historical fiction, the novel did well enough, but for a mystery, it lacked a lot of actual, well, mystery.

Kristen McQuinn THREE SISTERS, THREE QUEENS Philippa Gregory, Touchstone, 2016, $27.99/ C$32.99, hb, 576pp, 9781476758572 / Simon & Schuster UK, 2016, £20.00, hb, 560pp, 9781471133015 One of the less documented Tudor women is explored in Gregory’s latest 16th-century read.

Margaret, elder sister of Henry VIII, was a girl of thirteen when she was sent to marry James IV of Scotland and seal the Treaty of Perpetual Peace.

Though the title gives the impression of a multiple narration, as in The Boleyn Inheritance and The Other Queen, this isn’t quite the case.

Katherine of Aragon, Queen of England, and Mary Tudor, Queen of France, are prominent figures in the story, though mostly through correspondence with Margaret. The “sister” queens share a rivalry that ebbs and flows with the changing political situations of the three countries.

While they each have unmoving opinions of themselves and each other, the birth and loss of 15th Century — 16th Century

children binds them together – yet they each have a desire to be the Tudor princess who produces a son. The story follows Margaret from her wedding and new life in the wilds of Scotland to her role as Queen Mother, culminating at the peak of Henry VIII’s divorce proceedings, where the sisters, each in her own fashion, must graciously step out of the glittering Tudor court.

Margaret’s personality portrays her as proud and stubborn, and one who does not seem to learn from experience and mistakes. This, along with the constantly changing political alliances, will leave the reader’s head spinning. Likewise, those who enjoyed Katherine of Aragon’s characterization in The Constant Princess will find a different person altogether, though this can be attributed to Margaret’s skewed view of her, as well as Katherine’s understandable desperation in her later reign. Without a likeable protagonist, this story may fall short of expectations for some Gregory fans, although there are a few charming characters who add appeal to the detailed storyline.

Arleigh Johnson THE ORNATRIX Kate Howard, Overlook, 2016, $27.95, hb, 272pp, 9781468313826 / Duckworth, 2016, £8.99, pb, 272pp, 9780715650974 In 16th-century Italy, two women rejected by their families weave in and out of each other’s lives in this novel about the desire for beauty and acceptance. One is an ostentatious, glamorous widowed courtesan, and the other is shunned for the bird-shaped blemish on her face. Marked as she is, Flavia cannot go out in public – until the discovery of white cerussa, a lead-poisoned cosmetic. If only her mother hadn’t seen the broken nest while pregnant; then her face would never have been marked with the bird in flight.

Strong lyrical imagery (“she has a list of truisms longer than a hermit’s toenails”) provides weight to the historical setting, which I very much enjoyed. This writing style works immeasurably well to express changes in moods or thoughts and character observations: “Her stepmother’s questions were like a great hand reaching into her head, pushing things around that ought not to be moved, and squeezing what was known and normal into a small forgotten place.”

However, the prose is not effective for conveying actions. Some sections needed a re-read in order to visualize the physical movements: “A loud cracking noise fills her head. She blinks very hard because no one told her there was going to be a storm today.

Twice more, the smack of something hard on her ear.” If you’re being struck with the edge of a silver card case, as is happening here, you’ll know it’s not thunder. When characters feel pain or fear, the thoughts need to be more urgent in nature.

The beauty recipes included by Howard illustrate the ridiculous lengths women have gone through for beauty. This is a moving, sometimes frightening, and always surprising story. Utilizing strong historical settings and enchanting language, the light and dark pigments coalesce into a story beautiful on multiple levels.

J. Lynn Else 16th Century — 17th Century

REBELLION’S MESSAGE Michael Jecks, Severn House, 2016, $28.99/£20.99, hb, 224pp, 9781780290850 The seedy underworld of London in 1554 is explored through the eyes of Jack Blackjack, who wakes up behind a pub next to a dead body, while holding the bloody murder weapon. He recalls robbing a patron of his purse and finds it lying beside him, empty, aside from a cryptic note sewn into the lining. Jack finds his world turned upside down as the cutpurses he lives with lose trust in him, since people who cross paths with him are being murdered. He needs to stay ahead of the killer while trying to know who to trust with the mysterious note.

The novel, set after the deaths of Edward VI and Lady Jane Grey, is a murder mystery that brings in the politics of the era. Mary Tudor sits on her shaky throne, and the men who have religious and political clout are as dangerous as the criminals.

The story follows a multitude of characters as the city faces irregular volunteers battling with the rebels through the streets. This story is a good mystery for lovers of politics and history. I found it to be a bit rough around the edges, which fits with the characters. The author certainly knows his period.

Beth Turza THE COURSE OF FORTUNE, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 Tony Rothman, iBooks, 2015, $37.95, hb, 378pp, 9781596874275 (volume 1); $37.95, hb, 288pp, 9781596874282 (volume 2); $37.95, hb, 408pp, 9781596874299 (volume 3) Francisco de Barai, young and full of vigor, must flee his native Seville under false charges.

What follows is a 15-year adventure across the Mediterranean and two continents. He soon falls in with the Knights of Malta. Though, given his low birth, he can never be one of them, he finds both friendship and rivalries among their ranks.

Through years of toil, ambition, and slavery he becomes increasingly bound to these knights, and to an oath to slay Dragut, the famous Ottoman admiral and privateer. All will be decided in what will become the greatest siege and conflict of the century: the Siege of Malta.

In this epic tale, Rothman uncompromisingly sets the reader deep in the 16th-century world of the Mediterranean – unmitigated, with no nod to modern sensibilities or expectations. It’s wonderful and refreshing. The characters are complex and three-dimensional, and his writing is compelling.

The story is witnessed through Francisco’s eyes (as he relates it to his captor, Suleiman the Magnificent), and Rothman folds in the flavor of the Maltese, French, Sicilian, and Ottoman worlds with a deftness that is a joy to take in. Well worth the read – recommended.

Justin M. Lindsay

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17th century

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CHARLATAN Kate Braithwaite, Fireship, 2016, $19.99, pb, 300pp, 9781611793659 The court of King Louis XIV of France was, without doubt, one of the most colorful and scandal-ridden in history. During his reign, he amused himself with numerous mistresses, the most important and influential of whom was Athénaïs de Montespan. As her beauty began to fade and Louis’ interest waned, her family feared losing their place at court if she lost Louis’ favor.

She visited a fortune-teller, La Voisin, who also conjured “love spells” guaranteed to hold a lover’s passion. La Voisin was popular with the ladies of the court. In fact, all Paris was aware of her, which brought her to the notice of Paris’ Chief of Police, La Reynie. He was particularly interested in the convenient deaths of a number of inconvenient husbands. When his investigation of a network of fortune-tellers and poisoners led him directly to the inner circle of Louis’s court – namely to Mme de Montespan, his official mistress and mother of seven of his children – many lives and fortunes were in danger.

Kate Braithwaite has written an intimate and intriguing view of one of the most famous courtesans in all France. She paints a sympathetic portrait of Mme de Montespan, whom history sometimes treats harshly. Her story provides intelligent insight into the glamour and treachery of the Sun King’s court. This novel is worth reading.

Audrey Braver THE DEVILS OF CARDONA Matthew Carr, Riverhead, 2016, $27, hb, 401pp, 9781101982730 Amid rumors of rising rebellion in Aragon, royal decree sends former soldier and now judge Bernardo de Mendoza to investigate the murder of a priest in the town of Belamar. The cultured and rational Mendoza recruits his swashbuckling cousin Ventura to accompany him, along with the boy whom he rescued from the flames of Granada more than a decade earlier and a wizened veteran of the Imperial Landsknecht.

It is late 16th-century Spain, and pampered courtiers, self-flagellating Inquisitors, brutish counts, womanizing priests, oppressed Moriscos, and bandits abound. Carr signals fairly clearly who is good and bad, and lends a more modern openmindedness to those with whom the reader will sympathize, although with enough depth of detail in their experience to make those sensibilities seem reasonable. Despite an unfortunate number of clichés in characterizations, the historical details are riveting and well done. Cities, palaces, towns, and countryside spring to life, incorporated into the narrative rather than reading like re-packaged research.

Mendoza and his companions encounter a web of conflicted relationships among Old Christians and supposedly converted former Muslims. The investigation uncovers feuding nobles, corrupt officials, mounting and merciless violence, and, overarching it all, a wide-ranging and at times baffling conspiracy. While some of the details are hard to follow, and some minor but crucial HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 23

characters take work to keep straight, the story is an exciting page-turner of an adventure.

Martha Hoffman DEATH’S BRIGHT ANGEL J. D. Davies, Old Street, 2016, £8.99, pb, 291pp, 9781910400463 Battles at sea, religious conflict, fanatics ‘speechifying’, the threat of foreign terror and the Great Fire of London are all combined in this 6th novel in the Matthew Quinton mystery series.

The author has blended his knowledge of sea warfare between the British Navy and their Dutch and French adversaries with his well-researched interest into the real causes of the London fire.

An appendix at the back of this novel contains the novelist’s detailed investigation into the fire, set against the political context of the period.

The novel opens with the Jeanne d’Arc being taken as a prize by Captain Quinton. It then leads the reader on through the destruction of a large Dutch merchant fleet to the razing by fire of the Dutch town of Westerchelling three weeks before the burning of London. This event is pivotal to Davies’ story and leads his main character to become embroiled in the intrigue leading up to the trial of Robert Hubert, a Huguenot watchmaker.

It is always challenging for a writer to try to catch a new reader up with a cast of characters already well-established in previous novels. Having never read any in this series, I find it admirable that Davies has managed to introduce these characters smoothly. My favourite being Captain Kitt Farrell, a seaman, who unlike Quinton, hadn’t come from the privileged classes and won his captaincy on merit being a “bad judge of wine”, but an excellent judge of the movement of ships through water.”

This novel is full of naval action, but it isn’t overburdened with technical vocabulary. Davies has created a ring of authenticity and a taste of the atmosphere of the times through competently crafted dialogue.

Myfanwy Cook TO FOLLOW HER HEART Rebecca DeMarino, Revell, 2016, $14.99, pb, 368pp, 9780800722203 In this final Southold Chronicles story, Jeremy Horton is shipwrecked in the summer of 1664, and all on Long Island believe he is dead. When Patience Terry learns he has survived, she is overjoyed, but Jeremy’s flimsy reasons for not wanting to hold their wedding become more and more frustrating. Patience and the rest of the Long Island friends and family find it hard to understand Jeremy’s reluctance. Even though readers receive a peek into his psychological motivation, it does not seem very convincing.

This is a long, slow, very sweet Christian book, partly based on real people. Tensions between the Dutch and the English play a part in driving the plot. The beginning and the end are far more riveting than the lengthy middle section, although fans of the Hortons will enjoy the threedimensional descriptions of their food, faith, and fellowship. Patience and Jeremy finally find resolution in a hair-raising ending that brings them 24 | Reviews |

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home to their English roots and will make readers hope the author has a follow-up in the pipeline. An epilogue concerning Mary and Barnabas Horton is emotionally very poignant: Bring tissues.

Elizabeth Knowles CRANE POND: A Novel of Salem Richard Francis, Europa, 2016, $18.00/C$23.75, pb, 348pp, 9781609453510 Historical fictions about the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-1693 have often been reduced to political or moral allegory, stand-ins for McCarthyism, send-ups of Puritanism, or cautionary tales of pietism gone wrong. The judges never come off well. In Crane Pond, Richard Francis creates a nuanced, compassionate and fascinating portrait of Samuel Sewall, the unwilling hanging judge. He’s a devout, faithful husband with unholy fantasies; a loving, bungling father; leader of his beloved community who oversees its unraveling; a rigorous, thoughtful judge whose conclusions seem (to us) absurd.

Crane Pond recounts the 15 months of witch trials and Sewall’s next four tormented, guiltridden years of retribution against a richly detailed, highly sensory re-creation of the times. The writing is elegant, with grace notes of sly humor, using accessible yet evocative phrasings. But Francis does more: taking us beyond the complacency with which we often view this iconic moment in American history. We tell ourselves we’re way more rational today. “Oh really?” Francis suggests, with a riveting account of how Puritan theology and worldview bullied educated, earnest men like Sewall into hanging twenty people on the “evidence” of a few screaming girls. Our own worldview may right now be putting us in positions the future may find absurd. For this reason alone, Crane Pond is well worth the read.

However, it’s not a fast read. There are many characters and repeated first names. Keep the supplied list of principal characters handy. Subtle legal and theological arguments must be traced to explain a convoluted system in which if God exists, so must Satan, and hence witches exist, and only a witch would deny being one. But persevere: Crane Pond deserves and rewards attention. This portrait of Samuel Sewall, enemy of Satan, forces sympathy for a man often seen as a devil.

Pamela Schoenewaldt BIRTHRIGHT David Hingley, Allison & Busby, 2016, £14.99, hb, 352pp, 9780749020323 In 1664 London, young widow Mercia Blake’s world is shattered when her Parliamentarian father is belatedly condemned to the scaffold, her evil uncle evicts her from the family’s manor house, and her dead husband’s parents try to take away her young son. Nobody’s fool, Mercia quickly realizes that her father is a victim to greed and vengeance, and that his last words contain her key to restore her family’s fortunes. Her only hope is to gain the King’s gratitude by recovering a collection of paintings presumed lost after Worcester. With the help of an old friend and suitor, and of a young sailor with a chequered past, can Mercia find the

paintings before whoever stole them gets to her?

With an interesting premise (art theft isn’t quite the usual fare for historical sleuths), Birthright could have greatly benefited from a less anachronistic depiction of Restoration social mores. I doubt a common sailor would be on a first-name basis with a lady from the gentry who, in turn, addresses the King as “you”. Entertaining enough, but a disappointment on the historical side.

Chiara Prezzavento THE MASTER AND THE MAID: Heaven’s Pond Trilogy, #1 Laura Libricz, Blue Heron, 2016, $12.99, pb, 295pp, 9780996817783 Nuremberg, May 1616. Two years before the outbreak of the Thirty Years War, the devastating conflict that would rend apart Catholic and Protestant Europe, feckless Willy Prutt barters his lover, Katarina, to Sebald Tucher, the descendant of a powerful patrician family. Katarina braces herself to be taken by force, but Tucher, a married man with freethinking leanings, surprises her by using gentle persuasion, taking her to his country manor, Heaven’s Pond, and charging her with the running of the estate. However, this task is not the only challenge facing Katarina: on her way to Heaven’s Pond, she encounters an archer, HansWolfgang, who threatens to kill her unless she takes care of his newborn daughter, Isabeau. As Hans-Wolfgang tells the story, Isabeau’s mother was brutally murdered by Ralf, a Jesuit priest who, intent on stealing the child’s inheritance, now pursues her father. It is only a matter of time before Ralf descends on Katarina, promising that he will brand her a witch unless she surrenders Isabeau. When shortly thereafter, a brutal band of masked marauders attacks the house, the fates of Katarina and Isabeau hang in the balance.

The first part of a trilogy, the novel vividly reconstructs the atmosphere of 17th-century Franconia, its cities and countryside, and the book will captivate readers interested in the history of the great patrician families of Nuremberg, the Tuchers and the Imhoffs. Unfortunately, the reading experience is sometimes marred by the use of a language that is too modern and not representative of contemporary speech patterns and attitudes.

Elisabeth Lenckos THE BLACK FRIAR S.G. MacLean, Quercus, 2016, £19.99, hb, 450pp, 9781782068457 Following in the forbidding footsteps of The Seeker, winner of the CWA 2015 Historical Dagger, The Black Friar sees Damian Seeker, or the Seeker, continue his efforts to safeguard Oliver Cromwell and the still-fragile Protectorate from internal and external dissent. Seeker must ward off the machinations of former comrades, the Fifth Monarchists, and the plots of Royalist enemies while also investigating a complex mystery involving child snatching, murder and powerhungry rivals.

This second instalment of the Seeker adventures gives the reader an interesting look behind the edifice of the 17th-century Cromwellian state and 17th Century

the unceasing efforts required by its spymasters and spies to keep enemies at bay while also providing the reader a look into the personal world of Damian Seeker. A man who can literally empty a coffee shop by his entrance – such is the power he wields and the fear he inspires – is also a flesh and blood man with a wounded heart and a complicated love life. S.G. MacLean is terrific at balancing Seeker’s personal struggles with the political fires he must put out. She locates that sharp characterisation within a convincing backdrop of 17th-century London and creates an atmosphere of fear and suspicion that is almost a character in its own right. This really is Damian Seeker’s novel; he dominates proceedings, but MacLean also leaves room for the well-drawn supporting cast, including many real figures of the era like George Downing, Andrew Marvell and even an upwardly thrusting Samuel Pepys.

Finally, the plot of this historical mystery is sufficiently labyrinthine to keep the attention focused as the narrative progresses towards a resolution, and the disparate elongated strands are unravelled and tied up satisfactorily. The conclusion of The Black Friar begs only one question, what will Damian Seeker do next, and how soon can we read about it?

Gordon O’Sullivan DUTY TO THE CROWN Aimie K. Runyan, Kensington, 2016, $15.00/ C$16.95, pb, 338pp, 9781496701145 It’s May 1677 outside the Quebec Settlement, New France, in the Canadian colonies. Told through three alternating characters, the story begins with Manon, a half-white, half-Huron girl, as she gathers herbs on a white man’s land to help her ailing brother, Tawendeh. Threatened by a farmer who accuses her of trespassing, she goes to the home of Nicole Lefebvre, who raised Manon in her early years. In the next chapter, we meet Claudine, Nicole’s sister, who dreams of marrying a wealthy man who will take her back to Paris and make her a fine woman. When Claudine accompanies Nicole to Manon’s longhouse in the Huron village, in order to take herbs and supplies to nurse the sick there, Claudine thinks ahead to her entrance into formal society, her coming-out ball in fancy dress. Then we meet Gabrielle, the seamstress who works on Claudine’s gown. We learn that Gabrielle is pressed to find a husband, since the local edict requires her adoptive parents to pay a fine if she does not marry by age 16.

The novel weaves the lives of these three women together as they find love, disappointment, and tragedy in New France. Around them the society grows and prospers in the new land, and we see the meshing of cultures as the Huron and white settlers slowly accept one another’s differences. With the many setting details and lovely descriptions of everyday life, the reader is treated to a picture of what it must have been like to reach maturity in such a world. It is a novel of both love and loss, and we come away in admiration for the women striving despite mistreatment and abandonment. I found myself sorry when I reached the end of the book, since Manon, Claudine, and Gabrielle had 17th Century — 18th Century

become like good friends of mine.

Gini Grossenbacher

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THE LONG WAY HOME Kevin Bannister, Fireship, 2016, $19.99, pb, 335pp, 9781611793611 Murphy Steele is not old enough to do a man’s work when he and Thomas Peters run away from their owner. They are easily captured and brutally flogged. With a second escape, both are branded R on their cheeks as runaways. The third time, their captor takes them to Wilmington, North Carolina, and keeps them for his own.

The American Revolution comes to Wilmington with a fleet of British warships. Lord Dunmore promises to free any escaped slaves who will serve as soldiers. After the war, they will be given land.

Murphy and Thomas eagerly arrange another escape and join the Royal Ethiopian Regiment, soon renamed the Black Pioneers.

Thus begins The Long Way Home. Basing his novel on actual persons and events, Kevin Bannister takes an utterly unique look at the American Revolution through the eyes of a second, smaller group of people who win their freedom in battle.

However, their war ends badly. Murphy, Thomas, and other Black pioneers have a choice – return to slavery in North Carolina, or follow withdrawing British troops and Loyalists to Canada. There, they find prejudice equally pervasive and land of their own an elusive dream.

I loved The Long Way Home. It’s told in an easy, conversational style, with vivid language that puts you right in the action. Thomas Peters was instrumental persuading over 1,000 freed blacks to return to Africa, where they founded Freetown, Sierra Leone. Mr. Bannister’s story ends with that hopeful beginning, and a note which says he’s working on a sequel. I can’t wait to read it.

Jo Ann Butler

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THE JEWEL Catherine Czerkawska, Saraband/Trafalgar Square, 2016, $14.95/C$19.95/£8.99, pb, 320pp, 9781910192238 When Jeany Armour first meets Rab Burns in the 1780s Scottish town of Mauchline, she hears he is “a lad best avoided by a girl like her, a lass with a good reputation to maintain.” But her heavenly voice, along with the treasure-trove of old ballads she sings, soon brings Jeany to Rab’s attention. Before long, and despite all her mother’s admonitions about chancy lads who slip away, nothing can keep the two lovers apart. Robert Burns is no ordinary tenant farmer, but a poet with a book

always in hand and a glint in his eye. And Jeany becomes his woodlark, his muse and inspiration, his lover, the mother of his children, and his wife.

Their tumultuous relationship endures in spite of the machinations of others and the couple’s own failings.

Scottish novelist and playwright Catherine Czerkawska gives dulcet voice to the neglected story of Jean Armour. The author’s elegant prose vividly evokes 18th-century Scotland, and her narrative is firmly grounded in fact. Often overlooked or minimalized by Burns’ biographers, the true tale of Jean’s life and the many challenges of her marriage to Scotland’s acclaimed poet spring to life in this lovely novel, sweetly told. Highly recommended.

Susan McDuffie

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THE WHITE MIRROR Elsa Hart, Minotaur, 2016, $25.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250074966 In 18th-century China, tensions are escalating between the Emperor of China, the Tibetan king, and the Mongols in the north.

Li Du, a former imperial librarian, is traveling with a tea caravan along the Tea Horse Road.

During their trek to a village manor, the group comes upon the body of a dead monk, with a strange symbol painted on the corpse. When the rain turns to snow, the caravan seeks refuge and reports their gruesome discovery to the manor lord.

The monk’s name was Dhamo, a reclusive painter, and no one in the manor is surprised to learn the monk appears to have committed suicide.

But when Dhamo’s last “thangka” (a painting on cotton) goes missing, Li Du wonders if there’s more behind Dhamo’s death. He soon learns that each guest at the manor has a secret they are hiding.

When memories from Li Du’s past come to the surface, he must confront the real reason behind his becoming an independent traveler instead of returning home, while also identifying a murderer.

One of my favorite books of 2015 was Elsa Hart’s novel Jade Dragon Mountain, which introduces Li Du. This is the author’s second novel, and it’s definitely cut from the same “thangka” as her first. Hart has the ability to weave political and religious intrigue into her plotline while creating a culturally rich, character-driven story. A favorite character of mine, Hamza, provided delightful dialogue throughout the book via his storytelling and discussions with Li Du. It was like breathing in the delightful aroma of a perfectly-steeped cup of hot tea.

Hart masterfully brings this historical period to life. Follow the clues with Li Du in his intriguing investigation and thoughtful introspection. This wonderfully detailed story makes for an enjoyable whodunit mystery that’ll keep you guessing.

Highly recommended.

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THE CAPTAIN AND THE COUNTESS Rosemary Morris, Books We Love, 2016, $14.99/ C$19.55, pb, 348pp, 9781772991093 The Right Honourable Captain Edward Howard and Kate, the Countess of Sinclair, feel a powerful attraction to each other; however, she is a wealthy widow, determined not to marry again after her experience with an older, abusive husband, and he is only a naval officer, and some years younger. The barriers seem insurmountable, but she is seeking her twin children from whom she was separated at their birth, and he is eager to assist in the search.

This is an odd book in many ways. Though reminiscent of a Regency romance, it is set firmly in the early 18th century with careful, at times distracting, attention to period detail.

The exaggerated mannerisms and conventional language of the characters are familiar from 18thcentury comedy, but they do not translate well from the stage to the form of the modern novel, particularly one with little discernable satiric intent. The plot is melodramatic. This will appeal to readers who enjoy a sentimental romance and to those curious about the lifestyle of the privileged aristocracy during the reign of Queen Anne.

Ray Thompson

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THE BLIND ASTRONOMER’S DAUGHTER John Pipkin, Bloomsbury, 2016, $28.00/C$37.00, hb, 464pp, 9781632861870 This novel focuses on the turbulent years in Ireland from 1791 to 1823, when the pursuit of astrology and the mapping of the solar system conflicted with political upheaval and created personal tragedies.

Arthur Ainsworth is obsessed with finding an unknown planet near Mercury. When astronomer William Herschel discovers Uranus, Arthur is consumed with jealousy. As he goes blind from staring at the sun, and his observations continue to prove futile, he throws himself from his rooftop observatory.

His daughter, Caroline, who often assisted him in documenting his observations, inherits his passion for stargazing and mapping but is forced to leave her home and Ireland when a crooked middleman robs her of her inheritance. Caroline not only leaves behind her father’s work and dreams but also Finnegan O’Siodha, the blacksmith who had been helping her father build a massive telescope, and whom she has loved forever but from a distance.

The Blind Astronomer’s Daughter is a tour de force of characterization and historical narrative.

The novel is not just about Arthur and Caroline, and their search for an elusive planet and the mapping of the solar system, but also about the people who have bearing on them, including Finnegan and his family, who live and work on 26 | Reviews |

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Arthur’s land; William Herschel, a musician who discovers Uranus by chance; and his sister Lina, who struggles to be recognized as a legitimate astronomer. Even the uprising and rebellion of 1798 and its aftermath are integral to the story.

No matter how small, the characters and the time come alive in narrative that is rich, intense and meticulously rendered that it often comes across as lyrical or philosophical.

The novel is a remarkable story about the pursuit of intellectual curiosity but also its mania and the people it rewards as it equally destroys.

Francesca Pelaccia

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THE BIRDMAN’S WIFE Melissa Ashley, Affirm Press, 2016, A$32.99/ NZ$37.99, hb, 400pp, 9781925344998 This is an extraordinary and a memorable book.

Although it is, perhaps, aimed more at ornithologists, taxidermists, taxonomists, twitchers and nature illustrators, I found it fascinating, and I am none of these things. Author Melissa Ashley has had to face the daunting task of writing a biography about a woman whose life has been largely unrecorded.

Few of her letters are extant, and her journal, such as it is, covers only a few years of her short life.

The book, therefore, published as a work of fiction, is the imagined biography of Elizabeth Gould. Born at the beginning of the 19th century, during the Regency, she became the wife of John Gould, who is immortalised by the exquisite bird books bearing his name. Copies of these books are treasured possessions in major libraries worldwide.

Elizabeth died at 37, worn out after giving birth to her eighth child and years of dedicated work illustrating her taxidermist and taxonomist husband’s descriptions of the thousands of birds that he had killed and stuffed. His Birds of Australia – where the couple spent a less than comfortable two years, to say nothing of the discomforts and perils of the voyage from and back to Britain – is especially important. Sadly, it is John Gould who is remembered for this work, as it is assumed by many people that he drew the pictures. In fact, it appears that he did not draw even one.

Ashley’s knowledge of her subject is encyclopaedic, and she writes beautifully and clearly with a great deal of love. I cannot recommend this book too highly – though, as I say, it might not appeal to all readers.

Ken Methold SOMEONE TO LOVE Mary Balogh, Signet, 2016, $7.99/C$10.99, pb,

390pp, 9780451477798 When the Countess of Riverdale instructs her solicitor to find the illegitimate daughter whom her late husband has been supporting in an orphanage near Bath, and compensate her with a final settlement, she assumes this act will protect the reputation of her own children. But when he finds Anna Snow, now a teacher at the orphanage, he discovers that the late Earl had actually married her mother. Not only is Anna legitimate, moreover, but the second marriage took place before her mother died. Since it was bigamous, it was invalid and the children illegitimate. Though unaware of her family connections, Anna (Lady Anastasia Westcott) is the sole heir.

The consequences of this shattering revelation allow the author to explore not just Regency conventions, like the snobbery and sense of entitlement of the aristocracy, and double standards in the treatment of women, but such timeless issues as conflict within families and the psychological wounds that trouble orphans. In the Duke of Netherby, the admirable heroine finds a suitable husband, of course. This is, after all, a Regency romance. But it is elegantly constructed.

Highly recommended.

Ray Thompson THE OTHER EINSTEIN Marie Benedict, Sourcebooks, 2016, $25.99/£17.99, hb, 304pp, 9781492637257 Mitza Marič is a brilliant young woman whose family struggles to get her accepted into and excel at Zurich’s elite Polytechnic, one of the few institutions of higher learning admitting women in the late 1890s. Mitza, a physicist-in-training, is a math genius who seeks to find a unifying explanation for how the world works. One of her classmates is Albert Einstein, who takes an immediate interest in her. Why, Mitza asks, would he be interested in a dark-haired Serb with a limp?

Well, he is. And so their relationship begins to develop; they fall in love, they plan to marry, but Einstein can’t find a job. Mitza, now pregnant with their child, abandons her education.

Ultimately, they marry. Only after Mitza and Albert become what he tells her is “ein stein” – one stone, and Mitza partners with Albert on a theory of relativity which was her vision, does Albert’s academic career take off – at Mitza’s expense.

Benedict’s portrayal of Albert as a conniving, manipulative genius is marvelous. While Mitza tries to keep her family together after Albert co-opts her theories and publishes under his own name, intentionally denying her whatever recognition she would be entitled to, Albert becomes an abuser and an adulterer – an all-around not nice guy.

I found the scene between Madame Curie and Mitza particularly effective. Here is a Nobel laureate coming from much the same background as Mitza, making her realize that, had she had the kind of husband Pierre Curie was, Albert would have reveled in Mitza’s accomplishments and brilliance. Alas, for Mitza that was not to be. This is a tour de force giving real insight into a famous man and a woman who should have been.

Ilysa Magnus 18th Century — 19th Century

DODGER OF THE REVOLUTION James Benmore, Heron Books, 2016, £19.99, hb, 374pp, 9780857054821 Jack Hawkins, the Artful Dodger, Fagin’s top thief and burglar, is having a bad time, slave to the opium poppy, his precious hands trembling and useless. No wonder the beautiful Lily Lennox has given him the elbow. Now he has a chance of redemption. Handsome mulatto siblings, Celeste and Jerome Lamoreaux need this greatest of cracksmen to retrieve an item proving their right to a fortune: a certificate held in Paris by the terrifying Hugo Defarge.

The year is 1848. Dodger, his young assistant Nick, Celeste, and Jerome arrive in Paris as revolutionaries pour onto the streets and the barricades go up to confront the National Guard for the first day of vicious bloody conflict. From the height of the barricades, Defarge performs miracles of killing and Dodger must be there, keeping track of the man who wears the keys to a fortune round his waist. The dreadful day ends, but hate-filled violence still prevails with lost children, insane heroics and understandable cowardice tumbling over one another. Our hero’s infiltration of the Tuileries is a highlight, the guards stupified by his own opium stew. There are few danger-free moments for Dodger, but whenever there are, he contemplates Celeste; she is disingenuous and untrustworthy, but to what purpose? Dodger seems unlikely to receive his promised reward in Paris. Will he find a priceless gift in London?

Dodger’s cockney crim-cant is entertaining and his grammar unconventional but consistent.

Readers should enjoy the author’s crafty references to Dickens, Victor Hugo and Dumas and try to spot as many as they can.

Nancy Henshaw THE HOUSE IN QUILL COURT Charlotte Betts, Piatkus, 2016, £8.99, pb, 401pp, 9780349404530 In 1813, a time when there was no formal law enforcement, hardworking business people were regularly threatened to pay tithes to a mob leader to ensure they could continue to trade without reprisals. There was no social security for those out of work, poverty and disease was rife amongst the lower classes, and violence of every type was a constant threat. Since the untimely death of her beloved father has left Venetia’s mother, younger brother and herself in straitened circumstances with no obvious means of support, the appearance of a handsome stranger forces on them a move to London. Far from the life she has known and the open spaces around her seaside home, Venetia is faced with a challenge of extraordinary proportions when they have to begin their new life at Quill Court in London.

Major Jack Chamberlaine is an unwelcoming host, and Venetia finds him difficult to work with as he accuses her of being a “gold-digger”. Despite this, she is determined to make a successful business for the whole household’s benefit, following in her father’s dreams of opening a high class establishment to sell furniture, soft furnishings and design wallpaper for the wealthy of London society.

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The threats in this story, both real and imagined, build a web in which the characters become more linked as the story develops. The violence escalates through to the conclusion, and the descriptive passages of overflowing sewer-like streets and alleys have the reader almost inhaling the ordure along with the characters. It is a well-told tale with a satisfactory outcome and an enjoyable read.

Cathy Kemp A DUKE TO REMEMBER Kelly Bowen, Forever, 2016, $5.99/C$7.99, pb, 368pp, 9781455563371 Elise deVries is a tracker, skilled at finding her quarry. As an undercover agent for Chegarre & Associates, known for discreet handling of indelicate scandals, she is assigned to locate the missing Duke of Ashland. This turns out to be dangerous to both her heart and her life: the duke is unexpectedly attractive, but the heir to his estate will stop at nothing to ensure his death.

For a Regency, there is more adventure than usual, as Elise nearly drowns rescuing a child and survives two assassination attempts. Fortunately, as a former tracker for the Canadian militia during the War of 1812, she possesses toughness and skills unavailable to most young ladies in Regency England, and the Duke has acquired a few of his own struggling to survive as a youth on the dangerous back streets of London. And they have loyal friends. Definitely recommended for those who enjoy a lively and well-paced adventure mixed with passionate romance, and a feisty and remarkably talented heroine, who is as adroit at disguise as she is accurate with a Baker rifle.

Ray Thompson BILL DOOLAN: American Outlaw Bill Brooks, Five Star, 2016, $25.95, hb, 244pp, 9781432832261 In 1892, order is slowly coming to the Old West.

Oklahoma Territory is one of the last bastions where outlaws can hide out. Bill Doolan, formerly of the Dalton Gang, until they were virtually wiped out in the Coffeyville raid, is known as the last great outlaw of the West. Marshall Bill Tilghman is on his trail, vowing to bring Doolan to justice.

This novel is about the pursuit of Doolin and his “Wild Bunch” gang. Will he escape imprisonment or face death at the hands of the law? The author has the ability to bring his westerns alive by delving into the minds of the main characters, especially Doolan and Tilghman. I developed a strong affinity with both Bill Doolin and the man chasing him.

This novel reminds me of a popular television show a number of years ago, The Fugitive. Throughout the novel, I continued to hope Doolan would eventually find the freedom he desired. Fast-paced action and a real page-turner.

Jeff Westerhoff THE SCULTHORPE MURDER Karen Charlton, Thomas & Mercer, 2016, $15.95, pb, 316pp, 9781503938243 Detective Stephen Lavender and Constable Ned Woods of London’s Bow Street Police Office arrive in a small town in Northamptonshire at the

request of the area magistrate to investigate a brutal murder of an elderly man, and they soon discover evidence that contradicts the local authorities’ assumptions about the perpetrators and motive.

Even the murder victim and his sole surviving family member pose an enigma.

As the investigation unfolds and expands to a nearby town in pursuit of potential suspects, the past and present misdeeds and improprieties of several inhabitants of the area warrant scrutiny.

Constable Woods stays behind, connecting bits of the puzzle through casual inquiries, while Detective Lavender travels home to London to consult sources there regarding other key information.

During Lavender’s absence, Woods must come to grips with a figure from his own past, a shadowy specter that has haunted his nightmares. Lavender returns confidently armed with conclusive facts and finds a significant surprise awaiting him. In addition to solving their case, the detective and constable must prevail against adversaries neither expected to encounter.

This traditional-style mystery evokes life in the English countryside of 1810 along the canal network, using authentic details and conjuring a cast of imaginable residents. Its resolute investigative duo moves the action forward at an urgent pace, and clues multiply and interlock steadily throughout the book’s well-constructed plot.

Cynthia Slocum

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FATES AND TRAITORS: A Novel of John Wilkes Booth Jennifer Chiaverini, Dutton, 2016, $27.00, hb, 400pp, 9780525954309 We’ve all heard of John Wilkes Booth, the actor who assassinated President Lincoln, but who knows much about Booth beyond that? In Fates and Traitors, the latest historical novel by bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini, four intriguing witnesses escort us through Booth’s meteoric life.

In 1838 John Wilkes Booth is born out of wedlock to Mary Ann Holmes and Junius Booth.

The sixth of seven children, John has giant footsteps to follow, for his father and two brothers are worldfamous Shakespearean actors. John Wilkes Booth yearns to surpass their achievements, but fame is more easily sought than acquired. Who better to witness his struggles than his mother and his sister Asia?

By the fateful presidential election of 1864, John Wilkes has found the success he craves, and he frequently performs in Washington, D.C. He woos Lucy Hale, but their relationship seems doomed because she is the daughter of a New Hampshire senator and Booth staunchly upholds the Southern Cause. Plus, Booth is an actor, with all the scandalous overtones that profession carries.

