Historical Novels Review, Issue 80 (May 2017)

A PUBLICATION OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY

HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW Issue 80, May 2017

Celebrating 20 Years HNS Marks Its Anniversary

a starring role female detectives handling contradictions margaret george’s nero writing marlene history, story & fact conjuring the essex serpent sarah perry & the gothic novel renaissance florence unconventional women fact behind the fiction jennifer robson’s latest

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE historical fiction market news | red pencil | new voices | 300+ reviews

Historical Novels R eview

ISSN: 1471-7492 | © 2017 The Historical Novel Society |

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

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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 US (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 Editor:

Lucinda Byatt 13 Park Road Edinburgh, EH6 4LE UK <textline13@gmail.com> |

review s edit o r s , u k

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

Alan Fisk <alan.fisk@alanfisk.com> Publisher Coverage: Aardvark Bureau, Black and White, Bonnier Zaffre, Crooked Cat, Freight, Gallic, Honno, Impress, Karnac, Legend, Pushkin, Oldcastle, Quartet, Sandstone, Saraband, Seren, Serpent’s Tail 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, Glagoslav, Hodder Headline (inc. Coronet, Hodder & Stoughton, NEL, Sceptre); John Murray; Pen & Sword, Robert Hale | Alma and The History Press (interim) Doug Kemp <doug.kemp@lineone.net> Publisher Coverage: Allison & Busby; Little, Brown; Orion; Penguin Random House UK (Cornerstone, Ebury, Transworld, Vintage, and their imprints); Quercus Karen Warren <worldwidewriteruk@gmail.com> Publisher Coverage: Accent; Birlinn/Polygon; Bloomsbury; Duckworth Overlook; Faber & Faber; Granta; HarperCollins UK; Knox Robinson; Pan Macmillan; Penguin Random House UK (Michael Joseph, Penguin General, Penguin Press, and their imprints); Short Books; Simon & Schuster UK

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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: Bloomsbury, FSG; Grove/Atlantic; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Minotaur Books; Picador USA; Poisoned Pen Press; Soho Press; St Martin’s Press; and Tor/Forge |

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Richard Lee <richard@historicalnovelsociety.org> Publisher Coverage: all self-published, subsidy, and electronically published novels |

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 |

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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 <info@vanithasankaran.com> (USA), or Elisabeth Storrs <contact@hnsa.org.au> (Australasia).

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Historical Novels R eview I s s u e 8 0 , Ma y 2017 | I SSN 1471-7492

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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 ma rc gr a ha m, linne a h arts uyker, j es s kidd & c r y s t a l k ing | my fanw y cook

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r ed pe nc il g i rl i n d i sgu i se | c in dy vallar

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9 CELEBR ATI NG 20 YE A RS impr e ssi on s of the HNS | by richa rd l ee 11 a s tarri ng ro l e female detectives | by myfanw y cook 13 han dlin g contra diti o ns m ar ga r et ge or ge ’s youn g n ero | b y kris ten m cqu i nn 14 writin g ma rl ene h istor y, s tor y & f act | b y c.w. go rtner 15 con j urin g the es s ex serpent sa r a h p er r y & the gothic n ovel | b y kate b raithw a ite 16 ren ais s an ce f l o rence unconve ntion al wom en | by vicki ko ndel i k 17

f act behin d the f icti o n j e nnife r r obs on ’s lates t | by arleig h jo hnso n

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

H ISTO RIC AL FIC TIO N M ARKE T N E W S NR staff opening Interested in joining the HNR editorial staff? After serving as the UK children’s review editor for the last five years, Elizabeth Hawksley will be stepping down from her position, so we’re looking for an editor interested in taking over for her, effective with the November issue. Reviews editors receive free HNS membership during their tenure and are granted first picks on reviewing incoming books from publishers they work with – in this case, children’s and young adult historical novels from UK-based presses. To express interest or for more information, please drop me an email note at sljohnson2@eiu.edu.

New books by HNS members Welcome to the first appearance of this listing, which features new historical fiction releases by Historical Novel Society members. The books are in order by publication date, with descriptions supplied by the authors. Congratulations to all on your new releases!

If you’ve written a historical novel or nonfiction work with a publication date between January and September 2017, please email the following details to sljohnson2@eiu.edu by July 7: author, title, publisher, release date, and a blurb of one sentence or less. The listings will appear in August’s column.

In The Accidental Stranger by Cj Fosdick (The Wild Rose Press, January 6), a man with a past bridges an ocean and a century only to find his future in the present nearly ends before it begins.

In Beverly Scott’s novel Sarah’s Secret: A Western Tale of Betrayal and Forgiveness (Word Project Press and SWSM Press, January 6), Sarah and Sam each tell their story of trust, secrets and betrayal in the Old West; it’s based on rumored secrets from the author’s family history.

Wayne Turmel’s Acre’s Bastard - Part 1 of the Lucca Le Pou Stories (Achis Press, January 7), a work of adult-level historical fiction set in the Holy Land of1187, poses the question: Can a ten-year-old orphan save himself and help the Kingdom of Jerusalem prevent disaster at the Horns of Hattin?

Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis (Atheneum, January 10) is a novel in verse by Jeannine Atkins, based on the dramatic life of the first person of color to become internationally recognized as a sculptor.

How can one young woman and a charming but irresponsible rake succeed against two of Napoleon’s most ruthless agents? The answer can be found in Beth Elliott’s latest Regency tale, The Rake and His Honour (Endeavour Press, ebook January 26, in print at end of April).

Lewis F. McIntyre’s The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China (CreateSpace, February 2) is the fictional account of the first Roman diplomatic mission to China, and HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Columns | 1

probably like the actual one, which was lost to history, nothing goes according to plan.

Matilda Empress by Lise Arin (Archer/Rare Bird, March 1) is set in the 12th century, during a period of English civil war, and tells the story of two cousins competing for crown and kingdom, whilst engaged in a love affair.

The Confessions of Young Nero by Margaret George (Berkley, March 7) recounts the epic story of the boy Nero who becomes the Nero of legend.

Jason Born’s new novel Leagues of the Lost Fountain (Halldorr, March 8) is a rollicking middle-grade adventure that slips between modern times and the Age of Exploration.

Hidden Ones—A Veil of Memories by Marcia Fine (Limage Press, March 15) begins in 1650 Mexico City, during the Inquisition, as the Crespin family faces the arrest of their beloved grandmother for Judaizing, their plan to escape into the Southwest Territories, and the finale of the generations in 1834, when the Inquisition officially ends in the New World.

In author Steve Bartholomew’s 13th novel, Finding Joaquin (indie, March 22), Ira Beard, a bounty hunter from New York, comes to California in 1852 to find Joaquin Murietta, the state’s most dangerous bandit.

Cast out by her father for refusing the suitor of his choice, Lallie Grey accepts Hugo Tamrisk’s proposal, confident that he loves her as she loves him; but Hugo’s past throws long shadows, as does his recent liaison with Lady Albright, and soon Lallie must question Hugo’s reasons for marriage. Catherine Kullmann’s latest Regency-era novel is Perception & Illusion (KDP and CreateSpace, March 30).

First in the new Descendants of the High King series, set in 11th-century Ireland, Ashley York’s Curse of the Healer (indie, March 31) tells the story of Aednat, who has spent her entire life training to be the great healer, knowing she must remain alone. When she meets Diarmuid, the intense attraction she feels toward him shakes her resolve to believe in such a legend.

In Leonide Martin’s The Controversial Mayan Queen: Sak K’uk of Palenque (Made for Wonder, an imprint of Made for Success Publishing, April 1), the second book in the Mists of Palenque series, a young Mayan queen rises to meet her destiny after an enemy attack leaves her people without a leader or a portal to the Gods.

Hilary Benford’s second novel Joanna Crusader (Wordfire Press, April) focuses on the amazing life of Joanna Plantagenet, favorite sister of Richard the Lionheart, who went with him on the Third Crusade; she actually entered Jerusalem (Richard did not), and met Saladin, the great Saracen leader. It’s the sequel to Sister of the Lionheart, the story of the first half of Joanna’s life.

Samantha Wilcoxon’s newest novel Queen of Martyrs: The Story of Mary I (indie, April 12) takes a fresh look at the life of Mary Tudor. How did a gentle, pious girl become known as ‘Bloody Mary’?

A.J. MacKenzie’s The Body in the Ice (Bonnier Zaffre, April 20) tells a story of espionage, family feuds and Gothic suspense set in the winter wastelands of Romney Marsh during the French Revolution.

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Whirligig: Keeping the Promise (Ocoee, April 22), the first novel from multi-award winning short-story writer Richard Buxton, is at once an outsider’s odyssey through the battle for Tennessee, a touching story of impossible love, and a portrait of America at war with itself; self-interest and conflict, betrayal and passion: all fuse into a fateful climax.

A More Perfect Union by Jodi Daynard (Lake Union, May 23) opens in 1794, as Johnny Watkins (Eliza Boylston Watkins’ child from Our Own Country) returns to America from Barbados, intent on becoming a great statesman. Even his hero, John Adams, believes the gifted boy will go far, but there’s just one catch: Johnny must learn to pass for white.

The Second Blast of the Trumpet by Marie MacPherson (Knox Robinson, June) takes up the story of John Knox, freed from the galleys in 1559; while dramatising the trials and tribulations faced by the Scottish firebrand, it reveals this controversial character to be a friend, husband and lover of women – in striking contrast to the Calvinistic, misogynistic caricature of the popular imagination.

New publishing deals Sources include author and publisher submissions, Publishers Marketplace, Publishers Weekly, The Bookseller, Booktrade.info, and more. Would you like to see your latest publishing deal in an upcoming column? Send them to me at sljohnson2@eiu. edu.

HNR reviewer Clarissa Harwood’s debut novel Impossible Saints, the story of an English suffragette torn between her political ambitions and her love for a young clergyman, sold to Katie McGuire at Pegasus, for publication in Winter 2018, by Laura Crockett at TriadaUS Literary Agency.

Lauri Kubuitsile’s The Scattering, taking place during southern Africa’s colonial wars in the early 20th century, and tracing the fates of two women whose paths cross following their sufferings during wartime, sold to Jeni Ogilvie at Waveland Press, by Aoife Lennon-Ritchie at The Lennon-Ritchie Agency on behalf of Penguin South Africa. The Scattering was named to the Walter Scott Prize Academy’s list of recommended titles.

Christina Britton Conroy’s four-book series, His Majesty’s Theatre, has been acquired by Endeavour Press via Donna Eastman at Parkeast Literary, for publication in late 2017. In this story of a London theatre company from 1885 -1904, a gay actor-manager escapes arrest by pretending to marry his leading lady and father her illegitimate child; together, they harbor a country heiress escaping a forced marriage.

Lange, a novel by Elise Hooper about Dorothea Lange’s pioneering documentary photography work during the Great Depression and Japanese internment, sold to Lucia Macro at William Morrow by Barbara Braun of Barbara Braun & Associates for release late in 2018.

American Duchess by NYT bestselling author Karen Harper, about heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt who, manipulated by her overbearing and formidable mother, Alva, into a loveless marriage with the Duke of Marlborough, ultimately broke free to live her own life, sold to Lucia Macro at William Morrow, by

survivor looking back on her experiences a decade later, via Eric Myers of Dystel, Goderich, and Bourret.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s debut novel The Hellfire Club, a political thriller set in 1954 in Washington, DC featuring a new NY congressman and his zoologist wife, and mixing fictional with real-life characters, sold to Reagan Arthur at Little, Brown, for publication in summer 2018, by Robert Barnett at Williams & Connolly.

Amy Sackville’s as-yet-untitled novel, a portrait of Diego Velazquez, beginning with his arrival at the court of King Philip IV of Spain, sold to Laura Barber of Granta, for publication in spring 2018, by Jenny Hewson at Rogers, Coleridge & White.

South African writer Zakes Mda’s Little Suns, which opens in 1903 as a rickety old wanderer searches for his lost love, a feisty healer who once tended his clan’s queen, sold to Valerie Brandes and Laure Deprez of Jacaranda Books, by Isobel Dixon of Blake Friedmann.

AmazonCrossing’s Elizabeth DeNoma acquired When the Future Comes Too Soon, the second in Malaysian-Chinese author Selina Siak Chin Yoke’s family saga, set during the Japanese occupation of Malaya in the ‘40s, via Tom Colchie of the Colchie Agency, for publication this summer.