Can Lucy’s father’s resistance be overcome?

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A Confederate widow hanged as a conspirator in Booth’s plots, Mary Surratt may be almost as familiar to readers as Booth. But was she truly an accomplice in the assassination which sent her to the gallows?

I couldn’t have enjoyed reading Fates and Traitors more. The prolific Ms. Chiaverini does a terrific job of recreating Booth’s world and depicting the tensions he bore – illegitimacy, failure and fame, and abhorrence at seeing his country brought to ruin. Her characters are rich and complex, and so is her highly recommended story.

Jo Ann Butler

TO CAPTURE WHAT WE CANNOT KEEP Beatrice Colin, Flatiron, 2016, $25.99, hb, 304pp, 978125071446 This is a romantic love story against the richly described backgrounds of Paris and Glasgow in the late 19th century. Caitriona Wallace lost her husband when the Tay Bridge collapsed in 1879, and seven years later she is struggling to find her place in life as a still-young, but far from well-off, widow. Her answer is to take employment as a chaperone to Alice Arrol on a tour of Europe with Alice’s brother, Jamie. The trip culminates in Paris, where Cait and the Arrols have a chance meeting with Émile Nouguier, an engineer building the Eiffel Tower.

Cait and Émile’s attraction is immediate, but they are pulled in different directions and Cait returns to Glasgow. There she must weigh up an offer of a respectable but unappealing marriage, while Émile has responsibilities not only to Gustave Eiffel, but also his sick mother and a potentially vengeful discarded mistress. When circumstances combine to allow Cait and the Arrols to return to Paris, it seems that love might win through, but things only grow more complex as Alice, not Cait, is deemed a suitable partner for Émile. Alice, however, is much more drawn to a handsome, and perhaps not quite reputable, Count while her brother Jamie, although supposed to be working with Émile, prefers the gambling dens and brothels of the French capital.

Beatrice Colin has woven an atmospheric romance with convincing period detail and a fascinating insight into the construction of the Eiffel Tower. It is worth noting that although this is a work of fiction, Émile Nouguier was a real-life historical figure. He co-designed the Tower with Eiffel and was one of the original patent holders for its design.

Kate Braithwaite PICKETWIRE VAQUERO James D. Crownover, Five Star, 2016, $25.95, hb, 324pp, 9781432832919 The story of an early ranching family of Arkansas continues in this third installment of the Five Trails West series. Jesse and Sarah Meeker raise their brood of five children while trading horses and mules between the 1840s and 1860s.

Once the family is beset by a marauding gang, they escape to village life, quietly biding their time and plotting revenge, with the help of their youngest boys, Jake and Zeneas. Adventures abound, with travel on the Cherokee and Santa Fe Trails, 28 | Reviews |

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the murder of a grandson of President William Harrison, and a stay at Bent’s Fort, where Zeneas learns how to handle wild cattle. Full of tall tales and male camaraderie, Picketwire Vaquero is long on adventure and description, but short on character development of its upstanding clan, their friends and adversaries. Although the Meekers marry into Cherokee clan lines, not much is made of their mixed heritage or traditions, except to make them objects of ridicule by hoodlums.

Eileen Charbonneau

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THE WONDER Emma Donoghue, Little, Brown, 2016, $27.00, hb, 9780316393874 / Picador, 2016, £14.99, hb, 400pp, 9781509818389 Emma Donoghue follows up a series of triumphs – the bestselling psychological thriller Room (with its Academy-Awardnominated film adaptation) and the critically acclaimed Astray and Frog Music – with this quieter, more intimate gem of a novel set in 1859 Ireland. Elizabeth (Lib) Wright, a nurse trained

by Florence Nightingale and hardened by the horrors of the Crimean War, arrives in a rural Ireland that has barely recovered from the Great Famine, commissioned to keep a vigil over Anna, an eleven-year-old girl who has reportedly survived without eating for four months. Skeptical and condescending at first, the nurse slowly becomes drawn into a family tragedy that threatens both Anna’s life and Lib’s own notions of faith, morality, and order.

The novel is a psychological drama wrapped in a mystery, so to hint at the nature of Anna’s extraordinary secret would be to spoil the delicately crafted sense of suspense that Donoghue achieves. Suffice it to say that, even though the solution to the riddle is somewhat predictable, this in no way detracts from the reader’s pleasure in Lib’s keen insight and increasing compassion and sympathy for the grim process she is called to witness. Although the setting for the novel hints at the huge forces bearing on Lib and Anna’s world – colonialism, patriarchy, and religious fanaticism – Donoghue keeps the focus almost claustrophobically tight, with most of the action taking place in a tiny room – the perfect arena for the battle of wits between a determined caretaker and a tiny girl who is equally, fiercely determined to abandon her flawed world. This is one of the best historical novels of the year and will doubtless appear on many award lists.

Kristen McDermott

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THE SHOGUN’S QUEEN Lesley Downer, Bantam Press, 2016, £7.99, pb, 467pp, 9780593066874 January 1853, or the Year of the Dog, third year of the Kaei era, a yang metal year – and an armed

American fleet is demanding unprecedented trade rights with Japan, and to deliver a letter into the hands of the Shogun. In the Shogun’s Palace, bitter infighting is going on between lords who passionately desire to keep Japan’s closed status, and those who recognise the inevitability of change.

The world is pivoting inexorably – and the fulcrum is 15-year-old Okatsu, daughter of a samurai lord, and soon to be the consort of the next Shogun. Another problem; this Shogun suffers from grand mal epilepsy, and is also mentally deficient. Who can deal with the American threat?

This book held me enthralled from the moment I opened it. Reading Lesley Downer’s biography, I’m not surprised – her mother was Chinese, and her father a professor of Chinese; she herself lived in Japan for several years. This book immerses you in Imperial Japan, and holds you spellbound in the arcane rules and logic of the Women’s Palace. It’s a superb piece of writing, drawing you immediately into the culture of the last days of the Japanese Shogunate, and the power struggles within it. You also get a vivid picture of the exquisite beauty and formality of the court. Somewhat confusingly, this is Book One of The Shogun Quartet, although the latest to be published; I’m going straight out and buying all the others. I loved this book.

Nicky Moxey THE CHAMPAGNE QUEEN: The Century Trilogy, Book 2 Petra Durst-Benning (trans. Edwin Miles), AmazonCrossing, 2016, $14.95, pb, 478pp, 9781503937581 “You were raised to marry, not to peel potatoes.” Isabelle recalls her mother’s dictum.

Although wedded to her true love, cyclist Leon Feininger, she’s now peeling potatoes in her inlaws’ dilapidated farmhouse. Born to a prosperous Berlin family, she had met Leon in 1897. Following a whirlwind romance, they’d married, despite her parents’ vehement objections, and moved to Leon’s family vineyard in the Palatinate. However, life on the farm was nothing like Leon had indicated.

The visions of grand rural landscapes depicted in paintings soon evaporated from Isabelle’s mind, and being alone all day, she verged on depression.

An inheritance from Leon’s uncle of a vineyard in nearby Champagne thrills the couple. Rejuvenated, Isabelle sets about decorating their new home and resurrecting champagne production. With limited staff, and Leon still involved in bicycle racing, it’s an uphill battle that includes overcoming local hindrances. However, following a tragic incident, Isabelle has to take charge of the estate and even seek help from her two girlfriends from Berlin.

Although this is the second book of Petra Durst-Benning’s Century Trilogy, it can be read as a stand-alone. While the first had featured one of her childhood friends, Josephine, this novel is 19th Century

Isabelle’s story. The excellent English translation provides interesting insight into the pre-WWI era and life in the wine-producing regions at the German-French border. Women’s struggles for greater independence and a voice in business and political matters are vividly portrayed. The story depicts not only the work-related and romantic issues faced by couples but also the tremendous knowledge and toil necessary in growing and harvesting grapes and producing and marketing champagne. This absorbing novel keeps us reading about Isabelle’s fate.

Waheed Rabbani THE LAST PEARL Leah Fleming, Simon & Schuster, 2016, £7.99, pb, 408pp, 9781471140976 1879, York. Greta Costello is poor. She helps her widowed mother and two siblings to survive poverty by working as a Saturday girl for an old jeweller, Saul Abrahams. He realises that her long fingers and eye for detail would make her an excellent pearl stringer. This skill will change her destiny as a new life opens up for her.

1879, Scotland. Jem Baillie is the son of a fisher of pearls in the Tay River, Perthshire. Together they discovered the rarest of white pearls, which they name ‘Queenie’. After his father’s death, the pearl is lost to him by unscrupulous means. Jem seeks revenge. The two strands of this novel are expertly balanced in intensity as the stories of these strong-willed characters become intertwined.

This engrossing tale reveals a multi-layered moving plot of heartache and hardship that spans generations and continents. The characters are skilfully crafted by their life experiences and the choices they make. The resulting consequences are strongly portrayed. It was lovely to follow Greta from being young and naïve to the mature woman she becomes. The characters are appealing, and unlike the pearl ‘Queenie’, they are not perfect and have flaws. Ultimately, they need to reassess their life priorities and decide what is of true importance to them. The book also provides a fascinating historical insight into the pearling industry, from their initial discovery hidden within freshwater mussels to the process which results in beautiful gems. I thoroughly enjoyed this captivating novel and would highly recommend it.

Valerie Loh THE LAST HORSEMAN David Gilman, Head of Zeus, 2016, £18.99, hb, 370pp, 9781784974541 David Gilman’s new novel is packed full of intrigue, adventure and excitement. The tale opens in Dublin in 1899 with American Joseph Radcliffe, lawyer and former soldier. Unafraid to represent radical young men who face the noose as a result of their Fenian beliefs, Radcliffe is a thorn in the side of the British establishment. When his young son runs away from boarding school Radcliffe gets information that he has followed some of his friends in the Irish Regiments to the war in South Africa, so he sets off after him along with his old friend and army comrade Benjamin Pierce. They will need every skill they learned in the “Indian 19th Century

Wars” in order to track Edward down.

Unfolding alongside this story is 16-year-old Edward’s tale of what he hopes will be a grand adventure, and the story of Sheenagh, a prostitute on the run for passing information from the Fenian Brotherhood to the British Army. The writing is skillful, and while the story is a page turner full of adventure, there are a number of moments in which we are reminded that though most of the characters are fictional, the horror of this war was not. Gilman remains neutral in his opinions while still managing to get under the skin of his characters and, like all the best historical fiction, it is the characters and how they play off each other that really makes the story come alive. A perfect read for fans of Bernard Cornwell.

Lisa Redmond MONTICELLO: A Daughter and Her Father Sally Cabot Gunning, William Morrow, 2016, $25.99, hb, 368pp, 9780062320438 Unquestionably, Thomas Jefferson is and will always be known as one of the greatest Americans ever to live. Author of the Declaration of Independence, founder of the University of Virginia, Vice-President and two-term President, Jefferson’s resume is staggering. Who I knew nothing about was his daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph. Interestingly, Gunning titled the book Monticello, and in many ways, the focus of the book, Martha’s roots, and her stability reside at Monticello.

Returning from Paris as a teen with her widowed father and his entourage – which included Sally Hemings, a woman Martha spends much of the book denying and rejecting but who spent almost 40 years as her father’s companion and the mother of several of his children – Martha decides to marry Tom Randolph, a promising young lawyer and landowner. What begins as a storybook romance soon devolves into a difficult relationship, fueled

by Tom’s poor financial choices, Jefferson’s constant financial bailouts, a horde of Randolph children (Martha had 12), and Martha’s desperate need to return to Monticello. Try as she may to create a life elsewhere, Martha needs always to return, for Monticello is her safe place.

Perhaps the book’s most intriguing aspect is the focus on slavery, which continues to surface throughout – Tom and Martha’s aversion to it, but inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to change a known factor in their lives or the practical impossibility of manumitting their “property.”

Equally fascinating are Jefferson’s own positions on slavery, and how what we perhaps thought we knew about Jefferson may not be entirely correct.

It was a departure for me to seek out Martha.

But then, I was often frustrated by this superbly intelligent woman, by her choices and her failure to choose, and by the almost biographical retelling of her story. That said, this is more than a worthwhile read about an individual about whom I knew nothing but learned much.

Ilysa Magnus

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THE SHORES OF TRIPOLI: Lieutenant Putnam and the Barbary Pirates

James L. Haley, Putnam, 2016, $28.00/C$37.00 hb, 464pp, 9780399171109 An award-winning historian who also writes fiction can be expected to deliver excellence, and Haley doesn’t disappoint.

In reply to currently popular British historical naval novels, he introduces us to young American Lieutenant Putnam.

In 1801, Putnam is fourteen and already starting his career in action against the Barbary pirates along the North African coast. Gaining in experience and heroically blooded in battle as a boy, he is eventually transferred to the famous frigate U.S.S. Constitution. Then the historically accurate action really explodes as Putnam is intimately involved in the bombardment of Tripoli, the land battle at Derna, and the later rescue of American sailors and civilians from slavery. Throughout, he struggles to maintain his relationship with his hometown sweetheart.

With poignant echoes of today’s horrors with terrorism, the book sadly reminds us this conflict is not new. The descriptions of life at sea and the skills needed to survive are illustrative. Haley is brutally honest about unequal conditions for common seamen versus officers, and especially how, even then, U.S. government officials could be so cynical and self-serving. Yet there are heroes like young Lieutenant Putnam, General William Eaton, and especially Navy Captain Edward Preble, along with many more entrancingly admirable men and strong women.

The novel concludes with a dramatic, eventfilled ending which brilliantly sets the stage for the following books in this new series. It makes painfully clear Barbary pirates were not the only threat to the infant U.S. republic. European powers, especially the British, were hovering like vultures. This wonderful book is, in historian Barbara Tuchman’s words, “a distant mirror.” An absolute must read.

Thomas J. Howley MERCY FIRST AND LAST Katie Hanrahan, Newcastlewest Books, 2016, $19.95, pb, 270pp, 9780996713122 Katie Hanrahan’s newest novel tells the story of Sarah Curran, the daughter of a radical Irish politician. Though only 26 when she died of tuberculosis in 1808, Sarah led a life of rebellion and passion that inspired Irish poet Thomas More, who is also featured in the story, to write ballads inspired by her life and the love she shared briefly with Robert Emmet, a man not approved of by Sarah’s father.

While the story focuses a great deal on Sarah and Robert’s clandestine relationship, it really is the story of a young woman making her own way in the world. Living during a time when women had very few of their own resources, and even fewer healthcare options, it was a hard life for many, HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 29

Sarah included.

I learned quite a bit about Irish history from reading this book, which was a welcome surprise.

I was familiar with Sarah Curran’s name but not enough to know anything about her life, as short as it was. Hanrahan did a quality job of bringing this fascinating character to life in a believable way. The chapters are short, but I never felt I was missing anything. Instead, this allowed me to be drawn more into Sarah’s story, and I felt compelled to keep reading.

Elicia Parkinson THE KID Ron Hansen, Scribner, 2016, $26.00/C$35.00, hb, 320pp, 9781501129759 From his 1859 birth in the slums of New York’s Five Points to his violent death in New Mexico in 1881, William Henry McCarty, the notorious Billy the Kid, was known by many names. His was a short life but a long ride, and Hansen takes the reader down every trail. When Billy was four, his widowed mother took him to the frontier town of Wichita. We see “The Kid” as – well – a kid, devouring dime novels, learning dances and songs, charming the ladies, and exhibiting the marvelous ambidexterity that half a dozen years later would doom rival gunslingers.

Diagnosed as consumptive, Widow McCarty moved her family to Denver and eventually New Mexico, where she died of tuberculosis in 1874.

The Kid was fourteen. Billy’s grief transmutes to anger and sets the novelist’s stage for the bulk of the book. Uncivilized culture, deviant companions, and impoverished circumstances propel The Kid on an almost linear course from petty pilferer to horse thief, cattle rustler, killer, outlaw, and bounty bait. His death at twenty-one must not have taken him by surprise.

Hansen recounts the iconic episodes of William Bonney’s (another alias) legendary life with the sensitivity of a dramatist and the objectivity of a historian. We see a young man in full: feared and beloved, tender and volatile, self-assured and vulnerable, a person of honor unredeemed in a lawless place where outlaws became lawmen.

Readers familiar with Hansen’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford will welcome him back to the Wild West he knows so well. The verisimilitude, the period detail, the material trappings of the time and culture, the evocation of place, and the deft tone of the dialogue put Hansen in the company of Wallace Stegner and Margaret Atwood. He has humanized – which is to say both complicated and explained – the legendary Kid. John O’Donnell MERCER GIRLS Libbie Hawker, Lake Union, 2016, $14.95, pb, 422pp, 9781503951976 Drawing from a little-known time in American history, Mercer Girls is the riveting story of three women looking to escape their pasts and reinvent their lives by settling in Seattle in the 1860s. At this time, Seattle was still just being built up, but the population was predominantly male. Asa Mercer, a 30 | Reviews |

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businessman, traveled to Lowell, Massachusetts, a town that had faced economic collapse due to the war, with the hope of bringing back eligible women to serve as wives and pioneers of the land.

The three women in the book, Josephine, Dovey, and Sophronia, are as different as can be, in economic status, age, temperament, and religious beliefs, but each has her own reasons for wanting to become a “Mercer Girl.” Leaving behind everything they know, they take a chance and travel to Seattle with a dozen other women.

Once they arrive in Seattle, they begin the arduous process of trying to shake off their pasts and forge new identities in an uncertain world. Jo is clearly running from something—or someone— as is Dovey, while Sophronia’s staunch religious and moral beliefs have prevented her from finding a husband. The Mercer girls also play a predominant role in Seattle’s suffragist movement, while Seattle’s history of prostitution is explored as well.

The author does a superb job in crafting authentic backstories and personalities for the women. The first part of the book, with the voyages across several bodies of water, reads like an adventure story. Hawker’s descriptions of Seattle in its frontier days are vivid, and the supporting characters are equally multidimensional. The book is ambitious in scope, but my interest never strayed. This is an engaging and enlightening story featuring strong women who each made valuable contributions to an emerging society. Highly recommended.

Hilary Daninhirsch THE ORPHAN MOTHER Robert Hicks, Grand Central, 2016, $26, hb, 312pp, 9780446581769 Author Hicks has returned to his The Widow of the South (2005) territory in this story of Carrie McGavock’s former slave, Mariah Reddick. The “Widow McGavock” continues to tend the graves of the 1,500 soldiers killed in the battle of Franklin, Tennessee, as her daily life is a shadow of its glory days. She wants Mariah to help run the household. But Mariah wants no part of her slave past. She has become the town’s midwife.

The love of Mariah’s life is her son Theopolis, a respected cobbler and part of a growing and vocally striving middle class of the Reconstruction South.

At a public event, Theopolis is savagely beaten and murdered, and Mariah becomes the orphan mother of the title. In her deep grief, Mariah returns to the McGavock plantation. She wants to know what happened and who is responsible.

Half the story is told with a keen eye through the viewpoint of Tole, a deeply damaged outsider who is trying to escape his past as a Union soldier.

Together, Tole and Mariah unearth the men and unspool the motives behind Theopolis’s death, but not before the town is caught up in the maelstrom of a South returning to racial dominance. This heartrending story is beautifully told, with deep and lasting characterizations. It brings its resonance right into the present day.

Eileen Charbonneau

LISTEN TO THE CHILD Elizabeth Howard, Hookline, 2016, £8.99, pb, 247pp, 9780993287480 MisLit – stories of unhappy childhoods – has become such a popular genre that entire shelves are devoted to it in the larger bookshops and this is beginning to be reflected in historical fiction.

Listen to the Child is about hundreds of unhappy childhoods, focusing on just six.

About 1870 several children’s charities in Britain, first of all in London and later elsewhere, began to place orphaned and abandoned children with families in Canada. Thousands of children crossed the Atlantic in this way until the Canadian government stopped it in the 1930s, because so many children were used as cheap or unpaid labour under harsh conditions. A similar scheme with Australia lasted until 1967.

Howard describes the origins of the scheme, seen through the eyes of two social workers. We see the dreadful lives that many children endured in London and follow six of them to the even worse experiences most of them had in Canada. It was a way to Hell paved by the very highest intentions.

The deprivation and cruelty is so extreme that it borders on melodrama. To have one of the children washed overboard by a freak wave seems over the top in every sense.

This is a short book but emotionally very intense. The world it describes seems so distant to our own. We would not treat children like this now, but we did within the memory of many of us alive today.

Edward James AS DEATH DRAWS NEAR Anna Lee Huber, Berkley Prime Crime, 2016, $16/C$22, pb, 338pp, 9780425277720 As Death Draws Near, set in 1831 in England and Ireland, is the fifth (or sixth if you count a novella) in Huber’s Lady Darby mystery series.

The romantic strand of this series finds Lady Darby (Kiera) now married to Sebastian Gage, the handsome and brilliant inquiry agent she has helped in the past, frequently to her great danger.

The chemistry continues between them, along with Kiera’s new worries about what being Sebastian’s wife and a future mother means for her choice of activities and intellectual pursuits.

A cryptic letter from Gage’s imperious father interrupts their honeymoon and propels them off to Ireland to investigate the murder of a nun who happens to be cousin to the Duke of Wellington.

Why anyone would kill a quiet and dutiful postulant is not at all clear to Gage and Kiera, even if her family is dismayed at her conversion to Catholicism. Soon threats of violence arising from the political conflict between Irish Catholics and Protestants swirl around Gage and Kiera. The murderer kills another nun. Is the tithe protest that is supposed to be peaceful the motivation for these deaths or is some personal heartbreak behind these brutal murders?

Kiera’s character grows in believable and engaging ways. The subplots with her maid Bree and the Abbey inhabitants are suspenseful and rich. There are enough twists and surprises to keep 19th Century

the reader turning pages. Irish history and legend add depth without being confusing or obscure.

Judith Starkston THE WICKED DUKE Madeline Hunter, Jove, 2016, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 384pp, 9780515155181 In her third book of her Wicked Series, Madeline Hunter introduces us to us to His Grace, Lancelot Hemingsford, Duke of Aylesbury. Most of England believes Lance murdered his brother to gain the title. Unhappy because of the suspicion, he hides out at Merrywood Manor, the family manse.

He is lonely – not that he would ever admit it, and he misses his friends and his hell-raising in London.

Marianne Radley is impoverished and dependent upon her uncle Horace, the local magistrate.

Curious about the death of the prior duke, she finds herself in a dilemma: marry Aylesbury, or have her family cast out from their old family home, which is now owned by her uncle. The benefits of marrying include being able to investigate the reason behind the murder, but she will be unable to help her cousin Nora, who has suffered a sudden mental illness. Marianne is not the only one in a quandary. Aylesbury is being blackmailed into marrying Marianne in exchange for a clean slate by her uncle. Hunter’s novel is populated with welldrawn characters with a complex mystery subplot which kept me turning the pages! Recommended.

Monica E. Spence THE HANGED MEN Gary Inbinder, Pegasus Crime, 2016, $25.95, hb, 240pp, 9781681771649 One hot July Paris morning in 1890, a body hangs from a pedestrian bridge. Detective Achille Lefebvre is assigned to the case and quickly deduces this was no suicide but a brazen murder. Achille’s investigation takes us into the underbelly of Paris, haunted by a variety of interesting characters, including Toulouse Lautrec, ladies of the evening, and enigmatic men of power and money. Details take the reader back to the beginnings of the modern era, both in life and detective work. Too few people have working phones. The pervasive stench of horse droppings is being replaced by mechanical vehicles. Achille is among the first to use the art and science of fingerprinting and forensic photography.

It is also a time of major powers in turmoil.

Germany, France and Russia have been through savage internal conflicts and have not fully shaken off the effects of the great conflicts of the Napoleonic era. Using the analogy to chess, Achille begins to understand that the hanged man is a no longer useful pawn sacrificed to send a message to more powerful players; players who seek superior weapons and plot assassinations that could trigger the next world war. Achille’s former detective partner, now working for another branch of law enforcement, is on the same trail and at times becomes more of a hindrance and pest than of any real help.

Organized into twelve chapters with large page breaks between them, this 235-page murder mystery will strike some as too short to do 19th Century

justice to the complex main story line and some of the many characters, each with his or her own interesting background. Perhaps sequels will fill some of that in.

G. J. Berger

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NEWS OF THE WORLD Paulette Jiles, William Morrow, 2016, $26.99/ C$33.50/£14.99, hb, 224pp, 9870062409201 I loved this slim, profoundly moving book so much that, as soon as I finished it, I wanted to read it again. Paulette Jiles’s Wild West tale of an elderly veteran and a ten-year-old girl rescued from Indian captivity explores the restorative powers of love in spare, exquisite prose. Captain Jefferson Kidd, 72, has fought in three wars, loved and lost, and now leads a solitary, peripatetic life as a news reader, trumpeting tales of progress to mostly illiterate North Texas audiences. Asked to make the long trek to San Antonio to take the girl to a family she does not know, the Captain begs off, pleading old age and loathing the responsibility, but his compassion and sense of honor compel him to accept. The dangers they face together – and the girl’s fierce courage – bind them together inextricably, opening the Captain’s heart. Once he has left her, he finds himself a changed man – and makes a bold choice that will forever alter both their lives. Jiles, one of our most talented writers, gives us a beautifully told tale of love’s redemptive power that resonates long after the final page is turned. Highly recommended.

Sherry Jones RUFFIAN DICK: A Novel of Sir Richard Francis Burton Joseph Kennedy and John Enright, Yucca, 2016, $24.99, hb, 248pp, 9781631581021 Famously, Sir Richard Francis Burton’s staid widow burned all his papers upon his death; she knew what the famous not-so-Victorian explorer, early anthropologist, amazing linguist, translator of scandalous eastern erotica and rogue was capable of. This novel imagines the discovery in our own day of scorched pages of a journal discovered in the ruins of the British Consulate in Trieste, where Burton served as ambassador. I question the use of Carbon-14 dating in an object so recent; that may be an addition of the second author, Enright, who has taken over the manuscript Kennedy, a life-long archeologist, left incomplete upon his death.

In any case, the journal proves to be the infamous gentleman’s account, spared from the holocaust, beginning during his thwarted search for the source of the Nile. An African seer instructs Burton that he must go to a wild and untamed land for his next adventure, and so he does – to the US in its infancy in search of that notorious practitioner of exotic sexuality, Brigham Young. Episodic with

sometimes unclear disappearances of characters and frustratingly brief encounters, Burton’s adventures show the seamiest side of the frontier, from voodoo queens and yellow fever epidemics to man’s inhumanity to man, slave owners white and black, natives and settlers. Ancient Old World cultures known to Burton previously at least had rules. Those who came to claim the “virgin” land were those who wanted to escape rules and did so with abandon.

Ann Chamberlin FOREVER AND FOREVER: The Courtship of Henry Longfellow and Fanny Appleton Josi S. Kilpack, Shadow Mountain, 2016, $15.99, pb, 336pp, 9781629721422 This “historical proper romance” is based on poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s seven-year courtship of Fanny Appleton. The writer covers the period from their first meeting in Switzerland in 1836, as Fanny’s family enjoys their grand tour of Europe, to their eventual union in Boston in 1843.

Her novel is based on biographies, letters and journals, fleshed out to provide a sketch of the life and times of an older widower and a young woman irresistibly drawn together.

Their love story opens with a picture of a wealthy New England family in Europe, and then moves to depict their lifestyle as they return to Boston. Comparison is made between the Appletons’ affluent lifestyle and the more limited means of a poor Harvard professor at the time. The question arises throughout the book – why would the daughter of a wealthy and respected Boston family even consider a man socially so far beneath her? The answer to this is provided in the frequent extended interior monologues, especially those of Fanny Appleton. Her introspection is shown as increasingly tinged with religion as she slowly comes to realize the worth of her suitor.

Kilpack has included a few stanzas of Longfellow’s love poems to ground the reader in his reality as he faces the long years of rejection.

She also includes at the end of the book a timeline, along with extensive chapter notes, a brief bibliography and discussion questions. This book fills a void for readers of romantic historical novels while illustrating the issue of class in early 19thcentury Boston society.

Val Adolph A MARCH TO REMEMBER: A Hattie Davish Mystery Anna Loan-Wilsey, Kensington, 2016, $15.00/ C$16.95, pb, 306pp, 9781617737282 Anna Loan-Wilsey highlights a little-known episode in our country’s history, the first poor people’s march on Washington, D.C., in this, the fifth and most recent volume of her Hattie Davish mystery series.

The greatest crime recounted in this murder mystery set in the late 19th century is the suppression of the ideas of Jacob Coxey. Coxey was a real person, a visionary who marched from Ohio to Washington in 1894 with a colorful “army” of the unemployed and the idealistic. He sought to petition Congress to end the worst depression HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 31

the country had known up to that time by building infrastructure. His ideas anticipated the New Deal by 40 years, yet he was thrown into jail for walking on the Capitol lawn. The robber barons and crooked politicians found that intimidation and imprisonment weren’t enough to silence Coxey; ridicule from the newspapers, however, turned Coxey’s crusade into a joke. To this day, the term, “Coxey’s army” is synonymous with “screw-up.”

Just as the vanguard of Coxey’s Army arrives in Washington, secretary/sleuth Hattie Davish witnesses an accident – or is it a murder? The bodies pile higher and Hattie’s investigations lead her to a plot that involves the highest levels of government.

With its themes of economic inequality and political corruption, A March to Remember is very timely. It’s also a fun read, though the narrative moves at a distinctly 19th-century pace; the first murder doesn’t take place until chapter 7. The dialog is in the purple prose of dime-store novels. A few colorful period expressions would have added spice to the narrative; a glut is cloying. Luckily, the storyline is engaging, and the heroine is plucky enough to offset the occasionally leaden pacing and dialog.

Liz Milner THE DUKE’S LAST HUNT Rosanne E. Lortz, Madison Street, 2016, $13.95, pb, 341pp, 9780996264839 The timid Miss Elizabeth Malcolm is understandably unenthusiastic about accepting the addresses of the very intimidating Duke of Brockenhurst. But for various reasons (particularly financial) her parents are insistent, she is a dutiful daughter, and so down they come for a visit to his Sussex estate. Though more attracted to his brother Lord Henry than to Rufus himself, whose primary interest is in hunting, she yields to parental pressure and accepts his proposal. The very next day Rufus is killed in a hunting accident. Or is it an accident?

Though set in the Regency period, as in her earlier To Wed an Heiress, the author was inspired by medieval history, in this case events surrounding the death of William Rufus, second King of England after the Norman Conquest.

Here, too, a suspicious death shifts the focus from social conventions of the era to solving the mystery, and with it the welcome reappearance of Jacob Pevensey, the astute Bow Street Runner. The mystery is satisfying, and it is interesting to observe how Lortz chose to adapt the medieval characters to a Regency context. In the concluding chapters the characters seem interestingly ready to defy the rigid class boundaries and expectations more than one might find in the 19th century, but that is not uncommon in modern Regencies, which need to provide their readers with sympathetic figures.

Recommended.

Ray Thompson A SCOT IN THE DARK Sarah MacLean, Avon, 2016, $7.99, pb, 400pp, 9780062379429 In this entertaining Regency, Sarah MacLean freshens a standard plotline (ward with a problem meets unexpectedly young and handsome 32 | Reviews |

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guardian) with a particularly strong heroine and an oddly vulnerable alpha male. Lillian Hargrove is the beautiful ward of the Duke of Warnick.

Unfortunately, the duke died, as did a series of heirs, until the title fell to a disinterested Scotsman who has no idea Lillian exists. Desperate for companionship, she makes a terrible error, posing for a nude portrait at the request of a con artist.

(Nineteenth-century-style sexting.) Now the ton knows she exists. As does her guardian. A curmudgeon of massive proportions, Warnick is appalled by the sudden responsibility, but shoulders it nonetheless. He must see her married before the painting is exhibited. But Lillian, who intends to marry for love or not at all, has other plans to put humiliation behind her. In the process, she rehabilitates the duke. (He tends to wallow in his imagined unworthiness, which leads him to unwittingly treat Lillian poorly “for her own good.”) Fortunately, our heroine is too sensible to indulge his inferiority complex, and readers will root for her happily-ever-after ending.

Sue Asher SIGNAL FOR VENGEANCE Edward Marston, Allison & Busby, 2016, £19.99, hb, 352pp, 9780749020019 1860, Wimborne, Dorset. When Rebecca Tullidge, downtrodden wife of a railway signalman, creeps out one night to visit her railway policeman lover, John Bedloe, she is horrified to find his corpse on the railway tracks. The murder of a railway policeman is viewed seriously, and Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are summoned from London to solve the crime. They soon learn that Bedloe had plenty of enemies as well as several mistresses. There is no shortage of suspects but, in this close-knit society, nobody is talking. Colbeck has other pressures, too. His wife, Madeleine, is expecting their first child and he’s desperate to solve the crime and get back home for the birth.

I always enjoy Marston’s Railway Detective adventures; he obviously knows exactly how the mid-Victorian railway system worked and is good at getting across a sense of place. He paints a vivid picture of Wimborne as a country town where local landowners are more concerned about poaching than railway crime. He understands the narrow options open to women at that date; there is little scope for them to be proactive, they can only react.

Rebecca manages to have a furtive affair but, with a violent and suspicious husband, her personal safety is always at risk. My one niggle is with Madeleine being rushed to the London General Lying–in Hospital with birth complications. A middleclass woman in 1860 would have done anything to keep out of a public hospital where the hygiene was appalling and ‘a woman increased her chances of death in childbirth six-fold by entering a London lying-in hospital.’ (1878 report) Instead, she would have paid for an experienced midwife. However, that’s one small scene. Overall, Signal for Vengeance is both historically accurate and a terrific read, sure to appeal to Marston’s many fans.

Elizabeth Hawksley THE LAST DAYS OF NIGHT Graham Moore, Random House, 2016, $28.00/ C$37.00, hb, 355pp, 9780812988901 / Simon

& Schuster UK, 2016, £14.99, hb, 384pp, 9781471156663 One billion dollars. That’s the value of electric light in 1888. Or, that’s the staggering sum for which Thomas Edison is suing George Westinghouse, his rival in the electricity gambit, for sole control of who lights up America. For his defense, Westinghouse hires a fresh-out-ofcollege lawyer named Paul Cravath. Together, they plot against the man beloved by Americans as the Wizard of West Orange and backed by the wealthiest man in the country, J. P. Morgan. Paul’s task seems insurmountable.

Enter two unlikely allies: Nikola Tesla and Agnes Huntington. Tesla becomes a naïve pawn in the battle between Westinghouse and Edison, and Paul is blind to their manipulations. Agnes Huntington, a society belle and renowned singer, initially reaches out to Paul to defend her in a small contract dispute, but ends up befriending Tesla— and defending him against the two capitalists— and a romance begins between her and Paul.

The basic facts in this novel are true: There was a war for currents with Paul Cravath at the center of it all. The main characters are real—including the relationship between Paul and Agnes—and Graham Moore does justice in rendering them all as honestly as possible, but there are a number of liberties taken in the general timeline which Moore admits in the notes. For me, these liberties were somewhat off-putting. By condensing the history, the book feels more like a screenplay than a novel.

Moore’s writing is sharp and as energized as his topic, but the chapters read like quick vignettes, making it hard to connect with the characters. One thing can be said: Despite the screenplay nature, this is a riveting book that will hold your attention and will illuminate many on the birth of the electric light in America. Part legal thriller, part romance, injected with a history lesson. Worth the read.

Bryan Dumas RULER OF THE NIGHT David Morrell, Little Brown, 2016, $27.00/ C$35.00, hb, 352pp, 9780316307901 In 1855, Britain’s passenger train service to and from London, and all points in between, is in its infancy. A mysterious murder is committed in one of the first-class compartments on a train traveling from London to Sedwick Hill. Well-known author and investigator Thomas DeQuincy, along with his lovely young daughter, Emily, are aboard the same train in adjoining compartments. DeQuincy helps Scotland Yard’s Detective Sean Ryan and his partner, Detective Sergeant Joseph Becker, solve the crime. Soon other crimes are committed within the railroad system: a bomb explodes on a busy train platform, and later, a compartment on a moving train catches fire and is then hit by an oncoming train. As a result, fewer people risk traveling the rails, and the value of the stock of the railroad drops substantially, creating panic among the investors.

The author has combined factual events of the time period with a fictional story. The reader will be involved in the intricate plots and subplots while the ongoing Crimean War is being fought between Britain and Russia. Could this be a Russian plot to disrupt the British market, is there a serial killer on 19th Century

the loose, or could these actions be a plot against the railroad? This fascinating mystery story has implications regarding terrorism that readers today will recognize. A worthwhile read for all mystery enthusiasts.

Jeff Westerhoff FROM ACROSS THE ROOM Gina L. Mulligan, Five Star, 2016, $25.95, hb, 272pp, 9781432832520 I love the epistolary novel. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s mine. Mulligan has does the form proud with From Across the Room.

Writer Thomas Gadwell begins his correspondence in the summer of 1888. He’s arrived at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego and attempts to appease his editor. He promises to meet his deadlines and finish his book, but he soon finds a more attractive correspondent, Mary Harting.

Mary is the daughter of a railroad tycoon, Charles Harting, and her father’s disapproval means that she and Thomas must meet and correspond in secret.

The correspondence is all from Thomas, but we can guess his relationships with the recipients, who include novelist Henry James, from the tenor of each letter. His letters to Mary range from the first flush of love to despair as her father pushes another suitor in her path. He takes a different tone with his editor, Avery, his mentor, Henry James, and his father. His correspondence spans sojourns in San Diego, New York City, his home in Boston, and a memorable stay in Newport. His letters bring each recipient to life, and the novel doesn’t suffer from showing only his correspondence. I read this in one sitting, and when I came to the surprise ending, rather than feel cheated, I was instead openmouthed in admiration.

Ellen Keith GOOD WATER John D. Nesbitt, Five Star, 2016, $25.95, hb, 210pp, 9781432832759 Tommy Reeves is a young ranch hand working his way across the West, accompanied by his friend Red Armstrong. When the two of them come across a settlement of Mexicans nearby, they can’t help be interested in the people there, especially the pretty young women. Despite the fact that their foreman orders them to stay away from the settlement, they return. Their defiance sets in motion a devastating chain of events that result in violence and murder.

The book proceeds at a slow, loping pace through most of the story events, relaying them in a restrained and understated manner.

Characterization is satisfyingly complete, and the laconic style of dialogue is especially effective in portraying the Old West. The book really shines with its wonderful, authentic details, though. Most westerns don’t go into detail about how to skin an antelope or cook tortillas on an open griddle, but this book does, with fascinating realism. At its heart the story involves Tommy’s coming of age.

His romance with a beautiful Mexican girl also illuminates Mexican culture and the challenges they faced due to their ethnicity.

Lots of the story’s pivotal action scenes take place offstage, so don’t expect a traditional shoot 19th Century

‘em up tale of revenge and gunslingers. While the narrative does include range fires, bullet wounds, and other Western tropes, it suffers overall from a lack of drama. However, if you are looking for a story which evokes the spirit of the West, with its hardworking settlers, simple lifestyle and wideopen sky, you can’t go wrong with Good Water.

Xina Marie Uhl THE ADVENTURES OF JOE HARPER Phong Nguyen, Outpost19, 2016, $16.00, pb, 257pp, 9781944853044 It has been ten years since Joe Harper left home in St. Petersburg, Missouri to follow the wanderlust fancies of Tom Sawyer. Ten years as a pirate under Captain Sawyer, however, has changed Joe into a sorrowful, guilt-stricken man. Upon his return home, he finds his mother dead and his old life unrecognizable. Joe’s only aim now is to find the right cave in which to die. Thus starts Joe Harper’s adventure across the frontier, where he befriends and travels with Lee, an astute Chinese hobo, Ruth, a runaway Amish girl, and numerous other vagabonds who add to the hilarity and suspense of their journey west.

Nguyen’s addition to Twain’s classic does not disappoint. Stylistically, Nguyen’s ability to capture the vernacular of 1870s Missourian hobo life is one of the marvels of this piece of fiction. Narrated in the first person from Joe’s perspective, the story feels smooth, and aside from a couple of dream sequences, the timeline is straightforward. I did question the premise of the plot in the beginning.

I wasn’t sure the plot was going to drive me on towards the finish line. At the start, what kept me intrigued was style. In true Twain form, Phong’s use of vernacular opened up the world of hobo life.

Towards the middle, the characters came to life, and I noticed and appreciated the novel’s comedy.

In the last third, the plot kicked in with a new character, and it was full steam ahead towards the ending.

Val Jensen THE IRON WATER Chris Nickson, Severn House, 2016, $28.99/£20.99, hb, 224pp, 9780727886439 The latest in the Inspector Tom Harper series is another expertly written Victorian police procedural. An interesting scrap of history – the 1893 test of a torpedo on Waterloo Lake in Leeds – is turned into a murder mystery when the resulting explosion raises a body sunk in the lake. When a severed leg is dredged from the River Aire and another body discovered during an arson investigation, Harper and his trusty sergeant, Ash, must navigate the dangerous territory of Leeds’ rival gang bosses to find the perpetrators.

Like all of Nickson’s mysteries, the procedural aspects are leavened by the detective’s personal life, and the interactions between Harper and those he cares about are manifestly appealing. The atmosphere is spot-on; Nickson knows Leeds, which we see in all its bustle and dirt, having just been incorporated as an official “city,” as well as the varied social strata that make it up and the issues faced by that society. All characters, primary and secondary, are realistically constructed. Start with the first in this series and read them all; then go

back and read Nickson’s equally excellent Richard Nottingham series – same city, different time period. In this genre, it doesn’t get much better than Nickson.

Bethany Latham REVENGE IN A COLD RIVER Anne Perry, Ballantine, 2016, $28.00/C$37.00, hb, 311pp, 9781101886359 / Headline, 2016, £8.99, pb, 384pp, 9781472219565 Revenge in a Cold River is the 22nd in Anne Perry’s mystery series set in 1860s London, featuring Commander William Monk of the Thames River Police. Monk had lost his memory in a carriage accident years ago. Customs officer McNab has a grudge against Monk because of events which Monk cannot remember. When two prisoners escape from Customs, one is killed and the other gets away, but the officer pursuing him drowns while fighting with Monk in the river.

McNab tries to make it look as if Monk killed the man deliberately. Monk knows he’s being framed, but he needs to discover the reason McNab hates him in order to clear his name. He finds out that the two prisoners may have been involved in a conspiracy to rob wealthy merchant Aaron Clive, who made his fortune in the California gold rush.

Clive’s wife asks for Monk’s help in discovering what happened to her first husband, who was declared dead in a gunfight in California, but whose body was never found. As he investigates, some tantalizing memories return to Monk, and he realizes that he might have been in California at the time. Will he find the truth before McNab has him hanged for murder?

As always with this series, the character development of Monk, his wife Hester, and his friend, lawyer Oliver Rathbone, are as important as the mystery itself, but the mystery is a very suspenseful one. Perry’s descriptions of life on the Thames – its sights, sounds, and smells –draw the reader in and make the river as important a character as any of the people. Victorian London comes to life, and the characters are so engaging you will want to read more of the series. It’s probably best to start with the first, Face of a Stranger.

Vicki Kondelik

BY GASLIGHT Steven Price, Oneworld, 2016, £18.99, hb, 732pp, 9781780748689 / Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2016, $28, hb, 752pp, 9780374160531 Given its length and structure containing four flashback sections plus an epilogue, By Gaslight appears a daunting read. However, in this case appearances are deceptive. This tale is skilfully set up and packed with enigma and suspense such that readers will hurtle from chapter to chapter and barely notice the time fly. Certainly, the telling of the story could be shorter, but then one would miss out on the atmospherically exuberant detail, which is a strong feature of this book. An omniscient narrator alternates from a focus on the protagonist (William Pinkerton) to a focus on the main antagonist (Adam Foole). The reader may flinch at the occasional authorial intrusion, but on balance this seems to render the experience richer and even more Dickensian in style. As do the character names, which bristle with the same wit as one will HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 33

find in Dickens’ early novels as well as Smollett’s and Trollope’s before him.

At the heart of this tale is an apparent unresolved filial relationship between William Pinkerton and his recently deceased father, Allan Pinkerton (founder of the detective agency). Seeking his own answers, William has taken on his father’s obsessive quest to track down the mysterious Edward Shade.

William, like the reader, longs to know just who and what Edward Shade was to Allan Pinkerton and why Pinkerton Senior was obsessed in finding him. It is January 1885, and the trail leads William to fog-filled London and to Charlotte Reckitt, but when William corners her, Charlotte jumps into the River Thames. The following day her severed head is dredged from the river, and with that the trail to Edward Shade has gone cold… or has it? An excellent read with vibrant descriptions, a clever structure and very strong ending.

Lawrence Battersby FLORENCE GRACE Tracy Rees, Quercus, 2016, £7.99, pb, 535pp, 9781784296179.

Orphaned Florrie Buckley lives in rural poverty in Cornwall. Life is hard, but she loves the moors and is happy in her Cornish community. When she is 15, she is shocked to learn that she is related to the Graces, a rich and ambitious London family.

Torn away from all that is familiar, she struggles to cope with her new life in an aspiring London household in 1850. Her dominating grandfather, Hawker Grace, is determined to restore the Graces to their lost prominence with no regard for his family’s happiness. Re-named Florence Grace, her life is further complicated by a desperate attraction to her troubled cousin, Turlington.

The contrast between a Cornish existence, close to nature, and the rigid etiquette and restricted life of a woman in a Victorian upper-middle class establishment is beautifully observed. The forced conversion of strong, independent Florrie into soft, over-fed and overdressed but still rebellious Florence is completely believable. The Cornish landscape and London atmosphere are so vividly depicted that we really feel for a Florrie who cannot walk on grass and breathe in fresh, smoke-free air.

But the novel seems too long without enough plot to sustain interest, and each incident and event is over-analysed. An additional problem is that only Florence, Turlington and Hawker are threedimensional figures. The many other characters are mostly flat, either nice or nasty as required.

There is so much to enjoy in this novel: a vivid portrayal of contrasting Victorian lives convincingly set in two very different places and enriched by a good feeling for the period. We have an appealing heroine whose confusions and passions are believable. If only the novel were a little more concise. er dominating Her Lynn Guest THE SECRETS OF WISHTIDE Kate Saunders, Bloomsbury, 2016, $26.00/ C$35.00, hb, 352pp, 9781632864499 / Bloomsbury, 2016, £14.99, hb, 352pp, 9781408866863 Set in 1850 England, this complex Victorian murder mystery has a feel of Charles Dickens.

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The author explains in an afterword that she was inspired to write this story by her issues with David Copperfield. Sleuth Laetitia Rodd, the 52-yearold widow of an archdeacon, makes her living as a private investigator. She works for her brother, Frederick Tyson, a criminal barrister. When he asks her to investigate a case involving an inappropriate love affair and the son of a wealthy house, she goes undercover as a Lincolnshire governess.

The intricate plot will keep readers guessing, as old stories are unearthed, new characters appear, and death strikes more than once. Laetitia and Frederick join forces with an annoying police inspector she calls “Blackbeard,” and together they struggle to unravel the secrets of the Calderstone family at the great castle of Wishtide.

Laetitia lives in Hampstead with her confidante and landlady, Mrs. Bentley. This character is based on the real person who rented her charming house to John Keats earlier in the century. This home is one of the coziest settings in a suspense novel since Miss Marple moved to St. Mary Mead. Readers will enjoy the basement kitchen, where the heroine drinks hot brandy and water while recuperating from all the derring-do.

Elizabeth Knowles LAST CHANCE COWBOYS: The Lawman Anna Schmidt, Sourcebooks, 2016, $7.99, pb, 352pp, 9781492612995 The Lawman, second in the Last Chance Cowboys series, combines a western story with romance. The added bonus is the historical content.

Although Schmidt occasionally takes historical liberties, readers are taken back in time during the western expansion of the Arizona territory, and their curiosity will be spurred to the point they will want to look up the facts.

The plot begins in the late 19th century, with Jesse Porterfield returning to frontier life. Having fled after his father’s death, he is determined to find his father’s killer, win over the love of his life, Addie Wilcox, and prove his worth to the community by becoming the town’s sheriff. He must also rescue Addie from the bully and corrupt rancher who wants vengeance against her for refusing his advances.

The story’s best part is the well-developed female characters. Long before the ERA, these frontier women show how they could take on roles normally reserved for men: Addie becomes her father’s apprentice and wants to attend the Women’s Hospital Medical College in Chicago; Amanda, Jesse’s sister and Addie’s best friend, uses her beauty and brains to tame the fiercest cowboys; and Maria, his other sister, takes over the running of the family ranch after convincing several other small ranchers to band together in a cooperative arrangement.

The Lawman is a riveting, fast-paced story that blends the beauty of the land with the hardships faced by Arizonians – a perfect setting for this plot. Readers are reminded of a time when technology barely existed, weather conditions created havoc, and doctors had to endure lousy working conditions.

Elise Cooper

LEAVING INDEPENDENCE Leanne W. Smith, Waterfall, 2016, $12.95, pb, 360pp, 9781503934788 Leaving Independence is, at its heart, a love story that takes place on the western frontier during the Civil War era. But it is also a story of resiliency when faced with trying circumstances. Tennessee resident Abigail Baldwyn has been raising her children on her own while her husband is fighting in the Civil War, refusing any help from her father.

When she receives word that her husband Robert died in the war, she accepts her widowhood, until she hears a rumor that Robert has been seen in Idaho Territory.

Rather than wait passively, Abigail gathers her children and travels to Independence, Missouri, where she boards a caravan on the Oregon Trail in hopes of finding out the truth. Along the way, she meets a man named Hoke Mathews, also traveling west, and the two try to resist their growing feelings for each other.

The book is an adventure story and love story wrapped up into one absorbing read. Abigail is a refreshing character—she is courageous, spunky, and fiercely independent, balancing motherhood with trying to pull her weight en route to learning the truth about her husband. The adventure part of the story is no-holds-barred, complete with gunslingers, snakes and scoundrels, while the love story is subtler. Abigail is a dynamic and unforgettable protagonist who stars in a wellresearched, utterly enchanting novel.

Hilary Daninhirsch A JACKETING CONCERN Margaret Southall, Knox Robinson, 2016, £12.99, pb, 310pp, 9781910282540 In 1811, within a mansion in London’s Somers Town, Lord Roderick, sixth Baron Davenant, lies in bed in the arms of Harriette, a renowned courtesan. He dreams of frolicking in a perfumed garden until, with a downpour of bricks and a cloud of soot, something wrapped in rags comes crashing down the fireplace, startling the adulterers. Thinking it’s an animal, Harriette screams, “Bloody Hell!” The tumbled bundle turns out to be a bruised and battered seven-year-old, Addy, a climbing boy – a chimney sweep’s helper.

Out of pity, and with Harriette worried about their reputation, Davenant takes the boy home and leaves him in the care of his sister. He forgets about the lad until his groom informs him that Addy speaks perfect English and even French, believing him to be an abductee from a prosperous family (a “jacketing concern”). Initially confused, Davenant agrees, with his sister’s encouragement, after seeing that Addy also knows Latin. He confidently takes up a wager with another adversary, and even the Prince Regent, and sets about finding the urchin’s parents.

In this debut novel, Margaret Southall’s strong, evocative writing brings the Regency era before our eyes as we travel alongside the characters involved in Davenant’s quest. The plot thickens when mysterious eccentrics, including a murderer, trail Davenant from his fashionable home in Mayfair to the seedier districts of London, the slave ports of Liverpool, and smugglers’ caves on the Sussex coast. Davenant is ably assisted by his groom and 19th Century

another brazen but knowledgeable climbing boy.

He encounters not only brothel ladies but also an attractive Quaker heiress eager to help him, which introduces a touch of romance into the narrative.

The inclusion of East India Company clerks, Bengal nabobs, smugglers, and slavers add to the historical aspects of this complex story.

Waheed Rabbani INFERNO Julian Stockwin, McBooks, 2016, $23.95, hb, 360pp, 9781590137352 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2016, £18.99, hb, 464pp, 9781444785494 During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain learns that Napoleon has made peace with Russia and Prussia, thereby creating trading arrangements with allies on the continent. To prevent an attack from the North (via the Baltic Sea), the King of England agrees to capture and hold the Danish fleet in Copenhagen and stop a possible alliance between Denmark and France. Denmark is a neutral country, and sending a naval fleet and army to force Denmark to capitulate creates a moral dilemma. Captain Sir Thomas Kydd, on board the Tyger, is part of the armada heading to Denmark.

He is unaware that his friend Renzi, along with his wife, Kydd’s sister, has been sent to Denmark to negotiate the release of the Danish fleet into British hands.

Francis Maynard, ensign of the British 52nd Regiment of Foot, is part of the army that lands in Denmark. Its goal is to surround the land portion of Copenhagen to assist the armada in forcing Denmark to hand over its fleet. However, Danish Crown Prince Frederik has issued orders to the elderly Peymann to command Copenhagen’s defenses and protect the city at all costs.

In this eighteenth in the Kydd Sea Adventure series, less than half of the content is related to Kydd’s story, which is a little unusual. The balance covers Francis Maynard and the attack of the British army. I’ve read most of the novels in the series and enjoyed this one just as much. Stockwin is one of the preeminent writers of this genre. His knowledge of sailing and the Napoleonic Wars is “up to speed.” I look forward to the next entry.

Jeff Westerhoff EDGAR ALLAN POE AND THE LONDON MONSTER Karen Lee Street, Point Blank, 2016, £14.99, hb, 384pp, 9781780749303 June 1840, and Poe sails to England, where he meets up with (his own fictional creation) the detective C. Auguste Dupin. He first met Dupin in 1832 while in Paris, and they have arranged to meet in London, at Poe’s request, over a curious box that Poe’s adopted father’s widow had supposedly sent him, after excluding Poe from the rest of the estate. The box contains letters between Poe’s grandparents that demonstrate their involvement in a series of attacks on women in the late 18th century. The London Monster stabbed upwards of fifty young and stylish women in their backsides from 1788-1790, shredding and slitting their clothes. These attacks did happen in London and the author makes the fictional link to Poe’s grandparents. While Dupin and Poe investigate the matter in London, there also appears to be a 19th Century

malevolent force that is attempting to seek revenge on Poe for these violent acts – Poe’s overall health and state of mind are not assisted by his own mental volatility and vulnerability, regardless of any external threat – from supernatural, or whatever the origin. The duo uncovers unpleasant secrets from the past, and Dupin also has demons from his family’s past to exorcize as well.

Poe narrates the story in an impressive approximation of his own rather baroque writing voice, and there are plenty of references to elements that were to subsequently appear in Poe’s fictional and poetical works. A sequel is planned to this entertaining and well-written novel.

Douglas Kemp THE SOLITARY WOMAN OF SHAKESPEARE James Terry, Sandstone, 2016, £8.99, pb, 308pp, 9781910985199 Think you know your Shakespeare? Think again! We’re in the Territory, before it became New Mexico, in a frontier mining town – along with the burros and coyotes. What Shakespeare needs is its first heroine: enter stage left (and train right) the adventurous Abigail, leaving her home in the east to marry a man she has never seen but whose romantic letters paint a picture of a rosy future.

James Terry wittily structures his novel in five acts: the drama of Abigail’s shock when she discovers that her bridegroom is an elderly bartender; her adulterous love affair with Shakespeare’s young bank official (the true author of the love-some epistles) which has the unexpected bonus of reviving Henry’s flagging libido and, as part of her survival mechanism coping with being the only female in town, her audacious staging of an all-male version of As You Like It, with unforeseen consequences.

A cast as colourful as any in the Bard’s comedies struts through the novel. It’s possible to perceive many other clever references, too; the isolated township is akin to Prospero’s isle, but the storms are of the sandy or snowy variety and, like any Shakespearian drama, the plot centres on the timeless “battle of the sexes” and the emotions that drive us. Terry has a great ear for realistic dialogue; you can hear the lilt and twang of the Wild West in every conversation, and there’s much to enjoy in his fine descriptions of landscape, weather and place.

His prose is balanced, lucid and intelligent. James Terry’s imagining of what drove men and women to the edge of civilisation in 19th-century America is a masterclass in the historical novel genre. He knows his Shakespeare, in all senses of the word.

Jan Middleton HELL BAY Will Thomas, Minotaur, 2016, $25.99/C$36.99, hb, 304pp, 9781250077950 Together for the 8th time, Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, embark on another case. This time, they are called to provide security for a secret conference – being held under the cloak of a debutante-like ball – on the remote Scilly Island estate of Lord Hargrave. But just as they are getting settled on the island, Lord Hargrave is killed. Over the course of the next couple days, members of the Hargrave family are being killed,

and it is up to Barker to find the killer and keep all the guests safe. Barker’s plan is to hold everyone inside the estate and ferret out the killer. This leads to all kinds of accusations and mistrust; suspicions and fears drive the guests into various allegiances and pit one against the other.

Hell Bay is a locked-room thriller that will immediately remind people of Agatha Christie (And Then There Were None) or John Carr (The Hollow Man). It follows the traditional theme of a killer that seems to sneak in and out undetected while the other guests hurl accusations against one another. Barker is a rather passive investigator; he’s always reacting to a murder rather than proactively searching for the killer. It felt like Thomas wrote it this way to keep the story going, as it was fairly easy to figure the general notion of who the killer was from the first few pages. The characters are likeable, the setting appropriately eerie – lighthouses and hedge mazes – and Thomas’ writing is quintessentially British mystery in voice and pace. Readers may feel put off by the actions of a few characters at the end, but all in all, a fun little thriller.

Bryan Dumas TIME AND REGRET M. K. Tod, Lake Union, 2016, $14.95, pb, 366pp, 9781503938403 It’s 1991, and Grace Hansen, the mother of two teenage boys, is trying to get her life back together after a divorce she did not instigate. While sorting through her attic she comes across a box belonging to her dead grandfather and finds a puzzling note, written in his handwriting and dated from 1972.

It’s addressed to Grace and says, ‘read carefully, I never should have taken them.’

Any book that opens with a cryptic note indicating hidden family secrets from the past immediately has me hooked. The story that unfolds takes Grace on a voyage of discovery across the battlefields of France where her grandfather, Martin, served as an officer in the 19th Battalion from 1915 until the war ended in 1918. The story switches seamlessly between Grace’s modern-day adventure and Martin’s experience in World War One. I particularly enjoyed the way Tod mixes in Martin’s diary entries. As Grace searches for answers, there is a twist of modern-day danger and intrigue in addition to the mysteries of the past waiting to be solved. What Grace uncovers, as she tries to solve the puzzle of the note, opens her eyes to her grandparents’ lives and relationship and also gives her an opportunity to make her own journey of self-discovery.

Time and Regret is a thoughtful and elegant story that manages to mix thriller aspects with vivid history and a touch of romance. The characters are beautifully drawn, and the historical aspects are vivid and compelling. Highly recommended.

Kate Braithwaite PLAYING THE PART Jen Turano, Bethany House, 2016, $14.99, pb, 341pp, 9780764212772 In 1882 New York City, actress Lucetta Plum must flee the city when an obsessive admirer comes after her. Friend Abigail Hart helps Lucetta to hide by taking her to Ravenwood Castle, where HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 35

she hopes the actress will fall in love with her grandson, Bram. Allegedly haunted, Ravenwood is an odd place, with a mausoleum for a gatehouse, a goat that chases anyone in a dress, and cannonshooting servants. Even before meeting her, Bram had decided that Lucetta is the one woman he can love; Lucetta has no interest in men who believe she is the characters she plays on stage.

Playing the Part is a fun romance. Lucetta is a charming heroine, and Bram is both dashing and delightfully dopey. Ravenwood and its many residents are absurdly wonderful; every character is quirky and engaging. I laughed out loud, over and over, at the myriad of crazy situations. The historical details are light and the dialogue is a little anachronistic, but the writing is so clever, readers won’t care. This is marketed as a Christian romance, but the references to religion are rare and nonobtrusive to the story and character development.

Delightful fun.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt THE CURIOUS AFFAIR OF THE SOMNAMBULIST AND THE PSYCHIC THIEF Lisa Tuttle, Jo Fletcher Books, 2016, £16.99, pb, 412pp, 9781784299606 It is 1893, and Miss Aphrodite (usually known as Di) Lane arrives in London having left her erstwhile partner, Miss Georgia Cox, whom she discovered had been involved in fabricating evidence for séances. She immediately finds employment with Jasper Jesperson, a young man living in Gower Street with his mother, as his assistant in a consulting detective agency. Jesperson has numerous talents and abilities, although they struggle as first to find sufficient business. But they are given the task to find out why a relative of their landlord has been sleepwalking, and then Miss Cox turns up and requests assistance in locating the whereabouts of a number of spiritualists who have mysteriously gone missing. It does not take a genius to spot that the two cases are related, and they become involved in a dangerous battle to save the captured mediums.

Although they are certainly not Holmes and Watson, there is an element of the famous duo in the subjects and mysteries they have, as well as Miss Lane acting as the foil to Jesperson’s apparent brilliance and ingenuity. The story zips along in entertaining and enjoyable way, and it is very well written. The characters have previously appeared in some of Lisa Tuttle’s shorter fiction, and the novel seems set up for a series. I certainly hope so.

Douglas Kemp A CIVIL ISSUE Curt Von Fange, Five Star, 2016, $25.95, hb, 392pp, 9781432832513 During the Civil War, Henri Mueller and his crew are explosive engineers for the Union Army.

They are taken prisoner, and soon after their arrival at Andersonville Prison, they’re sent to a railroad bridge in Alabama. They blow up the bridge and, during the explosion, are able to escape. They later learn the train traveling over the bridge was carrying gold. About ten years later, President Grant approaches Henri about the stolen gold shipments. Grant feels they were going to be used 36 | Reviews |

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to create trouble for the nation by releasing them into the economy. The President orders Henri to locate the missing gold and the men who took it.

First-time novelist Curt Von Fange has written an exciting story with beautifully described settings. His knowledge of mining methods and smelting equipment at the time helps embellish this well-researched tale. My only complaint is that it reads at times like a travelogue, with history lessons about each locale that interrupt the storyline. Other than these occasional interludes, the story was fast-paced and kept me on the edge of my seat.

Jeff Westerhoff THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD Colson Whitehead, Doubleday, 2016, $26.95/ C$34.95, hb, 320pp, 9780385542364 In the antebellum era, Cora, a teenager born into slavery on a Georgia plantation, agrees to flee with a literate new arrival, Caesar, and head north with him to freedom. Cora had been a particular target of Terrance Randall and his overseer due to her brave defense of a fellow slave, and because her mother had successfully escaped five years earlier.

At every step along her route, a slave tracker hunts her down.

“A plantation was a plantation; one might think one’s misfortunes distinct, but the true horror lay in their universality.” The same holds true of each stop Cora makes along the underground railroad, creatively imagined here as a literal set of subterranean tracks on which trains carry their desperate passengers somewhere else – anywhere else. Cora’s harrowing experiences in different states reflect not only African-Americans’ pre-Civil War lives but also the bigotry and racist violence they faced in later historical periods – today included.

Most works of literary fiction (as this one is) offer deeper characterizations than is shown here, and some readers may be frustrated at the lack of emphasis on Cora’s inner feelings. However, the writing follows in the authentic style of historical slave narratives. Cora’s tale unfolds in direct, unembellished language that reads quickly and allows for no ambiguity.

As a highly anticipated title by a preeminent author, and as an Oprah pick, this novel will be widely read and discussed – as it should be. It’s heartbreaking, occasionally brutal, and undeniably relevant. It also deserves more than one reading.

Cora is an immensely courageous heroine, and the novel’s underlying sense of hope lies not only in her determined quest for liberty but in the many individuals, both named and unknown, who risk their lives to help her achieve it.

Sarah Johnson A USEFUL WOMAN Darcie Wilde, Berkley, 2016, $15.00/C$20.00, pb, 357pp, 9780425282373 In 1817 London, Rosalind Thorne tries to live down the shame of her father’s disappearance after he accrued numerous debts. Her mother has died and her godmother, Lady Blanchard, steps in to rescue the gently-born Rosalind, until Lord Blanchard demands Rosalind leave his house after an unfortunate incident. Set up in small lodgings,

Rosalind makes herself useful by planning parties and preparing debutantes for their debuts as she scrimps to survive, clinging to the edge of society thanks to Lady Blanchard’s sponsorship. Her good sense and organizational skills keep her from sinking into poverty.

Lady Blanchard, a patroness of the famous club Almack’s, asks Rosalind to meet her there, where Rosalind discovers a dead body in the ballroom.

The corpse is Jasper Aimesworth, a wastrel from a high-placed family. Is it an accident or murder?

Rosalind is caught up in the investigation, where the suspects include her former beau, now a duke, for whom she still has feelings. At first reluctant to pursue the reason for Jasper’s death, she seeks the truth at the request of Jasper’s sister and finds the people closest to her, of the loftiest rank, may be involved.

Rosalind is an interesting, dare I say “plucky” heroine, a once-rich girl now lowered to live by her wits. She still follows the strict etiquette of her time and lost position, no matter the cost.

The asides on what is proper in each situation are amusing, reminiscent of Jane Austen. A handsome Bow Street Policeman – so far beneath her – complicates her struggle to stay respectable. The mystery gets convoluted, but is no less compelling.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and look forward to the next book in the series.

Diane Scott Lewis NO OTHER WILL DO Karen Witemeyer, Bethany House, 2016, $14.99, 364pp, 9780764212819 Life is hard for Texas women in the 1880s, especially for orphans, abuse victims, and widows.

A handful of these outcasts start a women’s colony in an abandoned town. The colony grows and thrives until anonymous threats demand they all clear out. Few among them have ever held a gun.

The county sheriff is chasing cattle rustlers and can’t be bothered.

Most of the women with children do leave, but many stay. The town’s leader, Emma Chandler, wires Malachi Shaw to come help. He’s helping build railroad lines in Montana. The women’s colony and then thirteen-year-old Emma had saved Malachi’s life ten years before, fed and clothed him, and taught him to read and write and learn his numbers. Now he drops everything for his “angel,” Emma, and the only family he has known.

The years have been kind to Emma and Malachi.

She is now the beautiful town bank manager, he one of the best dynamite men in the west. Old and fresh adult yearnings come rushing in, but Emma and Malachi repress them. Their lives would be impossible together. She must hold her threatened town together, and he must train the women to fight, help stop the bandits, and race back to a boss who allowed mere days away from his job.

Witemeyer spins a delightful story of easy-toroot-for characters fighting elusive marauders and their own feelings. Secondary characters, even horses with personality, all fit nicely. Solid action sequences and plot surprises balance the quieter scenes and help maintain a fast pace and suspense to the last pages. No Other Will Do is a pleasure to read.

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THE JOYCE GIRL Annabel Abbs, Hachette Australia, 2016, A$32.99, pb, 358pp, 9780733636974 / Impress, 2016, £8.99, pb, 350pp, 9781907605871 In Zurich in 1934, Lucia, the emotionally frail daughter of iconic Irish author James Joyce, is undergoing the “talking cure” with Carl Jung, trying to make sense of the failures in her life.

Flashback to Paris in 1928, when she is an ambitious and talented dancer with the potential to be successful in her own right but constantly thwarted by her family’s demands, including her father’s insistence that “dancing isn’t an appropriate career for the daughter of a literary genius” and that she must continue to remain at home in her role as his muse. When Samuel Beckett arrives on the scene, Lucia falls headlong in love with him. She is convinced that marriage will be her escape route to personal freedom, but she is destined for further disappointment and betrayal.

There has been a boom in novels set during this era, many of them about artists or celebrities like Zelda Fitzgerald – a fellow student in the same dancing class as Lucia – so I approached this title with a degree of reservation that this might be an overworked genre. I needn’t have worried, as Annabel Abbs proves to be the consummate author. Utterly hooked from the beginning, I became immersed in Lucia’s struggle through the destructive shadows cast by her controlling and demanding parents, the false promises of the “Flatterers” who surrounded her father, and the blighted dreams of a life that could not be lived on her own terms. There is no happy ending for Lucia, but one hopes she continued to dance on in her own inner world and found some solace after all the pain she suffered.

This intimate and absolutely splendid novel must top my recommendations as the best 20thcentury fiction of the year.

Marina Maxwell

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THE BIRDCAGE Clive Aslet, Sandstone, 2016, £8.99, pb, 317pp, 9781910985007 It is 1916, and for the young men and women of Britain, exotic and enticing Salonika promises chances of heroism and honour.

Sunny, an ultra-modern warrior in his hot air balloon, envisages duels in the sky, manto-man. Timid little 20th Century

Winner hopes to use his artistic skill in recording the ferocity of every sort of conflict on the instant.

He has not bargained for falling passionately in love with Elsie Fox. Elsie, born into poverty and hardship, seizes all her chances – a nurse, a reckless driver, a convert to Serbian rebellion. But she has disappeared, and Winner must find her, even at the cost of his life. Partially-sighted spy catcher Simon finds time for his pursuit of archaeology in this ancient place. Quartermaster Otter’s sluggish wits are amazingly sharpened in a prolonged encounter with a German submarine.

The moral of this story, at least for Winner: anyone can be heroic if the prospect of cowardice is even more frightening. In the mountains of Macedonia, Serbs and Bulgarians, locked in ancient hatred, fight one another to the death.

In Salonika there is every temptation for servicemen and nurses: suave villains, cafe society, beautiful women. Typically, The Follies’ amateur entertainment provided by and for those same servicemen, snatches success from inevitable first night disaster. The author is to be congratulated on keeping a tight control of people and events.

I loved this delightful, crazy, high-spirited story, and everyone in it. Many novels are called thrillers.

This one thrills from suspenseful opening to its mighty unstoppable climax.

Nancy Henshaw

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THE EXPLORERS GUILD: Volume One: A Passage to Shambhala Jon Baird, with Kevin Costner and Stephen Meyer, Rick Ross (illus.), Atria, 2015, $29.99/C36.99, hb, 770pp, 9781476727394 This uniformly grand work of imagination brought a smile to my face the second I opened the cover, and 700 some-odd pages flew by in a frenzy of enjoyment.

I. Absolutely. Loved. It. World War I rages, and Arthur Ogden, a rather useless sort of upper-class twit, joins the Explorers Guild, a gentlemen’s club whose adventurer members must make some notable discovery to attain entry. Traveling to the Arctic on a drunken dare, Ogden falls through the ice and discovers… something; he’s the only one to make it back alive, though damaged. Meanwhile, his brother, the implacable and darn near invincible Col. John Ogden, commands a motley bunch of dragoons in Arabia until Arthur’s misfortune drags him and his company into a globe-trotting adventure.

Written in a style emulating the adventure tales of the Victorian period, the publisher has gone all out for the conceit – pages are even faux-foxed to look old. Narrative sections are punctuated by graphic pages illustrating connecting dialogue or action.

Dirigibles, submersibles, memory machines, a sinister black-robed group (of course), orphans, pirates, beautiful Russian actresses, flaming octopi projectiles; this is so much fun. Jules, Rudyard, Robert Louis, all of you – move the h--- over (the conceit extends to dashing out profanity).

In the acknowledgments, Jon Baird calls the music Kevin’s (yes, it’s that Kevin Costner) with Baird just playing the notes – Baird gives himself too little credit. The “dear reader” sections are true to the Victorian conceit while chock full of wry humor, characterization is robust, and everything is cleverly executed. Rick Ross’s graphic sections have a wonderful illustrative style and meld seamlessly, and the entire package is just… darn near perfect.

While this is a pastiche of what passed for young adult lit in the Victorian era, it’s not a children’s book; it’s unlikely young adults would understand its nuances, though they could certainly revel in its adventure.

Perhaps the most exciting part is that “Volume One” in the subtitle. While the ending wraps up neatly, if more volumes are forthcoming, I will buy and read every last one.

Bethany Latham MAGGIE’S KITCHEN Caroline Beecham, Allen & Unwin, 2016, A$29.99, pb, 400pp, 9781760293048 In London during World War Two, Maggie Johnson opens one of the many British Restaurants, an initiative of the Ministry of Food to feed tired and hungry Londoners. It’s a fascinating aspect of the war that I was not aware of. From the opening scene, Maggie uses her cooking to comfort and bless others. The novel portrays well the consequences of rationing: the hunger, the thrifty use of every morsel of food, and the effort to ensure people received sufficient nutrients from a limited supply.

It is quite the opposite to the nutrition problems of our Western world today!

At the beginning of each chapter is a cooking or nutrition hint, many of which show that the basics of healthy eating never change. The comment in Chapter 19 from the Ministry of Food’s War Cookery Leaflet says: “During the past few years we have discovered how good a daily green salad can be. People who tell you that they feel much better now that they eat salads are not just food faddists.”

The recipes at the end of the book include British traditions such as Scotch eggs, Toad-inthe-Hole and mock cream – not a hint of chia seeds, coconut or coriander! It’s interesting to see how the British ‘made do’ with what little choice they had.