Bestselling author of The Baker’s Daughter Sarah McCoy’s novel Marilla, telling the backstory of Marilla Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables, sold to Rachel Kahan at William Morrow,

by CAA. Karen Odden’s The Piano Girl of Soho, in which a doctor’s daughter in Victorian London stumbles upon the operations of a notorious crime ring while illicitly working as the piano player in a Soho music hall, sold to Priyanka Krishnan at William Morrow, in a two-book deal, by Josh Getzler at Hannigan Salky Getzler.

New transatlantic edition Lucy Treloar’s Walter Scott Prize-shortlisted Salt Creek, billed as a “story of love, duty, hardship and intolerance seen through the eyes of a strong woman in 1850s colonial Australia,” will be published this September in the UK and US by Gallic Books/Aardvark Bureau (pb, £9.99/$15.95). In HNR 75, reviewing the Australian edition, Marina Maxwell wrote: “This is another brilliant and absorbing addition to the recent crop of exceptionally fine historical novels exploring the Australian pioneer experience.”

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For more forthcoming titles, including both adult-level historical novels and those for children and young adults, please see: https:// historicalnovelsociety.org/guides/forthcoming-historical-novels/

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Annelise Robey at The Jane Rotrosen Agency.

C.C. Humphreys’ The Hindenburg Murders: A Roxy Loewen Mystery, following the globetrotting exploits of a 1930s American aviatrix as she tracks stolen art and tries to stop a killer before he can blow up the famous zeppelin, sold to Amy Black at Doubleday Canada, in a two-book deal, by Michelle Richter at Fuse Literary.

Books 4 and 5 of Mary Lawrence’s Bianca Goddard Mysteries set in the slums of Tudor London, featuring the daughter of an infamous alchemist, sold to John Scognamiglio at Kensington Books by Fred Tribuzzo of the Rudy Agency.

Patricia Hopper’s second novel in the O’Donovan family saga series moves to 1885 with Corrib Red. It tells the story of Grace and Deirdre O’Donovan, their coming-of-age indiscretions and aspirations, amid simmering Home Rule tensions in Ireland.

Corrib Red was acquired by Nadine Laman at Cactus Rain Publishing for publication in March 2017.

The Address by Fiona Davis (author of The Dollhouse), a multi-period novel about two women, a century apart, whose lives are forever altered by their time in NYC’s most famous residence, the Dakota, and the murder that connects their stories, sold (again) to Stephanie Kelly at Dutton, by Stefanie Lieberman at Janklow & Nesbit.

Kate Mayfield’s debut novel The Parentations, speculative historical fiction spanning two centuries across Iceland and London, and following an immortal boy and the individuals surrounding him, was acquired by editor Jenny Parrott via Oli Munson at A. M. Heath for Oneworld’s literary crime imprint, Point Blank, for March 2018 publication.

Prolific historical novelist and family saga author Beryl Kingston’s Everybody’s Somebody, the story of a woman’s life in the early- to mid-20th century, through both world wars and showing her life as a survivor in tumultuous times, has been acquired by Endeavour Ink. Jessica Fellowes’ (author of 10 nonfiction titles, and niece of Julian Fellowes) debut novel, The Mitford Murders , the first in a series of Golden Age-style murder mysteries based around a real-life crime and set amid the Mitford household, sold to Ed Wood at Sphere, for publication in September 2017, by Caroline Michel at PFD. Bestselling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford’s new fourbook historical fiction series, following a merchant family, the Falconers, beginning in the Victorian era, was acquired by HarperCollins UK fiction publishing director Lynne Drew and executive publisher Kate Elton via Robert Bradford. The first book, which is set in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, will be published in 2019.

Linda Spalding’s A Reckoning (sequel to the Governor General’s Award winning novel, The Purchase), about a family’s breakdown, set in Virginia in 1855, intertwined with one slave’s quest for freedom and to find his mother and child in Canada, sold to Ann Close at Pantheon, and Martha Kanya-Forstner at Doubleday Canada, by Ellen Levine at Trident Media Group.

John Scognamiglio at Kensington acquired Mrs. Jacob Klein’s Story, V.A. Shannon’s debut novel, about a Donner Party

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 80, May 2017 | Columns | 3

NEW VOICES Legends are refreshed and new historical insights expressed by debut novelists Marc Graham, Linnea Hartsuyker, Jess Kidd, and Crystal King.

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he Half-Drowned King (Harper US/Little, Brown UK, Aug. 2017) by Linnea Hartsuyker, and its forthcoming sequels, have their origins in legend and the author’s own family history. When she was in her late teens, she says, “One of my relatives decided to trace our Scandinavian ancestry and identified all of our relatives back to Alma, five generations ago in Sweden. Scandinavian church records are nearly unbroken back to the coming of Christianity in the 11th century, and beyond that, the sagas record ancestry back to the loins of gods and giants.

We found that one branch of my family descends from Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway in the 9th century.

“I was fascinated by this connection, and when I went to college, I researched Harald in Cornell’s libraries, reading The Heimskringla, the Saga of Norwegian Kings written by Snorri Sturlusson, when I was supposed to be doing my engineering homework. I learned about Princess Gyda, who proclaimed that she would only marry Harald if he conquered all of Norway, so he swore he would not cut his hair or shave his beard until he had done so, and fifteen years later, he returned and married her.

“When I read the sagas again in my late twenties,” she continues, “this time as an aspiring writer, I found that Harald’s story is not a very compelling narrative to build a novel around. Harald is the brightest and the best, and he always wins. The people who surround him, torn between duty and their own desires, have far more engaging stories. At Harald’s side, I found Ragnvald of Maer, his right-hand man, who makes hard sacrifices because of his loyalty to his king. The sagas provide a bare-bones account of Ragnvald’s involvement in Harald’s conquest, leaving plenty of room for invention. And he had a sister, Svanhild, about whom even less is known.”

Hartsuyker believes, she says, that “the dawn of the Scandinavian kingdoms was a fascinating time when some longed for a powerful king to protect them, and others clung to the freedom of smaller, independent territories. In The HalfDrowned King, Ragnvald and Svanhild embody two sides of that 4 | Columns |

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conflict in a tale of betrayal and hard choices, of families ripped apart, and brought back together again.”

Marc Graham, author of the 19th-century American saga Of Ashes and Dust (Five Star, Apr. 2017) has, like Hartsuyker, been a storyteller for most of his life. “Beginning with wretched sci-fi in my early years, and moving on to mediocre bits of thriller in my college years. I’d mostly abandoned the notion of becoming a writer until, in 1998, I was living in Richmond, Virginia. A friend was studying to become a regression hypnotherapist and required a certain number of test cases. I’m an engineer by profession, but found the idea intriguing. One hour on the therapist’s sofa radically changed the course of my life.

“The session began by entering a state of relaxation. I was then invited to enter into a handful of life events, identify myself and my surroundings, and relate my experiences. It was there that I met Jim Robbins and learned about his life.”

Graham explains: “While the session involved only four scenes of Robbins’s life and death, these formed the core of what was to become Of Ashes and Dust.

The Muse had grabbed me and, though I blundered through the first few years of dabbling in writing, she was relentless in birthing the story through me.

“I cannot say with certainty if the bits of story I witnessed were the result of past-life memories or of a deeply relaxed and creative state. I’ve found no trace of Jim Robbins in the historical record. However, there have been too many instances of synchronicity for me to discount the whole thing. When, as the writer, I needed a certain event or place or character, a little research brought forth just the thing on multiple occasions. I’m not necessarily advocating regression hypnosis as a tool for the creative process, but I would encourage all writers to be open to inspiration and mindful of the Muse. One never knows when, where, or how she may pounce.”

The inspiration for Crystal King’s novel Feast of Sorrow (Touchstone, April 2017) is a clear example of a creative mind that is open to the unexpected. She is a culinary enthusiast and has “always been drawn to books about food, both non-fiction and fiction,” she says. “In fact, I was reading Feast: A History of Grand Eating by historian Roy Strong when I found the seed of inspiration for Feast of Sorrow. At the time, I was working on a contemporary novel about a celebrity chef who had a fantastical set of knives that fueled his cooking. I needed an origin story for the knives, and in Feast there was a paragraph about the ancient Roman gourmand, Apicius, and the dramatic way in which he

photo credit: Wayne Earl Chinnock

photo credit: Travis McBride

had died.”

King elucidates: “I was struck by the strangeness of the tale, decided it made the perfect origin story for the fantastical knives, and set to work writing the scene. However, I quickly realized that the story of Apicius was far more compelling than the story I was writing. I scrapped that book and embarked upon heavy research about ancient Rome. I even began learning Italian and took numerous trips to Italy so that I could walk in the footsteps of my characters.”

From the outset of her creative process, she says, “Food was central to the story of Feast of Sorrow. Much of the tale unfolds at banquets, in the kitchen, and on the dining couches where the Romans laid down to eat their meals. It meant that I had to understand the food, not just how it was made, but how it tasted.”

King points out: “The world’s oldest known cookbook bears the name of Apicius, and one of the greatest joys of writing Feast of Sorrow was trying to interpret many of the recipes of that cookbook. While flamingo tongues and fried dormice are not appealing to modern palates, I was delighted to learn many other recipes are still delicious today. My husband and I regularly make one of the dishes, Parthian chicken, for dinner!”

Jess Kidd’s novel Himself (Atria, Mar. 2017; Canongate, Oct. 2016) focuses on a feast of fictional village life rather than culinary delights and dangers. The village at the centre of Himself was inspired by Kidd’s earliest memories of Ireland and “by the patchwork of stories I heard growing up and the places I have

visited as an adult,” she says. “Mulderrig is a fictional location out along the wild west coast. As you’d expect from a setting for a mystery, it’s a curtain-twitching, pressure cooker of a town, full of twisted secrets. For all that, it has its own lyrical beauty, a hidden jewel amongst bog and sea and mountain. It’s also a place imbued with nostalgia.”

The novel begins in 1976, and it was about that time, as Kidd explains, “I started to sit up and look around me. I wanted to capture the magical quality I saw in Ireland as a child, an Ireland where supernatural beings were just out of sight but always in earshot, where the landscape was alive, the sea was mad, and the weather was frequently unholy. April 1976 is the here and now of Mahony’s arrival in the village, but his story begins long before this. The narrative spools back to between 1944 and 1950.

These flashbacks give a picture of a different Ireland: the Ireland of Mahony’s mother.

“In writing this book, I was inspired by the ripples between these different times, by the things that changed and the things that stayed the same. In many ways Mulderrig is a place struggling to come to terms with the past and the present.

Mahony’s explosive arrival breaks down barriers and forces the town to acknowledge its difficult history. My gateway into the past was through the reminiscences of people I know. Some, unable to find work in Ireland, left to find a living elsewhere.

I added their memories of Ireland to my own, so Mulderrig is very much an expression of the country I’ve experienced and the country I’ve inherited through the spoken word.”

Kidd, like her fellow debut novelists, has opened up a new gateway for readers to access those lives that have been buried in the often-overlooked corners of history.

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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: Linnea Hartsuyker, Marc Graham, Jess Kidd & Crystal King

HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Columns | 5

THE RED PENCIL Cindy Vallar analyzes the work behind published manuscripts. In this issue, she profiles Greer Macallister’s Girl in Disguise (Sourcebooks, 2017).

Life is a collection of events, one after another. How you react to the first one influences each subsequent reaction until voilà, you have your life. The same holds true in fiction; a novel is simply a series of scenes put together to show not only what happens but also what effects those actions have on the characters.

Incorporating a goal, a conflict, stakes, and motivations into each scene adds depth to the story and its characters, which in turn allows each scene to serve more than a single purpose. First drafts often lack all these elements, so an author revises the scene until it shines like polished furniture.

In 2014, Greer Macallister learned about Kate Warne, whom Allen Pinkerton hired as his first female detective. “Why haven’t I ever heard of this woman before? She was a pioneer. She saved Abraham Lincoln’s life.

She was as important in her way as Amelia Earhart, Sally Ride, Marie Curie. And yet, if you ask 10 people on the street who Kate Warne is, nine will have no idea.” Since Greer wished to reverse that trend, she opted to write a fictional version of Kate’s life , she says, “because I am seriously no good at writing nonfiction, and . . . very little is actually known about her. She’s the perfect subject for historical fiction, because we have this core person who’s intriguing, but almost none of the detail about who she was, what she thought, how she lived.”