Although there is conflict between the characters and a certain measure of intrigue, I would have liked to see more, especially with Janek, the Polish refugee. Perhaps I have been reading too many of my son’s action mystery novels! Maggie’s Kitchen is an easy, light read that provides insight into a lesser known part of life in war-torn London.

Cindy Williams BLUE MADONNA James R. Benn, Soho, 2016, $26.95/C$33.95, hb, 336pp, 9781616956424 This is the eleventh in Benn’s Billy Boyle mystery series set during WWII. “Uncle Ike” drops Billy behind enemy lines just as the beaches of Normandy fill with Allied soldiers. Billy goes to a chateau where two undercover women shelter downed airmen. Billy’s not sent to solve murders, but that job becomes part of the mission if he is HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 37

going to get one necessary man back to England and keep both himself and his love interest, Diane, safe.

Balancing traditional crime solving with wartime tragedy and intrigue, Benn portrays Nazi horrors, along with crafty characters and good twists that surprise the reader. The opening, dark machinations in England hold interest, but the high suspense begins as Boyle heads into enemy territory. The love story aspect is lukewarm, partly because Billy’s love must hide her identity and partly because Benn depends on the reader’s awareness from earlier books. Boyle doesn’t think about her until she crops up in the plot, so we’re not persuaded of his love. That is a minor weakness in a compelling combination of mystery and war thriller.

Judith Starkston REMBRANDT’S SHADOW Janet Lee Berg, Post Hill Press, 2016, $15.00/ C$20.00, pb, 304pp, 9781682611432 Sylvie Beckman is the privileged, spoiled child of famous art collector Josef Rosenberg. Sylvie prides herself on her fine, attractive clothing and the status wealth brings. But now, with Hitler’s troops approaching Sylvie’s home in Holland, an ugly transformation looms large as Jews find their rights stripped away. Sylvie’s family is temporarily made safe by her father’s use of the famous art works he still possesses to entice the Germans to bypass the family’s home. Over time, they realize they must leave the Netherlands, but this novel is really about the years afterward, in which the scars of the war linger and affect Sylvie’s every thought and action. She is so demanding that forty years later her son, Michael, escapes by joining the military, fighting in Vietnam, and writing about his experiences and background as part of a healing process. Sylvie totally disapproves of his girlfriend, Angela Martino, because she isn’t Jewish, but after Michael and Angela marry, Sylvie finally shares her past with Angela.

As with all Holocaust survivors, a painful connection exists. Berg illustrates how Sylvie was shamed by her Jewishness during those horrific years, and is unable to cast it aside even after escaping the life-threatening conditions of the war. Sylvie’s survivor’s pride insists on holding on to her Jewish identity, with Berg emphasizing to the reader that the threat of extinction still looms in the minds and hearts of these wounded individuals. This dichotomy pervades a story in which artistic beauty is used to both save and destroy lives. Rembrandt’s Shadow is a remarkable work of recommended historical fiction!

Viviane Crystal DEATH OF AN AVID READER Frances Brody, Minotaur, 2016, $25.99/C$36.99, hb, 368pp, 9781250067395 / Piatkus, 2014, £8.99, pb, 368pp, 9780349400570 This story, the sixth in the Kate Shackleton mystery series, takes place in 1925 Leeds, England.

There are actually two mysteries; they may or may not be related. Kate, whose soldier husband never returned from World War I, has turned to private investigation to earn a living. She is hired to find the illegitimate daughter of a London aristocrat.

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While Kate and her partner, ex-policeman Jim Sykes, are working on this case, a body turns up in the eerie basement of Leeds Library. Kate becomes involved with several quirky, secondary characters, including an endearing monkey who comes close to stealing the show.

The convoluted and complex plot winds on as Kate is painfully injured and faces mortal danger from the killer. Intricate and at times slow-moving, this novel does give enough backstory to satisfy the new reader, and explains things well enough that the book can stand alone. It includes fascinating descriptions of English class divisions between the wars, and detailed pictures of Leeds life in 1925.

Fans of traditional English mysteries will like this one.

Elizabeth Knowles SAFFIRE Sigmund Brouwer, WaterBrook, 2016, $14.99/ C$19.99, pb, 336pp, 978030744651 Panama is a fledgling country, born out of a revolution supported by the U.S., and now a canal is being ripped through the country. The setting is ripe for political corruption and intrigue, and into the maelstrom is plopped James Holt, a widower cowboy from the Dakotas. He’s all cowboy – he even toured with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Holt’s there on a personal favor for Teddy Roosevelt. The only thing certain for Holt is that he plans on getting home as soon as possible. But in the sweltering, mosquito-infested Canal Zone, nothing is certain anymore.

Holt finds himself assigned to find the missing mother of a little mulatto girl named Saffire. Other than her, no one in Panama wants this woman found. As Holt digs deeper into the underbelly of Panama, he is drawn into intricate webs of deception, political shenanigans, and, eventually, the arms of a woman who will change his life forever.

Brouwer’s command of language is such that the heat, humidity, and hum of insects in Panama resonate off the pages. Part history lesson – some characters are real, and their involvement in the Canal construction is nuanced – and part romantic thriller, Saffire delves into the real struggle to build the canal while interweaving a kidnapping and mystery story into the history lesson. It’s listed as a Christian historical novel, so fans of that genre may be disappointed that the only source of religious inspiration comes nearly 300 pages into the book in the form of a single paragraph spoken not by Holt, but by a nearly irrelevant dying character.

In the end Saffire is a nice historical look at the Panama Canal construction mixed with a nifty little American Wild West cowboy drama-meetsthriller.

Bryan Dumas THE HOUSE OF DREAMS Kate Lord Brown, St. Martin’s, 2016, $25.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250084538 In the early 1940s, American journalist Varian Fry was a part of a group of internationals with a mission of helping hand-picked refugee intellectuals and artists escape the Nazis in Marseilles, France. In Kate Lord Brown’s novel, she brings to life the story of the American Relief

Center through the eyes and experiences of a wellknown painter, Gabriel Lambert.

Lambert’s story is brought to us through the efforts of a young journalist in 2000, Sophie Cass, who is able to convince the elusive and solitary Lambert to allow her to interview him. It is known that Lambert harbors a secret, and Sophie, who has a family connection to Lambert, is set on discovering the truth and will not take no as an answer.

While Lambert and Cass are fictional characters, many of the other characters that make appearances throughout the story are real people such as Marc Chagall, Peggy Guggenheim, and André Breton. This creates a gateway between fiction and reality, which makes the story even more interesting than if it was entirely fictional.

Brown handles the two storylines (Sophie and Gabriel in 2000 and Gabriel and Varian Fry in 1940) skillfully through alternating chapters and viewpoints. While some stories attempt this structure unsuccessfully, Brown manages to write believable characters with different voices, making it easy to visualize the characters through the jumps in time. There is a twist that is best not revealed here, and that is the only point where I had some trouble with the story. It is difficult to write a convincing twist, and while I appreciated the effort, it was not what I had expected, and therefore it felt jarring. Still, this is a story I would recommend to anyone, particularly those interested in European artists during World War II. Elicia Parkinson THE JEALOUS KIND James Lee Burke, Simon & Schuster, 2016, $27.99/C$34.99, hb, 382pp, 9781501107207 / Orion, 2017, £8.99, pb, 400pp, 9781409163510 Forget the “Happy Days” of the carefree 1950s. Shortly after WWII, Houston, Texas is a simmering cauldron of mayhem, hatred, and incessant violence. According to author James Lee Burke, the city of that time is the murder capital of the world! The protagonist, seventeen-year-old Aaron Holland Broussard, is eerily wise beyond his years, enmeshed in his first love and simultaneously plagued by all types of low-life scum, including rich kids, Sicilian gangsters, crooked cops, local organized crime and predatory teachers.

Aaron must try to protect his new girlfriend, Valerie Epstein (whose father may be a coldblooded killer), his benighted best friend, Saber Bledsoe, his mentally damaged mother and alcoholic father, and try to make a few friends out of his long list of enemies. The book careens along swiftly as Aaron narrowly averts one catastrophe after another but can’t seem to make it all stop.

He is aided on occasion by a sad policeman, a mafia moll, the wisdom of his father and the genetic inheritance received from his Texas Ranger grandfather. Somehow, good triumphs in the end.

The author’s world depicted here is too dark and foreboding for my tastes, but Burke’s noir outlook is an apparent reason for his longstanding success across years of numerous novels, including his last that I reviewed. The angelic girlfriend appears too ethereal and unconvincing, and Nazi youth camps and brown shirts in 1950s Texas strain credulity.

But still, the book pulses non-stop with continuous 20th Century

emotional earthquakes until it erupts in a volcanic and satisfying ending. The prose is unique and entrancing, Aaron’s pet dogs and cats are innocent and likeable, and at least he goes to Mass on Sundays. I must admit I, almost reluctantly, liked this novel.

Thomas J. Howley TEETOTALED Maia Chance, Minotaur, 2016, $24.99/C$34.99, hb, 292pp, 9781250072214 Lola Woodby would be a merry widow if her cheating husband had left her any money. Instead, he left her broke and forced to work, establishing the Discreet Retrieval Agency with her cook, Berta Lundgren. To make matters worse, it’s 1923, so Prohibition makes her beloved highball illegal.

Finding lost cats isn’t paying the bills, so Lola and Berta accept a job from Sophronia Whiddle, who engages them to steal her daughter Grace’s diary.

Grace is on the verge of an advantageous marriage, and her mother doesn’t want the diary to fall in the wrong hands.

Just as in Lola and Berta’s first outing, Come Hell or Highball, nothing goes according to plan.

Befitting its 1920s setting, the plot resembles a screwball comedy. Lola, the younger of the pair, indulges in romance magazines, while Berta, older, stern, and Swedish, thinks pulp classics like Mexico City Mayhem will help them hone their craft. The mystery itself is almost beside the point. Chance populates the tale with equally nutty characters and a vivid sense of Prohibition-era New York, from the clothes to the cars to the conversations.

Ellen Keith THE WHISKEY SEA Ann Howard Creel, Lake Union, 2016, $14.95, pb, 287pp, 9781503936898 After they’re orphaned in 1908, life appears stacked against Frieda and Bea, daughters of a New Jersey fishing town’s whore. Luckily for the little girls, Silver, a bachelor clam raker, takes them in. When Frieda graduates from high school, she plans to join the aging fisherman on his boat. To her horror, Silver informs Frieda that he has sold the boat to send her to secretarial school. He also advises the young woman that she consider marrying Sam Hicks, the man who bought Silver’s boat. However, Frieda has other plans.

When Prohibition became national law in 1920, it provided Highlands’ fishermen with a fast way to get rich. Ships loaded with liquor from Canada or Europe meet whiskey runners a few miles offshore so the fishing boats can slip their illegal cargoes ashore. The captains risk a hefty fine and confiscation of their boats, or death from hijackers also in search of easy money, but a successful whiskey runner can make $1,000 in a single night.

Frieda signs up as a boat’s mechanic so she can support Silver and send her little sister to college.

The Whiskey Sea is an entertaining look at the free-wheeling whiskey runner’s world through the eyes of a tough, resourceful young woman. Ms. Creel presents her readers with a fast-paced, vivid adventure, and also a very personal tale. Frieda has choices to make. Is ensuring her family’s future worth risking everything? And what of “Princeton,” a handsome college boy who signs on as deckhand 20th Century

for a summer’s adventure, and Sam Hicks, the stolid fisherman who has adored her from afar?

Try The Whiskey Sea – it won’t let you down.

Jo Ann Butler

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SIRIUS: The Little Dog Who Almost Changed History Jonathan Crown, Scribner, 2016, $25.00, hb, 256pp, 9781501144998 Sirius, Jonathan Crown’s debut novel, first appeared in Germany in 2014.

Having made the bestseller list there, the book is now available in English. In Germany in 1938, an utterly charming fox terrier observes the changes taking place in Berlin. His owners, the Lilliencrons, realize it’s not safe to be a Jewish dog during these times, so they change his name to Sirius, after the “big dog in the sky.”

As conditions for the Jews continue to deteriorate, the family, along with Sirius, decides to flee Germany and head for safety in the U.S. They end up in Hollywood, and through a series of mishaps, Sirius becomes a movie star. But, the world being what it is, Sirius is once again returned to Germany, where, though terrified, the little dog wins the love of the Führer himself.

Watching the horrors of Nazism through the eyes of an innocent dog makes the whole business quite intimidating. Something about the juxtaposition of the rampant hatred of one group of humans for another against the loyalty and unconditional love of a dog places evil in even starker contrast with good. The scene that stands out as the most chilling, for me at least, is the Night of Broken Glass, when unruly mobs smash the Jewish ghetto with such violence and hatred that even the dog is shaking. It makes me wonder if such a scene could happen here, in the U.S, where the threads of civility are fraying as various groups rail against each other.

This grown-up fairy tale, simply written yet deeply complex, is a quick, easy read. That said, this story, and Sirius, will haunt you long after you’ve closed the book.

Anne Clinard Barnhill CHAMPION OF THE WORLD Chad Dundas, Putnam, 2016, $27.00/C$36.00, hb, 474pp, 9780399176081 Witty, wiry Pepper Van Dean used to be the lightweight wrestling champion of the world. But one broken leg and five years later, he’s working the sideshow circuit, doing the dangerous Hangman’s Drop stunt and wrestling for nickels after hours.

When an old friend offers Pepper a job coaching Garfield Taft, a down-and-out African-American heavyweight champion looking for a comeback after a stint in jail, Pepper jumps at it. His wife Moira, a canny cardsharp, isn’t as eager. The “old friend” was the one behind the broken leg that cost Pepper his title all those years ago. When they arrive at the private training camp tucked away in the desolate

Montana wilderness, Moira sees things that don’t add up. Is the operation about nothing more than clean sport or is it hiding something more sinister than that?

Dundas is a sportswriter by profession and wields that talent in bringing to life the world of 1920s wrestling. He writes with surety and vivid detail, making the breathless reader feel each blow and choke and fall. It’s not all wrestling; the ubiquitous gangsters and bootleggers of the ‘20s swagger through the story, adding their own color.

But it’s the main characters, especially Pepper and Moira, who steal the show. Their dialogue is smart, their marriage warm, and their failings honest.

From the start, I was captivated by their stories, even though much of Pepper’s was told through his love of a sport largely unfamiliar to me. It is a credit to Dundas’s skill that I – someone who is largely not a sports fan – could be so enthralled by a novel set in the world of professional wrestling.

Recommended, to everyone.

Jessica Brockmole THE YEARS THAT FOLLOWED Catherine Dunne, Touchstone, 2016, $25.00/ C$18.99, hb, 352pp, 9781501135668 / Macmillan, 2016, £13.99, 384pp, 9781447211686 In 1966 Dublin, Calista is seventeen and fettered by her strict parents’ standards – standards about social class, the right cutlery to use, the people one should know. She is ripe for rebellion, and when Alexandros Demetriades, the handsome son of one of her father’s business partners, comes to dinner one night, she eagerly responds to his flirtatious advances. She is in love, she thinks, enough to leave her family, marry Alexandros, and move to his family’s home in Cyprus. There she finds more hard lessons about class, money, manipulation, shame, and abuse.

In 1957 Madrid, eighteen-year-old Pilar has just arrived in the city, having escaped the extreme poverty of her small Spanish town. She is driven to achieve, to work her way to economic stability, to embrace her dead mother’s advice of answering to no man.

The intersections of these two women’s lives are revealed slowly, over several decades of maturity, heartbreak, and loss. Calista’s story is told in a series of flashbacks, while Pilar’s chapters move forward in time. The women have lived very different lives, but have become strong and focused thanks to betrayal and violence, both personal and political.

The civil strife in Spain and Cyprus provides an apt backdrop to their stories; though that history is not the focus of the novel, the class tension and political machinations writ large are very much reflected and influence Calista and Pilar’s lives.

Dunne’s writing is urgent and attentive; details such as a trembling hand, a shard of glass, an unlatched door, all contribute to this page-turning narrative. The complex characters and their secrets are well worth getting to know, and the feelings of quiet joy and sadness will reverberate with readers long after the last chapter is finished.

Helene Williams ASSASSINS Jim Eldridge, Crème de la Crime, 2016, $29.99/£20.99, hb, 256pp, 9781780290881 HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 39

In 1921 London, responding to an urgent call about the shooting of a prominent cabinet minister, Lord Amersham, DCI Stark and DS Danvers of Scotland Yard arrive at his Regent’s Park mansion.

They are met at the door by Winston Churchill, who already had Amersham’s body moved inside from the pavement where he’d been shot. When told by the DCI about this improper action, Churchill glowers at him and departs with a retort that it’s the Bolsheviks they should be searching.

Observing the three accurate bullet holes in the body, the detectives believe it’s a professional assassin’s job.

Although forensic examination indicates the gun was a German Luger, Special Branch, because of Amersham’s vocal opposition to Irish Home Rule, wants Stark to investigate the visiting Irish delegation – particularly their leader, Michael Collins. While making inquiries at the British Communist Party’s offices, Danvers stumbles upon a lead of a personal nature. The plot thickens when other murders occur, and an unidentified group takes credit for the assassinations, lengthening the list of suspects.

This murder mystery is a departure for bestselling YA author Jim Eldridge. It’s an impressive work featuring the troubled post-WWI period in British history. The story includes a sizeable cast, from detectives and their families to British Communists, notable Irish revolutionaries, Winston Churchill, and even King George V. The British class system predominant during the period is handled deftly, and with an interesting twist. The DCI, a demobilized soldier, comes from the working class, while his Sergeant hails from the landed gentry. They interact well, although Stark doesn’t think much of Churchill’s pompous attitude. The inclusion of a romantic subplot adds flair. Although in places the narrative includes more than enough telling details, likely for the benefit of younger readers, it’s an appealing first volume in a whodunit series.

Waheed Rabbani ABSALOM’S DAUGHTERS Suzanne Feldman, Henry Holt, 2016, $26.00/$37.00, hb, 253pp, 9781627794534.

Absalom’s Daughters is the story of two teenage girls from Mississippi who brave the Jim Crow South of the 1950s to claim their inheritance from their no-good daddy, who abandoned them. First there’s Cassie, a black girl who is self-educated and helps her grandmother and her mother, Lil Ma, with their laundry business. Her half-sister, Judith, white, is illiterate and wants to be a radio singer, singing what others call “colored” music, with which Judith has fallen in love.

Abandoned by their father and dirt poor, it is Judith who discovers their father has come into an inheritance in Virginia, where he has fled. She talks Cassie into coming with her to their share of this inheritance. Reluctant at first, Cassie finally agrees, and the two set out in what must be the worst escape vehicle ever. Somehow, they get from point A to point B, find help along the way, and learn a lot about people and life on their journey.

The concept of the book is sound, and there are bits of humor throughout. However, the main problem is there is little difference between the 40 | Reviews |

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sisters’ voices, and this leads to confusion about who is who. The dialect is heavy, almost Faulknerlike. But of course, being set in Mississippi with a title like “Absalom’s Daughters,” the reference to Faulkner can’t be missed.

As a fan of Southern fiction, I was disappointed in the character development. No one rang true for me, with the possible exception of the old man who tells “mule” stories to Cassie. However, there are many interesting aspects to the novel, such as the obsession some of the characters have with skin color variations. The internalized racism Cassie’s grandmother exhibits is difficult to read, and sad.

Anne Clinard Barnhill THE LAST DAYS OF LEDA GREY Essie Fox, Orion, 2016, £13.99, pb, 288pp, 9781409146254 In the long, arid summer of 1976, a young journalist in search of a story and of a path in life stumbles across a junk shop whose artifacts lead him to the discovery of a story which will become an obsession, and with which he becomes most intimately embroiled. He is transported by his research to the earliest days of cinema, during its brief but intense flaring in pre-First World War England, before Hollywood stole the show. The direction his life will take will become increasingly controlled by the figure of Leda Grey, as he traces her evolution from charismatic ingénue, to muse to the indomitable Charles Beauvais, and finally as chances of fame and fortune pass her by.

Fox makes the wise choice of fictionalizing her setting, allowing her to develop her own imaginative world, for all her Brightland is very recognizably Brighton, a centre of creativity when cinema was in its infancy. There is plenty of erudition here, and it is deployed beguilingly. I found myself Googling the actors’ seaside village and its railway carriage bungalows, the ‘actuals’ – short travelogue films, and the glass house studio, wanting them to be historically based (and I was not disappointed). Fox’s considerable knowledge and obvious delight in this world make for a rich experience for the reader. She creates a world which revives the exoticism, the surreal juxtapositions, the smoldering kohl-eyed and chiffon-clad sensuality, the crudely crafted magic tricks, the glee and the melodrama of these films.

The intoxicating sense that everything is possible is there, but so are the personal disappointments.

Indeed it is the wholeheartedness of Fox’s imaginative reconstruction which is the book’s greatest strength.

Within this setting and its complex narrative frames, the book delivers plenty of incident, supernatural mystery and page-turning jeopardy.

An engaging read.

Jane Lee A HERO OF FRANCE (US) / A HERO IN FRANCE (UK) Alan Furst, Random House, 2016, $27.00/ C$36.00, hb, 234pp, 9780812996494 / Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016, £18.99, hb, 256p, 9781474602907 German-occupied Paris, March 10th, 1941. The novel opens with Mathieu, head of a Resistance cell, and through his eyes we see the silent streets

of Paris, buildings shuttered and dark under the blackout orders. Mathieu, it turns out, leads a cell which helps downed British airmen either down to Spain or up to the Channel and back to England.

As time progresses, the Gestapo begin to tighten their surveillance around Mathieu’s operations, and the Resistance must employ students, nightclub owners, teachers, and aristocrats, who form the underground alliance against the German spies, collaborators, and informants.

Lovers of WWII France will savor the historical detail and atmospheric settings of Furst’s tight writing. The author pulls us into the many operations Mathieu and his fellow agent Chantal undertake, at times under the noses of the Gestapo, who patrol and punish resisters with brutal force.

Furst writes with ample descriptive detail, but he weaves the background information into the action so that the reader does not find it overwhelming, yet is informed enough to engage with the next thrilling scene. He employs an anticlimactic ending, but one that is true to the way Resistance operations worked. Sometimes success is not a matter of win or lose, but instead a gray area in which satisfaction with the good is better than any possible perfection.

Gini Grossenbacher A FEW RIGHT THINKING MEN Sulari Gentill, Poisoned Pen Press, 2016, $15.95, pb, 323pp, 9781464206375 Fans of Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series, rejoice: here comes another Depression-era Australian sleuth! Painter Rowland Sinclair comes from money, and in 1931 Sydney, where jobs are hard to come by, he has opened his ancestral home to fellow artists, creating bohemian bonhomie among his friends and consternation among his family members and household staff. Politics are inextricable from economics, and there’s no shortage of factions here; the unemployed are tending toward Communism, while there’s a distinct leaning towards Fascism among the upper classes, including those like Sinclair’s brother, Wilfred, who will do anything to preserve the status quo. Whether the Old Guard, such as Wilfred, will resort to the violence and hamhanded tactics of the overtly-Fascist New Guard, led by Eric Campbell, makes for some worthy narrative complexity.

When Rowly Sinclair, Rowland’s uncle, is found beaten to death, everyone’s motives—personal, political, and economic—come into question.

Thus Rowland and his housemates, including sculptress Edna, poet Milt, and painter Clyde, find themselves investigating who would want to murder an aging dandy, mixing with crowds from the questionable to the elite. Along the way there is plenty of solid discussion of politics and social status, with enough context to both draw in those new to the era and keep those more well-versed in their history interested.

Characters are well-drawn, too, from Rowland’s artist friends to the historic figures such as Campbell. Gentill’s inclusion of newspaper blurbs from the time, recounting social and cultural events as well as criminal and political activities, add yet more depth to captivate readers in this terrific debut.

Helene Williams 20th Century

ARIZONA MOON: A Novel of Vietnam J. M. Graham, Naval Institute, 2016, $29.95, hb, 320pp, 9781682470718 1967 was the year in which the battle between America and North Vietnam loomed large, ferociously wounding and ending lives of soldiers from both countries. Captain Raymond Strader, a Marine Corps squad leader, has a few days remaining before he is scheduled to return home to Pennsylvania. By a fluke, he’s in the wrong place at the right time, as he’s ordered to accompany a helicopter transport team to rescue one soldier and carry out two of his fellow soldiers who had died. Initially, it is believed that the comatose LCpl Noche Gonshayee, an Apache Indian feared by all, killed the two dead soldiers, but the truth is soon clarified. The remainder of the story is about the search for Gonshayee and Strader as they struggle through the Ong Tu Mountains with North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers right behind them.

Their cat-and-mouse maneuvers are the intriguing essence of this novel. For we learn about the literary preferences of the NVA, which they believe defines the American enemy. The impressive and noble challenges that form the Apache identity are described in detail, reshaping the reader’s respect for Gonshayee. The lush, beautiful but deadly Vietnamese forests and mountains are personified as enemies or friends, depending on who traverses them. Finally, although the banter between American Marines is crass and funny, the intensity of their bond, highlighted by their determination to rescue and protect their own, exemplifies the goal of their jobs in the middle of the direst, life-threatening conditions. Ironically, the NVA team shares the same love of brother and country. Arizona Moon is a unique, highly recommended historical novel that will remain seared in every reader’s memory.

Viviane Crystal A MOST EXTRAORDINARY PURSUIT Juliana Gray, Berkley, 2016, $15.00/C$20.00, pb, 464pp, 9780425277072 At the death of the Duke of Olympia in 1906 England, his personal secretary, the steadfast Miss Emmeline Truelove, is commanded by the duchess to travel to Greece and locate the duke’s missing heir. Emmeline is shocked, especially when her traveling companion will be Lord Silverton, a wellknown dissolute rake. Max Haywood, the deceased duke’s grandnephew and heir, was pursuing his passion for archeology on the island of Crete when he disappeared.

Emmeline sets off, voyaging on the duke’s steamship to Athens to begin her quest. Silverton is charming, and amusing, but she has scruples, and brushes off his offer of friendship. They reach Crete, and then find one of their contacts has been murdered. A mystery surrounds Haywood’s dealings at the ruins of Knossos that involves the myth of the Minotaur and the Maze. Emmeline discovers her simple search has turned into a dangerous mission where her life is threatened. She also comes to know the debauched Silverton, who is not who he seems to be.

The ending is in the realm of the paranormal.

I wondered why an English duke holds the title 20th Century

of “Olympia,” a Greek word. The ghost of Queen Victoria (a woman she never knew) frequently appears to Emmeline to scold her over her actions—an unnecessary plot device.

Besides this, the novel is a rollicking adventure full of bright, humorous banter between the two protagonists. I thoroughly enjoyed it and understand it’s the beginning of a series. Miss Emmeline Truelove is a worthy heroine, and I hope the incorrigible Silverton will also appear in future stories. Recommended.

Diane Scott Lewis MONSOON SUMMER Julia Gregson, Touchstone, 2016, $25.99, hb, 464pp, 9781476725260 / Orion, 2016, £16.99, hb, 384pp, 9781409108122 Kit Smallwood has just arrived at Wickham Farm in Oxfordshire, where a friend is founding a charity to send midwives to the Moonstone Home in South India. It is 1947; Kit is suffering from nervous exhaustion from her time nursing soldiers during the Second World War and also harbors a secret that is weighing on her conscience.

While at Wickham Farm assisting with her friend’s charity, she meets Anto, an Indian doctor rooming in the same house. He is in England finishing his medical training, and he also begins to assist Kit and her friend with their work. It does not take long, however, for business to turn to pleasure for Kit and Anto, and soon they are consumed by their love for one another.

The story takes the couple from England to South India, where Kit is sent to work at the Moonstone Home. Anto’s family conveniently lives in the same village, so he is able to present Kit to them as his wife. There is inevitably culture shock by both Kit and Anto’s family as they try to grow accustomed to one another’s experiences and beliefs.

This story is almost 500 pages long but reads quickly and enjoyably. Gregson writes about India in a way that brings the country alive for me, someone who has never visited. This is not to say that she writes about the country with rosecolored glasses. Rather, she writes with a great deal of expertise, allowing room for the nastiness of the political issues that occurred that year during the Partition of India. It’s more a love for country and a passion for one’s work than anything else. These are complex, well-rounded characters.

I highly recommend this engrossing read for those interested in romance novels or even those (such as myself ) who are not.

Elicia Parkinson EL PASO Winston Groom, Liveright, 2016, $27.95/ C$36.95/£15.99, hb, 480pp, 9781631492242 In 1915, northern Mexico is in a state of revolution led by Pancho Villa and his army.

There are American mining and ranching interests located throughout the area. One cattle ranch is owned by a Boston millionaire who has made his money from the New England and Pacific Railroad: Colonel John McGill Shaughnessy. His adopted son, Arthur, works out of Chicago and has an avid interest in early flight. John Shaughnessy and his son head for El Paso, and ultimately their

ranch in Mexico, accompanied by their families.

Unbeknownst to the Shaughnessys, Pancho Villa has murdered the ranch manager, stolen some of the cattle, and has plans to take over all the other American businesses in the region.

This family saga has all the ingredients of a classic, depicting the Mexican Revolution, its effect on the innocent Mexican people, and Americans caught up in the maelstrom of Pancho Villa’s wrath. The story incorporates actual persons such as writer and communist John Reed, writer and former Civil War soldier Ambrose Bierce, cowboy and eventual actor Tom Mix, and Pancho Villa himself. There are kidnappings, battles, an explicit bullfight, and daring escapes. This book is also about the marriage between Arthur and his wife, Xenia, along with his relationship with his adoptive father.

This sprawling epic is the newest work by the author of Forrest Gump and many popular nonfiction books about the Civil War. The life, culture, and times of the Mexican Revolution are vividly portrayed. There are a number of fascinating characters, and the author fastidiously captures their essence and makes them credible and realistic. The blending of actual and fictional characters is done well. I highly recommend this well-researched novel.

Jeff Westerhoff THE BOOK OF BELOVED Carolyn Haines, Thomas & Mercer, 2016, $15.95, pb, 332pp, 9781503938069 Carolyn Haines is off to a great start with The Book of Beloved, the first book in her new series, Pluto’s Snitch. The main character, Raissa James, is a young World War I widow with a particular talent—she sees dead people. When Raissa accepts an invitation to attend a party at her uncle’s plantation in Mobile, Alabama, Raissa starts to see spirits in abundance. Trouble is, not all the spirits are friendly. In fact, they may have committed murder—in the present as well as the past.

Enlisting the help of Reginald Proctor, a selfproclaimed medium, Raissa holds a séance. The results are far more terrifying than Raissa or Reginald imagined. To solve the murders, she and Reginald embark on the trail of old scandals from the Civil War that threaten the reputations of some of Mobile’s finest. When Raissa uncovers the dark history that haunts the estate, her life is in danger.

The ghosts seem to want to help, but some can’t be trusted. Who among the spirits is friend? And who is foe?

Readers of paranormal mysteries will love the complexity of the spirits and their tragic stories. And while the dark historical details of the Confederacy come alive, so do the appalling effects of racism in the 1920s. We can look forward to more adventures with Raissa and Reginald, hopefully in the deep South of bayous and Spanish moss, a land she paints beautifully with words.

The Book of Beloved is a fun but eerie read, wellwritten by Haines, author of 18 novels, including the Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series. Highly recommended.

Lorraine Norwood

HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 41

DEEP WATERS Patricia Hall, Severn House, 2016, $28.95/£20.99, hb, 208pp, 9781780107684 Book five of the Kate O’Donnell mysteries follows Detective Sergeant Harry Barnard as he hunts for a missing club owner while his girlfriend Kate, our main heroine, is off photographing a piece about the historic flood that devastated Canvey Island in 1953. When a body turns up during the investigation and complicates things, Barnard is desperate to close the case. Meanwhile, Kate captures the photo of a person of interest in her travels, and old crimes resurface. Now the couple must work together, stay alive, and puzzle out the connections before it’s too late.

I found the setting and main characters of this story charming and enjoyable. I appreciated Hall’s details that brought life in the ´60s sharply to the page. We have subtle reminders of WWII’s lasting impression on the country, and feel the frustration of Kate trying to enter a workforce comprised mostly of men. The historical aspect grabbed my attention, and the mystery was intriguing, if not a bit expected, but the story centers largely on Harry rather than Kate, and I would have liked to know more about her. A sizeable cast of characters tends to complicate the scene, and I found myself lost a few times, but Hall weaves the two plots together to a satisfying end. I also wished for a bit more clarification on a few points, but overall, this was an enjoyable mystery.

Holly Faur HEIRLOOMS: Stories Rachel Hall, BkMk Press 2016, $15.95, pb, 190pp, 9781886157910 This volume is a treasure box of interconnected short stories tracking a saga of a Jewish family’s survival, starting in Holocaust-era France.

Beginning in 1939 St. Malo, we meet young Lise, devoted to the raising and protection of the baby of her dead sister-in-law. She makes her way across and out of France’s occupied zone, facing the horrors and fear of wartime Europe. Hall’s writing style is minimalist perfection, each chapter a selfcontained jewel. She manages to project intense sympathy without a hint of sentimentalism, and her multi-perspective sense of pathos is rare for the genre. Even Nazi officers and abusive French police are given multiple dimensions and some level of human frailty, which only makes the facts of wartime life more starkly real. As the settings progress to Israel and America, the story resonates deeply with the modern refugee experience and seems all the more fresh and timely. Definitely a welcome and beautiful voice in wartime historical fiction. Enthusiastically recommended.

Jackie Drohan THIS HOUSE IS MINE Dörte Hansen, St. Martin’s, 2016, $26.99/ C$37.99, hb, 336pp, 9781250100856 This literary novel takes place in the rural Altland area of northern Germany, where Vera arrives from East Prussia as a five-year-old war refugee in 1945. Ida Eckhoff, a farmer’s widow, grudgingly allows Vera and her haughty mother Hildegard to stay in the servant’s room. Ida’s son, a prisoner of war, returns with an injured leg and 42 | Reviews |

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permanently disabled by psychological trauma. A bond forms between Karl Eckhoff and the young Vera. When Hildegard marries Karl, much to Ida’s displeasure, Vera lives in the crossfire of a domestic battle of wills. Vera’s mother later abandons her and Karl to marry a wealthy man in Hamburg.

The ravages of World War II, however, never leave. For decades an emotionally numb Vera tends to Karl, whose sleep is haunted nightly by invading Russians. She clings to the cold house, never really at home in it or in the surrounding community, and grapples with her own experiences of the war’s devastation. The centuries-old farmhouse speaks to Vera via noises in its roof and walls and the inscription carved on the beam of its gable: this house is mine but not mine, it also belongs to the one who comes after me.

Vera’s niece flees Hamburg when the relationship with her child’s father implodes and she moves into the farmhouse with a four-year-old son in tow. This pair of present-day refugees brings change to the house that begins to thaw Vera’s frozen core.

Eloquent imagery and symbolism enrich the perceptive central story, related through various characters’ points of view, and subplots portray cultural tensions between Altland’s entrenched heritage and the contemporary attitudes of city dwellers who flock there as tourists.

Cynthia Slocum BARBED WIRE AND CHERRY BLOSSOMS Anita Heiss, Simon & Schuster Australia, 2016, A$32.99, pb, 288pp, 9781925184846 / also A$12.99, pb, 288pp, 9781925184860 The small Australian town of Cowra, New South Wales, was the location for a major World War II prisoner-of-war camp. In August 1944, over 1,100 Japanese prisoners broke out. Most were soon recaptured, some killed, while several others committed ritual suicide.

This incident is the trigger for the story of Hiroshi, an escapee who wants to live rather than kill himself as Japanese honour demands, and Mary, a young Wiradjuri woman from Erambie, the local Aboriginal mission. Mary’s father, Banjo, discovers Hiroshi, and rather than turn him in to the authorities allows him to hide out in an air-raid shelter and arranges for Mary to take him food.

Mary knows little of the world apart from her life at the mission and is fascinated by Hiroshi’s tales of Japan, and in turn he is captivated by this dark girl who lives in Australia, yet because of unjust laws and discrimination has to live much like a prisoner in her own country.

Although historically no Japanese escapee was left unaccounted for after the breakout, this fictional “what-if ” is not only an unusual love story, it also explores war from differing perspectives.

Hiroshi is contemptuous of his fellow Italian prisoners, who have no sense of shame at being held captive yet, being Europeans and therefore considered “white” – unlike the “yellow” Japanese – are allowed to move comparatively freely within the local community. But all the prisoners are better fed than the Aborigines who are trapped in the conundrum. Some are furious with Banjo and say he should not be protecting their country’s enemy, while he argues they are still fighting their

own war and have no allegiance to the Australian Government’s rigid racial policies and stringent control over their lives. An insightful novel containing much to reflect upon.