When Girl in Disguise opens, Kate is a novice and Greer initially concentrates on how Kate learns to become a good detective. “Does she stumble? She was fighting through the enormous, pervasive sexism of the time – how did that feel? The Harrington case, which this scene focuses on, illustrates a little of her journey.”

A year into my employment, I was a new woman. I paid off my debt to Mrs. Borowski and left her boardinghouse for a smaller, finer one in the Garden District. I hated to leave her, but my coming and going at all hours had begun to 6 | Columns |

HNR Issue 80, May 2017

draw notice from the other boarders. I needed to be where no one knew me. I gave a false name at the new house to make things easier. Whoever I was on the inside, as far as this corner of the world was concerned, I was Miss Olive Harris, spinster. That was all they knew, and all they needed to know.

My new boardinghouse was comfortable and elegant. I had a good-sized room with a bed and bureau, and my own private dressing room. The bedspread was soft under my fingers and the drapes at the window were new enough not to be faded from the sun. I settled in as best I could, and pretended I was fully accustomed to such lush surroundings.

And after only a year, experience had made me wiser and more useful as a Pinkerton operative.

I knew nearly every kind of case.

Counterfeiting, blackmail, burglaries of all kinds. We had very few murders, though more than I would have liked. Pinkerton nearly always involved me in these investigations.

There were often female witnesses or widows to interview, and they shrank away from his bull-headed approach. Subtlety had never been the boss’s strong suit. My light touch was needed to make the poor women comfortable. In the process of these investigations, I learned much about the condition of bodies and how they gave away information about themselves, even when the soul was gone and the mouth would never speak words again. But there was no substitute for information obtained from the living, and there, my help was needed.

The most memorable murder investigation in which I participated tested my skills in another way entirely.

It began with a pounding on my door, just after four o’clock in the morning.

Groggy with sleep, all uncertain, I heard the noise. Was it even there? Was it part of a dream?

I opened my eyes to see.

As soon as I knew for sure that there really

was a knocking at my door, and that it only grew in volume and violence, I immediately slid across the bed and pulled my gun from the nightstand.

Then I cocked it, stood, and wrapped my robe more tightly around my body as I walked toward the door. I could not have been more awake.

“Who is it?”

“Messenger, ma’am.”

I drew aside the curtain, just a sliver, and looked out. The boy did indeed look like a messenger.

“Slide it under the door, please,” I said.

It was a paper note, hastily folded and not quite square, no envelope. I shouted “Thank you,” and watched the shadow on the curtain. The boy waited for a moment or two, then crossed in front of the house and went away.

I breathed a little easier, then opened the paper to read: 136 Devries Road. Fatal case. Come right away. AP. I dressed hastily, and from there, the only question was whether or not to take my gun. But if Pinkerton hadn’t suggested it, I likely wouldn’t need it. It sounded like the violence was in the past tense. I put a knife in my boot just in case, and half-walked, half-ran toward the address Boss had given me. When he said right away, I knew he meant it.

Since a scene should have more than a single objective, this draft needed more. “[I] wanted to show all the ways Pinkerton could test her. But I also had to move the story forward. So she’s not only going through a personal challenge on this case, she’s also redefining relationships with her colleagues, and laying the groundwork to get to an emotional place where she reveals a secret to both Pinkerton and us, the readers.” In the final version of this scene, Greer’s primary goal remains, but everything we do, everything we encounter has an emotional effect on us, so the same must hold true for Kate. Each case will vary in its complexity and, since she lives in a time of civil unrest, the danger she faces also increases.

I had been a Pinkerton operative for more than a year before someone tried in earnest to kill me.

By then I was living in a smaller, finer boardinghouse just off Des Plaines Street. My unusual comings and goings at Mrs. Borowski’s had started to draw notice from my fellow boarders. I gave a false name at the new house to

make things easier. Whoever I was on the inside, as far as this corner of the world was concerned, I was Miss Cora Harris, spinster. That was all they knew and all they needed to know.

My new boardinghouse was comfortable and elegant. I had a good-sized room with a bed and bureau and my own private dressing room. The bedspread was soft under my fingers, and the drapes at the window were new enough not to be faded from the sun. The window overlooked the street at the front of the house, shaded by a pretty, delicate birch tree. I was fully accustomed to such lush surroundings. Miss Cora Harris had not been raised in theaters and flophouses, terrified of being left behind on purpose or by accident; Miss Harris was a lady.

And while I returned to the boardinghouse nearly every night, all my days were spent on cases.

A year of experience had made me wiser and more useful as a Pinkerton operative. I knew nearly every kind of case. Counterfeiting, blackmail, burglaries of all kinds. I had impersonated a fortune-teller to suss out a poisoner, a case that was not just memorable because of its novelty but because the nut juice Tom Bellamy offered me to darken my skin did not fade completely for an entire month. I assumed he’d stained me on purpose, but I didn’t complain, either to him or to Pinkerton. I knew that appearances were everything. If I appeared to be a difficult employee, even if I had every reason, I’d lose the ground I’d gained with the boss. And Pinkerton had come to rely on me more and more. Sometimes, he even seemed friendly.

It was only unfortunate that my least favorite kind of case was also the kind Pinkerton found me most essential in solving: the murders.

The Harrington case began with a tapping on my window, just after four o’clock in the morning.

Groggy with sleep, all uncertain, I heard the noise. Was it even there? Was it part of a dream?

I opened my eyes to see.

As soon as I knew for sure that the sound was real, and the gentle tapping became a louder series of knocks, I immediately slid across the bed and pulled my Deringer from the nightstand. I thumbed the hammer, stood, and wrapped my HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Columns | 7

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HNR Issue 80, May 2017

keep up, my breath coming faster, but I had no intention of asking him to slow down. When the boss said right away, he meant it.

Greer’s editor challenged her to improve the opening paragraph, and almost getting murdered is far more interesting than moving to new digs. Notice, too, that Bellamy has replaced the messenger. “Bellamy is one of Kate’s coworkers and he’s important throughout the book. I wanted to demonstrate what their relationship was like at this particular stage. I think it improves the scene, too – otherwise it could just start with her arriving at the Harrington’s house, because she’s just receiving a message. Now she’s reacting to a noise, she’s getting out her gun, she’s teasing him a little – it all illustrates character, both hers and his.” His insertion also allowed Greer to include a historical fact. “We only know a few of the cases that the real Kate Warne worked, and she impersonated a fortune-teller in one of them.

But I wouldn’t have included it just for that. At this point her relationship with most of her colleagues, especially Bellamy, is extremely contentious. He’s the one who gives her the nut juice, knowing what will happen.”

The rest of this scene shows Kate’s detecting skills and how her plan to trap the murderer almost results in her death. Greer’s changes draw you into the story so you feel and react as if you’re “right there with her, struggling to breathe.” This enables you to see and live in “her world instead of ours.”

As Greer relates, she loves “creating people and places and stories, but I also really love talking about those people and places and stories with people who share my love for books. My book tour schedule is on my website at greermacallister.com/ events and I also love to Skype with book clubs, wherever they might be.”

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robe more tightly around my body as I walked toward the window. I drew aside the curtain, just a sliver, and looked out. I could not have been more surprised at what I saw.

Tim Bellamy stood under my window, hunched against the nighttime chill and darkness, staring up expectantly with his cold, blue gaze.

After a few long moments, he said in a normal speaking voice, “Let me in, please, Mrs. Warne.

I don’t think either of us likes me standing here.”

I replaced my gun in the drawer and hastened into the hallway, unlocking the front door of the building and holding it open to admit him. He immediately handed me something and stood silently with his heels together on the carpet, waiting like a messenger boy.

I opened the paper note, hastily folded and not quite square, no envelope. It read: 136 Sedgwick. Fatal case. Come right away.

AP. “He was going to send a messenger,” said Bellamy quietly. “I offered to come instead. I didn’t think you should go alone this time of night.

It wasn’t the time to argue. I could defend myself against his chivalry some other day. I turned back toward my room and said, “Come on.”

“Mrs. Warne, I don’t think—” “The hallway’s worse than outside. Someone will come along. Think of my reputation.”

That got him moving. He stood in my room like a statue, facing the closed door, while I dressed hastily. I would have suspected any other man of peeking over his shoulder while I was en déshabillé, but I doubted our white knight would lower himself to something so base. Had the circumstances been otherwise, I would have needled him about it to amuse myself, but had the circumstances been otherwise, he never would have been standing there.

After that, the only question was whether or not to take my gun. But if Pinkerton hadn’t suggested it, I likely wouldn’t need it. It sounded like the violence was in the past tense. I slid a jackknife into my boot just in case.

Bellamy and I walked together in complete silence, keeping a brisk pace, block after block disappearing behind us. I scrambled a bit to

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.

a personal impression of the HNS by founder Richard Lee

O began the society with an A4 leaflet folded into three. It

proudly boasted of the society, which it described much as we describe ourselves today. We are open to all. We publish print magazines (2 annually, I said). Members were then also entitled to a one-off ‘Browser,’ a guide to what was in print (in the UK) in historical fiction, including classics and with a challenge to members to help create a ‘canon’ of historical fiction. The leaflet claimed I was also planning ‘colloquies,’ and that I was offering a free £5.99 book to be included within the £8 membership fee.

These days this would be termed a ‘lean startup.’ Back then it was probably regarded as naïve, ambitious or possibly dishonest. The situation, as with a lean startup, was that I had an idea but no team, no product, no capital and no income. I did have free books to give away, courtesy of UK publishers (Penguin, HarperCollins, Headline and Little Brown). For the rest of it, there was only my (assumed) integrity and my (implied) hard work.

The response to my leaflet was understandably mixed. Many must have been skeptical – but happily, in those days of stamps and letters, few troubled to tell me. But many were excited by the idea. This was the first and unforeseen problem of the society.

When a hundred good people write to you, it requires a hundred replies, and then the best conversations continue. My single biggest failure with the society has been my inability to give the time to correspondence that it deserves. I have box-files full of those treasured early letters – the passion for historical fiction that they still convey is astounding. Since email, my number of correspondents has grown exponentially, and so many still write to me with that same wealth of knowledge, that same deep love

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CELEBRATING 20 Y EARS

of this branch of literature. Connecting with enthusiasts – and specifically enabling enthusiasts to connect with each other – is what a society is for.

From these letter-writers came the first core of the HNS. Two things became swiftly apparent, which transformed the shape of the society from my initial conception. Firstly, members wanted book reviews. Author members wanted their books to be reviewed (there was no other venue then for any but the literary or the bestseller), and reader members loved reviewing, and were hungry to discover the newest books.

Secondly, though members loved the concept of a canon of historical fiction, they violently disagreed about what that canon should include.

Historical fiction is diverse, and its enthusiasts are partisan. The society, from its earliest membership, reflects this. We are fractured – most clearly, perhaps, along the commercial/literary divide – but we are also comprehensive, because readers and writers across the literary spectrum all lay claim to us.

In practical terms, for the person who had rashly tasked himself with fronting this organisation, this created (still creates) huge headaches. Firstly, reviewing. If we were going to review comprehensively, we needed a lot of reviewers, a number of editors and a lot of unbudgeted-for cash to publish these reviews. So the August of our first year saw the birth of the Historical Novels Review, a burgeoning administrative structure, the requirement to double membership fees and (for me personally) a large unsecured debt. Secondly we had to drop the ambition to ‘curate’ the genre. Who, after all, was qualified to decide upon a canon? And who could claim to have read all the

by Richard Lee

M ANY... were excited by the idea. This was the first and unforeseen problem of the society.

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In terms of practical change this meant that Sarah Johnson, preeminent expert on our genre, joined and came to lead our team of editors. Together with author Ann Chamberlin, she also stepped up to establish a US conference, with Ann hosting the first in her home state of Utah (as Ann put it, ‘500 miles in any direction from any other HNS member’). They built it, and people came – twice the number at that first US conference than had attended any UK conference to that point. Since then the US conferences have become an established fixture and have gone from strength to strength (in 2017 we are in Portland, Oregon). Following the US, and adding her own élan to the project, author Jenny Barden organized our first big UK conference in London in 2012, with enormous success (in 2018 – 24th-26th August – we will be in Scotland). In 2015, led by Elisabeth Storrs, we held our inaugural Australasian conference in Sydney (in 2017 we are in Melbourne).

The other happy outcome of our conferences is our nascent ‘chapters’ network. Friends who had met at conference and felt that two years might be a little too long between drinks instead planned to meet locally. Essentially this is a pioneer movement.

The ‘central’ society helps where it can – and we’re going to help a whole lot more with guidelines and sign-ups via our main website – but local impetus always needs to be local. If you are interested in this side of the society, check out if there is a chapter you can join. If there isn’t, get in touch: you could be that pioneer.

So that is the Historical Novel Society today, at least as it is perceived by its first member. I would love to hear how other members’ perceptions differ. Above all, I would love to hear how members think we should navigate the next twenty years.

My view of the future of the HNS is fairly clear. We must continue to improve all the things that we currently do, even where we already do them well. That is not strategy; it is common sense.

What we should do next, I believe, is to extend our reach. The internet offers a way to do this that my leaflet, when we started out, could not. Now we can deliver newsletters for negligible charge. Now we can deliver free novels in the same way. We can even host live events worldwide without huge costs. All we really need to achieve this is the energy to organize it, and the good will to publicise it. We are a fabulous group of 1400 people, but currently our reach is limited to each other. If we pool our resources, our friends, our followers, we could easily reach 10 or 100 times that number at negligible cost. This would be an extremely effective and worthwhile thing to do, and this is where I think the society should focus its efforts next.

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new books, never mind to have the authority to judge between them all? Certainly not me. Nor was there any democratic process we could think of that would serve. So we decided we would report bestsellers and we would report literary prizewinners, but beyond that we would let our reviews speak for themselves.

Among the early joiners there was a distinct group of – as yet – unpublished authors. This group has subsequently always been an important strand of the society: active, motivated, energetic and vocal. For these ‘trainee writers’ we launched writing awards. The first, for the opening to an historical crime novel, was won by Ruth Downie, and eventually became the first of her Medicus novels (now a series of seven, published by Penguin Random House). We had no money for prizes, so we had to be creative. We organized with a travel operator on the Greek island of Kythera that Louis de Bernières should tutor a course for them – if they gave a place on this course as a prize.

The winner of the Kythera Prize was Hilary Green and a novel based on her winning story was published as The Last Hero, set in Bronze Age Greece and ‘as good as Mary Renault,’ according to de Bernières. Hilary has had many books published since, the latest for Ebury Press (Penguin Random House), writing as Holly Green. We organized something similar the next year with Explore! Travel – the prize was judged by Hilary Mantel, and joint winner was Michel Faber, author of The Crimson Petal and the White and Under the Skin. We have continued to run awards for new fiction. Martin Sutton, whose Lost Paradise won our New Novel Award in 2013 and was published by the HNS, went on to win the Winston Graham (‘Poldark’) Prize in 2016.

Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, whose novel Swan Song was a runner-up for the 2015 New Novel Award, has been signed by Hutchinson (Penguin Random House) in a six-figure deal. The novel will be published in July 2018.

Conferences also became important, and again the society and I had rather different ideas about how they should work.

The society’s attitude was ‘If you build it, he will come’ – and the society was quite correct, as it turns out. My attitude was always more fearful. I supported our first London conference in terms of speaking and helping find speakers, but sturdier hearts than mine put the show together (thank you Sarah and Sandra).

Meanwhile, I thought the bigger and safer way to go was to find events that were already successful and work with them. For this reason the HNS ran talks for English Heritage at its flagship reenactment event at Kirby Hall for two seasons. Later we joined with the Cambridge History Festival for another two years, later still we piggy-backed a libraries historical fiction festival in Manchester. These were all successful, powerful events in their different ways. However, what was clear – and I guess should have been clear from the inception – was that they were not really HNS events.

At this point the USA took hold of the reins of the society.

While the society was doing what it was doing, the internet had begun to explode into everyone’s lives. The impact on the HNS was that we grew to be international – historical fiction is absolutely not a parochial genre, even when at its most ‘local.’

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.

female detectives take centre stage

F emale detectives first made their appearance in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1864, the female detective stepped into English fiction in the form of Miss Gladden, a character who investigated a series of dastardly crimes written by James Redding-Ware (under the pen-name Andrew Forrester) and set in London (The Female Detective, reprint British Library, 2012). Shortly before this, in Household Words in 1856, Dickens published a story written by Wilkie Collins that featured a poor needlewoman who investigates the death of her friend.

The scene was set for female detectives to step into the limelight, but it is only over the past twenty years that female detectives have begun to flourish in historical fiction, becoming strong contenders for the most popular historical crime fiction characters. From Caroline Lawrence’s Flavia, protagonist of her Roman mysteries, to Kate O’Donnell, Patricia Hall’s photographer working in 1960s London, female sleuths have taken centre stage. A few of these women detectives, such as Peter Tremayne’s seventhcentury Irish lawyer and religieuse, Sister Fidelma, and Adelia Aguilar, Ariana Franklin’s medieval forensic specialist, have attained an almost cult status.

The longevity of the series of novels in which they feature is a testimony to these female sleuths’ continuing rise in popularly. This year, Fiona Buckley is celebrating twenty years since the appearance of Ursula Blanchard, the Elizabethan female detective who now stars in The Heretic’s Creed (Severn House, 2017).

Buckley notes that, in 1996, “I had just finished a six-book series, Bridges over Time, written under my own name, Valerie Anand, the story of one family from before the Conquest to the moon landing. I was wondering what to do next.

I was considering some sort of crime writing and I was also reading Elizabethan history at the time. I thought of a crime series set in the sixteenth century.

I also thought that I wanted to make it ‘different’ in some way – there were quite a few historical detectives around; Cadfael,

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A Starring Role

for example. How about a woman lead? It could be interesting.

In the sixteenth century, a woman detective would have difficult problems! Also, thinking over my recent reading, I realised that in the Elizabethan age, espionage was practically a national pastime! And that would be a nice variant on simple detection.

Ursula was coming into focus.”

Buckley says, “I also wondered what kind of woman she would have to be. How would a sixteenth-century woman ever get into such a career? She would need to have some status; so as to mix with people in the political world. She would need, I thought, to have contact with the court.” The question remained: “Why would a lady at the Elizabethan court undertake such work? For money? Yes, she might be hard up. But still...then I thought of the well-known mystery of Amy Robsart, the wife of Robert Dudley, who died so mysteriously and whose death seems to have been expected before it happened. What if Ursula were paid to look after her and become involved that way? And then Ursula seemed to take on a life of her own.

Since then, I have just let her tell me her story.”

Emily Brightwell’s stalwart Victorian housekeeper, Mrs Jeffries, debuted in 1993, and the thirty-fifth novel in the series, Mrs. Jeffries Rights a Wrong (Berkley, 2017) is due to be published in May. Brightwell and Buckley’s characters are “different” and have broken the traditional mould of who detectives can be, but the answer to their increasing readership over the past twenty years possibly lies elsewhere.

Today, the female detective characters which grace bookshop shelves come from a range of different social backgrounds, periods and settings. Nicola Upson, for example, joined a growing sub-genre of authors focusing on celebrity sleuths, real people who have been fictionalised in the role of detective. Upson turned Josephine Tey, the crime writer from the Golden Age of detective fiction, into an investigator; Laura Joh Rowland’s two-book series featuring Charlotte Brontë also debuted in 2008, as did Justine Picardie’s Daphne (Bloomsbury,

by Myfanwy Cook

Historical... or not, female detectives are generally good company. They go about their business with grace, competence and a sense of humour.

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Smith’s Poppy Denby, a perky 1920s heroine; and Mary Miley’s Hollywood-based investigator, Jessie Beckett, have all not only broken old moulds, but created an entirely new one – that of the working-woman detective.

Not all find work a necessity – many noteworthy female detectives over the past two decades have come from the upper echelons of society. Yet as Rhys Bowen’s character Georgiana, thirty-fourth in line to the throne of England, aptly remarks in Heirs and Graces (Constable, 2013): “I want a life of my own, not to be a hanger-on in someone else’s life.” This is a sentiment echoed by Phryne Fisher, Kerry Greenwood’s wealthy Australian 1920s amateur detective, and Tasha Alexander’s Victorian detective, Lady Emily Hargreaves, who relishes the prospect of “going about without anyone recognising who you are” (Tears of Pearl, Minotaur US, 2009 / Constable UK, 2015).

Whether the detective is a captivatingly beautiful socialite like Amory Ames in Ashley Weaver’s 1930s series or an eccentric child investigator, such as Flavia de Luce in Alan Bradley’s series set at Bucksaw Manor in the 1950s, one thing is clear: female sleuths have become the stars of historical crime fiction. Kaite Welsh’s first novel, The Wages of Sin (Pegasus Books, 2017), is set in the underworld of Victorian Edinburgh and features, as Welsh describes her, “fallen woman-turned-medical studentturned-detective Sarah Gilchrist.” Welsh explains, “Women – like the LGBT community and people of colour – are written out of history too often. I wanted to put them back where they belonged.”

Miss Gladden explains in The Female Detective that, “it may be said the value of the detective lies not so much in discovering facts, as in putting them together, and finding out what they mean.” For readers, the proliferation of women detectives over the past twenty years has not only been entertaining, but has also introduced them to the underworld of history through the eyes of intelligent and independent women. They may sometimes work in tandem with men – for instance, the handsome Milo in the novels of Ashley Weaver, or Inspector Witherspoon, whose housekeeper Mrs Jeffries solves crimes alongside her housework in Emily Brightwell’s novels. No longer, however, are female sleuths Dr Watson-style sidekicks, serving only as foil to the great (male) detective. Female detectives have come of age and are now fixed as intelligent and entertaining mystery solvers in the growing firmament of historical crime fiction.

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http://severnhouse.com/author/Fiona+Buckley/9564 http://annparker.net http://www.frances-brody.com/ https://kaitewelsh.wordpress.com/

MYFANWY COOK is an avid reader of historical crime fiction and an Associate Fellow at two British universities. She also runs and designs writing courses for numerous organisations.

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2008), while Anna Maclean’s novels feature Louisa May Alcott as a detective. Lastly, in Susan Wittig Albert’s novels, the children’s author Beatrix Potter has been transformed into a solver of mysteries. In contrast, P.D. James and Carrie A. Bebris convert a fictional character, Elizabeth Darcy from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, into their private investigator. Surprisingly, all these diverse novels do share a common link: the women are the stars, heroines who are making their mark in a man’s world.

American novelist Ann Parker writes, “When creating a protagonist for my Silver Rush historical mystery series, several forces nudged me into fashioning Inez Stannert, who runs the Silver Queen Saloon in 1880s Leadville, Colorado. First, as a child, although I loved reading and watching westerns I quickly realized that the ‘guys’ had all the fun, which seemed very unfair to me. Decades later, I finally got to remedy that particular gender injustice by creating a strong woman character, making her a ‘woman in a man’s world,’ and tossing her into all kinds of situations and adventures. I also wanted to create a morally ambiguous female protagonist – someone who paced the thin line between right and wrong, and didn’t hesitate to step into the darkness if doing so got the results she wanted. At the time I was pondering this, there were many male protagonists of this ilk but few female protagonists.”

Frances Brody, whose ninth Kate Shackleton adventure, Death in the Stars (Piatkus, 2017), will appear in October, has created the character of a young woman who was born in 1891, whose husband is killed in the First World War, and who undertakes her first case in 1922 at the age of thirty-one. Kate Shackleton, like Inez Stannert, faces a world that is still dominated by men, but is on the cusp of a change. Brody explains, “Historical or not, female detectives are generally good company. They go about their business with grace, competence and a sense of humour.

Mould-breaking female detectives are dab hands at overcoming obstacles. They circumvent difficulties and deceit in pursuit of truth and justice. Smart, empathetic, witty and a touch devious, they are like the friend one turns to in times of trouble. As to my chosen historical period, I’m under no illusions about how hard my family’s lives were in the 1920s, and yet it was a fascinating time that holds a deep attraction. I like tipping out hidden pockets of history that I’m convinced readers will enjoy finding out about.”