Marina Maxwell

C

WAR AND TURPENTINE Stefan Hertmans (trans. David McKay), Harvill Secker, 2016, £16.99, pb, 304pp, 9781846558825 / Pantheon, 2016, $26.95, hb, 304pp, 9781101874028 Classified as fiction, this fascinating book seems to be a hybrid of memoir, biography and fiction.

The author’s subject is his grandfather, Urbain Martien (1891-1981), whose family lived in the Belgian city of Ghent as Catholics and on his death bequeathed to his grandson notebooks of his memoirs. These were apparently left for thirty years unread by the writer, who then decided that he needed to examine this unique legacy as the 100th anniversary of the First World War approached – because the memoirs dealt with his grandfather’s dreadful experiences in the war.

The book is not a straightforward narrative. It moves around to gain impressions, reflecting upon the very essence of memory, the past, reality and family relations. The author tries to reconstruct the past after the notebooks end, to use his and his family’s memories to assemble a coherent account of his grandfather’s life. It is highly readable and intelligent, thought-provoking and moving, as Hertmans uncovers a version of the unrecoverable past. The book also deals with how life and society change – how, in this transitory world, the landscape alters and buildings and people are lost, gone forever.

His grandfather was a precise, often difficult and stubborn man. He spent the latter years of his life, as a widower, making copies of famous paintings, and also suffered from psychiatric problems. The core of the book are the war years from 1914 to 1918, which saw Urbain, who had trained as a soldier and was thus immediately called up, wounded three times. As with all who participated in these horrors, the experiences shaped his subsequent life and stayed with him at all times. This part is narrated in the first person present tense, by the writer’s grandfather, and is presumably an amalgam of his memoirs and fiction. It is a visceral, intimate and horrific account of the horrors of the war. This is simply a magnificent book.

Douglas Kemp EDEN HILL Bill Higgs, Tyndale, 2016, $ 14.99/C$20.99, pb, 384pp, 9781496410832 Fans of Liz Curtis Higgs’s Christian fiction will welcome the debut novel of her husband, Bill Higgs: Eden Hill. As the title suggests, the small town in which the novel is set is a paradise of small-town Norman Rockwellian Christian values.

But it is early in the 1960s, and the social changes 20th Century

making waves across the world cause ripples even here. Reverend Eugene Caudill wants to shepherd his flock through any difficult times, but his enthusiasm is flagging under the cumulative weight of various troubles. Yet he sees that a couple in his church is particularly needful. Virgil Osgood, the owner/operator of Eden Hill’s service station, has his life shaken by two events. The first is his wife’s sudden discontent after taking a quiz in a ladies’ magazine during her weekly visit to the beauty parlor. The second is the opening of a modern full service gasoline franchise across the street from his own business. Is there room in this small town for two service stations, or will competition fracture the close-knit community?

The good people of the town need a lesson about God’s grace, doing unto others, and what it means to be a neighbor. Reverend Caudill rises to the challenge aided by a model couple, Welby and Alma, who preach by example as well as timely advice. This feel-good fiction will rouse nostalgia for those elusive simpler times of historical memory. While the messages grow a bit repetitive, and perhaps fewer scenes would have served to bring the point home, the characters are wellmeaning or learn to be, and it’s soothing to spend time with them. This is a fine addition to the genre.

Sue Asher THE VANISHING FUTURIST Charlotte Hobson, Faber, 2016, £16.99, hb, 308pp, 9780571234868 This debut novel covers ground familiar in historical fiction – the years before and after the 1917 Russian revolution – but comes at it from an unusual angle, focussing on the avant-garde inventor and physicist Nikita Slavkin.

The narrative is a memoir, narrated in the 1970s by 80-year-old Gertie, writing a confessional for her daughter. Undervalued and unhappy at home in Cornwall, Gertie travels to Moscow with a family friend in the spring of 1914 to work as a governess. She thrives with the chaotic, liberalminded Kobelev family. Nikita Slavkin is their lodger, and she forms an attachment to him. After the Bolshevik revolution, the Kobelevs leave for the south. Gertie stays in Moscow to join a commune led by Slavkin in the Kobelevs’ house, where property, privacy and sex are banned in the name of equality. Jealousies and rivalries pull the commune apart, while Slavkin labours on eccentric projects; his aim is to build a capsule that will transport socialists into a parallel universe where they can become even better people. When he disappears he is first condemned by the authorities as a traitor, then lionised as the Vanishing Futurist who sacrificed himself for the communist ideal. Gertie has to decide how important that ideal is to her.

Because of the nature of the narrative – Gertie talking on paper to her daughter – this is very much a story being told, a recounting of something that has already happened. As such it lacks immediacy; some episodes, which must have been traumatic in the extreme to live through, are dealt with somewhat matter-of–factly. Nevertheless, the novel captures the tragedy and idealism of those years: misery, famine, corruption, coupled with the fleeting certainty that anything is possible.

Janet Hancock 20th Century

THE WAGES OF DESIRE Stephen Kelly, Pegasus, 2016, $25.95, hb, 320pp, 9781681771496 In the Hampshire village of Winstead in 1942, a young woman is found shot to death in a cemetery.

Inspector Lamb investigates. The woman, a former conscientious objector, was working on a nearby farm being renovated into a POW camp. Next, during the digging of a foundation at this farm, children’s skeletons are uncovered. Twenty years earlier, a woman had hanged herself after her husband and twin boys vanished.

Vera, Lamb’s driver after he injures his ankle, is also his daughter. She finds herself involved in the mystery when she meets a young girl who wanders the village at night while her mother works at a factory. The girl tells Vera about the odd characters that populate Winstead, including two menacing brothers who once lived at the farm. The vicar who discovered the body in the cemetery is also a suspect, and is carrying on his own devious plans that include his despised wife and a former lover.

Lamb, with the help of Vera, pieces together the past crime with the present, a twisted, sinister scenario. Evil lurks in the village, and both their lives are in danger.

The story kept me involved, though it’s too wordy and repetitive at times. It reminded me of an oldfashioned mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie mixed with the TV series Foyle’s War (a favorite of mine). The village characters stand out, each with their own quirky personalities. The horrible crimes involving the children are cringe-worthy. Lamb is enigmatic, and I wanted to know more about his personal life. Vera stands on the brink of realizing her own strengths in this interesting series. The novel holds plenty of surprises to please mystery fans.

Diane Scott Lewis THE MIDWIFE Katja Kettu (trans. David Hackston), AmazonCrossing, 2016, $14.95, pb, 382pp, 9781503938434 In Nazi-occupied Finland during the Lapland War and the final years of WWII, the lives of a young Finnish girl and a Nazi officer intersect as this beautiful yet brutal story unfolds. The midwife is an outsider in her Finnish village, named WeirdEye by the villagers who belittle and look down on her while at the same time benefiting from her skills as a midwife and healer. Johannes Angelhurst is a Nazi officer who is assigned to Weird-Eye’s village as a journalist and photographer tasked with watching the villagers to report any spying and resistance activities taking place around him.

Johannes is reassigned to the Titkova Nazi prison camp. Weird-Eye is given permission to go to the camp as a nurse/medical assistant to be with him. As the novel reveals, it comes to light what purpose the camp serves. Johannes is guilt-ridden about what he is ordered to do and seeks oblivion in a drug he has access to in the camp. Weird-Eye does her best to relieve the suffering around her, not knowing until late in the story what takes place in some of the camp’s forbidden areas. As the Nazis withdraw from Finland, destroying everything they leave behind, so many lives lay in ruin.

Kettu’s language is heartrending in the telling

of this devastating story. At the same time, her beautiful, poetic images of the Arctic landscape make the cold splendor of the setting come to life.

The book has received critical acclaim and literary awards in the author’s native Finland. Translation rights have recently been sold worldwide, and it is now available in English. I highly recommend this book even to those who have had their fill of WWII books. Kettu gives us a new look into WWII from the Finnish perspective in Nazi-occupied Finland.

Janice Ottersberg THE FÜHRER MUST DIE! Victoria Andre King, Yucca, 2016, $24.99, hb, 192pp, 9781631681045 Hitler had the luck of the Devil. On November 8, 1939, the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, a bomb exploded in the Bürgerbräukeller Hall, where Hitler made his annual speech commemorating the occasion. Much of the building collapsed, people died – and Hitler was unharmed, because he’d left early. The bomb had been set by Georg Elser, who was quickly caught (he’d managed to fail at walking across an almost unguarded portion of the German/Swiss border). And then the fun began, because while this wasn’t the first or the only attempt on Hitler’s life, it was, from the Nazi point of view, the most embarrassing one. For the wouldbe assassin, Georg Elser, was a German worker – and the Führer had the total support of every German worker. Party line: it’s impossible for a German worker to want to kill the Führer. None of the security services wants to touch this careerkilling, life-ending case. Not the SS, not the SD, not the Gestapo. So the mess gets tossed into the lap of the police, who don’t want it either. During intense interrogation and endless interviews, the police desperately try to drag an international conspiracy out of Georg, and Georg tells them everything. Everything. There’s rarely been a more exasperatingly stultifying confession.

Yet the author pulls off the hat trick of making the novel engrossing yet as mind-numbing as the policemen find the whole “confession.” The book is detail-laden, fascinating, and sometimes oddly funny. It’s marred by a few clangers, such as the mention of Christopher Lee to evoke a horror-film mood. And the book ends so abruptly I thought I was missing pages. This is a weirdly compelling book.

India Edghill ONE MAN’S WAR P. M. Kippert, Chicago Review Press, 2016, $14.99, pb, 258pp, 9781613733561 Based on his father’s account of service during World War II, P.M. Kippert has written a heartrending account of “tip of the spear” conflict – a young rifleman in a frontline company. We join draftee Bob Kafak on the beach at Anzio, Italy, and follow the fighting to the south of France and into Germany.

The sufferings are horrific. But Bob, soon nicknamed “Dash” by his comrades in the trenches, learns through painful example or experience to keep his head down, his feet dry, and his gun firing.

After being hospitalized with an infection that nearly kills him, Kafak enters the more hand-tohand combat, looking into the eyes of his enemy.

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Along the way he resists promotion after seeing the short lifespan of commanding officers. He earns the respect of his fellow soldiers, who are a funny and companionable band of brothers. While on leave in Italy, Kafak has a memorable meal with a Tuskegee airman when the restaurant empties of all but the two of them. He learns a new blasphemy, “motherf***er,” from the airman and adds it to the filling-in-the-spaces language of men in combat.

One Man’s War honors the memory of one soldier and, in doing so, pays tribute to them all. This visceral, intense, moving experience is a worthy addition to war literature.

Eileen Charbonneau THE OUTSIDE LANDS Hannah Kohler, St. Martin’s, 2016, $25.99/ C$29.99, hb, 304pp, 9781250080929 The day after Jeannie and Kip Jackson’s mother died, President Kennedy is shot and everything in San Francisco grinds to a halt. They learn a lesson that day, one that persists throughout the novel: the problems of the world are always greater than your own. The way their lives intersect with the world at large—the Vietnam War and antiwar movement, the burgeoning feminist movement—and the choices they make form the crux of the novel.

Jeannie is just out of high school when her mother dies and, overlooked and malleable, is content to let others decide the trajectory of her life. Her younger brother is strong-minded, but proves himself a good kid in the habit of making bad decisions. As Jeannie settles into marriage and young motherhood, Kip attempts to both escape from and atone for teenage mishaps by joining the Marines. But the bad decisions follow him and one leads to a serious criminal charge. From home, Jeannie is drawn into his case, but in her quest for the truth, she’s confronted with questions leading her to an ultimate choice, one she must make for herself.

Kohler’s prose is impeccable and her narration assured. As a debut, The Outside Lands is impressively confident. For a war novel, it’s quiet and inwardly focused, the battles between conscience and self-understanding more prevalent on the page than the battles between enemies.

As can be expected with a book pivoting on war (especially a war as messy as Vietnam), there is no neat bow tying up everything at the end. But, for a story about choice and opinion, resistance and acceptance, the reader should find satisfaction in the paths the characters take and where their stories end.

Jessica Brockmole

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MISCHLING Affinity Konar, Lee Boudreaux Books, 2016, $27.00, hb, 352pp, 9780316308106 It’s 1944 in Poland, and 12-year-old twin sisters Pearl and Stasha Zamorski are sent to Auschwitz, where they become part of the experimental population of twins known as Mengele’s Zoo. The sisters, however, are inseparable. They divvy up responsibilities for the past, their memories, the future, and the living; complete each other’s thoughts; and test their unique bonds. However, they endure different experiments at the hands of the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. Stasha believes 44 | Reviews |

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she has been made “deathless” while Pearl has not. When her worst fear is realized and Pearl disappears, Stasha crawls into a barrel, refusing to continue her life without her twin.

Just before the Russians liberate Auschwitz, Stasha and another survivor, Filiks, who took on the name of his own dead twin brother, are herded out and soon begin their own mission of survival, driven by their need to find and kill Mengele. As they make their way to Warsaw, they encounter other survivors with their own stories, Nazi sympathizers, Red Army soldiers, and Jewish resistance fighters.

Mischling is a remarkable debut novel of Auschwitz survivors’ strength and triumph. The accounts of Mengele’s experiments are horrific, but the survivors rise above them with their own unique means of endurance that left me thinking about them long after I had stopped reading the scenes. The writing is superb and never failed to amaze me. It is crafted using the lyricism of poetry, which pulls at heartstrings in different, often opposing, ways at the same time. Mischling is a beautiful novel that will resonate with readers long after it is finished. Brava, Affinity Konar.

Francesca Pelaccia DEATH AMONG RUBIES R.J. Koreto, Crooked Lane, 2016, $25.99, hb, 288pp, 9781629537764 / also $15.99, pb, 288pp, 9781629538167 Death Among Rubies is R.J. Koreto’s second novel in the Lady Frances “Franny” Ffolkes historical mystery series. In this story, Franny accompanies her friends, Gwendolyn and Thomasina, to Gwen’s family estate for a quiet weekend working on suffragette projects. Instead, she finds out that her friends have been threatened, and Gwen’s father has been stabbed to death with a ruby dagger that is rumored to be cursed. What’s a lady to do?

If you’re looking for a book with a large, diverse cast of women who become wrapped up in solving a murder to save their friend from being wrongfully accused, you will definitely enjoy this book. If you’re looking for a charming Edwardian-era mystery, you will also enjoy this book. This series has no explicit situations or language – which is very much appreciated.

A few critiques. Early on, it’s obvious who the culprit is, so parts of the investigation feel unnecessary. While there are plenty of antagonists to Franny’s sleuthing, there aren’t many twists and turns to the mystery. Also, some of the sentences could have used more polish. A couple of times, they read like unfinished thoughts, and the next opens with a conjunction.

Restructuring certain sentences would have clarified Koreto’s ideas. Conversely, the character dialogue is fantastic. The female leads are simply wonderful. Who doesn’t love a comeback like this one from Franny: “I am also sorry for losing my temper and calling the inspector an imbecile and coward. It was rude of me to publicize those facts.”

I enjoyed seeing characters and relationships from the first book develop. I can tell the writer loves this time period, as he handles the era’s mannerisms and conventions masterfully. All in all, this is a delightful read, though not as strong as the first book (which I loved).

J. Lynn Else THE SECOND WINTER Craig Larsen, Other, $25.95/C$33.99, hb, 400pp, 9781590517888 Larsen’s gritty tale is as much about one Danish family’s struggle to survive the Nazi occupation of Denmark as it is about a young Polish woman’s survival and escape from prostitution. The Second Winter moves from 1969 East Germany to 1938 Poland to 1941 Denmark, tracing the lives intertwined by their association with the elusive young Polish girl, Polina. She is left alone on the streets of Krakow after her family is shipped off to a concentration camp, then picked up by German soldiers, who take her to a place in the country “where other women were being kept as well.” Thus begins Polina’s initiation into a world where the profiteers of war exploit young girls’ bodies.

Fredrik Gregerson and his two children, Oskar and Amalia, live on a small bit of land in northwestern Denmark, on a farm that barely supports his family. Fredrik assists Jews escaping the Nazis, who have invaded Denmark and taken over the nearby Aalborg airport, but only for the money that keeps him in drugs and women.

These disparate lives cross in unexpected ways, making the ending satisfying without sacrificing the complexity of characters Larsen has so carefully created. This novel is a fresh approach to the abuses of both the occupier and the occupied in a period of history that continues to surprise us with its dark, dirty secrets.

Terri Baker THE GREAT SWINDLE Pierre Lemaitre (trans. Frank Wynne), MacLehose, 2016, £18.99, hb, 464pp, 8780857053244 The story begins with an act of dreadful treachery.

In early November 1918, and the final days of The Great War, Albert Maillard and Édouard Péricourt are young soldiers in the front line of the trenches, desperately hoping to survive the final days of a war which is drawing to a close. In a closing military action, which has been orchestrated by their commander, Lt. (later Captain) d’Aulnay-Pradelle, both men are wounded and form a close bond after Édouard saves Albert’s life, and they learn of the appalling action of their hated Lieutenant. Édouard’s wounds are severely disfiguring, and Albert devotes himself to saving his comrade, and then changes his identity at Édouard’s request.

After the war in Paris, d’Aulnay-Pradelle marries Édouard Péricourt’s older sister Madeleine, mostly to get access to her family wealth and connections.

He gets privileged access to the contracts for interring the many thousands of French soldiers in the new military cemeteries throughout the former battlegrounds of France and uses this to defraud the state for his own benefit. While Albert and Édouard live in abject poverty, Édouard has an idea how they can take their share of the profits to be made from the post-War programme of 20th Century

constructing commemorative monuments. Albert is horrified by this project, but the prospect of getting large sums of money to lift them clear of their poverty is irresistible.

This is an appealing and absorbing story that is narrated very capably by the author. Pierre Lemaitre provides an excoriating account of the disasters that affected the ordinary soldier in The Great War, and then the injustices of post-war French society, when veterans were very often ignored and mistreated.

Douglas Kemp FORGOTTEN WOMEN Freda Lightfoot, Lake Union, 2016, $14.95, pb, 384pp, 9781503934214 In 1986, Jo visits Spain on a mission to settle questions regarding the authenticity and provenance of a painting she found in her grandmother’s attic. The artwork depicts a scene from the Spanish Civil War, and her grandmother staunchly refuses to offer any information about it.

Becoming acquainted with a Spanish family that possesses a similar painting, Jo learns that Libby, her Scottish grandmother, had worked with the International Brigade there in the late 1930s along with a childhood friend, Lady Charlotte, in an effort to provide medical assistance to all in need.

Gradually, Rosita, a Spanish woman who knew both of them at that time, provides details of their complex web of relationships and experiences.

For decades, fear and a pact of silence has prevented these women from speaking of what happened during the war, facing their disturbing memories, and acknowledging the unique bond of friendship they once shared. Framed by Jo’s point of view, the story alternates between the two time periods and conveys, in a somewhat expository style, the upheaval, destruction, injustice, and suffering that innocent people, especially women, caught up in the military conflict between Falangist and Republican forces endured. Varying measures of love, hatred, jealousy, cruelty, and kindness whirl through these brave young women’s lives, and their fates are uncertain in the presence of pervasive danger. A myriad of plot twists and hooks create suspense as this intricate tale slowly unfolds via a series of flashbacks. Revelations that emerge at the end put the mystery of the painting and several other troubling secrets to rest.

Cynthia Slocum THE GOLDEN AGE Joan London, Europa, 2016, $17.00/C$23.00, pb, 224pp, 9781609453329 Meyer and Ida Gold flee Hungary during World War II and find themselves in Perth, Australia, with their son, Frank. They hope to start a new life, but everything comes apart when Frank contracts polio. In 1954, he is sent to recover in a pub converted into a convalescent home called the Golden Age. There, Frank meets Elsa, a 12-yearold Perth native, and slowly the two begin to aid in each other’s recovery while falling in love. For the Golds, Australia is a world away from Hungary, and they are isolated and alone. Ida, once a renowned concert pianist, shuts down; she refuses to play and struggles to accept life in her adopted country. Meyer, in turn, works to find little joys in 20th Century

discovering his home and sheds wartime loss as he integrates with society. Intertwined are the stories of Olive Penny, a nurse at the Golden Age, who struggles with relationships, and Elsa’s mother, Margaret, who gives up the notions of being the perfect wife and mother and tries to reconcile with her daughter’s illness.

The Golden Age has won numerous awards in Australia, including the Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction. London’s writing is at its best when bringing to life the coming-of-age story between Frank and Elsa: their hopes and fears (and those of other polio-stricken children), their resolve, and their disappointments. The setting and place are rich and detailed, and Perth feels alive. The side stories interrupt the main one; serving as little vignettes, they make the book feel disjointed, more like a collection of short stories. Though they’re well-written, I would have not missed any of them and would have just enjoyed Frank and Elsa’s tale.

Bryan Dumas THE QUEEN’S ACCOMPLICE: A Maggie Hope Mystery Susan Elia MacNeal, Bantam, 2016, $16.00/ C$22.00, pb, 341pp, 9780804178723 London, 1942: Maggie Hope, working in the Special Operations Executive offices, is troubled by the disappearance of some young women recruits, as well as her suspicions that SOE operatives in France are in serious trouble. But those concerns must be set aside when the corpse of a viciously slain young woman is found in Regent’s Park.

Maggie, reassigned to help investigate the murders, works with the intriguing DCI Durgin while her good friends train for their own assignments as SOE agents. But Maggie has attracted the attention of a deranged killer, and her efforts to catch this monster may cost her life.

This was my first Maggie Hope novel, and Maggie’s determined quest to catch this Ripper wanna-be works as a suspenseful stand-alone.

The inequality with which women agents were treated during WWII makes for an interesting and informative theme, and wartime London is vividly portrayed. Several ongoing plot threads from previous novels in the series might be better appreciated if the books were read in sequence, although nothing is really left hanging.

Recommended for those who like their historical mysteries with large servings of suspense – I couldn’t sleep!

Susan McDuffie

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THE BOOK OF HARLAN Bernice L. McFadden, Akashic, 2016, $16.95/ C$24.95, pb, 400pp, 9781617754463 In 1917, Harlan Elliot is born in Macon, Georgia, the grandson of a revered minister whose daughter and carpenter husband leave their son to be raised by his Godfearing grandparents.

But Harlan’s life journey takes him far from Macon. In the

midst of the lushness and vibrancy of the Harlem Renaissance, Harlan learns to love music and his guitar, as well as women and the finer things in life.

Eventually, his band crosses the Atlantic to Paris in the days before the Nazi invasion, and Harlan’s story leads him to darker places. This novel sweeps us with Harlan from 1917 to the early 1970s as world and national events play out and carry him in their wake.

The Book of Harlan is an incredible read.

Bernice McFadden knew very little of her paternal grandfather’s life, but from a few scant facts she has created an amazing novel that speaks to lesser known aspects of the African-American experience and illuminates the human heart and spirit. Her spare prose is rich in details that convey deep emotions and draw the reader in. This fictional narrative of Harlan Elliot’s life is firmly grounded amidst real people and places—prime historical fiction, and the best book I have read this year.

Many people on my Christmas list will be getting a copy! Highly recommended.

Susan McDuffie DEATH AT THE PARIS EXPOSITION Frances McNamara, Allium Press of Chicago, 2016, $16.99, pb, 276pp, 9780996755832 In McNamara’s first mystery featuring Emily Cabot, Emily investigated a death at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. In Emily’s sixth outing, she’s at another world’s fair, the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. She’s Bertha Palmer’s social secretary, and Mrs. Palmer is serving as the only female commissioner from the United States to the exposition. Emily has brought her husband, three children, and their nursemaid along. She’s come a long way since 1893, when she and her husband, Dr. Stephen Chapman, were just friends.

Jewelry thefts and a murder put the Palmers’ son Honoré under suspicion. Mr. Palmer’s health suffers, and Mrs. Palmer is busy with the exposition. Emily wants to help her friends and employers and investigates, but her skills are tested in this foreign country. She doesn’t speak French and the police don’t welcome her inquiries as they do in Chicago.

As heady an experience the exposition was in 1893, Paris in 1900 is that tenfold. The House of Worth has a featured role. Artist Mary Cassatt provides refuge for Emily and her children, and even Edgar Degas makes an appearance. McNamara expertly captures the variety of Americans abroad, from Emily and her husband, who appreciate the experience, to the awful Johnstones from Nebraska and the vapid young women in their charge. Emily remains a strong character, albeit a little less interesting as Mrs. Palmer’s social secretary than she was in previous outings as a lecturer at the University of Chicago or working at Hull House.

I’m sure the next installment will find her back in her element in Chicago.

Ellen Keith I WILL SEND RAIN Rae Meadows, Henry Holt, 2016, $26.00, hb, 272pp, 9781627794268 Mulehead, Oklahoma is in the midst of the longest dry spell that anyone can remember. Wheat HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 45

crops are failing, cattle are dying, and the hot, dry, wind is blowing dust over everything in sight.

The Bell family farm is engulfed in dust, and each sweltering day without rain only increases their anxiety. How much longer will they be able to keep their family together?

Both mother and daughter, Annie and Birdie, dream of escape. Teenage Birdie is in love for the first time and pins her hopes on marrying her boyfriend, Cy. If he would only ask her to marry him, perhaps they could depart this wasteland and start a new life out west. Annie starts a secret flirtation. If she gives in to her desires it would mean abandoning her family, but it might also offer the opportunity to leave farming behind and go off to Chicago. Meanwhile, the men in the family are resolved to stay. Samuel believes God will see them through this drought but fears when the rain begins again, there will be a flood of biblical proportions. His young son, Fred, mute from birth and suffering from dust pneumonia, isn’t sure what to do other than to stoically support his father. He helps him build a boat even though everyone in town ridicules them.

Meadows masterfully re-creates the desolate landscape of the Dust Bowl, and her story is rich with historical detail. The Bells are complex and engrossing characters. This is a story you aren’t likely to forget.

Janice Derr DAUGHTERS OF CASTLE DEVERILL Santa Montefiore, Simon & Schuster, 2016, hb, £14.99, 534pp, 9781471135880 This is the second novel in the Deverill Chronicles trilogy and the follow-up to the bestselling Songs of Love and War. Set at ruined Castle Deverill in the west of Ireland and the Deverill family homes in England, the novel picks up the story in 1925. The war is over, but turmoil continues for the family so that even the ghosts are worried.

Celia remembers with great affection, childhood summers spent at the castle. With her husband, she buys it from her uncle in order to restore its former glory. Yet she wants it to be far better than it was and needs a never ending supply of money, at a time when the financial markets are beginning to shake.

Her cousins Kitty and Harry have their own problems: Kitty is bringing up her father’s illegitimate son, and her whole world is threatened when his mother Bridie wants him back. Harry’s secret love affair may cost him not only his wife and family, but also his reputation. Woven through the story of the Deverill family are the lives of their childhood friends: siblings Bridget and Michael Doyle, who are now their bitter enemies, and Jack O’Leary, who carries Kitty’s heart.

Through the many tragedies and tribulations that beset the family, through the revelations of dark secrets, the plot touches upon many significant issues of the time. This is no bodice-ripper, and the characters are more nuanced than the simplistic good and evil sometimes found in romantic fiction.

It is an entertaining read, easy to get lost in on a wet afternoon. Montefiore carries the reader with skill through thirteen painful yet endearing years, towards an ending which is satisfying but gives sufficient hints of the next instalment to whet the 46 | Reviews |

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appetite. I look forward to it.

Joanna Galloway

THE GIRL IN THE CASTLE (US) / SONGS OF LOVE AND WAR (UK) Santa Montefiore, Morrow, 2016, $14.99, pb, 512pp, 9780062456854 / Simon & Schuster UK, 2016, £7.99, pb, 528pp, 9781471135866 First in an anticipated trilogy, this is actually the story of many women in a castle, all coming to terms with changing times and loyalties. Castle Deverill is home to Lady Adeline and Lord Hubert Deverill, English landowners in West Cork, Ireland, in the early 20th century. Their granddaughter, Kitty, takes after Adeline, with her special powers of being able to see the ghosts of previous castle residents, who suffer from a curse put on the land by the Irish when the English claimed it more than 300 years earlier. Kitty loves Ireland, the castle, and her IrishCatholic friends Bridie and Jack, and is determined not to be cold and arrogant towards the locals—her mother Maud has enough hauteur for the entire family. When Ireland is dragged into the Great War, and locals are forced to enlist, though, even Kitty begins to see reasons for the divide between the imperialist Britons and the colonized Irish. She puts herself in danger to help Jack, not noticing that Bridie, a servant at the castle, is making some dangerous choices of her own.

The war, and the ensuing Irish unrest, forces the three friends apart, with each taking the path they must to survive. The lives of the other women—Kitty’s mother, sisters, and cousins—are also affected by political, cultural, and economic, and the sweeping narrative includes subplots of the tensions between women in traditional versus more forward-thinking roles. The focus always comes back to love, however, and the history of Ireland and its troubled relationship with England, however well-described, plays second fiddle to the romance and relationships of the Deverills and their hangers-on. This is a fast, light read with some fantasy elements.

Helene Williams

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CHARCOAL JOE: An Easy Rawlins Mystery Walter Mosley, Doubleday, 2016, $26.95, hb, 305pp, 9780385539203 Los Angeles, 1968.

Private Investigator Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, having just opened his own detective agency, is feeling pretty good about life. And then Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, “gunman, strongarm, and wildcard,” shows up and calls in a marker.

It seems prison inmate Rufus “Charcoal Joe” Tyler wants to hire Rawlins to investigate the double homicide for which his friend’s son, physicist Seymour Brathwaite, PhD, has been charged.

Rawlins, who owes Mouse his life—and then some—agrees, enlisting Fearless Jones, “one of the three people that Mouse claimed he wouldn’t want

to tangle with,” to keep the artless PhD under wraps while he investigates. One victim, Rawlins learns, was shot dead and the other tortured and then shot in the eye and the heart. Both were found lying in a pool of blood at Brathwaite’s feet. The police found no weapon at the scene, and Brathwaite claims he was there looking for the housekeeper, his foster mother, Mama Jasmin.

Buying Brathwaite’s story—for now—Rawlins prowls the underworld searching for a link between a housekeeper, a physicist, and a slaughter.

He turns up a gambler, a jewelry clerk, and a big chunk of change that went missing the night of the murders and that just might get him killed.

Mosley, building story character by character, can ratchet up the tension with just a look. “Tony Gambol was the type of man that you don’t want to squint at you.”

Or with a brushstroke. “Elias Shaw—three hundred and then some pounds of muscle, hard fat, and bad intentions.”

Or with a word of counsel. “Walk softly wherever it is you goin’. You know Charcoal Joe’s a tombstone just waitin’ for a name.”

Mosley’s unforgettable characters and superior literary craft bring poetry to noir in Charcoal Joe. Highly recommended.

Rebecca Kightlinger MURDER ON THE TRACKS Bruce W. Most, Black Opal, 2015, $12.99, pb, 278pp, 9781626943322 Two years have passed, but beat cop Joe Stryker remains haunted by the brutal death of his partner.

When it appears that the killer has returned to town, Joe is ready to put everything on the line to bring him to justice. However, the killer has acquired powerful friends and is ruthlessly working on their behalf. For the killer and his friends, Joe is just as dispensable as his partner was. Will he get to them before they get to him?

Murder on the Tracks evokes in wonderful detail parts of Denver of 1949. It is dedicated to Raymond Chandler, and one can see why this is. It respects the hard-boiled crime genre that Chandler did so much to popularise and feels entirely authentic to its Black Mask, pulp fiction roots: Protagonist, Joe Stryker sprinkles as many interior monologues and wisecracks as Philip Marlowe would. The body count is prodigious, and the story fizzles along at a perfect pace from the start, only becoming complicated in the last two chapters when Stryker lets us in on how he figured things out.

It should be mentioned that there are some racial references in the novel that could potentially offend modern sensibilities.

Whilst diehard lovers and experts of police procedurals may baulk at the premise of a patrolman doing homicide’s work, or even the plausibility of certain characters’ motivations, there’s no doubting that Stryker and his sidekick, rookie cop Moroni Perdue, are likeable characters that you find yourself rooting for straightaway.

Even if Stryker is on the take one feels it forgivable in the circumstances.

The story has some clever twists and turns, and pleasingly the villain does not arrive as a deus ex machina; clues are there early on, and some readers will be thrilled to have spotted them.

Lawrence Battersby 20th Century

CROSSING THE HORIZON Laurie Notaro, Gallery, 2016, $26.00/C$35.00, hb, 441pp, 9781501105210 This intricate novel details the lives of three aviatrixes in 1927, all vying to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Charles Lindbergh has just made his name, and Amelia Earhart isn’t quite in the headlines yet. Instead, Elise Mackay, Mabel Boll, and Ruth Elder are all eager to follow in his footsteps. The three women couldn’t be more different – Elise is the daughter of a British earl, going against her family’s wishes as she takes to the sky. Mabel is a glamourous, slightly spoiled socialite who becomes volatile and drunk when things don’t go her way (which is often). Ruth, a beauty pageant winner, takes her winnings and learns to fly, becoming “Miss America of aviation.”

Notaro switches back and forth during chapters to detail each of these three women’s stories.

Readers become deeply involved in the struggles, small victories, and devastating losses of all three. It’s no easy task, as each woman faces the difficulties of finding a pilot, raising funds, getting a plane, waiting for the right weather, attempting the journey, and doing it first.

Notaro does an excellent job providing insight into what it must have been like for these women during this time. She has interwoven real newspaper articles, photographs, and interviews along with her imagination to relay the stories of these three remarkable women. The Author’s Note details what happens to each character, since the story ends in 1928. The flow is a bit slow, only because there is so much history and detail. Overall, this is quite the read. Highly recommended.

Rebecca Cochran A DEADLY AFFECTION Cuyler Overholt, Sourcebooks, 2016, $15.99, pb, 448pp, 9781492637363 New York City, 1907. Genevieve Summerford, MD, having spurned a position at a prestigious hospital, is about to embark on a research study in the Yorkville tenement district. Her hypothesis: if women with psychosomatic pain can identify the trauma at its root, they can free themselves from it. In her first session, Summerford’s patient Eliza Miner discloses that she was once forced to give up her illegitimate baby. Still grieving eighteen years later, Eliza wants only to know the girl’s whereabouts. Summerford encourages Eliza to face Dr. Hauptfurer, the prominent physician who arranged the adoption, and demand the information.

The next morning, Summerford sees Eliza Miner, dazed and covered in blood, being escorted by police from Hauptfurer’s office. While Detective Sergeant Maloney works to establish that it was Eliza who slit the doctor’s throat, Summerford investigates Hauptfurer’s many shady adoptions, homing in on one of the city’s wealthiest families.

Genevieve Summerford, young and inexperienced, with a tendency to act without thinking, has her own ghosts to exorcize, as do most of the characters in a cast that spans the spectrum of New York society. Author Cuyler Overholt peels back the skin of this hierarchy, deftly revealing the kind of secrets that pervade every societal level and that link the unlikeliest members of each.

20th Century

Rather than exploit New York’s vast cityscape to evoke atmosphere, Overholt goes intimate in this medical thriller, bringing Summerford and her suspects together in tight spaces—a drawing room, a railroad car, a back bedroom—where conversation becomes conflict and tension boils over into turmoil. A well-researched, entertaining mystery with conclusions you’ll never see coming, A Deadly Affection is an exciting start to what promises to be an addictive mystery series.

Rebecca Kightlinger THE QUESTION OF RED Laksmi Pamuntjak, AmazonCrossing, 2016, $14.95, pb, 476pp, 9781503936430 Following an awe-inspiring prologue, in which the Hindu epic Mahabharata is synopsized, the novel opens in 2006 in a hospital in tropical Buru Island, Indonesia. Two unconscious women in their sixties are being treated for knife wounds.

Apparently one of the ladies, Amba, a Javanese visiting from Jakarta, had been attacked by the other, Makaburung, the local chieftain’s adopted daughter. The women were discovered in a cemetery, where Amba lay clinging to a grave, bleeding, while Makaburung knelt nearby, holding a bloodied knife and also bleeding from apparently self-inflicted wounds. A day later, an Ambonese man, Samuel, walks into the hospital demanding to see Amba.

He is also visiting Buru and had met Amba on the ferry. Although Samuel had offered to help Amba locate her former lover, Doctor Bhisma, she had vanished. Amba and Bhisma were separated forty years ago during the Suharto regime’s crackdown on Communists. Amba reveals her life story during Indonesia’s tumultuous 1960s, which is no less tragic than the timeless Mahabharata.