Brody’s “mould breaking” character has captured the imagination of other non-historical fiction writers, such as Lee Child. Is this because of the female detective’s ability to overcome challenges? This includes not only the challenge of trying to establish her worth against the prejudice of her period, but also the challenge of making a living. The Molly Murphy series, written by Rhys Bowen and set at the turn of the century in New York; Boris Akunin’s Sister Pelagia novels; Amelia Peabody, a Victorian spinster with an interest in archaeology, created by Barbara Mertz (writing as Elizabeth Peters); and Carola Dunn’s article-writing Daisy Dalrymple are examples of women striving to forge their own careers. In a similar way, Ann Granger’s Lizzy Martin, a lady’s companion; Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs, with her experience in battlefield nursing; Fiona Veitch

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Margaret George on the challenges posed by Nero

challenge of writing historical fiction arises when authors A encounter popular opinion that runs contrary to documented

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Handling Contradictions is of being nearly drowned by his infamous uncle Caligula. His mother, Agrippina the Younger, was a ruthless woman who pushed her son to do anything to come out ahead. The novel progresses through Nero’s childhood and young adulthood into the early years of his reign. Along the way, he grows from a visionary young boy to a more worldly and cautious man.

Given his unstable upbringing, Nero had ample opportunity to become the tyrant that history often portrays. However, he wasn’t a mad emperor at all. Margaret George compares the traditional view of Nero, largely recorded by the biased views of Tacitus, versus what she discovered in her research; the two figures were quite different. In fact, not only was Nero of sound mind, but, as George says: He was non-violent. He tried to end the gladiatorial games in Rome and replace them with Greek artistic festivals – that didn’t go over very well. Then, when he brought the gladiators back, he forbade killing. He only acquired his reputation for cruelty when he responded to the assassination plot against him, hunting down the traitors and having them executed without mercy.

George shared that this turning point in Nero’s life was one of her favorite scenes of the book because it allowed her to explore the way this young man, only seventeen at the time, had to decide to become someone who wa s ruthless and cold, dealing with “the truth of what he was becoming, so different from who he had thought himself to be.”

It isn’t often that such a complex, sympathetic character is brought so vividly to life; it seems even less common for such a character to arise from the ashes of an infamously misunderstood and maligned figure. Margaret George has succeeded brilliantly.

fact. For example, popular opinion often says that Henry VIII was a tyrant, although he likely wasn’t. Similarly, when we think of the Roman emperor Nero, we typically envision the madman who torched Rome while fiddling. Factually, that didn’t happen.

So how do writers handle these contradictions? Acclaimed author Margaret George provides some answers with her newest novel, The Confessions of Young Nero (Berkley US / Macmillan UK, 2017).

George became aware of the discrepancy about Nero early in the research for The Confessions of Young Nero, and knew she had challenges ahead. Her characterization of him is rich and multi-layered as a result.

She reconciled the familiar version of Nero with the one she learned about by getting to know him as a person as well as a ruler.

She says: He was well liked by the common people (the ‘riff raff ’ as Galba called them) but alienated the aristocracy by behaving in ways they felt demeaned the office of emperor. This disapproval focused mainly on his artistic and athletic endeavors. He did not realize how deep this hostility went until a conspiracy, made up of those near and dear to him, formed to assassinate him. It was personal dislike of him, rather than his policies, which were reasonable and even enlightened, that made him the target of their plot. So it is not difficult to reconcile the Nero of history and the Nero I found in research.

She goes on to explain that Nero’s real problem “was that he wanted to be primarily an artist and in doing so neglected his imperial duties.” In actuality, it sounds like Nero was deeply afflicted by two pernicious states: youth and idealism.

The Confessions of Young Nero gives readers an in-depth look at the earlier years of this fascinating – and very misunderstood – ruler. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, only later called Nero, Kristen McQuinn is a reviewer for HNS and a contributor at begins life on tenuous ground and struggles to survive the Book Riot (http://bookriot.com/author/kristen-mcquinn/). political machinations of his family. One of his earliest memories Follow her on Twitter @KristenMcQuinn.

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by Kristen McQuinn his unstable upbringing, Nero had ample opportunity to become the tyrant that history often portrays.

However, he wasn’t a mad emperor at all.

HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Features | 13

on’t defame the dead” is the adage among historical fiction D writers. We mustn’t slander a protagonist who actually lived,

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history, story & fact

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WRITING MARLENE

why she did took sleuthing. The modern age facilitates research, if not necessarily interpretation. On the contrary, it can confuse it, because with so much available to us, we must determine what’s verifiable. Marlene was both famous and elusive, much like Chanel. Neither woman wanted to be known for who they were, but rather for how they wanted to be known. In order to inhabit them, I had to pry apart their self-created mythology to discover their inner hearts.

Most historical fiction writers don’t set out to defame history; we take our research seriously – sometimes, to our editors’ despair, too seriously. But, veracity isn’t simple, and our job is complex: research everything we can find; distill the mass of information into what’s relevant to our story; and, in the case of credibility, decide what likely happened, based on what we know about the character. Factual accuracy is essential. But within a finite amount of words, not everything that happened can make it into the book. Unlike the historian or biographer, the historical novelist’s greatest challenge is what not to include.

Historical fiction writers bear the responsibility to not re-invent the past to suit our whims. I also believe we bear equal responsibility to be judicious with what we find. Our readers desire the same ingredients from us as from any other novelist: compelling characters; a well-constructed plot, and, above all else, an irresistible story.

At best, historical fiction offers a sense of what the past was like. At worst, it’s entertainment. But it should never be mistaken for History. It is fiction, based on actual events, people, or eras.

A historical novelist worth his or her salt won’t have Lucrezia Borgia using hair spray. Still, when it comes to story . . . that depends on who’s telling it.

unless he or she did something heinous. Even then, we should refrain from calumny, carving our story within the crevices of truth. History, however, is an imperfect science; not everything gets recorded for posterity. And the challenge for the biographical historical fiction writer in particular is sifting through all those facts to reach a unique, multifaceted interpretation of our protagonist.

Four of my nine novels depict women who lived over 400 years ago. Part of my research included letters to archives for permission to view relevant historical documents, trips abroad to review the documents, and painstaking notes. Massive bibliographies complement the work; but it’s never easy to recreate a person who lived so long ago. On the upside, with so much diffused by gaps in the record, it allows for some freedom in interpretation. As none of these women left diaries about how they felt, I had to weave together a hopefully accurate portrait based on what is extant.

When I shifted to modern times in Mademoiselle Chanel (William Morrow, 2015) and, most recently, with Marlene Dietrich in Marlene (William Morrow, 2016), different challenges arose. Dietrich is well-documented because she lived in the 20th century, a movie star and WWII heroine. She left films, letters, interviews, and concert footage, as well as her autobiography, which isn’t as biographical as we might prefer.

In addition, she has living descendants, one of whom wrote about her. This can be a slippery slope. Living descendants carry personalized recollections that don’t necessarily coincide with how others experienced the person; with Marlene, complicated family dynamics came into play. While I had to take these into account, I also had to be respectful of the relationships themselves.

To recreate her involved reading numerous biographies, as well as C.W. Gortner is the bestselling author of nine historical novels, research into Weimar-era Berlin and 1930s Hollywood, both of including his most recent title, Marlene. His books are translated which no longer exist. And like most of us, Marlene was fallible; into over 25 languages. Visit him at cwgortner.com in her lifetime, she tended to revise her own facts. Discovering

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by C.W. Gortner

LIVING... descendants carry personalized recollections that don’t necessarily coincide with how others experienced the person...While I had to take these into account, I also had to be respectful of the relationships themselves

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HNR Issue 80, May 2017

Sarah Perry & the modern gothic novel

When Sarah Perry’s husband told her the legend of a winged

serpent menacing villages deep in the Essex countryside, her imagination was engaged. The story of a young widow, Cora Seaborne, and the people of a village called Aldwater, falling prey to superstition that a dangerous serpent lurks in a local estuary, was instantly formed. Characters came quickly into Perry’s mind: emotional Cora and her ‘foil,’ the scientifically-minded vicar, Will; Cora’s son, an autistic boy living long before such disorders could be diagnosed; and Cora’s faithful admirer, Dr Garrett, the Imp, as she calls him, a London surgeon at the forefront of developments in medical science.

The original Essex serpent caused uproar in the real village of Henham-onthe-Mount in 1669, but Perry brings her serpent into being in the later years of the nineteenth century. The influence of the gothic tradition is pivotal. “I am especially interested in the ‘sublime,’” explains Perry, “a key component of the Gothic and something which, according to the essayist Burke, is a sensation which moves us beyond merely experiencing a sense of beauty into a transport of awe, and wonder, and even terror.”

Perry’s fascination with where the line is drawn between what is natural, supernatural or spiritual drives her characters’ journey.

Cora and Will encounter a Fata Morgana, for example, an optical phenomenon and form of mirage. They see an illusion of a ship and this is a phenomenon that Perry has recently experienced in real life. In her case, she saw “great black tower-blocks being built far out into the sea, and it was just as strange and magical as I had hoped.” The serpent takes on symbolic significance and means different things to different characters. “I wanted each,” says Perry, “to be haunted not by the serpent itself, but rather what the serpent represents. For example, the schoolgirls and Naomi in particular respond to it with a kind of anxiety that is very rooted in their youth: it’s almost a phallic symbol, like a version of the ‘worm’ that enters the rose and makes it sick in Blake’s poem.”

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Conjuring the Essex Serpent

There are, however, no “maidens in nightgowns” or “cruel villainous counts” in The Essex Serpent. Instead, Perry chose “to foreground everything which was modern and urgent about the period: scientific progress and debates, political and social upheaval, the early development of feminism, and so on.” The women of The Essex Serpent do not succumb to vapours. Cora is fiercely intelligent and her friend Martha is a fervent advocate of social change.

Stylistically though, Perry is wonderfully gothic. In the past she has wished she wrote in a more modern style, but attributes this to her unusual upbringing. “My parents were members of a very old-fashioned Strict Baptist chapel.

So I was brought up reading, memorizing and reciting the King James Bible, and singing Victorian hymns, and reading things like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. We didn’t have a television in the house, or any pop music, and I wasn’t allowed to attend parties or to go to the cinema; but I was surrounded by classic literature and classical music. I read Jane Eyre when I was eight, and my father bought me a copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles when I was ten.”

And refreshingly, amidst all the praise The Essex Serpent has garnered, Perry prizes the feedback she has received from the people of Essex the most: “Essex is famously something of a joke in the UK, and not a place that people associate with romantic landscapes, or myths, or earthquakes, so my fellow Essex folk have been really delighted, which has perhaps been the very best thing about it.”

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The Essex Serpent, published in 2016 by Serpent’s Tail UK, will be published in June 2017 by Custom House US; it was a Costa Book Award Finalist, longlisted for the 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize, and chosen as Waterstones Book of the Year 2016.

Kate Braithwaite is the author of Charlatan, a novel of poison and intrigue set in 17th-century Paris.

by Kate Braithwaite

I Am... interested in the “sublime,” a key component of the Gothic and something which, according to the essayist Burke, is a sensation which moves us beyond merely experiencing a sense of beauty into a transport of awe, and wonder, and even terror.

HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Features | 15

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two novelists on unconventional Florentine women

wo new historical novels, Alyssa Palombo’s The Most T Beautiful Woman in Florence: A Story of Botticelli (St. Martin’s

Griffin, 2017) and Donna Russo Morin’s The Competition: Da Vinci’s Disciples, Book Two (Diversion Books, 2017), feature strong, unconventional women in the Florence of Lorenzo de’ Medici, a place and time which saw a flourishing of the arts. But it was a man’s world, where women were at the mercy of their fathers and husbands and were expected either to marry or join a convent.

Palombo’s novel tells the story of Simonetta Cattaneo Vespucci, known for her great beauty and intellect, who became Botticelli’s muse.

Russo Morin’s novel – the second in a trilogy which began with Portrait of a Conspiracy (2016) – features a group of six women artists who paint in secret, under the tutelage of Leonardo da Vinci.

Palombo says of Simonetta, “Women were held to certain standards of modesty, piety, and obedience – much stricter standards than those that applied to men. In my novel, Simonetta is an avid reader, which was not as a general rule encouraged for women. Yet many of the people she meets in Florence appreciate her intelligence and her passion for the written word and for art. As the novel goes on, she becomes painfully aware of the many double standards that exist for women in her world – and indeed the somewhat different expectations people have of her as an exceptionally beautiful woman – and ultimately decides to make her own rules.”

Russo Morin writes that a female painter “would have been considered a non-conforming radical, a disgrace to her family and her gender.”

Of the women in her group of artists, she says, “I wanted to illuminate the period through the lives of women, women who dared to do the unthinkable. In this case, to be a part of the artistic revolution that came to be known as the Renaissance. The Da Vinci’s Disciples trilogy is nothing if not an homage to the power of female friendships, a bond that is unlike any other. It is all there,

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Renaissance Florence

both the good and the bad of how women are with each other, and what they can accomplish when they are united.”

On Simonetta’s relationship with Botticelli, Palombo writes: “In the novel, Simonetta sees some of Botticelli’s work (shortly) before meeting the man himself, so she is initially an admirer of his work. When they meet he immediately declares that he would like to paint her, and she is startled and intrigued by this.

When she does eventually pose for him, they become friends during the time that they spend together, and find themselves to have much in common on an intellectual level. As time goes on they both know that their friendship has deepened into something more, but I’ll leave it for the readers to find out if they actually take their relationship to the next level, so to speak!”

When asked about Leonardo’s role as mentor to the women artists in her novels, Russo Morin says, “His artistic genius was just starting to bloom at the time of the horrific – and factual – assassination that is at the root of the first book in the trilogy. As this was the beginning of his career, I knew that his life – with all of its greatness and sadness – would be enough to encompass a three-book story.” As she points out, Leonardo was also seen as an outsider in his society. “Because of his sexual orientation and the trauma that it put him through, it was my impression that he would not be one to judge. It made him the perfect conduit for the women to follow their artistic dream.”

Both novels draw the reader into the world of Renaissance Florence and illuminate the lives of the courageous women of this era.

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https://alyssapalombo.com http://donnarussomorin.com/ Vicki Kondelik is a cataloger at the University of Michigan’s Graduate Library, and edits their blog, Lost in the Stacks. She is working on a novel about Beatrice Cenci.

by Vicki Kondelik

It was... a man’s world, where women were at the mercy of their fathers and husbands and were expected either to marry or join a convent.

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HNR Issue 80, May 2017

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Jennifer Robson on Goodnight from London

H istorical Novels Review’s prolific 20 -century section is proof th

that WWII-era fiction remains one of the hottest historical subgenres. Jennifer Robson, author of three WWI novels, has just released her first book set during the 1940 Blitz. Much of the research for her doctoral thesis concerned life on the home front in Britain. Regardless, she admits, “I had a lot of catching up to do! Perhaps the most enjoyable part of my research for Goodnight from London was having the chance to revisit the oral history project I undertook while at Oxford.

I could hear the voices of the women I’d interviewed so clearly, and see them in my mind’s eye. And the project was an absolute treasure trove of details about daily life during the war.”

Robson’s grandmother, Nikki Moir, to whom her book is dedicated, led an interesting life that mirrors the protagonist in the story, Ruby Sutton. “My grandmother started at the very bottom of the editorial ladder in 1938, working as the newsroom ‘Girl Friday’ at the Vancouver News-Herald.

The war gave her opportunities she’d likely never have had otherwise. One of her proudest moments was interviewing Eleanor Roosevelt, although she was only one of several reporters admitted to the great lady’s presence. My gran left school when she was 16. She never had any formal training and she had no illusions about her strengths as a writer. But she knew how to get a good story and she never let anyone intimidate her. She was always curious, always learning. After my grandfather’s death in 1980, she decided she wanted to go to university. Nikki died just over three years ago at the age of 95. She was well enough to know that I had become a writer, and she often told me how proud she was of me. I am so glad that I always told her how proud I was of her.”

There are various clips from female journalists throughout the book. “They were all exceptional women, but Martha Gellhorn is someone I find especially fascinating. The obstacles placed in her path by the authorities, by her editors, even by her own husband (although she and Ernest Hemingway were almost entirely

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Facts Behind the Fiction

estranged by the war), meant that she had to work twice as hard as most journalists to get the story. And yet she never gave up.

I knew that I had to get permission from her stepson, Sandy Matthews, who controls her estate and is (understandably) very selective about granting rights to her work. I poured my heart into the letter I sent him, and I guess it worked since he very kindly allowed me to quote from her story of landing in Normandy on a hospital ship.”

Captain Bennett, whom we meet early in the story, is a likable, though secretive character. When asked about crafting his persona, Robson responded, “It was probably the most difficult aspect of writing this book. It would have been much easier for Bennett to have a moment of weakness and admit everything to Ruby.

But that would have negated everything heroic about him. His secrecy was intrinsic to his character: he simply could not tell her the true nature of his work. And I struggled with that. But it was something everyone engaged in covert work during the war had to bear. People like Ruby had to endure years of not knowing – and often, if the person they loved was killed in the line of duty, they never discovered the truth of what happened.”

Robson’s next book will be different. “Provisionally titled The Gown, it is narrated by several central characters rather than one heroine. It tells the story of three embroiderers at Norman Hartnell’s couture house in London, who are among those who created Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress in 1947.”

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Goodnight from London is published in trade paperback this month in the US by William Morrow (9780062675576).

Arleigh Johnson has worked in the book industry for 12 years and has reviewed with HNR since 2011.

by Arleigh Johnson

I could...

hear the voices of the women I’d interviewed so clearly, and see them in my mind’s eye. And the project was an absolute treasure trove of details about daily life during the war.

HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Features | 17

Reviews

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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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Denotes an Editors’ Choice title

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classical

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FORTUNE’S FOOL Albert A. Bell, Jr., Perseverance, 2017, $15.95, pb, 256pp, 9781564745873 In this sixth entry in Bell’s mystery series featuring Gaius Pliny the Younger, the story moves the major players out of ancient Rome and into the beautiful countryside around Lake Comum (Como), and most of the novel’s action happens there. As Pliny’s party, including his slave and lover, Aurora, and their friends Tacitus and Julia, draw closer to his childhood home, Pliny is forced to admit to the unhappy Aurora that his wife Livia has him over a barrel.

The jealous and unpleasant Livia has given him an ultimatum: either find Aurora a husband, or get rid of her before Livia arrives at Lake Comum.

Pliny’s choice for Aurora’s spouse is Felix, an older family servant who has actually managed to hide the fact that he is castrated. Shortly after Aurora’s marriage, Livia and her mother arrive, and tensions begin to flare. Giving in to Livia’s demand for more space in the villa, Pliny begins modifications which lead to the discovery of a decades-old skeleton in one of the villa’s walls.

Pliny, intrigued by the mystery, begins questioning the locals and stumbles upon an unsolved murder case. Gruesome warnings, a kidnapping, a tragic tavern fire, and murder attempts lead to the discovery of an abandoned villa in the woods that harbors other, darker secrets long hidden and undisturbed until now. Drawn into a web of lies, blackmail, and deceit, Pliny realizes he must question his own family’s connection and expose who is willing to commit murder to keep the case closed.

Bell does a fine job of juggling his various characters and storylines and pays great attention to period details. The relationship between Pliny and Tacitus, with their bantering humor and teamwork in solving the cases, continues to entertain.

Michael I. Shoop 18 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 80, May 2017

THE HOUSE OF NAMES Colm Tóibín, Scribner, 2017, $26.00, hb, 275pp, 9781501140211 / Viking, 2017, £14.99, hb, 272pp, 9780241257685 In his eleventh novel, Tóibín retells the myth of the House of Atreus and Queen Clytemnestra, who murdered her husband, Agamemnon, in return for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia to the gods, only to be killed by her son Orestes and daughter Electra. Yes, the wellworn plot is beautifully reconstructed here, but The House of Names is captivating for another reason—the poetic intensity of its language, which eliminates the temporal distance between contemporary readers and the ancient characters, bringing them up close to the modern consciousness.

Although we might be familiar with Clytemnestra, Orestes, and Electra—the narrative is told from their varying perspectives—Tóibín’s fiction, fearless of ecstatic diction as well as fierce conceit, presents these personae as if they were new and unfamiliar; as a result, the story’s momentum is such that we read on as if this were a murder mystery—which indeed, it is. The sections centering on Clytemnestra and Electra move quickly, while Orestes’ time in the wilderness—his mother’s lover has him abducted in order to use him as a pawn against her—is more reminiscent of a novel of growth, rather than of Greek tragedy, slowing down the pace of the narrative; still, his account compellingly describes his development from boy into man and his growing attachment to Leander.

Eventually, the young men return home, where Orestes murders his mother at the instigation of his sister, while Leander, inexplicably, seeks out the companionship of Electra, leaving Orestes to the ghost of his mother. The novel concludes with the scene of a haunting whose combined horror and sadness will remain etched in the reader’s memory.

A brilliant tour de force.

Elisabeth Lenckos

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1st century

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BREAD OF ANGELS Tessa Afshar, Tyndale, 2017, $14.99/C$20.99, pb, 416pp, 9781496406477 Lydia is the daughter of a well-established cloth dyer whose purple is unmatched. When her father is falsely accused of theft, and his business is swept up by a wealthy Roman citizen, Lydia flees to Philippi with her father’s secret formulas. Through an old acquaintance of her father’s and her own

fierce determination, Lydia is able to become a well-known merchant. By chance, Lydia meets the apostle Paul, who teaches her about Jesus. Moved by his words, she becomes baptized. But when Lydia’s past comes knocking at her door, will she be able to stand firm in her new-found faith, or will she allow her fears to destroy all she’s worked for?

While there are some lovely faith-filled dialogues, Afshar’s messages are sometimes laid out too clearly, which can come across as preachy.

However, Afshar masterfully builds both character and plot. The fears and insecurities of the main characters are genuine and relatable. Additionally, the time period and places are captured skillfully.

Basing her novel on the Biblical story of Lydia during Paul’s second missionary journey, Afshar teases out a rich and emotional story from only a couple mentions of Lydia in Acts 16. A very enjoyable story.

J. Lynn Else VINDOLANDA Adrian Goldsworthy, Head of Zeus, 2017, £18.99, hb, 416pp, 9781784974688 AD 98. Flavius Ferox is a Briton and a Roman centurion, a Regionarius of a small district at the furthest northern reach of the Roman Empire.

Roman power is seen as weak, and there are signs of resistance from the local tribes. There are rumours of Druids, and acts of murder, but the signs are ignored by Ferox’s superiors, even after an attack on a senior officer and his wife. A new governor arrives determined to stamp his authority over the natives, while at the same time the Druids move to destroy the Roman occupiers. The stage is set for a titanic confrontation, with the future of the whole of Roman Britain at stake.

Vindolanda is the first in a new historical fiction series by British historian, Adrian Goldsworthy. Roman and British politics make for a lethal combination, when mixed with a traitor, bloodthirsty Druids, iron discipline, and outstanding bravery. Quality research, strongly defined characters, action scenes which are graphic and exciting, and a strong, authentic plot make this a real pleasure to read. This is top quality historical fiction—one to read and keep. Highly recommended.

Mike Ashworth EAGLES IN THE STORM Ben Kane, Preface, 2017, £12.99, hb, 447pp, 9781848094024 It is AD 15 and Arminius, the leader of the Cherusci tribe, has finally succeeded in welding together the disparate German tribes under his leadership. He is sure that only he can lead them to victory against the hated Roman legions. Some gruesome sacrifices to Donar, the thunder god, can only help. Or so he hopes. On the other side Tullus, a seasoned Roman officer, is desperate for the return of the previously stolen eagles, the mighty symbols of the fighting legions. The novel basically focuses on the build-up to the ultimate Classical — 1st Century

battle. There is treachery, planning, negotiation, fears and death—lots of it.

This is the final Eagles of Rome novel, following on from Eagles at War and Hunting the Eagles. The backstory was filled in to a certain extent as I went along in the novel, but I feel it would have enhanced the reading experience had I read them in order. The relationships and previous experiences were key to understanding the motives of hatred, anger and comradeship. Bloodthirsty, soaked in the sweat and tears of its time, this is a fine blend of history and action. Fans of Simon Scarrow and Bernard Cornwell: form an orderly queue.

Ann Northfield FEAST OF SORROW Crystal King, Touchstone, 2017, $26.99/C$35.99, hb, 416pp, 9781501145131 As a slave about to go on the auction block in 1st-century Rome, Thrasius has few hopes for his future. He hitches his wagon to his transcendent passion: food. When the renowned gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius arrives on the scene in search of a household cook, Thrasius convinces him he need look no further, and Apicius purchases him for the outrageous sum of twenty thousand denarii.

At first, Thrasius can hardly believe his good fortune: he will oversee the kitchen of a wealthy household, with access to every exotic ingredient he can dream of—not to mention frequent chances to see Apicius’s beautiful handmaiden, Passia.

However, he soon learns that Apicius’s appetite for fame is even more insatiable than his appetite for fine cooking. As Apicius angles to become culinary advisor to Caesar, he pushes Thrasius into more and more precarious situations, until the entire household’s safety hangs in the balance with each meal.