Laksmi Pamuntjak has penned an admirable novel by using the tools of historical fiction to connect an ancient mythical tale to recent Indonesian history. The narrative is told through the heart-rending experiences of characters named shrewdly from the legend. The evocative descriptions of the mass murders and life in the prison camps make that dark period come alive.

The metaphor of color is used effectively in the plot. The cast of numerous characters and many subplots, as well as descriptions that are sometimes too detailed, makes this a long-winded read. While the reason for Amba not returning to Bura sooner is not fully explained, the reverse chronology format captures interest. This novel was awarded the prestigious 2016 German LiBeraturpreis.

It should appeal particularly to humanists and especially those unfamiliar with Indonesian culture and history.

Waheed Rabbani

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THE SECRET WIFE Gill Paul, Avon, 2016, £7.99, pb, 394pp, 9780008102142 Gill Paul’s latest novel is an intriguing blend of two stories in two different eras. A young woman hides away at a cabin inherited from her greatgrandfather in upstate New York; Kitty is reeling after discovering her husband’s infidelity and still mourning her parents’ sudden death. The cabin offers her a place to think, and she determines to learn more about the man she inherited it from.

Dmitri Malama is a Russian soldier recovering from an injury in 1914 at Tsarskoe Selo, where he is looked after by Grand Duchess Tatiana who, along with her mother and her sister Olga, is training as a nurse to help the war effort.

Dmitri and Tatiana grow close and begin to exchange letters, and gradually we come to understand the connection between Kitty’s family and the Russian royal family.

The Secret Wife is an enthralling and pageturning story linking two intriguing women and the very different lives they lead. This book follows the characters’ journeys across the century from the horror of the First World War and the terrors of the Russian Revolution, to the émigré community of Berlin between the wars, and the hustle and bustle of the mid-century New York publishing scene. It is wonderfully researched and beautifully written.

This novel will appeal to fans of Rachel Hore and Lucinda Riley and offers readers a perfect blend of romance and history.

Lisa Redmond A TREASURE CONCEALED Tracie Peterson, Bethany House, 2016, $14.99, pb, 325pp, 9780764213342 Emily Carver hides her beauty under a battered men’s overcoat so the woman-hungry Yogo City, Montana miners of 1895 won’t bother her. Emily’s father Henry invites a chance-met geologist, Caeden Thibault, to their claim, where Emily and Caeden have a “meet cute” moment as he walks in on her as she finishes her bath. But Henry has an enemy, Kirk Davies, who claims that Henry killed his brother in California. The Carvers’ cabin is set on fire, with tragic consequences for the family.

As Caeden tries to help the Carvers recover, he realizes he’s falling in love with Emily. But romance is blocked by Caeden’s being manipulated into a sham engagement to the daughter of his father’s unscrupulous business partner. And Kirk Davies returns, bent on further revenge.

Peterson includes historical Montanans as minor characters in the plot, and the discovery of noted Yogo sapphires is woven into the story. The religious content is heavy only in places where it’s relevant, such as when a distraught Emily seeks counseling from a local pastor. The plot could benefit from some tightening, but the romance is satisfying. This first volume in the Sapphire Brides series will gratify Christian fiction fans.

B.J. Sedlock A VERY ENGLISH SCANDAL: Sex, Lies, and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment John Preston, Other, 2016, $27.95, hb, 340pp, 9781590518144 / Viking, 2016, £16.99, hb, 352pp, 9780241215722 The title precisely describes this book: an account of events leading up to the murder trial of Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe. His trial at the Old Bailey in London was the first time a leading HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 47

British politician had stood trial on a murder charge, and the first time a murder plot had been hatched in the House of Commons. Thorpe, a charismatic and popular politician, was poised to hold the balance of power in a coalition government until one night, on a dark moor, an incident involving an ex-lover, a dog and a gunman exposed his lies, his philandering and his embezzlement.

The scandals in this novel are by no means limited to Jeremy Thorpe’s egregious behavior.

That’s just the start of it. There is the collusion of politicians to protect their own and the lengths to which they and the police went to achieve that.

There is the staggering incompetence of both the sinners and the sinned against – leaving a suitcase full of incriminating letters on a train, for example.

There are the glimpses of the bizarre behaviors, both criminal and just plain ludicrous, and the outright naiveté of some of Britain’s rich and famous in the 1960s and 1970s.

This novel is well researched, well written and full of the dry humor that makes it quintessentially British. Much of the material is quite astounding, even appalling, except that the reader is too busy appreciating writer’s turn of phrase to find time to be shocked. The action is nonstop, with unpredictable happenings making the book difficult to put down.

The writer’s deft hand with characterization and his understanding of human foibles make what might have been rather horrifying into an engrossing and enlightening read.

Val Adolph AMONG THE LIVING Jonathan Rabb, Other, $25.95/C$33.95, hb, 303pp, 9781590518038 In 1947, Yitzhak Goldah, a 31-year-old Holocaust survivor, resettles in Savannah under government assistance with his Jewish relatives.

There, he joins the family shoe-manufacturing business. Conflicts happen when the patriarch of the family tries to expand his business and the New York extortion racketeers of the Jewish Mafia interfere.

Yitzhak takes a job as a newspaper reporter, where he falls in love with the boss’s daughter. He’s a great writer, even though English is his second or third language, and surprisingly, his articles are wanted for publication in Atlanta and New York.

The content of his articles is not disclosed.

The structure is unusual. For the 100 pages, there’s no discernable plot, except that the hero relocates to Georgia. Then a story begins to emerge about the evil unions in New York. That story disappears for 200 pages in favor of the romance between the hero and the heroine and the turmoil between conflicting Jewish ideologies. Meanwhile, another girl appears, Yitzhak’s fiancée, who has also miraculously survived several years in Terezin and Birkenau. With 15 percent of the novel remaining, the author gets back to the presumed main plot, the extortion by the unions, where a 14-year-old boy was feeding information to a reporter. There was no indication for 250 pages that the kid was conspiring against the hero, or that the teenager even had anything to tell. If there was, I missed it.

The title reflects the message: Those who suffered in the Holocaust had difficulty living among those who did not, even with those of the 48 | Reviews |

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same faith. However, the hero doesn’t seem to have any trouble living in America. Only the female camp survivor does.

Some readers may enjoy it as a romance or drama. I found it confusing and a difficult read.

Kevin Montgomery MR CAMPION’S FAULT Mike Ripley, Severn House, 2016, $29.99/£20.99, hb, 256pp, 9780727886255 In 1969, Perdita and her husband Rupert, both Londoners, arrive in the Yorkshire coal mining village of Denby Ash. Perdita, a ‘resting’ actress, jumps at the opportunity offered by her godfather, the local school’s headmaster, to direct Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus. Rupert, the son of famous detective pensioner Albert Campion, is also asked, surprisingly, to coach the rugby team, likely because he’s an old Rugbeian. The vacancies came about after the sudden hit-and-run death of the schoolmaster and coach, Mr Browne. While Browne’s demise is being regarded as accidental, it had curiously occurred right after he experienced earthquake-like tremors in a council home, which the owner believes is the work of a poltergeist.

However, when some robberies occur, a conman goes missing, and Rupert is arrested, Campion hurries up north to look into the situation firsthand. Although the Yorkshiremen do not give the gentleman sleuth from the south an easy time, Campion’s unsanctioned investigation yields unexpected results.

This is Mike Ripley’s third murder mystery featuring the renowned late Margery Allingham’s creation, the squire-detective Albert Campion.

Ripley had previously completed the last unfinished novel written by Allingham’s husband (Mr. Campion’s Farewell, 2014), which was very well received. England in the 1960s is brought wonderfully alive, not only through portrayals of people’s lives, the local dialect, details on coal mining, and period norms, but also through references to significant events, such as the staging of the musical Hair. Campion’s character is presented in his typical sarcastic, facetious, and humorously entertaining style, just as Allingham might have done. Yet Campion is thorough, and as one police chief put it, “It’s hardly Campion’s fault that he is always underestimated—you might say it’s his greatest asset.” Again with this outing, Ripley is holding high the torch passed on to him.

Recommended.

Waheed Rabbani IN AMERICA Nina Romano, Turner, 2016, $17.95, pb, 311pp, 9781630269111 This is volume 3 of the Wayfarer Trilogy, which follows an Italian family over several decades. In this installment, Marcella Scimenti, 15, is the central character, the daughter of Giacomo and Angelica, who were chronicled in prior volumes. It tells of Marcella’s coming of age in Brooklyn in the late 1920s. She longs to become a singer of popular music, but her parents oppose her appearing to be a “loose woman.” A sales job at Macy’s gains her new experiences in the world outside Brooklyn, such as a female co-worker making romantic overtures, and attending a summer camp for store

employees. Neighbor boy Gianni loves Marcella, but he seems too safe a choice for her when she meets exotic, half-Chinese Bao, and the Vikinglike Al, encountered at a summer retreat. A secret from Bao’s past becomes the catalyst for Marcella’s transformation into adulthood.

I may have missed some background information from not having read the first two volumes of the series. My main problem with the book, however, is that Marcella is something of a self-centered brat, often not very likeable. There is character growth, but late enough in the story to make the first part of the book rather tedious. Also, some of the author’s language is odd: “My ears attended the wind’s whistling canticles through the window fittings, bringing with them the scent of flowers.”

Not exactly the word choices you’d expect from a teenage girl. The book has delicious passages describing food and cooking, like how the family made authentic pizza, or Marcella’s mother’s lesson on how to make homemade vinegar. Readers who liked the first two volumes of the series will definitely want to find out what happens to the family, but someone starting with this book may not be captivated.

B.J. Sedlock AUTUMN IN OXFORD Alex Rosenberg, Lake Union, 2016, $14.95, pb, 434pp, 9781503939072 Rosenberg’s second novel, (after The Girl from Krakow, 2015), is both a poignant love story and a suspenseful thriller, which guides a man and two women from England to the US in the 1940s and ´50s in an attempt to save the man’s life. In 1959, American Tom Wrought sees a man thrown beneath a London train. The man is Trevor Spencer, his lover’s husband and, although Tom had nothing to do with his death, he acts like a guilty man. Arrested by detectives already convinced of his culpability, Tom has to prove his innocence.

In flashbacks from 1937 until 1957, we learn Tom’s history. Everything is being used against him now: his long-ago involvement with the Communist Party; his influential and sometimes dubious friendships; the fellowship that brought him to Oxford; political essays he writes for publication anonymously; his work as a British spy; and the dark side of Liz Spencer, whom he loves but hardly knows. Tom, incarcerated, keeps a journal, searching for clues to jog his memory, while Liz and his attorney Alice Silverstone try to identify his enemies. When his journals are stolen from his cell, Tom knows someone powerful is trying to frame him for murder.

Reading Rosenberg is not a race; it’s steady progress through rough weather, with backtracks and flashbacks, and a “just the facts” style. Adjectives are reserved for landscapes and first introductions, which tell you everything you need to know, once. Sticking to what’s happening and who is saying what creates tension between the book and the reader—a need to know what’s coming next—and that makes a book suspenseful. Highly recommended to those who like complicated English mysteries.

Jeanne Greene 20th Century

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY Michael Rupured, DSP Publications, 2016, $16.99, pb, 238pp. 9781634769877 This is a gritty and well-researched vision of gay life in New York City during the famous Stonewall riots of the 1960s. Multiple perspectives add color to the historical event, ranging from closeted tourists to local drag icons, mafia nightclub owners to the police personnel assigned to harass gay bars, an unfortunate fact of New York law-enforcement policy during the era. Terrence Bottom, a young student at Columbia, falls for a handsome but tragically exploited street hustler named Cameron McKenzie. The Stonewall is the seedy focal point of the story, both snake pit and refuge for West Village street life during a time when real danger existed in LGBT expression. The novel’s realism is a well-timed reminder that there was little nobility in the establishment itself – among the edgiest dives in the Christopher Street neighborhood – but rather in the unprecedented riots named after it, a spontaneous resistance which arguably did launch gay activism as a recognized civil rights movement.

The novel’s use of dialogue is among its strong points, although the reader needs to squint past a self-indulgent sarcasm and toney dramatic that at time borders on stereotype. Even some of the character names are cheapish one-liners. That aside, the reader who commits does not go unrewarded, as good use of tension and pacing keeps the pages turning, and the many little-known historical factoids give a compelling impression of firsthand witness accounts drawn from primary research.

Jackie Drohan THE CITY IN DARKNESS Michael Russell, Constable, 2016, £19.99, hb, 352pp, 9781472121943 In the lead up to Christmas 1939 and with World War Two beginning across the Irish Sea, the Special Branch in Dublin appear more focused on matters closer to home, especially following a huge raid on the Military Arms store in the Phoenix Park. Detective Inspector Stefan Gillespie, initially assigned to the search for arms in the vicinity of the Pale, is surprised to be moved to assist with the investigation into the disappearance of a postman in rural County Wicklow. This is home territory for Gillespie and gives him the opportunity to spend time with his young son, who lives with Stefan’s parents since the sudden death from drowning of his wife, Maeve. By a strange twist, Stefan is engaged to accompany the Irish Ambassador to Spain at a point in the investigations where a link with the missing postman and an Irish prisoner from the Spanish Civil War, still incarcerated there, comes to his attention. This allows DI Gillespie to pursue the leads into the disappearance of the postman, but also to garner information relating to his wife’s death and those of two other young women who had similarly unexplained demises in the years preceding Maeve’s.

Beginning with two diverse storylines, Russell develops the characters, introducing them by turn and filling out their roles for the reader to become immersed in their lives. He focuses on teasing out the links between the IRA, the Garda Special Branch, and the part played by ordinary Irish men 20th Century

in supporting war in other European countries during this part of history – roles for which these men became targets as dissenters to their fellow countrymen.

Cathy Kemp

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THE JAZZ FILES Fiona Veitch Smith, Lion Fiction, 2015, $14.99/£7.99, pb, 318pp, 1782641750 The Jazz Files was a book that I offered to review because it sounded somewhat intriguing, and I felt like I ought to read something a little out of my normal reading zone. I expected it would be fine but beyond that, I didn’t expect to discover one of my favorite books of the year and a new favorite series!

The novel begins with a death, as all good mysteries do, then jumps ahead seven years to 1920. Our protagonist, Poppy Denby, is a sheltered young woman from a small English town who has recently arrived in London to live with her crippled aunt. Her aunt, who had been a suffragette, convinces Poppy to take a job other than as her nursemaid. She ends up eventually taking on the role as an investigative reporter for a rag newspaper trying to solve the seven-year-old death and the role the suffragette movement may have played in it. Throw in a dashing photographer, an ignoble nobleman, a loyal friend or two, and a crew of scrappy journalists, and you have a recipe for a crazy fun debut reminiscent of the very best of Agatha Christie, who was clearly a strong influence on Smith.

The Jazz Files is a novel full of vim, vigor, and music. The atmosphere is electric and vibrant throughout, the characters are all thoroughly delightful – except when they’re delightfully awful – and the plot is engaging from page one. I can’t wait to read the next installation in the series!

Kristen McQuinn THE LOVE OF GELI RAUBAL Brenda Squires, Parthian, 2016, £8.99, pb, 376pp, 9781910901502 I was not aware that Hitler had a niece, Geli Raubal, nor that his love for his niece, bordering on the inappropriate, caused senior Nazis grave concern. It was with interest that I began reading The Love of Geli Raubal, and Brenda Squires’s story of Max Dienst, a fictional journalist searching for the truth about the mysterious circumstances in which Raubal died.

However, The Love of Geli Raubal is not a mystery novel, and Raubal’s fate is not the key concern of the book. Instead, it revolves around the lives of various individuals living in Berlin in 1932, primarily the German Max and his Welsh wife Rhiannon. When Max’s employer recalls them to Berlin from London, they see firsthand the unstable nature of a city on the edge of crisis, and the hatred and racism that the Nazis are both causing and manipulating.

I felt that The Love of Geli Raubal was let down by its lifeless characters. Despite coming from very different backgrounds, the characters’ dialogue was indistinguishable. The background descriptions of early atrocities, the mistrust that arose between neighbours, and the clamping down on cabaret were interesting enough (although I was not surprised to see Squires credit Christopher Isherwood in her acknowledgements, as those descriptions reminded me strongly of his Berlin Stories) but the foreground story of Max and Rhiannon became predictable.

I would suggest that for anyone wanting to read about Berlin in the 1930s, there are more entertaining options, including Isherwood’s eyewitness accounts. Geli Raubal did not play enough of a role in this novel to warrant her inclusion in the title. However, I am grateful to Squires for bringing her to my attention, and I will certainly be seeking out the other sources that Squires mentions, which deal with her story.

Laura Shepperson THE BABE RUTH DECEPTION David O. Stewart, Kensington, 2016, $25.00/ C$27.95, hb, 261pp, 9781496702005 In 1920, young Babe Ruth is on a tear for his new team, the New York Yankees. Ruth’s private life of fast cars, heavy drinking and eating, and womanizing also seems to run at a record pace. But all is not as it seems on the surface. Crooked, even murderous, gamblers and bootleggers seek out opportunities. The 1918 World Series Black Sox scandal hangs over baseball. Rumors persist that the 1919 Series, in which Ruth was the star pitcher for Boston, was also fixed. A tough new baseball commissioner is on the hunt. Ruth is a suspect.

Apart from that, Ruth has his own deeply personal problem he can’t shake but must keep hidden.

Ruth asks Speed Cook to help cleanse the stains from his past. Cook, a promoter of Negro baseball and former player drummed out of the white-only major leagues, has connections and knows his way around the underbelly of baseball. Cook in turn enlists the aid of Dr. James Fraser, whose wife coproduced a silent film starring Ruth.

Against this background the story turns to Cook’s son, Joshua, and the Frasers’ daughter, Violet. Through their growing romance, Stewart explores the harsh race relations of the time and the barriers thrown up against African Americans, even war heroes and great baseball players. Stewart deftly interweaves the Babe Ruth saga with Joshua’s and Violet’s harrowing and page-turning journey.

Baseball fans as well as readers looking for a Prohibition-era adventure will enjoy The Babe Ruth Deception.

G. J. Berger

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LIKE A RIVER FROM ITS COURSE Kelli Stuart, Kregel, 2016, $14.99, pb, 352pp, 9780825444142 While the story of World War II’s Jewish Holocaust is well known, what still remains clouded in history is the enormous death toll and deprivation visited upon the peoples of Poland and Eastern Europe by both the Nazis and the Soviets.

In this thoroughly researched novel, Stuart tells the heroic and heartbreaking stories of four people caught up in the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 49

beginning with the blitzkrieg of Kiev.

Ivan Kyrilovich, mistakenly taken for a Jew, is lined up to be shot, along with 34,000 men, women, and children at Babi Yar. He survives but suffers greatly from depression at a time when his family needs him most.

Ivan’s daughter, Maria Ivanovna, is only fourteen when the Nazis scoop her up, along with her sister, and force her to Germany as slave labor in a munitions plant. At sixteen, Luda is raped by German soldiers and abandoned by her worthless father. She becomes pregnant with a child her countrymen consider an enemy. Worse, she later falls in love with a decent German soldier, putting herself at dangerous odds with her community. Frederick Hermann, a young German soldier, uses the power and brutality of the Nazi regime in an attempt to make himself more respected in the eyes of his high-ranking Nazi father, but begins to suffer twinges of conscience.

The novel is based on true stories Stuart gathered over fifteen years of research, including visiting Ukraine and talking with survivors of these horrific events. Her writing is evocative and beautiful, despite its grim content. And, in the end, the novel is about love, forgiveness, redemption, and hope. This is a highly recommended read, not be missed.

John Kachuba ABOUT THE NIGHT Anat Talshir (trans. Evan Fallenberg), AmazonCrossing, 2016, $14.95, pb, 387pp, 9781503936034 Talshir, winner of the Nahum Sokolov Prize (the Israeli Pulitzer), writes her first novel here, the story of Elias, a Christian Arab, and Lila, a Jewish orphan born in Istanbul. The couple meets in Jerusalem during the summer of 1947, and their romance is soon torn apart, first by war, then by the division of the city they share. Lila is there by almost chance adoption; her only passion involved with the city over which so much blood has been shed seems to come from the vampiring of her lover’s deep family roots.

Talshir’s language often captures the physical feel of Jerusalem in stunning ways: a breath of air through a hospital window, the way Elias’s skin matches the city “more than many Jews she knew,” “the scent of chickpeas in water.” My quibble may be exactly what Talshir was trying to point out, although the conclusion doesn’t make it seem that way to me. “Deep, irrevocable love” of this ilk often finds a place in historical fiction where I think it a fantasy and an anachronism. Elias is more the realist when he marries the woman his family pushes at him during those 19 years of forced separation between the modern Montagues and Capulets of the Holy Land. Lila, with her “tiny circle of friends, few obligations,” conveniently without family ties, does not find such ties in the embryonic state of Israel. A return to such “love” for Elias happens when that state has taken everything else from 50 | Reviews |

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him – lands, career, family. Lila cannot undertake the good works of her life – founding a home for pregnant single women (which would have made a more interesting story in its details) – until Elias returns to her. This “love” of gazing into eyes the modern nation state offers us seems a hollow shell, not much recompense for what we have lost.

Ann Chamberlin THE SHATTERED TREE: A Bess Crawford Mystery Charles Todd, William Morrow, 2016, $25.99/ C$31.99, hb, 304pp, 9780062386274 WWI nurse Bess Crawford treats a wounded soldier on the front lines. She assumes he is French although, surprised and under stress, her patient astonishes Bess by speaking fluent German. Her supervisor reassures Bess; the man most likely is Alsatian. When Bess herself is wounded and sent to convalesce in Rouen and Paris, she remains concerned that the mysterious man could be a German spy. A glimpse of him in a Paris taxi increases her resolve to investigate. Aided by her old friend American Captain Barkley, as well as a new acquaintance, the nun Marie-Luc, Bess searches for the mysterious soldier. However Bess’s inquiries endanger all three of them, bringing to light old misdeeds and murders long thought to be resolved.

Another Charles Todd book is always a luscious treat, and I devoured The Shattered Tree in one sitting. France during the Great War comes to life as Bess’s search takes her throughout Paris and into nearby villages. The intrepid Bess certainly does not know the meaning of rest and recuperation, but I am thankful, along with all of her fans, that she survives her war wound. Hopefully a fully recovered Bess will be continuing her inquiries in the future. Highly recommended.

Susan McDuffie

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A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW Amor Towles, Viking, 2016, $27, hb, 480pp, 9780670026197 / Hutchinson, 2017, £12.99, hb, 464pp, 9780091944247 The “gentleman” of the title is Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, a charming Russian aristocrat who lives in a posh suite in Moscow’s grand Metropol Hotel. In 1922 a Bolshevik tribunal sentences him to house arrest for writing a poem they deem seditious, and he is banished to an attic room in the Metropol. If he steps outside the hotel he will be shot. Most of his personal effects and furniture are confiscated; however, in a revealing gesture, he manages to save all his books and a large, heavy Louis XVI desk left to him by his godfather. “A king fortifies himself with a castle,” observed the count, “a gentleman with a desk.”

For decades, as guests and staff come and go at the hotel, and as political turmoil swirls in the outside world, the once sophisticated Rostov adapts to his reduced circumstances, not with increasing

bitterness, but with grace and humor. Though his physical world has shrunk, his emotional world expands. His friendships with waiters, cooks, a handyman, a precocious young girl, and visitors to the hotel enlarge his existence. The result is an extraordinary revelation for the reader – a literary novel that is intelligent, loving, witty, and elegant.

Amor Towles, a master of narration, has written a contemporary novel which reads like a translation of a great Russian classic. He deftly brings to life the cultural milieu of three decades of Russian experience. Each word is carefully planned, each scene beautifully rendered. A Gentleman in Moscow is surely one of the year’s best books and highly recommended.

Lorraine Norwood THE TEA PLANTER’S DAUGHTER: India Tea Series, Book 1 Janet MacLeod Trotter, Lake Union, 2016, $14.95, pb, 430pp, 9781503934191 In 1904, Sisters Clarissa and Olive Belhaven have spent a happy childhood on their father’s tea plantation in Assam, India. They are proud, resourceful young ladies who love their land, family, and tea. When their father clashes with a nearby rival tea planter family, the Robsons, and subsequently passes away, Clarrie blames the handsome young Wesley Robson for their devastating plight.

Despite her attraction to Wesley, she refuses his proposal of marriage because of some misplaced beliefs. With no alternatives left, Clarrie and Olive are forced to immigrate to England and move in with their cousin and his family. The two sisters are thrust from the light, free, wonderful world of India to dark, cold, lower-class Newcastle. After months of struggling with hard labor and poverty, and to escape their overbearing cousin, Clarrie accepts a position as housekeeper to an older, kindly lawyer, Herbert Stock. Life takes a turn for the better as the years pass, although Clarrie still dreams of returning to India and starting her own tea business. So when Welsey Robson reappears in 1910, Clarrie has some tough choices to consider.

This is an enchanting tale lush with imagery, drama, and historical detail. Clarissa and Olive face many odds, but they endure and change with the times. Clarrie’s stubbornness is frustrating at times, as is Olive’s ungrateful whining, but both sisters grow in depth throughout the story. The story spans many years and includes the First World War. At times, it seems like Clarrie and Olive will never find peace and happiness, but readers will be pleased to know the ending is quite satisfying.

Recommended.

Rebecca Cochran THE TEA PLANTER’S BRIDE: India Tea Series, Book 2 Janet MacLeod Trotter, Lake Union, 2016, $14.95, pb, 413pp, 9781503934207 Sophie Logan only remembers the Indian tea plantation of her childhood through snippets of hazy memories. When she was six years old, her parents both died, supposedly of a fever. Sophie was sent to Edinburgh to live with her Aunt Amy. The story really picks up in 1922 when Sophie is a beautiful young lady of marrying age. She is independent (she has a job), daring (she rides 20th Century

a motorcycle), and anxious to find a way back to India. When her friend Tilly becomes engaged to older tea planter James Robson, and the couple plan to move back to India, Sophie’s desires for India only deepen. Opportunity arrives in the form of Tam, a forester who has recently been stationed in India and will be leaving soon. Sophie and Tam enter into a whirlwind romance, resulting in their engagement and subsequent departure for her beloved homeland. But all is not as idealistic as Sophie hopes. With the help of Tilly, Sophie learns the truth of her parents’ deaths. Tam also becomes ill and cantankerous. Sophie becomes lonely, depressed, and secretly intrigued with another forester, Rafi, of Indian descent and a lower class.

This second book in the India Tea Series is as equally delightful as Trotter’s first. Characters from the first book appear as secondary characters, connecting the two stories together.

This incorporation, however, means that there is a complex plotline that takes a little while to get into. Sophie’s choices are questionable at times, but she learns from her mistakes. While the focus is a romantic drama, there are more serious undercurrents that demonstrate the uneven class systems and political upheaval during this time period. Trotter also does an excellent job with plot twists and surprises, keeping the reader on edge throughout. There were times when I wasn’t sure if it was going to end the way I had hoped. All in all, this is a remarkable tale best read with a pot of tea.

Rebecca Cochran THE WEDNESDAY CLUB Kjell Westö (trans, Neil Smith), MacLehose, 2016, £13.99, pb, 348pp, 9780857053510 Helsinki 1938, as Europe ferments towards another global conflict. Lawyer Claes Thune is still trying to come to terms with the departure of his wife Gabi and the end of his marriage, after she had a clandestine love affair with his oldest friend, and member of the eponymous Club. She then published a book of short stories relating to her love affair, which thrust the knife even deeper.

Thune, a decent, liberal man, is greatly concerned with the political belligerence in Europe and the imminence of another war. It is an issue discussed in The Wednesday Club – the group of friends and colleagues that have met at regular intervals for many years now, as indeed the volatile political situation affects all aspect of Helsinki life. In 1938 Finland is an independent country, but there are multifarious nationalist/political tensions relating to the proximity of its large Russian-Soviet neighbour, as well as a burgeoning fascist proNazi movement. His secretary, Milja Mathilda Wiik, also lives alone, having been deserted by her husband some years ago and, like Claes, is a rather lonely, complicated character, and an unpleasant episode, when she was a young member of a communist-sympathising family, is revealed as the novel progresses. Matters become complicated when Wiik is courted by a man from her troubled past, who is also a member of her employer’s Wednesday Club.

The book assumes a degree of knowledge by the reader of the political and cultural situation of Finland in the late 1930s (perhaps naturally enough, as it was published initially in Sweden) 20th Century — Multi-period

but many references and discussions can be a little obtuse to those without specific familiarity with the country’s history. It is an intelligent tale, capably narrated that fully engages the reader and immerses you in the anxious and volatile pre-War times.

Douglas Kemp BASQUE MOON Julie Weston, Five Star, 2016, $25.95, hb, 250pp, 9781432832988 Nellie Burns has relocated from Chicago to Idaho in the 1920s, trading a staid life as an old maid (at 26) portrait photographer for a more uncertain future as a landscape photographer in the West. She’s arranged to bunk with a sheep camp in Idaho to capture the scenery for a railroad company.

She’s accompanied by her dog, Moonshine, a name that causes a bit of confusion during Prohibition.

The job starts in the most ominous way possible: she, the rancher, and the next herder arrive at camp to discover the current herder has been murdered.

This is the second in Weston’s series about Burns and Moonshine, and I felt at a bit of a disadvantage not having read the first. There are undercurrents to the relationship between Nellie and Gwynn Campbell, the rancher, between Campbell and the Basque sheriff, and between the sheriff and Nellie. Nellie is at a disadvantage herself, not being able to communicate with Alphonso, the herder, when Campbell goes back to town to report the first herder’s death. The sheep camp is threatened by cattle herders, and Nellie herself is kidnapped when she returns to town. I felt as disoriented as Nellie herself as she tries to determine the best path away from her captives when she escapes. Motives are murky except that the bad guys are almost comically bad, leering and unshaven, threatening Nellie and her dog. Was the conflict over moonshine (the liquor, not the dog) or sheep versus cattle? I’m not quite sure. While the plot lost me, I’ll admit that Nellie and Moonshine (the dog, not the liquor) were appealing characters.

I might give their next adventure a try.

Ellen Keith YESTERNIGHT Cat Winters, William Morrow, 2016, $15.99/ C$19.99, pb, 400pp, 9780062563934 Alice Lind, school psychologist, travels to Gordon Bay, Oregon in 1925 to administer IQ tests to the schoolchildren there. Alice has always believed in science, and thinks that all problems can be solved with psychology. However, when she meets strange little seven-year-old Janie, her core is shaken and her beliefs uprooted. Janie exhibits characteristics of someone else and tells stories of her past life. At first, Alice believes this is just an overactive imagination. But Janie’s father believes that she has been reincarnated, while her mother fears Janie is insane. The more Alice learns about Janie, the more confused she becomes about what is true. She also begins to unravel deeply hidden secrets of her own past, which leads to more mysteries and more complications. Could Janie really be reincarnated? Could Alice, herself, also be reincarnated?

Winters has been one of my favorite authors since she first published In the Shadow of Blackbirds,

but this story is much darker, more racy, and just a little confusing. The entire story is fascinating, but Winters never quite explains everything, leaving a lot up to the reader’s imagination. Alice is a modern woman, and much of the story revolves around her sexual desires, which didn’t really seem to fit with other parts of the story. Nevertheless, these slight issues did not hinder the remarkably intriguing tale of Yesternight.

Rebecca Cochran

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DEVOTION Louisa Young, The Borough Press, 2016, £14.99, hb, 407pp, 9780007532872 Devotion: whose, for whom, or what?

In Italy, Aldo Fiori’s for Mussolini; in London, Peter Locke’s for negro jazz singer Mabel Zachary; and, spanning both countries, Tom Locke’s for Nenna Fiori. But Nenna is devoted to her father, a veteran of Caporetto, an engineer who has drained the swamps outside Rome, designed and built new towns, one of Mussolini’s rehabilitation projects after Italy’s humiliation in WW1. Hard work and obedience to the Duce are all that is required to make Italy great according to Aldo; the fact that the family are Jews he considers irrelevant until Mussolini revokes Jews’ Italian citizenship and places restrictions on them: not our sort of Jew, insists Aldo; there have been Jews in Rome since before the time of Jesus Christ.

The Fioris are cousins of Nadine Purefoy, Tom and his sister Kitty’s adoptive mother in London.

Readers of Louisa Young’s two previous novels My Dear I Wanted to Tell You and The Heroes’ Welcome will remember Nadine and her husband Riley, whose jaw was shattered at Passchendaele and reconstructed by pioneer surgeon Harold Gillies.

Devotion covers the years 1928-39. Towards the end of the book, Gillies’ handiwork is smashed when Riley defends the Jews in a pub altercation, for Nadine, too, is a Jewess. Gillies proposes a completely new reconstruction: “we’re much better at it that we used to be,” he comforts Riley.

The secrets, longings and traumas of the English and Italian families are played out against social change in Britain, when old boundaries were breaking down, and the situation was deteriorating in Europe. Each person has to decide who or what is most important to them. This is a beautiful book, written with integrity, humour, and depth of feeling: an explosive mix of passion, race and politics.

Janet Hancock

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SOUTHERN RUBY Belinda Alexandra, HarperCollins Australia, 2016, A$31.99, pb, 576pp, 9780732296445 HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 51

This dual narrative contains the familiar trademarks of a Belinda Alexandra novel: an uncommon setting and sympathetic characters forced to make compromises because of the people they love.

Amanda has lived in Sydney since the age of two with her Australian grandmother, Cynthia.

She knows nothing of her American father, Dale, who was killed together with her mother in a New Orleans car crash. Cynthia has always blamed him for the accident, refusing to have anything to do with his family. After Cynthia’s death, Amanda finds a letter from her American grandmother, Ruby, begging for reconciliation. When Amanda arrives in New Orleans in 2005, she begins to uncover the true story of her parents.

In 1953, Ruby struggles to protect her ailing mother from both poverty and reality as the family’s fortunes dwindle. An advantageous marriage is seen as the only traditional solution but Ruby is determined to work her way out of their predicament on her own terms. She becomes Jewel, a high-class nightclub act, and embarks on a forbidden love affair that will have major ramifications.

Like the character Ruby herself, the novel wears its political heart on its sleeve, and the more moving chapters are those involving the incendiary days of the early Civil Rights Movement plus the devastation and disgraceful aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. These contrast with some of the early chapters featuring Amanda, which are a bit overloaded with peripheral detail plus all the must-do’s when in New Orleans. Also, a few minor anachronisms have slipped through, e.g., an African-American using an Australian idiom.

Some readers will soon guess at the underlying secrets, and the ending has a satisfying, if neatly contrived, conclusion, but otherwise this is another memorable novel that should please the author’s many fans.

Marina Maxwell JUNE Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, Crown, 2016, $26, hb, 386pp, 9780553447682 Cassie Danvers has inherited her grandmother June’s crumbling Ohio mansion, Two Oaks. She is haunted by dreams of its previous occupants and the summer of 1955, when a Hollywood movie did on-location shooting in town. The novel splits between the modern-day uncovering of a family secret and the time of its genesis. Soon a larger inheritance is at stake, and a current Hollywood siren and her entourage descend on Two Oaks, driving Cassie out of her depressed seclusion and forming something like a family.

Meanwhile, back in 1955, a romance develops between Cassie’s teenage grandmother and the charismatic Clark Gable-like star. The courtship is aided and abetted by June’s even younger friend, Lindie, who adores her. There’s some shady land dealing going on, too. As truth continues to be revealed, the house creaks, cracks, and finally breaks under the strain.

Both stories work well, illuminating the cocoon that fame puts around its object, and how living inside can alter reality. The atmosphere of both periods is evoked with precision and beauty. But, 52 | Reviews |

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as in many split-time structures, the events of one period may seem more compelling than the other. Centering a barely functioning, depressed protagonist over half the book was a gamble that may not always pay off for readers looking to disentangle the events of the past.

Eileen Charbonneau LETTERS FROM PARIS Juliet Blackwell, Berkley, 2016, $15, pb, 384pp, 9780451473707 Claire Broussard’s mother drives into a Louisiana bayou, taking her life and leaving Claire with a harrowing fear of water and drowning.

Raised by her loving, wise grandmother, Claire grows up believing she can do anything to which she sets her mind and heart. However, after a successful career in computers, she walks away from her Chicago job to care for her dying grandmother and there recovers a mysterious, broken sculpture of a woman. This is the silent figure Claire spoke to during her childhood years. Now, she discovers the name of the sculpture is L’Inconnue, or “The Unknown Woman.”