Based on the life of the man who inspired one of the world’s first cookbooks, this novel has plenty of ingredients for intrigue: upstairs-downstairs politics, poisonings, and cameos by famous figures in Caesar’s household. Yet the plot ebbs and flows.

Antagonists are built up only to vanish abruptly from the narrative. The relationship between Thrasius and Passia—seemingly predicated solely on Passia’s physical charms—never gains enough depth to truly drive the story. However, while the plot shows some seams, the interspersed recipe snippets and immaculately researched culinary descriptions never fail to delight. King shines as a food writer and guarantees that the reader will finish this book with a new knowledge of ancient cooking—and perhaps a persistent craving for roast dormice and flamingo tongue.

Ann Pedtke THE FISHERMAN’S BRIDE: The Untold Story of the Wife of Simon Peter Catherine Magia, CreateSpace, 2016, $9.99, pb, 240pp, 9781540310446 When Hasar, a rich merchant, makes an offer to marry the (deliberately unnamed) heroine, she is appalled. Not only is the merchant crass and repulsive, as is often the case with such suitors in historical fiction, his would-be bride has come to like her father’s apprentice, the fisherman Simon, who daringly makes his own offer of marriage.

Having made her choice, the heroine, disowned by her father, settles into matrimony. But as the years 1st Century — 7th Century

pass, Simon, restless and yearning for spiritual fulfillment, finds himself drawn to John the Baptist—and then to a new acquaintance he and his wife meet on a journey, Jesus of Nazareth.

Magia’s prose is graceful and descriptive, evoking a strong sense of place, and once the stereotypical Hasar was sent on his way, the characters became complex and engaging. My only quibble was an ending that felt abrupt, probably because of the promised sequel; without having seen the latter, I did wonder whether the books might have been better joined together. Still, Magia left me caring about her heroine, and I am looking forward to see how her story continues.

Susan Higginbotham THE DOG WHO WAS THERE Ron Marasco, Thomas Nelson, 2017, $15.99/ C$19.99/£8.99, pb, 336pp, 9780718083922 Barley is born in the wilds of Judea to a loving mother dog. Life starts off tough and challenging until the mongrel pup is saved from certain death by a kind but poor elderly married couple.

He lives simply and happily in their tiny home on the outskirts of Roman-occupied Jerusalem.

Unexpected events break up the little family, and later Barley somehow links up with a homeless thief. Once again, his existence becomes precarious, but there are moments of joy in this new hostile environment. Accompanying his master into Jerusalem, Barley watches the splendor of a widely celebrated “Kind Man’s” arrival into the capital city on the back of a proud donkey with palm fronds spread before them. Barley also is witness to the violent and monumentally historic events which soon transpire.

Through the eyes of a small and lovable dog, this novel delivers a completely original impression and narration of the most familiar and greatest of all stories. From the pup’s perspective one learns a new understanding of terms like friendship and joy, but also of terror, ugliness, and betrayal. There are plenty of surprisingly clever twists. Though the book is imbued with a subtle and appealing spirituality, it doesn’t overwhelm with repeated biblical references.

Children will love and be inspired by Barley’s story, as will their parents and grandparents regardless of religion, or no religion. Readers will smile, occasionally laugh, and surely cry, but come away uplifted by this immensely moving little book. Highly recommended.

Thomas J. Howley

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3rd century

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FIRE AND SWORD: Throne of the Caesars, Book 3 Harry Sidebottom, Overlook, 2017, $27.95, hb, 464pp, 9781468314366 / HarperCollins, 2016, C$39.99, hb, 464pp, 9780007499922 / Harper, 2017, £7.99, pb, 464pp, 9780007499953 In 238 AD, the Roman Empire is in chaos.

Co-emperors Gordian the Elder and his son have both been killed in Africa. The former emperor, Maximinus Thrax, seeks to reclaim the throne, which was “stolen” from him while he was in the North fighting the Germanic tribes. Many in the

Senate had supported the Gordiani, and now the Senators are fighting among themselves to save their own lives should Maximinus return. The city of Aquileia near Italy’s northern border, presently held by Gordian supporters, is now under siege

by Maximinus. Should it fall, the route is open for him to march on Rome.

I’ve enjoyed reading all three books in this series.

This was a violent time in Roman history, and the author has written a well-researched story with a nice blend of historical characters mixed in. I would recommend reading the previous two installments first to gain a better understanding of the many characters. Much of this book revolves around the siege of Aquileia, because of its importance to Maximinus Thrax during his march. I am anxious to read the next installment, although knowing Roman history from this time does give away the ending. The author has brought 3rd-century Rome to life, and the steady unraveling of the plot makes this book a worthwhile read.

Jeff Westerhoff

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4th century

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THE MASK OF COMMAND Ian Ross, Head of Zeus, 2016, £16.99, hb, 445pp, 9781784975258 We are back in the 4th century for this tale about the closing years of the Roman Empire, which has split in two, Constantine ruling in Rome and the western provinces while Licinius has claimed those in the east. United by treaty, they rule the empire between them, but trouble is brewing. Tribes on the fringes begin to rebel against Roman rule and await their opportunity to throw off the Roman yoke altogether. Christianity, the new religion, is gaining in popularity. Treachery, treason, and even blackmail are the order of the day, and the latest black spot is on the Rhine. Aurelius Castus is ordered to go sort it out, but things become more complicated when he finds that his own young son, Sabinus, has become a pawn in the game, along with Constantine’s young heir, Crispus.

I have read many books on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, but this author was new to me.

I found this novel well-paced, a real page-turner in fact, with incidental characters as believable as the genuine, historical figures. There are tension and seemingly unsolvable catastrophes as well as personal emotions, which all combine for a very enjoyable and informative read. The maps help place the story within its proper geographical boundaries while the historical notes at the end put it all into perspective. I would encourage readers to read these notes first.

This is the fourth book dealing with the breakup of the Roman Empire, and I will certainly look out for the earlier three books in the series.

Marilyn Sherlock

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7th century

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OSWIU: King of Kings Edoardo Albert, Lion Hudson, 2016, £8.99/$16.99, pb, 558pp, 9781782641186 HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 19

Oswiu has replaced his much-loved brother, Oswald, as the Anglo-Saxon king ruling Bernicia (Northumbria) from his stronghold at Bamburgh.

Oswald has been killed by Penda, the ruthless and rapacious King of Mercia. Oswiu struggles to gain the same solidity of support as his brother, and is not recognised as ruler by the kingdom of Deira (York). Challenged to prove his mettle, he sets out on a journey to bring home his brother’s remains from Mercia, disguised as a blind man seeking a miraculous cure. Trickery and disguise emerge as Oswiu’s distinctive traits. He is accompanied on his daring raid by his faithful companions: his warmaster, Aethelwin; his scop (or poet), Acca; and the pagan priest, Coifi. The loyalty of Oswiu’s queen, Rhieienmelth, comes under suspicion and a wedge is driven between them. King Penda’s thoroughly unpleasant character is outstripped by his cruel son, Peada. A cast of other vividly drawn characters include the power-hungry thegn, Hunwald, and the charismatic bishop, Aidan.

Albert gives a strong role to the female characters. The queens and Oswiu’s daughter, Ahlflaed, are shown as equal players and counsellors in the action. Whilst Oswiu’s kingdom is Christian, Mercia is still pagan.

Gradually, the contest between Oswiu and Penda builds to a crescendo as the new Christian god threatens the end for the old gods.

The novel is well imagined and thoroughly researched. Albert tells the story with humour and excellent moments of high drama. At the outset, his prose is occasionally longwinded or repetitious, slowing the pace, but once the story has been set up and the ensemble of characters has been introduced, the novel becomes a compelling page-turner. Oswiu is the final book in Albert’s trilogy on the 7th-century Anglo-Saxon kings of Northumbria, but it works perfectly well as a highly enjoyable stand-alone novel.

Tracey Warr

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8th century

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WHERE DEVILS TREAD: Lions & Devils Book Three Jason Born, Halldorr, 2016, $14.99, pb, 609pp, 9781537333892 The massive concluding volume in Jason Born’s Lions & Devils trilogy (after Hell Shall Stir and Devils in the Breach) draws together all the strands that have woven through his sweeping, complex story centering on the clash between Frankish defenders and Islamic invaders in 8th-century Europe. We meet Duke Eudo of Aquitaine, embroiled in a long, simmering, and often erupting conflict with the forces of the Caliphate under Wali Rahman, with the warlike Charles Martel, known to history as “The Hammer of the Franks,” constantly lurking on the periphery, looking to score any victories he can against his hated enemy, Duke Eudo. The story is likewise told of loyal Caliphate fighter Munnuza, rendered here with the same intricate humanity as the more culturally recognizable Western characters.

Indeed, despite the old-fashioned panoramic sweep of all his books (and not just in this trilogy—Born is a long-time master of the genre), 20 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 80, May 2017

the author’s true knack is for fascinating the reader on the personal level of his many characters, who dream and curse and revel in dry humor and irony, and who feel intensely, immediately human despite their exotic settings and despite the breakneck pace of Where Devils Tread. This is an outstanding conclusion to an outstanding series. Highly recommended.

Steve Donoghue

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11th century

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BROTHER’S BLOOD: A Mediaeval Mystery C. B. Hanley, The Mystery Press/Trafalgar Square, 2016, £7.99/$14.95, pb, 242pp, 978075096614 Set in 1217, this novel centres on the heinous murder of a monk at Roche Abbey. The abbot sends for Edwin Weaver, a man who has become increasingly valuable to the Earl as an investigator.

This is the fourth in the series, and there are references to previous books. It is perfectly possible to read this as a standalone, although the first novel in the series is The Sins of the Father if you prefer to begin at the beginning.

Weaver travels with his young friend Martin, a knight in training, to the abbey to experience monastic life and try to find out who murdered Brother Alexander during the divine reading. The atmosphere of the abbey and presence of books prove a temptation for Edwin, who is drawn to a life of learning and contemplation. Medieval attitudes are clear throughout in the treatment of women, witches, disease, and religion. The reverence paid to books at that time, due to their rarity, is also a key idea.

This is a medieval variant on the Agatha Christie country house murder/mystery, with a closed list of suspects and a story that twists and turns with some red herrings and surprises along the way.

The whodunnit and denouement are very much character-based and psychologically believable.

Fans of Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma and Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael series will be very happy with this offering.

Ann Northfield

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12th century

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REBELLION’S FORGE: The Blood of Kings #3 K. M. Ashman, Thomas & Mercer, 2017, $15.95, pb, 386pp, 9781503942271 In 1109, a weak peace exists between England and Wales. The King of Wales, Gruffydd ap Cynan, is getting older and is glad to stay at home without worrying about devastating battles, as well as the loss of money and lives. King Henry “Beauclerc” of England is also satisfied, but he is also looking for any excuse to take up arms again and subdue Wales and all its recalcitrant local warlords. So the reader is not surprised when Nesta daughter of Tewdwr, the son of her husband Gerald, and one of their shared children are kidnapped by Owain ap Cadwgan, who has for years been haunted by an obsessive lust for Nesta. In addition, a Welsh lord known as “Devil” attacks a group of English soldiers

and murders all of them except their leader, whom he permanently and brutally maims. King Henry immediately declares war on Gruffydd, as well as his feisty daughter Gwenllian, who is as skilled in warfare as any man.

What stands out starkly in this conflict is the passion of love and war that every character exudes. Although Welsh kings, lords, and ladies are self-serving rulers who often make unwise choices, their belief in Welsh independence is deeply moving as we observe their fierce battles and dialogue. The identity of the “Devil” is stunning when discovered, more for his painful history than his audacious acts. The arrogance of the English stirs the reader with understanding but also a sense of dislike. Rebellion’s Forge is the thrilling final novel about this small portion of Welsh history.

Viviane Crystal REGICIDE: Peter Abelard and the Great Jewel David Boyle, CreateSpace, 2016, £9.99, pb, 436pp, 9781535440417 After a clunky prologue, Regicide develops into a fast-paced and entertaining read, featuring the delightful Hilary the Englishman. Hilary is a clerk in holy orders whom we first meet when he loses his cushy job as tutor to the fair Alys. Said Alys has died, so Hilary is expelled from a life of comfort and sent on his way by Alys’s father, who can’t wait to be rid of him. Soon enough, Hilary’s life takes a more adventurous turn as he is dragged into events that start with foul death and end with Hilary travelling all the way to the Holy Land and back, always no more than a step or two ahead of his pursuers. Why is he being hunted? Because Hilary has been burdened with a task—and a secret— that could potentially threaten the rule of Henry I, King of England.