This is the story of Claire’s trip to Paris to seek knowledge about the sculpture and its creator.

There she finds the place where the sculpted woman was created and agrees to a temporary job with the descendant of the creator, a maker of molds of “death masks.” The story behind the mask is beyond any reader’s expectations and is told in between Claire’s unusual relationship with the cantankerous, enigmatic Armand and his gracious cousin, Giselle. Two romances filled with danger and mystique will bloom that will change the lives of many. The appeal of L’Inconnue is compared to that of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, with its whimsical, mysterious smile. The reader will learn a great deal about death-mask making, sculpting, mold-making whether from plaster or in chocolate (be prepared to drool with desire for French chocolate), as well as the tempestuous character of Parisian artists during the Belle Époque. Letters from Paris is a phenomenal, unusual work of historical fiction that this reviewer can’t praise highly enough – must reading!

Viviane Crystal THRICE THE BRINDED CAT HATH MEW’D: A Flavia de Luce Novel Alan Bradley, Delacorte, 2016, $26, hb, 329pp, 9780345539960 England, 1950s: Flavia de Luce returns from Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, in Canada, to her family home in England. She looks forward to a reunion with her father, her sisters, Feely and Daffy, and the intrepid and dependable Dogger. But bad news greets Flavia at the pier, and she learns worse news on her return to Buckshaw. Flavia’s father is hospitalized with pneumonia, and Esmeralda, Flavia’s pet chicken, has suffered a horrid fate.

However, this bleak English winter is livened up by Flavia’s discovery of Mr. Sambridge’s corpse. She finds the eccentric local woodcarver hanging upside down on his bedroom door, quite definitely dead, strapped to a strange carved contraption. The only witness is a tortoiseshell cat; amidst the clues are some volumes of children’s poetry on the bedroom bookshelf. Flavia investigates while in the midst of

coping with her father’s illness. Her sleuthing leads her to the world of publishing, London teahouses, and the long held midwinter traditions of her English village.

Our little Flavia is growing up, no longer the hoyden who put poison ivy in her sister’s lipstick.

Like the theobromine found in chocolate, with which Flavia at times experiments, a Flavia de Luce mystery is a bitter, dark, and thoroughly scrumptious treat. In this book we see a more mature Flavia, who at times surprises even herself.

Highly recommended; don’t miss this!

Susan McDuffie THE LIGHT OF PARIS Eleanor Brown, Putnam, 2016, $26.00/C$35.00, hb, 306pp, 9780399158919 Madeleine endures her cold marriage to Phillip because she was expected to wed by her overlycritical mother. It’s 1999 in Chicago, and Madeleine has given up her dream of being a painter at her husband’s demand. She knows she’s not pretty, and Phillip only married her so her father would invest in his company. After a fight with Phillip, she travels to visit her mother in Magnolia, her southern hometown, and is shocked her mom is selling her childhood home. Madeleine cleans out the attic and uncovers a cache of journals written by her grandmother, Margie, in the 1920s.

Margie, a husky girl with few marriage prospects, is forced to chaperone her gorgeous cousin on a European tour in 1924. Her cousin dumps her in Paris and Margie must fend for herself. She discovers she loves Paris, finds a job, a place to stay, and meets an intriguing artist.

This engagingly-written character study showcases two women who aren’t perfect in appearance but have dreams and desires beyond the predictable. Margie blossoms in the narrow cobbled streets and cafes of Paris. She wants to be a writer, and scribbles in her journals. Madeleine is surprised her stern grandmother was once this free-spirited girl. Madeleine blossoms as well, in Magnolia, a town she once resented, but which now has grown into a trendy place with interesting inhabitants—she revives her painting. Both women make witty and humorous commentary on the life and people around them. With low self-esteem, they must work around their flaws, insulted by a culture that values beauty. Will society crush their aspirations? Ms. Brown’s grandmother’s letters were the source of inspiration for this story. A fresh perspective on life and love. Highly recommended.

Diane Scott Lewis THE GERMAN GIRL Armando Lucas Correa (trans. Nick Caistor), Atria, 2016, $26.99/C$35.99, hb, 346pp, 9781501121142 / Simon & Schuster UK, 2017, £12.99, 400pp, 9781471161629 Berlin in 1939 is seen through the eyes of Hannah Rosenthal, who starts her tale with “I was almost twelve years old when I decided to kill my parents.” Spoiler alert: she doesn’t. But her desperation and unhappiness are conveyed immediately. A girl who used to be her friend will no longer acknowledge her. Her professor father has been detained on specious charges and may be held again. Her mother has retreated inward.

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In New York City in 2014, Anna Rosen also has a mother who has given up. She was three months pregnant with Anna when her husband disappeared. He was later pronounced dead, although like many people who were never found on that day in September in 2001, there was no body to bury.

Hannah, her parents, and her best friend Leo and his father seek refuge in Cuba, but her father, Leo, and his father aren’t allowed to disembark.

Hannah’s mother, like Anna’s mother, is pregnant when her husband is separated from her. The son she raises in Cuba becomes Anna’s grandfather, Gustavo. Hannah is her great-aunt.

The German Girl is both an engrossing and a frustrating read. The parallels between Hitler’s Germany and Castro’s Cuba feel heavy-handed.

Adult Hannah loses her pharmacy to the state just as her family lost their home to the Nazis. The loss of Anna’s father in the September 11 attacks piles on yet another tragedy. But, Hannah and Anna are strong protagonists. Both are forced to grow up too quickly, to become the parent to their mothers.

Finding each other, when Anna and her mother visit Hannah in Cuba in 2014, provides a form of closure for Hannah and for Anna, a sign that her mother will join the living again.

Ellen Keith LOVE, ALICE Barbara Davis, Berkley, 2016, 406pp, 9780451474810 The novel touches upon difficult and emotional issues: suicide, the fate of children born out of wedlock, motherhood and family conflict. The story rings with sadness and the yearning for understanding. The family saga begins in 1960s Charleston, South Carolina, where the conviviality of wealthy Southern culture clashes with the need to keep up appearances. Dovie Larkin, a curator for a local museum, visits the Magnolia Grove Cemetery much more than she should since the death of her fiancé, who committed suicide several weeks before their wedding. Dovie seeks to understand, and to resolve the grief that overwhelms her. One day she sees an older woman leave a letter near the famous monument named Alice’s Angel. The statue was placed near the grave of Alice Tandy, a maid to one of the richest families in Charleston. There were rumors surrounding the relationship of Alice to the family; a belief that she was the mistress of the family’s patriarch. As the story unfolds, Alice’s real life is portrayed starting with the loss of her child, born out of wedlock and given up for adoption.

The novel is a narrative joy, and keeps the reader wanting to know more of each of the families it highlights. Definitely recommended.

Jackie Drohan THE ROPEWALKER Jaan Kross (trans. Merike Lepasaar Beecher), MacLehose, 2016, £20, hb, 544pp, 9780857056948 Jaan Kross died in 2007 and, although not known to this particular reader, was Estonia’s most widely translated author and won countless awards for his writing. His trilogy, Between Three Plagues, of which this is the first volume, documents the life of Balthasar Russow, a historical figure who left a chronicle of Livonia (modern-day Estonia and Multi-period

Latvia) during the tumultuous late 16th century.

The book is a sweeping epic, peopled by colourful historical and fictional figures, that follows Bal, a figure with whom the author clearly identifies to the point of calling him “my Balthasar” in a historical note at the end: both were born in the same little village and, like Bal, the author’s world collapsed when he was in his 20s and the Second World broke out.

Tallinn forms the focus of Bal’s young life: its port, its churches, and the school where Bal is a promising if unorthodox scholar. But we follow Bal on his sledge journey across the frozen Gulf of Finland on a memorable journey as far as Helsinki, and later to Stettin, then in German-speaking Pomerania. Bal’s humble birth and lively intelligence bring him into contact with different parts of Livonian society, from the rural communities where pagan practices (and incantations against wolves) are not uncommon, to the members of the Livonian Order and the town councillors and mysterious Doctor Friesner. The whole population is Protestant, but there are interesting references to the fact that post-Augsburg (1555) not all churches had suffered at the hands of the iconoclasts, and the people of Tallinn are still proud of their painted wooden saints, the altar triptych and a magnificent monstrance by Ryssenberch. Kross writes with profound knowledge and love of his homeland, allowing us to become immersed in a world that is foreign in so many ways.

Lucinda Byatt 300 DAYS OF SUN Deborah Lawrenson, Harper, 2016, $15.99/ C$19.99, pb, 367pp, 9780062390165 In August 2014, Joanna Millard flees Brussels, leaving behind a stagnant journalist career and a failing relationship, and finds herself on the sundrenched coast of Faro, Portugal. She enrolls in a Portuguese language class, where she meets Nathan Emberlin, a young, brash man with a secret. When Nathan enlists Jo’s journalistic and investigative skills in helping him track down information on the kidnappings of children—and his own adoption—along the Portuguese coast she quickly learns that idyllic Faro has a dark, sinister past.

During their investigation they meet Ian Rylands, an expat who suggests to Joanna that she reads a book called The Alliance. Set in Portugal during World War II, The Alliance details an American couple’s struggles in Portugal as they weave through Machiavellian webs of deceit, mistrust and political intrigue between the Nazis and the Allies. Eventually, Joanna learns that the book is not fiction and that it holds the clue to solving Nathan’s kidnapping quest.

300 Days of Sun is a book within a book. For Joanna’s sections, Lawrenson does an amazing job setting the scenes of Portugal. The vibrancy of sound, smells, and color springs from the pages.

The sections with The Alliance will appeal to fans of history by delving into the uncertain nature of neutral Portugal awash with Nazi and British and American spies. But these two pieces, though woven together to bring resolution to the plot, may get in the way of each other for many readers. I struggled to like Joanna. Her character felt a bit flat,

and Nathan was too much a caricature at times.

The ending is somewhat predictable, and Joanna’s final decisions may leave the reader with a feeling of “oh.” A good rainy day read when you want to feel the warmth of Portugal across your face.

Bryan Dumas MELNITZ Charles Lewinsky, Atlantic/Trafalgar Square, 2016, $16.95/£10.99, pb, 656pp, 9781848877672 Swiss-Jew Salomon Meijer, a cattle-dealer, is known in Chicago as being one of the few honest Jews around, trusted by even Gentiles. He lives a simple and successful life with his wife and two daughters, but this all changes quickly late one night in 1871 when his distant cousin, young Janki, shows up on his doorstep, unwell from his experiences in the Franco-Prussian war. Salomon’s wife and daughters nurse Janki back to health, embracing him as part of the Meijer family, and in return Janki changes the course of the Meijer family for generations.

The story spans five generations of the Meijer family, and the actions Janki makes in the late 19th century echo throughout the years. Of course, it’s not just a family saga – Charles Lewinsky writes an expansive story also about the Jewish experience over time, the troubles, the tensions, the relationships with non-Jews and with each other, the extensive history. Lewinsky deftly tells about anti-Semitism, expressing it to the reader in sometimes subtle yet disturbing ways.

This is a fascinating story about the lives of the Meijer family, from the good and the amusing to the sad and the terrifying. Each of the characters has a personality of his or her own, and their voices come through the pages like real people. This is not by any means a quick read. At over 650 pages, Lewinsky covers a lot of history and a lot of story here, and it’s meant to be read over a period of time and not in one sitting. Recommended for anyone interested in the European Jewish experience particularly from 1871 to 1945, but expect to settle in for a thick read and don’t rush it.

Elicia Parkinson THE CONFECTIONER’S TALE Laura Madeleine, St. Martin’s, 2016, $25.99. hb, 336pp, 9781250100542 / Black Swan, 2015, £8.99, pb, 336pp, 9781784160722 In 1988, Petra Stevenson has been working on her Ph.D. thesis at Cambridge on the period of history known as the Belle Époque. She attends a lecture by Simon Hall and discovers he intends to publish something about her grandfather, J. G. Stevenson, which will discredit him historically.

She also finds an old photo of a couple in front of the Patisserie Clermont, with the words “Forgive me” written on the back of it. It turns out that Petra’s father sold her grandfather’s house and granted Simon Hall permission to utilize all of her deceased grandfather’s papers.

So begins a fiercely competitive race to find out the truth, something that Petra fears in the unknown story yet to be told. It’s a mystery and romance on two levels, which immediately engages the reader’s rapt attention. Petra travels to France and learns about how Guillaume (Gui) du Frere falls in love with the creation of pastries at HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 53

Patisserie Clermont, luck obviously favoring him as he moves from being a railway worker to a pastry apprentice who will do absolutely anything to learn and create these masterpieces under the tutelage of Master Chef Clermont’s assistants.

Between reading descriptions of luscious eclairs, sugar sculptures, macaroons and other scrumptious delights, Gui falls in love with Clermont’s daughter, Jeanne. Jeanne’s a rebel, born in an age when arranged marriages for business purposes are the norm, but this young couple is determined to escape society’s strictures. How was J. G. Stevenson or Jim involved with this daring couple? Petra’s discoveries focus on truth, loyalty, forgiveness, and stalwart courage. Marvelous historical fiction!

Viviane Crystal THE SPICE BOX LETTERS Eve Makis, St. Martin’s, 2016, $25.99, hb, 272pp, 9781250095800 This story follows a young journalist’s search for her grandmother’s mysterious youth in Cyprus during World War I. After her grandmother Miriam’s passing, Katarina and her mother discover an old, hand-carved wooden spice box containing a diary and letters, all written by Miriam in her native Armenian. Katarina knows that a family tragedy occurred, but no relatives from that time seemed to have survived. The only way to discover the answer would be to return to Cyprus on holiday and see if she can get the letters translated.

Meanwhile, an elderly Gabriel, Miriam’s brother, struggles with his age and health while recalling memories of losing his family during the dark days of 1915, when families were separated and children murdered. What unfolds are different stories of a turbulent time, narrated through chapters set in 1915 about Gabriel, and in 1985, about Miriam, as translated by a young man Katarina gets to know in Cyprus. It’s a very interesting novel of loss and rediscovery as well as the history of human struggle.

Reading multi-period narratives from three different points of view can get confusing, but the story stays on track and flows smoothly between time periods and the main characters. Although the work is fiction, the incidents depicted were based in history, and it is important for us to remember those who experienced these war crimes. The novel helps us understand how healing can occur and how survivors can lead a full and long life, and it also leaves readers with a satisfying ending. A very good read.

Beth Turza THE VELVET HOURS Alyson Richman, Berkley, 2016, $16, pb, 383pp, 9780425266267 An abandoned Paris apartment filled with treasures and art was the true-life inspiration for this mesmerizing novel. Marthe de Florian was a courtesan who amassed a life of riches and wealth.

In 2010, her apartment, which had remained untouched for seven decades, was discovered, including the magnificent painting of her by artist Giovanni Boldini. In The Velvet Hours, the author fills in the unknowns with this alluring novel.

As a young woman in the late 1800s, Marthe 54 | Reviews |

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was a poor seamstress who gave birth to a son out of wedlock. Later in life she met Charles, a wealthy member of Parisian society, who, though married, fell in love with her, enabling her to cast off her former life of poverty and hardship. It wasn’t until years later that her granddaughter, Solange Beaugiron, learned of her existence. The two formed an initially shaky bond, but eventually Marthe opens up to Solange, feeding her bits and pieces of her past with each visit.

Solange’s own story also comes alive on the pages; she is a writer living in Nazi Germany, in love with a Jewish man, and their love story seems to be doomed before it can begin. Soon Solange must make a life-changing decision, forcing her to leave behind everything she values.

As usual, Richman’s writing is velvety smooth, pulling the reader effortlessly into each of the women’s stories. Solange is the more appealing of the two main characters, as Marthe de Florian is somewhat self-absorbed. But as Marthe slowly reveals herself to her granddaughter, the reader can’t help but be drawn to the charismatic woman who chose to create her own opportunities rather than succumb to a life of poverty. This multilayered story deserves a place on the bookshelf of any historical fiction fan.

Hilary Daninhirsch THE SECRETS OF NANREATH HALL Alix Rickloff, William Morrow, 2016, $15,99/ C$19,99, pb, 400pp, 0062433183 Set in World War II England, Rickoff ’s historical novel sends a grieving young woman to her mother’s childhood home—and into the arms of the family who had forced her mother to leave.

After a harrowing experience at Dunkirk, volunteer nurse Anna Trenowyth is assigned to duty in at Nanreath Hall, the ancestral home of Anna’s mother’s family in Cornwall, which now serves as a military hospital. Anna is a stranger there. Her mother, Katherine, ran away before Anna was born and died shortly after. Anna’s cousin is the present earl, but the bitter wounded man and his snobbish mother are dismayed to learn Anna’s identity when she arrives. Entries from her mother’s journal, in which Katherine describe her love for a man she cannot marry, are braided with Anna’s story. Who was the father Anna never knew? Why did Katherine’s parents call him “unsuitable”? The journal contains the answers Anna desperately wants but, unaware of the journal’s existence, Anna turns to her unreliable cousin for the truth.

Katherine’s story is an overly familiar one. But Anna’s search for love and meaning in her life, apart from her family history, is touchingly real, which makes the novel difficult to put down. The Secrets of Nanreath Hall is intriguing, if not totally original, and will be enjoyed by romance readers.

Jeanne Greene THE WIFE’S TALE Christine Wells, Penguin Australia, 2016, A$32.99, pb, 439pp, 9780143799894 This is a dual-narrative novel with a difference.

In one section, a modern-day woman becomes intrigued by centuries-old secrets about an elegant country home and its former mistress, a

mysterious dark-haired lady in red. The historical thread centers on that lady’s troubled marriage in Georgian England, which conjures up images of decadent aristocrats and scandalous affairs. Wells, a debut novelist, takes a fresh approach to both storylines, intertwining them in surprising and satisfying ways.

Liz Jones is a fabulous character. A career-driven corporate lawyer from Brisbane, she’s outgoing, funny, and occasionally blunt, but it’s for the right reasons. When her boss asks her to travel to the Isle of Wight and investigate the history of Seagrove, a stately home once owned by his ancestor, she resists – a beach vacation with her husband awaits.

But her marriage is shaky, and their joint holiday doesn’t happen, so soon Liz finds herself abroad, renting Seagrove’s guest cottage. Here she gets entangled with the Nash family, including guarded, down-to-earth Theo, while pretending to be researching Delany, his notorious ancestress. Wells’ background as an attorney adds depth: in 1789, Delany’s husband, an earlier Lord Nash, goes to court against his brother Julian, a “radical rogue and reckless libertine,” for supposedly having seduced his beautiful wife.

There’s more to the story, of course. What stands out is how real the situations feel, and how skillfully Wells avoids stereotypes. Delany makes a grand entrance into the courtroom and novel, complete with ostrich-plumed hat and confidence to spare, but her version of her alleged adultery (as her journal reveals) takes unexpected twists. Liz’s story also has significant heft, especially when her deception begins to clash with her closeness to the Nashes, Theo especially. Even the villainous characters are drawn with nuance. Full of great dialogue, romance, and a breathtaking coastal landscape, this engrossing novel deserves a wide audience.

Sarah Johnson THE FRENCH WAR BRIDE Robin Wells, Berkley, 2016, $16.00, pb, 466pp, 9780425282441 This novel is told with dual narrators: two women who loved the same man. Kat was the darling of the country club set, a doctor’s daughter in a small Louisiana town. Engaged to her high school sweetheart, dashing Jack O’Connor, all she had to do was wait for him to come home from the war. But in a stunning turn of events, Amélie, a young Frenchwoman who has lost everything, becomes his bride overseas and returns with him to Louisiana.

The story begins as Kat and Amélie meet in their old age and Kat confronts Amélie, demanding to know the true story. Amelie recounts for Kat the dramatic Nazi occupation of Paris, and the horrors of the war for the people of France. As her story unfolds the reader begins to understand her part in the French Resistance and Jack’s inevitable decision to bring Amélie to America as his wife.

While Kat still feels anger and jealously toward Amélie, she starts to see how the war forever changed peoples’ lives, including her own. A tightly woven plot incorporating riveting facets of the Nazi occupation makes this character-driven novel a delight to read, and sheds light on both the devastation of France during WWII and the Multi-period

cruelties that war gives birth to.

Linda Harris Sittig THE BIRDS OF OPULENCE Crystal Wilkinson, Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2016, $24.95, hb, 202pp, 9780813166919 Madness and memories, whether good or bad, are handed down through families like heirlooms.

For the women of Opulence, Kentucky, life is no different. This rural black township is small enough that everyone knows everyone else, and few secrets are kept for long. Even the most deeply hidden scandals reverberate through generations. In 1962 Mama Minnie Goode takes her granddaughter Lucy to a squash patch to give birth to Yolanda.

Why? Mama Minnie was born in the same squash patch, but that is not the only reason.

Women of the Goode family – Mama Minnie, Tookie, Lucy, and Yolanda – witness their mothers’ struggles with men and children, postpartum depression and shame, and they hope desperately to escape the same woes. Their neighbor, the widow Francine Clark, has her own secret to keep after she becomes pregnant by rape. She remembers how people had talked about her mother after she went mad, so Francine keeps the attack to herself.

Another secret, destined to be borne through life like a distasteful aura by Francine and her wayward daughter, Mona.

Crystal Wilkinson’s multigenerational novel, The Birds of Opulence, is an incandescent visit with four generations of Goode women. Birds, all: they are alert and listening, caring or unheeding, and some of them more than a little wild. The award-winning Ms. Wilkinson will draw you into her compulsively readable story with deceptively simple dialogue and vivid imagery, and the complex, unforgettable Goode women will captivate you.

Highly recommended for lovers of entwined family stories, and for everyone else as well.

Jo Ann Butler

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THE LOST GIRLS Heather Young, Morrow, 2016, $26.95, hb, 339pp, 9780062456601 As I said, I am the last. Since Lilith’s passing three years ago, the story of that summer has been mine alone to keep or to share.

Lucy Evans, dying alone in an isolated lake house, has shouldered a burden for 64 years: a secret she now wishes to divulge to her greatniece, Justine, her sole beneficiary, in a letter to be read after her death. But when Justine takes possession of her great-aunt’s house, she is fleeing a suffocating relationship and trying to settle her daughters in a new school while coping with the return of her vagabond mother. So it is not until later, after Justine’s daughter has fallen under the spell of the lake house—and of six-year-old Emily, who long ago went missing—that Justine discovers Lucy’s letter. In it, Lucy resurrects the summer of 1935, a season of shifting allegiances for the Evans Multi-period — Historical Fantasy

family.

As eleven-year-old Lucy unpacks her trunks, she imagines the camaraderie she’ll share with her older sister. But thirteen-year-old Lilith, growing up and suddenly coquettish, shuns Lucy in favor of friends her own age. With Lilith spending more time away from the family, Lucy garners the attention her brooding father had reserved for his eldest. And as Lucy becomes her father’s favorite, her mother tightens her already constant vigilance over six-year-old Emily. But even Mrs. Evans has to blink.

Lucy speaks her truths with candor, rolling out the secrets and unspeakable pacts that would anchor the Evans family to the lake house and taint four generations of Evans women. Into Lucy’s intimate recitation author Heather Young weaves the story of Justine’s nomadic life, incrementally turning up the tension that transforms a beautifully crafted work of historical fiction into a brilliant psychological thriller that rivals Shirley Jackson’s finest work. Highly recommended.

Rebecca Kightlinger

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timeslip

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THE VELVET CLOAK OF MOONLIGHT Christina Courtenay, Choc Lit, 2016, £7.99/$11.95, pb, 352pp, 9781781893203 Coincidentally, this title came up for review while I was planning a trip to Raglan Castle in South Wales, and it turned out to be a perfect introduction to the site. It’s a well-written dualtime romance partly set against a pivotal episode of English Civil War history: the 1646 siege of Raglan, which was among the last Royalist strongholds to fall to Parliamentary forces. Today the castle is a picturesque ruin.

Tess, the young Countess of Merrick, is the likeable present-day heroine. A talented furniture artist, she gained her title by marrying her estranged late husband, Giles, a compulsive gambler who was killed in a drunk-driving accident. Because of his habit, she has little money to spare. The estate was entailed, so Tess expects to vacate Merrick Court once Giles’s closest heir is found and moves in.

He turns out to be Josh Owens, a handsome Kiwi adventurer. Initially Josh wants to sell the place, but he comes to find rural Welsh farm life appealing.

He finds Tess appealing, too.

The time-shifts are smoothly handled. Tess and Josh begin seeing ghosts and tapping into the past through the eyes of a 1640s-era couple who seem to be warning them about something. Arabella Dauncey, the dispossessed heiress of Merrick Court, lives at nearby Raglan Castle as the Marquis of Worcester’s ward. Rhys Cadell, a Cavalier knight, cares for her but is unsure of her loyalties.

Courtenay provides wonderful visual details of the castle interior in its elegant former state. Readers are carried along on a daring moonlight ride and experience the siege as living spaces become overcrowded and Fairfax’s large New Model Army gathers outside, its cannonballs destroying Raglan’s walls piece by piece. Family squabbles, rumors of lost treasure, and a couple of nasty villains add to

the entertaining plotline.

Sarah Johnson

THE CONJURED WOMAN: Emerald Scarab Anne Gross, Beaufort, 2016, $16.95, pb, 300pp, 9780825307980 In 1808, Napoleon is looking to conquer Spain. Adelaide Lenormand, France’s preeminent fortune-teller, has a plan to aid Napoleon by conjuring a golem to be his trustworthy manservant. At the dinner party ritual, however, something goes wrong. During a struggle, the golem yanks an emerald scarab necklace off Napoleon’s neck and mysteriously disappears.

While the police search for the emerald, Adelaide seeks the golem. Yet what she’s conjured is a 21st-century nurse named Elise Dubois, who is found unconscious outside a London public house. When Elise wakes up, she finds herself 200 years in the past with no idea how she got there.

Despite a couple of interesting historical tidbits, overall the book’s setting is not strong and mostly describes how things smell (i.e., like urine), with scenes of men urinating on outdoor walls (where else would the smell come from?). By the end, nothing is resolved, and there’s a cliffhanger. How is a modern woman conjured instead of a golem?

How can French people hear Elise speaking French when she does not understand French words spoken to her? How does Elise portal-jump from France to London? What was the secret society’s true plan, La Société d’Isis (obviously referencing ancient Egypt’s goddess, Isis)? Why is the emerald scarab so important to them?

I didn’t like Elise at all. Readers are introduced to her as she sneaks out on a guy “the morning after” (and she despises the thought of having to talk to him after sex). Elise is self-centered, disrespectful, and ungrateful, and she undergoes no character development. Her constant use of modern idioms (“wouldn’t it be cool,” “are you okay”) made me cringe. The story reads like it’s about a petulant teenager lost in a 19th century-themed Renaissance festival.

J. Lynn Else

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CONGRESS OF SECRETS Stephanie Burgis, Pyr, 2016, $17.00, pb, 340pp, 9781633881990 At the 1814 Congress of Vienna, diplomats and aristocrats gather to reshape the boundaries of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Lady Caroline Wyndham is a wealthy English widow in attendance, and with a secret agenda.

She seeks her father’s freedom. Caroline was born Karolina and is the daughter of a Viennese printer who was arrested for publishing seditious pamphlets over 20 years ago. But there’s more to Karolina’s story. She was also arrested by the head of the secret police, Count Pergen, an alchemist who performed dark magical experiments on her for years until she was sold off into marriage.

When Karolina runs into a childhood friend, Michael Steinhuller, her plans begin to unravel. He HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 55

apprenticed with Karolina’s father, and she blames Michael for abandoning them on the night they were arrested. Since that night, Michael has been on the run as a con artist. He’s in Vienna posing as a Russian noble attempting to earn reparations for losses caused by Napoleon’s army. He hopes to finally stop running and gain enough money to live comfortably. Yet when he runs into Karolina, his priorities change.

Nineteenth-century Vienna comes alive in this historical fantasy novel. The historical details are fantastic. Burgis develops interesting fictional characters who walk side by side with wellresearched real-life people, including Emperor Francis II, Count Pergen, and the Prince de Ligne, to name a few. Burgis should edit movies because her book is expertly paced. My only minor complaint is that the last couple chapters of the finale felt a bit slow when compared to everything leading up to that point.

With a high level of tension and intrigue (which starts very early in the novel), this book is hard to put down. Quite enjoyable. I would definitely pick up another novel by Burgis.

J. Lynn Else THE TENGU’S GAME OF GO: Book 4 in the Tale of Shikanoko Series Lian Hearn, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016, $13.00, pb, 256pp, 9780374536343.

“All the pieces were in their positions, and flames were charring the edges. It was time to act… The tengu had already told him what he was to do: join forces with your brother; find Shikanoko, and offer him these forces so the Emperor might be restored and Heaven placated.” The nature of the ancient Japanese game of go is to surround the enemy on all sides so as to remove an impending threat.

In Lian Hearn’s final novel in the Shikanoko series, the previous major and minor players converge for the final battle to recover Japan’s true Divine Emperor, Yasunori. However, not only do his opponents vie for victory, but Yasunori rejects the imperial role others insist he must assume, and he absolutely rejects Shikanoko. The Spirit brothers prefer to use their powers mischievously but are now called to serve a higher power.

Characters destined for each other fall in love with those outside the Divine plan. Only the one who truly loves Shikanoko can remove the hideous and magical antler mask he was forced to wear while hiding in the Darkwood. The ruler Aritomi is dying but believes he will surprise all with the immortality inherent in the sorcery he has learned over the years. Fathers, mothers and sons reunite and must explain virtuous and nefarious past acts.

All in all, this medieval Japanese story, the reimagining of several classic Japanese literary tales, comes to an intriguing, riveting and actionpacked finale sure to please fans of Asian literature and newcomers to the genre as well. Nicely crafted, packed with surprises, memorable and highly recommended historical fiction by the skilled author, Lian Hearn.

Viviane Crystal ETERNA AND OMEGA Leanna Renee Hieber, Tor, 2016, $25.99, hb, 332pp, 9780765336750 This is the second book in a gaslight fantasy 56 | Reviews |

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series (after The Eterna Files) that follows the efforts of two organizations – Eterna, based in New York, and Omega, based in London – with a common goal: finding the secret of immortality.

In this book, their employees, a motley band of mediums, magicians and others, are pitted against those who would use these occult powers for evil, harnessing hordes of shadowy demons in a quest for dominance over both the human and supernatural realms.

I must admit that I found this book confusing and hard to read. Even after going back and reading the first book, I constantly felt like I was missing something. I’m not sure if that came from the sheer number of characters, the author’s writing style, or the pond-hopping dual/intersecting plotline.

I found the ending to be typical of stories that pit good against evil and therefore unsatisfying.

However, the author excels at creating a spooky Victorian atmosphere that at times borders on horrific and has crafted an enemy who makes Professor Moriarty look like a saint. If you like your Victorian fiction dark, dizzying and magical, you may enjoy this book. But read the first book before this one.

Nicole Evelina GHOST TALKERS Mary Robinette Kowal, Tor, 2016, $24.99/ C$34.99, hb, 304pp, 9780765378255 When Kowal’s popular and addictive Glamourist series came to an end, fans of her magic-enhanced Regency mystery/romance mourned, but they will be happy to pick up this new series about a young American medium, Ginger Stuyvesant, who works in the WWI Allied Spirit Corps. A talented, intelligent channeler and extra-corporeal traveler, she interviews the shades of just-killed Allied soldiers to pinpoint German troop movements and strategies. Ginger loves her work and her British fiancé, Ben Harford, equally, but finds herself thrust into the hell of wartime France when she uncovers a traitor in the Allied forces who can only be exposed with ghostly intelligence.

Ginger’s best friend Helen, a West Indian medium, adds diversity to the usual cast of practical British types who make up the Corps.

Ginger is a plucky and compassionate figure whom readers will want to know more about, particularly since Kowal doesn’t waste time on her personal history but leaps directly into a narrative that moves at a brisk pace. The novel cleverly draws on the historical Spiritualist movement for the big “what-if ” that powers the plot, although coincidences are a bit too numerous and the formulaic mystery lacks suspense. The device of indicating a character’s emotions through the color of her aura also becomes a bit repetitive. Still, Kowal creates a believable military technology out of communion with the dead while neatly avoiding its messier metaphysical implications, keeping the focus rightly on Ginger, her sense of humor, and her adventurous spirit(s).

Kristen McDermott

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EVERFAIR Nisi Shawl, Tor, 2016, $26.99/C$37.99, hb, 308pp, 9780765338051 Nisi Shawl has created an exciting new perspective on the steampunk genre by choosing a less familiar corner of the Victorian British Empire as her setting. In her epic alternate history, the Congo Free State becomes the site of a Utopian society, Everfair, established by African-American missionaries, refugees from Leopold II’s genocidal exploitation of the Congolese, and members of the real-life Fabian Society (progenitor of England’s Socialist movement and Labour Party). A sweeping cast of characters (an absolutely necessary guide is included) presents a cross-section of races, ethnicities, nations, and genders, who become allies, families, and adversaries in the struggle to forge a democratic nation out of a beautiful landscape beset by colonialism’s toxic legacy.

Shawl brilliantly reimagines the historical setting by introducing supernatural and technological elements such as nuclear-powered airships, antibiotics, and spirit traveling, all of which give the Everfairians an advantage in resisting their colonial oppressors from the 1880s through World War I. This allows Shawl to foresee a 20th century in which the innovation, spirituality, diversity, and passion of a variety of African cultures change the course of world history.

It’s an incredibly ambitious project, but Shawl tells it from the viewpoints of men and women intimately connected both to their ideals and to each other – most notably the polyamorous Albin clan headed by “the Poet,” Daisy; her lover, mixedrace inventor/author/spy Lisette Toutournier; ambitious Congolese king Mwenda and his visionary wife, Josina; Thomas Jefferson Wilson, a conflicted African-American missionary turned spirit-walking revolutionary; and genius engineer Ho Lin-Huang.

The narrative shifts rapidly from character to character and year to year, which may overwhelm some readers. But even within its grand scale, Shawl creates intimate moments of stunning natural beauty, emotional poignancy, and philosophical insight. This is both an important expansion of the overwhelmingly European steampunk genre, and a marvelous reading experience in its own right.

Kristen McDermott

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THE HYPNOTIST Laurence Anholt, Corgi Children’s, 2016, £7.99, pb, 342pp, 9780552573450 It is 1963 in the American Deep South, a land divided by colour and prejudice. Here, the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws hold sway. Twelve-year-old Black orphan Pip is bought for $75 by Zachary, an elderly white farmer, as a companion and carer for his bedridden wife, Lilybelle. Pip’s only possession is a copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, which belonged to his mother. He tends to Lilybelle with great care and he reads to her from his book, and a bond grows between them. He slowly falls in love with Hannah, the mute Native American servant girl, Historical Fantasy — Children & YA

and his life might have been bearable if it wasn’t for Zachary’s and Lilybelle’s brutal and possibly insane ex-Vietnam veteran son Erwin, who is the County Leader of the KKK. Pip and Hannah are befriended by their Irish neighbour, Professor Jack Morrow, the hypnotist of the title, and it is with Jack’s help that they survive the dangerous world they live in and build a future together.

The Hypnotist is a story of prejudice and segregation, of looming danger and great brutality, but it is also a story of love and hope. The characters, unusual and beautifully drawn, glow on the page, and there is a thread of magical realism to the narrative that at times lifts it above the dust and heat and ugliness of the setting and the history of the time. The details of Jack Morrow’s ability as a hypnotist are fascinating, and the story of Pip’s early childhood, which Jack helps him to revisit, is poignant. A timeline of the historical events of 1963 is helpfully included. This is a wonderful book with real heart, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Pat Walsh SERAFINA AND THE TWISTED STAFF Robert Beatty, Disney-Hyperion, 2016, $16.99/ C$17.99, hb, 384pp, 9781484775035 In 1899, twelve-year-old Serafina, Chief Rat Catcher for the Biltmore estate and the daughter of shapeshifting mountain lions (or catamounts), must fight an evil threatening all the humans and animals of the Blue Ridge Mountains—even at great risk to her own life.

This story begins a few short months after the dramatic events of the first book in the series, Serafina and the Black Cloak. After living secretly in the basement of the Biltmore House, Serafina is now known to the household and struggles to find her place among the staff and family. At night she continues her duties as rat catcher and explores the deep woods surrounding the estate where her catamount mother and half-siblings live.

Having been raised by Pa, her surrogate father, she is caught between two worlds. She wonders how she fits in; she’s too wild to be a lady at the elegant estate and too human to join the catamounts. Late one night, she encounters a strange and terrifying figure, and is attacked by vicious wolfhounds. She meets a feral boy, Waysa, who reveals that the humans and animals of the Blue Ridge Mountains are in terrible danger from a sinister force. As malevolent magic descends on the beautiful forests of Western North Carolina, Serafina must fight for her life and for the people and creatures she loves. When she comes face-toface with the evil infecting Biltmore, she discovers the danger is far greater than she’d ever imagined.

To save her beloved home, she must fight—and defeat—forces far beyond her own strength.

Beatty’s series is aimed at middle-graders, an age group perfectly suited to the story of a brave female heroine struggling with her place in the world. The novel is intense, fast-paced, and well-plotted.

Lorraine Norwood UNBOUND Ann E. Burg, Scholastic, 2016, $16.99, hb, 352pp, 9780545934275 Grace, a nine-year-old slave in pre-Civil War America, lives with her mother and stepfather, who Children & YA

work in the tobacco fields, and the elderly Sara, who cares for her and her two little brothers. When Grace is sent to work at the Big House, her mother tells her to keep her eyes down, and Sara warns her against speaking out. Grace struggles with the hatred and cruelty of her master and mistress and with keeping quiet. When she overhears the master say he is going to sell her mother and little brothers, Grace leaves the Big House and encourages her family to flee. With little time and few resources, they head for the dangerous swamp beyond the lake where they believe a settlement of escaped slaves hides.

Written in free-verse poetry, Unbound is a beautiful story. Burg’s descriptive language and use of dialect are cleverly crafted to bring to life the setting while staying within the reading-level needs of the young reader. Grace is an enjoyable protagonist, full of curiosity, love, fear and bravery.

The plot is exciting: the Big House is a scary, dangerous place for Grace, and so is the swamp full of gators and snakes and wildcats. Although fictional, the story is based on the experiences of former slaves who lived in the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia/North Carolina. An important story, well told. For ages 9-12.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt MAX Sarah Cohen-Scali (trans. Penny Hueston), Walker Books, 2016, £7.99, pb, 391pp, 9781406368253 / Roaring Brook, 2017, $19.99, hb, 432pp, 9781626720718 Originally written in French, this is a startling YA read. It opens as Max addresses us directly from his mother’s womb, ‘I don’t know yet what my name will be. Outside, they can’t decide…’

Max is one of the first babies to be born into the Lebensborn eugenics programme, set up in 1933 to breed Aryan babies to repopulate Germany.

In a compelling voice that is cruel and all-seeing, Max recounts how his mother was selected for her Nordic looks, and paired with an SS officer for one night. Soon she is forced to leave the baby she loves to be raised by the State. But blond, blueeyed and ‘perfect’, Max gladly embraces all that the Reich offers. The shiny badges, the black boots, the ideology of a superior race – this anti-hero loves it all. Until one day at school, the fiercely independent Lukas arrives and Max experiences, well, a feeling: an urge to connect.

This very original novel has already won awards and rightly so. It is tightly told, shocking, richly imagined. The cast of characters viewed through Max’s baby-blue eyes is extraordinary in its range.

(The intriguing Lukas is based on a real-life Jewish teenager who passed himself off as an Aryan.) It contains stories within stories. It effortlessly evokes the details of life under the Nazi regime as events unfold. It conjures horror, inhumanity and pathos.

And yet…

At the outset, Sarah Cohen-Scali asks the reader to ‘feel indulgent towards Max’s flaws, love him, defend him and adopt this orphan of evil.’ This, I confess, I was not able to do. Ultimately, Max – like the regime he represents – does not gain my empathy. However, I wholeheartedly recommend adults, both young (14+) and older, to witness his remarkable story and relish the freedom they have to decide for themselves.

Marion Rose

THE PEARL-SHELL DIVER: A Story of Adventure from the Torres Strait Kay Crabbe, Allen & Unwin, 2016, A$16.99, pb, 208pp, 9781760290474 It is 1898, and 13-year-old Sario lives on an island in the Torres Strait between New Guinea and Australia. His family dive for bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber) and pearl-shell, which they barter with visiting white traders, but Sario’s father Thaati wants to earn real cash and agrees for his son to go with a trader and work on his lugger as a diver. Sario is torn and does not want to leave his island home even if he would like to learn to use underwater pump-diving equipment. He’s also worried as his cousins have never returned after going to work for the white men. When the trader comes for him, he runs away and hides and then returns to his village to face the consequences. Long-term diving has caused Sario’s sister Leilani to become deaf, and his mother Apu is also desperately ill, and he must find a way of earning money to keep the family together.

The descriptions of a people and idyllic way of life threatened by the encroaching 20th century are fascinating and demonstrate considerable research, but its narrative style is at times choppy and even slow for an adventure story, although it does gather pace towards the end. There is racism and jealousy between the various ethnic workers as well as exploitation by the white bosses. The author’s notes and timeline are helpful in placing events in context. A number of issues are left unresolved and may indicate a sequel.

This is a novel aimed at the 9-13 age group, and it is likely to find favour with teachers in Australian schools.

Marina Maxwell SWEET HOME ALASKA Carole Estby Dagg, Nancy Paulsen Books, 2016, $16.99/C$21.99, hb, 304pp, 9780399172038 Times are tough for the Johnson family. It’s 1934, and the Great Depression has left them without jobs. They’re left with two options: Move in with Mrs. Johnson’s mother or apply for President Roosevelt’s New Deal colony. The latter offers them a fresh start but would mean moving the family from Wisconsin to Alaska! Mrs. Johnson agrees to give it a chance for one harvest season.

Upon arrival, the residents are living in tents, the town is under construction, there aren’t enough hammers for the house-building demand, there’s no electricity, and everyone shares a community outhouse. The oldest Johnson child, Terpsichore (pronounced Terp-sick-oh-ree), remains undaunted. Drawing on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books as a guide, Terpsichore works to make life easier for her family and convince her mother that Alaska is the place their family was meant to be.

Of note, this book doesn’t include the native Alaskan societies. Early on, the family objects to their move, lamenting about living in igloos and eating whale blubber. While probably a typical 1930s stereotype, Dagg does not take time to debunk these attitudes. The author’s afterword explains why she didn’t include Native peoples.

I respect her choice in this regard; however, on the same token, cultural stereotypes shouldn’t be included either.

All in all, this is a cute story with heartwarming moments. Terpsichore is a hard-working girl. She HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 57

first collects books to start up a library. Then she attempts to grow a prize-winning pumpkin (these pumpkin-growing scenes are quite charming).

Terpsichore’s projects uniquely highlight the hardships colonists faced either from their lack of resources, severe weather, or isolation from other cities.

Dagg creates spunky, well-developed characters.

Terpsichore reads a little blandly at first, but eventually develops her voice. A well-researched, well-detailed, straightforward plotline which fans of “American Girl” books will enjoy.

J. Lynn Else

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THE DRAGON’S HOARD Lari Don, illus. by Cate James, Frances Lincoln, 2016, £14.99. hb, 61pp, 9781847806819 I really enjoyed these eleven stories from the Viking sagas, obviously carefully chosen for their variety.

Most involve fighting but sometimes, as in Hunting Magnus, the Viking, Magnus, decides that he doesn’t want to fight. Instead, he escapes from his lord by a clever trick. In The Boy in the Bones, the hero, Bodvar, takes a bullied boy under his wing and gives him the courage to stand up for himself.

It’s a glimpse into a world with very different assumptions from our own, one where men are expected to enjoy killing people, and where the weak are disposed of. However, when the warrior Thorir comes across an abandoned baby in The Beserker’s Baby, he decides not to leave it to its fate.

My favourite is The Bear in Chains. Audun captures a polar bear in Greenland as a present for the King of Denmark. Here the story is turned on its head when Lari Don changes viewpoint and tells us what the bear did next.

Females rarely feature in the sagas but, when they do, they come across as single-minded and often fierce women. Eithne, the Viking mother in The Raven Banner expects her son to die in battle; not to do so would disgrace her.

The spiky ink and watercolour illustrations, by Cate James, are obviously well-researched and get across the stark but compelling nature of the sagas, where survival is only for the fittest. The world she depicts complements Lori Don’s stories admirably.

The Dragon’s Hoard is meant to be read out loud, and Lori Don tells us she often changes the story slightly when reading them aloud in schools – as the original story-tellers would have done. Some of the stories are blood-thirsty, but most children of six plus should enjoy them, especially if an adult is there.

Elizabeth Hawksley THE WOLVES OF CURRUMPAW William Grill, Flying Eye Books, 2016, $24.00/£14.99, hb, 80pp, 9781909263833 Half a million wild wolves once roamed freely across North America. There are about 9,000 left today. Set in New Mexico during the closing days 58 | Reviews |

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of the old west, this captivating illustrated book tells the true story of its two main characters; Old Lobo, leader of a pack of notorious wolves, and Ernest Thompson Seton, renowned hunter turned pioneering and iconic American conservationist.

With their normal prey, Bison, hunted to depletion, Lobo’s small pack has been forced to adapt by raiding cattle and outsmarting all the efforts of ranchers to catch them. The clever Lobo eludes poisons, traps, hunting dogs and even the magic of a werewolf hunter. Only when Seton arrives with the newest technology does the pack’s reign come to an end.

Based on Seton’s book, Wild Animals I Have Known, this children’s storybook is educational and appealing for young ones and the adults who will enjoy reading it with them. Seton went on to become a founder of the Boy Scouts of America.

He admitted his experience with Lobo was a turning point in his life. The Wolves of Currumpaw will surely charm readers as Lobo charmed Seton.

Thomas J. Howley THE LITTLE PIONEER Adam Hancher, Frances Lincoln, 2016, £11.99, hb, 32pp, 9781847807984 The illustrator, Adam Hancher, has based his dramatic picture book on true-life pioneers’ tales.

Set in the U.S. in the 19th century, this story gives an account of one small wagon train heading off into the West, narrated by a young girl whose family must leave everything familiar and face the unknown.

It is also a subtle account of dealing with the loss of a parent, for our narrator’s father has just died. The sense of loss is revealed not in words but in the depicted vast, open, empty spaces of the land through which they travel. Nature and the wilderness almost defeat them, but along the way our heroine learns to respect ‘the wild’ in both nature and humankind, and even manages to stand up alone against a terrible danger.

The story is told in brief text which cleverly uses 19th-century language and inflexion to add a sense of otherness. It is never anything other than clear and vivid: ‘It was a fearful time in those early days…’, ‘weary and footsore, we stopped to rest’. The illustrations are for the most part in sombre washes of yellow, grey, brown and dark blue, enlivened by the simple vigorous characterisations of people and animals, and by touches of warm red, in the ‘wild’ Mr. Reed’s shirt, and in the repeated motif of fire as a symbol of safety and community.

There are stunning full page spreads of key scenes – crossing a raging torrent, a night of festivity in camp, and, especially, the surreal landscape into which our heroine awakens one day, alone in the desert, surrounded by cattle bones and the discarded trappings of civilisation, a piano, a grand-father clock… all equally abandoned.

This is a beautiful book aimed at 4 – 9 year olds, for reading aloud or school-work.

Jane Burke THERESA MAKES A TAPESTRY Alexandra S.D. Hinrichs, illus. by Renée Graef, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2015, $19.95, hb, 40pp, 9781606064733 The same Getty Museum that produced the classic Marguerite Makes a Book brings us this new

picture book about Thérèse, who lives with her family in Les Gobelins manufactory in the Paris of Louis XIV: the place a tourist can still visit today to see craftspeople at work. The plot is the predictable one that modern girls will want to have: girls and women are not taught to work at the looms, but fictional Thérèse makes a piece that wins the King’s favor with what becomes a famous tapestry. The real tapestry and historical background are given in ample detail in a smaller-print article on the last page. The pictures are delightful and illustrate the techniques Thérèse follows – from the source of her dyes and the cartoon she works from to the way the knots are made – with such care that the adult researcher will find them useful.

Ann Chamberlin FULL OF BEANS Jennifer L. Holm, Random House, 2016, $16.99/ C$21.99, hb, 208pp, 9780553510362 This story is set during the Great Depression in Key West, Florida. Beans Curry, along with his pals Pork Chop, Kermit, and Too Bad, are desperate to make any money they can, both to help their families and to be able to buy a few delicacies for themselves, like a ticket to one of Shirley Temple’s movies. When Beans is told to babysit his little brother, Buddy, aged three, as usual, Beans comes up with a great idea to make the job a little easier.

He puts Buddy in a wagon with his blanket and begins to pull him around. Soon, Buddy is fast asleep, the blanket covering him.

While Beans and Kermit are looking for tin cans to sell, with Buddy snoring softly in the background, they run across Johnny Cakes, a neighborhood crook. Johnny Cakes sees Buddy and is inspired – he’s just found a way to smuggle his illegal liquor to customers all over town. He makes Beans an offer he can’t refuse.

Beans loves being able to give his mother money for groceries and other things she needs; however, he is also plagued by guilt, knowing if his mom knew the source of his sudden wealth, she would be ashamed of him. Will Beans go over to the dark side completely or will his better nature prevail?

Holm paints an accurate and fascinating picture of life for children in the ´30s. The slang of the times is sprinkled throughout the novel, adding authenticity. But it is the cleverness and pureheartedness of Beans and his family that make this a funny, warm novel.

Anne Clinard Barnhill THE ART OF REBELLION Brenda Joyce Leahy, Rebelight, 2016, $15.99/£13.99, pb, 254pp, 9780994839985 In her debut novel, Leahy gives us a charming young girl of sixteen, Gabrielle Villiers, who is in love with painting. It’s set in Paris during La Belle Époque (from the late 19th to the early 20th century); this “beautiful era” was a time of peace, but also a time of invention and a flourishing of the arts. Gabbi, the youngest of three sisters, has no interest in marriage but finds herself the object of attention of a certain baron who is at least twice her age and is in no way the kind of man she could ever love. So, Gabbi, faced with a miserable marriage, defies convention and flees to Paris, where she hopes to find her suffragette Grandmère, who disappeared four years earlier after a skirmish with Children & YA

the police during a women’s march for equal rights.

A girl in the big city is bound to run into trouble and Gabbi does just that. From losing her money to a young woman who befriends her, to discovering the great art at the Louvre, to encountering a charming and mysterious young man, Gabbi meets danger with aplomb and wit. This charming book of manners (think of a French Jane Austen) is entertaining, well-writte,n and surprising. A delightful read.

Anne Clinard Barnhill STALKING JACK THE RIPPER Kerri Maniscalco, Jimmy Patterson, 2016, $18.99/ C$22.99, hb, 336pp, 031627349X I feel almost dishonest reviewing this wonderful debut novel. Not because I know the author (I don’t) or because I have a connection to the publisher (certainly not). But because I. Love. Jack the Ripper novels. That said, I’m also super picky about my Jack novels, and this one definitely lit my fire.

Stalking Jack the Ripper grabbed my attention from page one. Audrey Rose Wadsworth is a highborn Victorian lady who wants to become an anatomist, to the horror of her father, who is very much a product of his times. Through various twists of fate, Audrey is drawn into the hunt for Jack the Ripper. She and Thomas, her uncle’s apprentice with whom she reluctantly partners, strike up an effective but fiery team, even as they grow closer to each other and to danger. As she gets sucked deeper into the manhunt, she begins to have grave fears that the man she is stalking is one of the people she is closest to.

Maniscalco creates delightful atmosphere throughout; I felt as though the chill of London’s seedy underbelly was worming its way into my bones at times. The secondary characters need a bit more developing and there are some anachronisms that chafe a bit. For example, the Victorians loved their etiquette. Audrey knows she shouldn’t allow Thomas Cresswell into her parlour alone, but she does anyway. That likely wouldn’t have happened in reality, but these anachronisms are not enough to throw off the fast-paced plot.

This novel is also the very first to be published under James Patterson’s new children’s imprint, Jimmy Patterson books, which is cool. However, I feel it needs a warning for sensitive readers, and should definitely not be read by those younger than 13. It features a couple of medically graphic photos, and the climax would be disturbing even in some adult novels.

Kristen McQuinn THE DEMON UNDERTAKER Cameron McAllister, Corgi, 2016, £6.99, pb, 328pp, 9780552574044 London, 1749: dirty, rat-infested and dangerous.

Everyone is terrified of the Demon Undertaker, a fiend with red eyes wearing a skull mask who supplies bodies for dissection. His latest victim is Lady Grace Davenport.

Young Tom Fielding, newly arrived from America to stay with his unknown uncle Henry Fielding, the Chief Magistrate, has barely stepped off the stagecoach when he’s nearly run down by a hearse driven at high speed by a masked man. He immediately gives chase. But things go disastrously Children & YA

wrong and he’s arrested and thrown into prison.

By the time he meets his uncle, he’s bruised, in shackles, hungry and filthy. Will Mr Fielding believe who he is?

I really enjoyed this book. The author knows exactly how to grab the reader from page one and yank them into the story. I particularly liked the gruesome (and authentic) historical detail. Having Tom clueless about 18th-century London means that we, too, can learn with him about the criminal underworld and its scams and gangs. There is also a useful Glossary.

The Demon Undertaker is obviously the start of a series and it’s going to be terrific. I can’t wait to read the next book. For ten plus.

Elizabeth Hawksley The Demon Undertaker has a clever plot and an original storyline, however at times I felt that there were too many coincidences, and the reader starts to question the sequence of events. I did like the idea of the ‘undertaker’ being a kidnapper, or worse, and the author evokes a real sense of menace. Yet I found that the writing could be predictable, for example, the main characters are always saved from death just in the nick of time. Overall, I would recommend this book for eleven plus.

Freya Sutcliffe, age 14 OF BETTER BLOOD Susan Moger, AW Teen, 2016, $16.99, hb, 304pp, 9780807547748 In 1922 New York, a teenage girl contracts polio. Her father sends her to a carnival troupe, where she performs plays advocating the danger to society of the “unfit.” There she meets another teenage girl, a “fit,” wise-ass con artist and carney worker, and they become friends. Then, there’s a murder; actually, several murders. The girls have to figure out who’s committing them and why.

This is an excellent story, well told. It’s authentic historical fiction, but there are elements of mystery and thriller. There’s a locked filing cabinet and disappearing children. There’s even a semblance of horror, where the reader will think, “Oh, please don’t go into that abandoned lighthouse.” A modern writing style for fiction called “take care of the reader” recommends the writer to repeat everything that’s important, and not to say anything that’s not.

The author does this. There are a few flashbacks in the beginning to develop the personality of the heroine, but soon after, it’s completely linear and reads like a movie. Each short chapter proceeds immediately from the previous one, and there are no long, boring paragraphs.

There are several snippets of humor. A bad lady tells the heroine, “Now, don’t tell Dorchy.”

The heroine replies, “Of course,” which means, “Of course I’ll tell Dorchy,” so it’s not a lie. Later, the heroine asks, “What are sundries?” Her companion says, “Anything under the sun.” They steal some money and a car from the bad guy, and the carney girl asks casually, “Now which pedal is the brake?”

There’s also great sorrow and despair: “We’re just corks in the river headed for the falls,” and “The tide will pull them out into the Atlantic, and after that, to all the waters of the world.” It’s a deeply disturbing subject, but a thoroughly enjoyable story. Highly recommended.

Kevin Montgomery

LAND OF THE GODS Sally Prue, Bloomsbury, 2016, £5.99, pb, 95pp, 9781472918093 Lucan, a Celtic boy, hides when he sees the amazing, if frightening, sight of a legion of Roman soldiers. Unfortunately, he makes the decision to fall asleep in a stranger’s wagon. From being a free Celt, he finds himself captured and sold as a Roman slave. Lucan’s initial ambitions to escape and return home are thwarted but, as he learns more about his Roman masters, his view of them changes, as does his destiny.

Lucan is quick-witted and a natural survivor. He has understated self-confidence, which is shown through the accessible way we see things from his point of view. This makes the story absorbing as he works his way through each trial the gods place in his path. These gods are Celtic as well as Roman; both cultures believing in fate and destiny.

Many aspects of Roman life are mentioned, such as food, baths and a surprising insight into Roman tax evasion. The scale of their buildings is cleverly conveyed by the impact they have on Lucan when he sees them for the first time.

Roman life can be peaceful and organised if everyone accepts their role as dictated by their gods. Freedom is a right, but not one shared by all… but freedom without the means to survive is somewhat meaningless. However, the fate of a slave can be changed by a single act of bravery. There is a glossary at the end of the book, along with the ingenious invitation to research the terms, facts or ask further questions on the Internet at a deeper level.

I would highly recommend it for readers of 8+ with no upper limit.

Valerie Loh THE DARKEST HOUR Caroline Tung Richmond, Scholastic, 2016, $17.99/C$22.99, hb, 320pp, 9780545801270 Sixteen-year-old Lucie Blaise is devastated when her brother is killed in World War II and volunteers to do her part in the war effort. She’s recruited by the Office of Strategic Services, who are impressed by her fluent French, and placed in a multinational espionage and sabotage unit for girls called Covert Ops. The young women of Covert Ops work undercover in Germanoccupied France, alongside the Resistance, spying, interrogating, sabotaging, and engaging in the occasional spot of assassination. On Lucie’s first mission, she stumbles across information about a new and terrifying weapon that threatens all of Europe, and is charged with tracking it down and dismantling it. But reports of a mole within Covert Ops complicates the investigation and leads Lucie to wonder just who she can trust in France.

Richmond’s Covert Ops is fictional and almost fanciful in its elements. Much disbelief was suspended in imagining a largely autonomous group of teenage spies and assassins, fighting their way across France with an arsenal that would make Q proud. However, the author’s note at the end suggests fact behind the fancy, with a solid list of sources for further reading. While Covert Ops itself may be fictional, the historical inspiration that led to its creation is real and fascinating.

Lucie is engaging as a heroine, and The Darkest Hour is not short on action. Sometimes there is HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 59

perhaps too much for this reader’s taste (it’s of the out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire variety), but both the pace and Lucie’s strength and competency will more than satisfy the target audience. This story will appeal to readers who enjoy books such as Robin LaFevers’ His Fair Assassin series or others with dangerous heroines who spy and kill their way through history.

Jessica Brockmole BLACK POWDER Ally Sherrick, Chicken House, 2016, £6.99, pb, 314pp, 9781910655269 This is a story inspired by the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. It centres on twelve-year-old Tom from Portsmouth, whose father is in prison in London for the capital offence of sheltering a Jesuit priest.

Tom sets off to save his father; and when he falls into danger he is rescued by a man on a mission of his own – a man who calls himself The Falcon, and who takes Tom to London with him, promising to try and help him.

With its constant reversals and twists and turns, Tom’s story is almost as complex as the plot and counter-plot of the Gunpowder Treason itself. The Falcon is, of course, Guy Fawkes, and the unravelling of the Gunpowder Plot is cleverly woven into Tom’s mission to save his father. There are several traditional villains, but The Falcon is a much more rounded character (and, I thought, a convincing portrait of the real Guy Fawkes based on the few details known about him). Tom’s relationship with him is touching and believable; I found myself genuinely wondering how it would work out – even though I knew it couldn’t last long!

The writing is lively and the pace never flags.

Tom has a pet mouse, Jago, and a cousin, Cressida, both of whom add variety to his adventures. The story is well-researched and at the back there are sources, places to visit, and an author’s note. This book should be popular with children of around 9 to 13, in or out of school.

Ann Turnbull THE CASE OF THE GIRL IN GREY Jordan Stratford, Corgi Yearling, 2016, £6.99, pb, 216pp, 9780440871187 London, 1826. In the second Wollstonecraft Detective Agency adventure, rising thirteenyear-old Ada Byron (brilliant mathematician but hopeless with people) and her friend, Mary Godwin (good with people and loves mysteries), are struggling with a new case.

Who is the desperate girl Mary sees running away in the rain in Regent’s Park? Is she any connection of heiress Lizzie Earnshaw, whose fiancé, Sir Caleb Gulpidge, is suspiciously trying to get hold of Lizzie’s fortune before their marriage?

The two girls, Lizzie and Alice, look very alike. And has Mr Earnshaw’s will really gone missing? Ada and Mary are asked to investigate. Things are not helped by the arrival of Ada’s half-sister, the nineyear-old Allegra, who’s desperate to help. She says she’s good at fencing but what’s the use of that?

And Mary’s step-sister, the snobby Jane Clairmont, also wants to be involved.

I enjoyed this, once I disentangled the roles and ages of the four young detectives from their historical counterparts. I’d have found it easier if I hadn’t heard of any of them before. As it was, I 60 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 78, November 2016

couldn’t help thinking: But surely Jane is Allegra’s mother! For much of the book there were six girls to keep track of, and I kept finding myself re-reading to keep track of who was where. Personally, I think that confining the number of girl detectives to three and dropping Jane would be less confusing.

Having said that, this is an enjoyable and exciting read, both as a detective and an adventure story. It is also as a sort of literary treasure hunt for anyone interested in the literature of the period. I liked the young Dickens’ contributions, not to mention Shelley’s, with touches of Charlotte Brontë and Wilkie Collins thrown in for good measure. Girls of 10 plus should enjoy this book.

Elizabeth Hawksley THE SEARCH FOR THE HOMESTEAD TREASURE Ann Treacy, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2016, $16.95/C$21.98, hb, 160pp, 9780816699568 In early 20th-century Minnesota, 14-year-old Martin Gunnarsson, a descendant of Scandinavian immigrants, is moving from the city to his family’s deserted farmland. A recent tragedy had left the Gunnarssons brokenhearted and with few funds.

A fresh starts seemed ideal—to everyone except for Martin, who sorely missed his friends and school.

However, Martin’s father went off to work for the winter, leaving his son in charge of the barren farm, his grieving mother, prickly though wellmeaning great-aunt, and spirited little sister. When his father is unable to return for spring planting, Martin takes it upon himself to tackle the work alone.

A chance meeting with a Gypsy boy, Samson, changes Martin in many ways. The Roma people are outcasts and feared as vagrants by most of society—Martin’s great-aunt especially. Yet Samson displays nothing but loyalty, friendship and kindness, and is a great asset to the laborious work. Just as the planting is coming along, a devious banker threatens to foreclose on the farm.

One shimmer of hope appears with the discovery of an old diary, written by Martin’s aunt, who died years before of diphtheria. A treasure, which was not named other than labeled a dowry, was said to be hidden somewhere on the land. As the situation became more desperate, Martin’s hopes of finding the means to keep the farm are bleak, although in the process he discovers invaluable life lessons and the true meaning of home.

This is a detailed, well-written and immersing read. The history behind the story is fascinating and will be of special interest to Minnesotans and anyone looking for a novel with a Little House on the Prairie feel. Young readers will particularly enjoy Martin’s characterization, as he picks his way through a hard year and pieces his family back together.

Arleigh Johnson ANOTHER ME Eva Wiseman, Tundra, 2016, $16.99/C$21.99, hb, 233pp, 9781770497160 In this YA historical fantasy, one of Wiseman’s teenaged narrators is an ibbur, a figure described in Hebrew kabbalistic writings as a deceased soul who possesses the body of a living human in order to right a great wrong. In this case, Natan, the son of a rag-seller in 13th century Strasbourg, France, has

been murdered as part of a plot to blame the city’s Jews for an outbreak of the Plague; finding himself suddenly in the body of a Christian apprentice, he realizes he is charged with attempting to stop the impending massacre of his community. Natan’s fate is complicated by the fact that the apprentice works for a compassionate gentile draper, the father of his beloved, Elena.

Wiseman has created a fascinating situation and vividly but economically conveys the fear and paranoia of medieval life, alongside the joys of young love. The novel divides the first-person narrative between Natan and Elena, who bravely accepts the fact that her handsome suitor is now a ghost occupying the body of a boy she finds repellant, and also that the fate of Strasbourg’s Jews depends on her ability to befriend both communities. The pace is quick but Natan and Elena have emotionally believable reactions to their uncanny situation. Ultimately, the tale may be too grim for young readers – anti-Semitic violence and detailed descriptions of death by Plague aren’t the traditional stuff of middle-grade fare – and not philosophical enough for readers who really want to know more about Judaic lore. However, Wiseman, an award-winning Canadian author, has turned a little-known moment in history into a thoughtful, humane page-turner.

Kristen McDermott

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nonfiction

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FLORENCE! FOSTER!! JENKINS!!!

Darryl W. Bullock, Overlook, 2016, $24.95, hb, 198pp, 9781468313741 In a slim volume including fifteen black and white photographs, an historical timeline, and a discography, Darryl Bullock describes the indescribable: Florence Foster Jenkins, a woman born for exclamation points! An accomplished pianist, a fundraiser for military charities, and a generous patron of the arts, Florence might have been just another early 20th-century New York heiress if not for her ear-splitting vocals, over-thetop feathered costumes, and unquenchable need to perform at Carnegie Hall—a feat she finally achieved in her 76th year.

With the same affection shown by Florence’s manager-lover and her legions of adoring fans, Bullock writes of a “discordant diva” whose trills could not be distinguished from the “screeching of a faulty radiator.” Yet, socialites, servicemen, and celebrities including Cole Porter, Enrico Caruso, Al Hirschfeld, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Tallulah Bankhead attended Florence’s concerts.

Bullock’s biography is a tuneful accompaniment to the eponymously named movie in which Meryl Streep—another American original—embodies the beloved Madame Florence on the appropriately larger-than-life-sized screen.

Jo Haraf DR JAMES BARRY: A Woman Ahead of Her Time Dr Michael du Preez & Jeremy Dronfield, Oneworld , 2016, £16.99, hb, 478pp, 9781780748313 This modern biography reclaims a historical Children & YA — Nonfiction

figure by telling a fantastic tale of extraordinary deception and medical innovation. James Barry, the first doctor to perform a successful caesarean birth and a reformer of military medical practices, was also Margaret Bulkley, teenage mother and first British female doctor. This is the story of a proud and fiery Cork woman who transformed herself into one of the most famous male military physicians in the British Empire thanks to the influence of powerful patrons, the complicit silence of those who suspected her, and not least her own skill, tenacity and determination not to be constrained by her sex.

A new biography of James Barry explores the life story that caused a contemporary sensation on the famous doctor’s death, sensitively using letters from her unruly family, her own correspondence, extensive research into the mores of the age and the medical knowledge and procedures of the day.

Delving deep into the background of Barry and her traumatic upbringing, the authors bring an authoritative knowledge when discussing medical matters and an understanding tenderness when discussing the extraordinary personal strain wrought on Barry by her constant attempts to keep the secret that would have ruined her.

Gordon O’Sullivan PAX ROMANA: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World Adrian Goldsworthy, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016, £25.00, hb, 513pp, 9780297864288 Historian Adrian Goldsworthy chronicles the rise of Rome, revealing how the Romans came to control so much of the world. He goes into great detail, starting with the rise of the Republic through the age of Julius Caesar and Augustus and then further on to cover the various Roman emperors who reigned in an era of prosperity and peace. Goldsworthy handles the subject with care, balancing how the Romans carried themselves also in terms of their relations with other peoples within the areas that they ended up taking care of outside of the Italian peninsula. He includes descriptions of the various political positions that could be held within a career. The Romans did wage war on many people that they came across in their travels outside of the Italian peninsula. However, they were good at what they did and managed to expand their empire accordingly. Their tactics were self-serving, and they travelled further afield to expand Rome’s hold on territory. The concept of Pax Romana was not perfect – it took hundreds of years to perfect.

It was imposed after conquest, whether the local population wanted it or not. The inclusion of maps, photos, a fairly detailed timeline and a glossary at the end adds to the overall appeal of the book.

Cathy Powell HISTORY AND FICTION: Writers, Their Research, Worlds and Stories Gillian Polack, Peter Lang, 2016, $89.95, hb, 191pp, 9783034319812 Authors incorporate history into their fiction in a variety of ways, and to different degrees, depending on the genre they’re writing, their personal views of the past, the needs of their narrative, the demands of the marketplace, and more. The writer of a fantasy novel set in a romantic Arthurian world won’t approach history in the same way as an Nonfiction

author of fact-based biographical fiction set in the early Middle Ages; both will likely emphasize different aspects of the past than a historian of the period would.

In this book, Gillian Polack, an Australian medieval historian who writes both historical and speculative fiction, serves as an expert guide to the complex relationship that fiction writers have with history. “The role of the fiction writer in exploring history, in creating new interpretations and in exploring old ones, cannot be underestimated,” she writes, showing fiction’s relevance and value, and explaining how authors’ choices affect readers’ understanding of historical events. Over nine chapters, she touches on different facets of the complex history-fiction interface, including the research process, world-building, authors’ establishment of credibility, story development, and how genre choices and publishers’ editorial decisions can influence how history is presented.

Polack’s analysis of this fertile research area is underpinned by her in-depth interviews with thirty fiction writers, primarily those who employ medieval history. Elizabeth Chadwick, Kathleen Cunningham Guler, Felicity Pulman, Helen Hollick, and Chaz Brenchley are among the authors included. Their responses (which are wonderfully candid) add additional context.

Particularly insightful are the authors’ comments about the emotional relationships they have with history. Polack also discusses novelists’ cultural and ethical responsibilities, the concept of transparency with regard to fiction, and the issues that arise when novelists rely on popular images of history or their own assumptions (examples are given). It’s important, as she states, for us to realize that the market plays a big role in deciding which historical interpretations are heard and valued above others.

This study will be an essential read for genre scholars, but the accessible writing style extends its appeal beyond academic circles. Historical novelists can consult it for deeper insight into their own writing and research choices, while anyone curious about how authors bring the past to life through fiction will come away with considerable knowledge of what goes into the crafting of the novels they enjoy.

Sarah Johnson ELEANOR AND HICK: The Love that Shaped a First Lady Susan Quinn, Penguin Press, 2016, $30/C$40, hb, 400pp, 9781594205408 Susan Quinn’s subtitle frames her biography about the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and reporter Lorena Hickok, known to her friends as “Hick.” Both women were raised with a minimum of affection – Eleanor with an adored but usually absent father and a disapproving mother who considered her a disappointment.

Hick’s father abused her throughout her childhood, and her stepmother threw her out of the house. The difference between them was Eleanor’s privileged life of wealth and influence and Hick’s hardscrabble early life. Both Eleanor and Hick longed for affection, and they found it given generously in their time together. Apart, they sent each other thousands of loving letters full of vivid detail. Much of Quinn’s story is based on this correspondence. However, large portions of the

book connect the events of the relationship story to the social and political history of the FDR era and explain this history in some detail. The writer does not explore the emotional depth of this love affair between two people who had felt supremely unloved. Rather, she presents a carefully researched chronology of the time.

Val Adolph 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire Rebecca Rideal, Thomas Dunne, 2016, $27.99, hb, 304pp, 9781250097064 / John Murray, 2016, £20, hb, 304pp, 9781473623538 Rideal, editor of “The History Vault,” calls 1666 the most devastating year in English history. The restored monarchy was at war with the Dutch and French, thousands had died of bubonic plague, and religious dissent was growing. Daily lives were bleak and uncertain. Then fire broke out in London. It was impossible to control, building to an inferno that destroyed most of the city in four days. Afterwards, many thought tragedy was God’s punishment for sin.

The 17th century was literate. Science flourished alongside superstition. Written accounts by contemporaries—people in the streets and geniuses behind the scenes—comprise much of 1666, making it a must-read. Pepys awakened at 3:00am, saw fire several streets away, and went back to bed. Isaac Newton, exiled from London by the fire, continued his work at a farm with an apple tree. It is this human element that makes 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire convincing and hard to put down. Highly recommended for anyone interested in 17th-century European history or the history of science.

Jeanne Greene THE LONG WEEKEND: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars Adrian Tinniswood, Jonathan Cape, 2016, 325, hb, 9780224099455 The title of this volume reflects a certain nostalgic appeal, as being the final time that large English (mostly) rural residences for the privileged classes thrived before the arrival of World War Two changed matters irrevocably. But the country house life had already been threatened by death duties and other financial crises after the end of The Great War.

The tendency with books of this kind is that because there is an enormous body of material available, the narrative can appear essentially anecdotal, in which the author selects a series of historical items of interest for the reader, very often culled from contemporary newspaper reporting. In this case the author utilises reporting and photographs from The Country Life. We also occasionally wander off message, and the author covers subjects such as the abdication of Edward VIII and methods of contemporary transport that seem to be only slightly relevant to the volume. But the chapters that deals with life for the servants in these houses makes particularly fascinating reading. This is a highly informed (the author has written previously about English country house design and life) engaging, and well-written account, that is lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs, printed on high-quality paper.

Douglas Kemp HNR Issue 78, November 2016 | Reviews | 61

© 2016, The Historical Novel Society ISSN: 1471-7492 | Issue 78, November 2016