Hilary is not alone: with him travels Peter Abelard, a man recently forcibly separated from his beloved Heloise and some rather vital body parts.

Still, Peter rises above all this and eagerly adds his intellect to Hilary’s increasingly desperate quest.

Mr Boyd is more than familiar with the events and people he depicts—from William Rufus’ death in 1100 to William the Atheling’s unfortunate death in 1120—and his zest and enthusiasm for his story and his characters makes this a compelling read, complete with vivid descriptions and an intricately wrought intrigue.

At times, this enthusiasm affects the writing negatively, resulting in incomplete, convoluted and confusing sentences, incorrect usage of pronouns and prepositions, and the odd anachronism: neither Stockholm nor Boeuf Bourguignon existed in the early 12th century. However, these are minor irritants, easily forgiven in a novel as charming and engrossing as this.

Anna Belfrage

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14th century

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THE GREEN COUNT Christian Cameron, Orion, 2017, £19.99/$26.99, hb, 475pp, 9781409172796 This book continues the tale of William Gold, whom we first meet in The Ill-Made Knight and The Long Sword. To date, Will’s career has taken 8th Century — 14th Century

him from impoverished squire, to being knighted on the field of battle; this story picks up in Cyprus in 1365.

I love historical fiction most when it’s nuanced: when the author assumes I know enough about the period to catch allusions to contemporary politics, when you are immersed in the landscape, and when the characters are rounded human beings with faults as well as virtues. It also helps—at least in an action story—when weapons are accurate and used correctly. Christian Cameron has achieved all of this and more. I know the English 14th century, but this book ranges widely across the Mediterranean, taking us from Jerusalem to the Greek Islands, in the company of Knights of St John, priests, Mongols, slaves, noblemen, Islamic scholars, and more: the entire riotous spectrum of mediaeval life, portrayed in Technicolor and smellovision. I also learnt one or two new sword fighting techniques!

Sir William Gold is a thoroughly likeable man, who grows from an impoverished lone knight to the leader of a powerful company of men (not to mention gaining a wife and step-family), without losing the self-deprecating charm that makes him such a pleasure to spend time with. Whether you’re after a roistering action book, a masterly portrayal of 14th-century European and Asian realpolitik, or to admire a storyteller at the height of his powers, you will enjoy this book.

Nicky Moxey

Viper’s Blood is the fourth book in David Gilman’s Master of War series continuing the saga of the Hundred Years’ War and the tale of the fictional Sir Thomas Blackstone. Edward III has invaded France, and as the winter of 1359 turns to the spring of 1360, there is a stalemate between the two armies. With the Dauphin refusing to leave Paris, the English army must cross France, taking supplies where they can. Thomas Blackstone is tasked with seizing gold for the King and, while seeking a healer for his oldest friend, Killbere, he rescues a young woman accused of witchcraft, a woman his men believe brings bad luck. Recalled to Paris as a truce is arranged, Blackstone is tasked with taking the French King’s daughter to Italy for her wedding, into the heart of Milan and the family responsible for the murder of Blackstone’s wife and daughter. Blackstone seeks vengeance.

The Dauphin hopes to be rid of Blackstone at last.

This is a book full of carefully researched details of war, siege, and weaponry, as might be expected, but it is also a treasure trove of details about medieval life, herbal remedies, folk beliefs, and the power of the medieval church. Blackstone is a man of his times: a warrior, a leader, hard on his son and on himself, but also just, fair and loyal. A great addition to the series, this book could also be read as a standalone novel. Perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Giles Kristian, and Conn Iggulden.

Lisa Redmond

THE DRAPER’S DAUGHTER Ellin Carsta (trans. John Brownjohn), AmazonCrossing, 2017, $14.95, pb, 292pp, 9781503938618 Elisabeth Hardenstein works hard for her father, a draper in 1351 Cologne, Germany. Her father trusts her acumen over that of her brother, Stephen, an unreliable, disruptive young man who is also her twin. Stephen is fired from an apprenticeship, returns home, and immediately tries to usurp Elisabeth’s authority with the business. When her father has a stroke, and is bedridden, Stephen takes charge and loses their money in gambling, and Elisabeth must ply her skills and knowledge in the cloth trade in a time when women weren’t allowed to trade on their own. Facing danger, and rejection, and the loss of her long-time love, Rafael, to a girl with a rich dowry, will she prevail?

While I was absorbed in Elisabeth’s trials, this book reads like a young-adult novel with sparse descriptions of people or cities and often simplistic, too-modern dialog with little deep nuance of character. The relationship with Rafael is not set up to show their undying love, so it never connected with me. Elisabeth disregards her personal reputation with him, which would have been ruinous in this era, and Rafael is a cad for taking advantage of her. Stephen is a dissolute horror whom she should never have trusted the second time—but he keeps the story lively. Elisabeth’s struggles as a woman to thrive in the cloth trade ring true, and the details about different types of cloth are interesting. The novel is a pleasant, light read.

Diane Scott Lewis

A TWISTED VENGEANCE Candace Robb, Pegasus, 2017, $25.95, hb, 320pp, 9781681774527 Kate Clifford’s life is seriously disrupted when her mother, Eleanor, returns to York in 1399.

Despite unrest seething in the city because of the dispute between King Richard and Duke Henry, and despite family feuds, Kate’s life has been going well. Her mother’s arrival, however, is never welcome, and when she moves in next door with a group of religious sisters, it puzzles Kate. When one of the gentle sisters is viciously attacked, Kate starts to ask questions.

Rapidly, Kate and her two wolfhounds are drawn into the conflict between the army camps flooding the city, between antagonistic religious groups, and between families, not to mention simple thievery.

The answer to many of Kate’s questions seems to lie with her mother, but Eleanor refuses to talk about her precipitous flight back to York. Kate’s fight to find answers and to save her livelihood and her family leads her to explore hidden corners of 14th century York with danger always threatening.

The author’s research is evident in this book, as with her previous novels. Her knowledge of the time and place creates a strong foundation for an exciting and readable tale. Her characters are skillfully drawn, and the pacing is strategic. A very satisfying read.

Val Adolph

VIPER’S BLOOD: Master of War David Gilman, Head of Zeus, 2017, £18.99, hb, 493pp, 9781784974466 14th Century — 15th Century

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15th century

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SCARS FROM THE PAST Derek Birks, CreateSpace, 2016, $18.99, pb, 507pp, 9781910944233 Scars from the Past is the first of a new series

following the fortunes of the Elder family during the Wars of the Roses. It would, perhaps, be most enjoyed after having read the first series, Rebels and Brothers, but it works well as a stand-alone story. There is a list of characters at the front of the book to which new readers may refer.

The novel depicts the Elders during the final years of Edward IV, mingling real and fictional characters. Derek Birks is particularly good at creating a warts-and-all view of the social conditions of the late Middle Ages. The lack of comfort of living conditions and life in general are very effectively shown. This element appealed greatly to the archaeologist in me.

The author’s style is to follow a variety of different members or friends of the Elder family rather than a single narrative, before tying them all together in an exciting and well-paced climax. For this alone, the book is well worth reading. There is plenty of action along the way, with back stories involving love, ambition, revenge, and lust. The cast contains a good mix of strong male and female leads.

The period is well researched and the settings atmospheric and vividly described, so that at times the reader feels embedded in the mud and rain.

As with all good family sagas, there is a repellent villain. My only slight criticism is that at 500 pages the pace can flag on occasion, but it builds up to an excellent and well-delivered finish.

The book is nicely produced and well-edited and, as with all good historical fiction, the reader learns fascinating period detail while being entertained by an experienced author who knows his trade. I look forward to the next instalment.

Nick Brown

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THE COMPETITION: Da Vinci’s Disciples, #2 Donna Russo Morin, Diversion, 2017, $14.99, pb, 268pp, 9781682308066 In the late 15th century, six women dare to seek permission from the head of a noble Florentine family and the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de Medici, to paint a religious fresco in the Church of Santo Spirito for a local competition. Under the mentorship of Leonardo da Vinci, these women are accomplished artists, forced to practice their art in secrecy because women are forbidden by law to engage in any of the arts. They receive their permission only because de Medici has changed, following the betrayals he endured (as depicted in the previous book, Portrait of a Conspiracy) and his lust for one of the painters, Isabetta.

The author shares with the reader how frescos are produced, a fascinating procedure requiring intricate skill and limitless patience, which all six women embrace. While these feisty women are ostracized and even experience physical abuse, their dynamic nature is obvious as each exhibits a special quality all women yearn to own. Viviana relishes the return and love of a warrior soldier but hesitates to commit herself in marriage, and HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 21

Natasia risks death to find information that will restore her family’s honor. Their mission is to create beauty that honors their local church and God, and they finish to the acclaim of their patrons.

The plot and its subplots are riveting reading.

Finally, a few of the women provide hints of future interest and, if one knows one’s history, potentially immense conflict. What is unique about these women is not only their loyalty as wives, daughters, and mothers, but also the fierceness of their artistic sensibilities, which must find satisfaction in producing works of phenomenal beauty. Superb historical fiction and a must read!

Viviane Crystal

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THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN FLORENCE Alyssa Palombo, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2017, $15.99, pb, 320pp, 9781250071507 Simonetta Cattaneo, a young noblewoman in 15th-century Genoa, is happy to marry the Florentine Marco Vespucci and be introduced to her husband’s circle of friends, including Florence’s unofficial ruler, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and the philosophers, poets, and artists who surround him. Her golden-haired beauty immediately attracts the attention of Lorenzo’s handsome brother, Giuliano.

But Simonetta prefers to be admired for her intellect, not her beauty, and she is drawn to one man in particular: the painter Sandro Botticelli, who asks her to pose for him. As he paints her portrait, the two discover they share a love of poetry and ancient philosophy. Eventually they realize they are intensely attracted to each other.

But Simonetta will not betray her husband, even though he cheats on her and offers her to Giuliano as his mistress, to advance his political career. The love between Simonetta and Botticelli will eventually lead to the creation of his masterpiece, The Birth of Venus.

Alyssa Palombo follows up her outstanding debut, The Violinist of Venice, with this stunning novel which is a reflection on beauty and how it can be a curse, as Simonetta fends off unwanted admirers. Palombo also writes compellingly of the relationship between artist and muse, as Simonetta and Botticelli struggle against their attraction to each other. Botticelli’s paintings come brilliantly to life, and Palombo makes the reader want to travel to Florence to see them. She draws you into the world of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Florence, a city that comes alive for the reader. Having recently been to Florence, I can especially appreciate her descriptions of its famous buildings such as the Duomo and Santa Croce. Simonetta, the beauty who would rather be admired for her mind, is an engaging heroine, and Palombo portrays Botticelli very sympathetically as well.

Vicki Kondelik

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THE SULTAN, THE VAMPYR AND THE SOOTHSAYER 22 | Reviews |

HNR Issue 80, May 2017

Lucille Turner, Hengist Press, 2016, $18.99, pb, 484pp, 9781527202061 1442: The Draculesti family rules Wallachia (modern-day Romania), the buffer between the Holy Roman Empire to the north and the Ottoman Empire to the south.

The family patriarch, Dracul, finds his loyalties being torn apart. While his heart is with the Greeks, he is friends with the Catholic Hungarians, and he must honor an oath to the Ottoman Sultan. In the midst of these opposing forces, Dracul is concerned about a family malady which affects his middle son, Vlad, a sickness he once suffered from himself. In a search for answers, Dracul travels with his two youngest sons to Constantinople to review ancient texts that may have a clue about their family’s illness. On the way, however, Dracul’s caravan is intercepted by Ottoman soldiers and brought before the Sultan.

Sultan Murad desires control over Constantinople, the Orthodox Greek capital. His hopes are on his son, Mehmet. To ensure Dracul’s fealty, Murad captures Dracul’s sons and keeps them as hostages.

The two boys are quickly sent away to train to become servants of the Ottoman Empire.

Mehmet and Vlad were both born middle sons.

Both feel they’re meant for more than their birth order has in store, and both sons have a dangerous secret. When Murad asks a soothsayer for advice, the fortunes revealed bring to light startling truths from the past as well as the future.

With a multifaceted narrative, diverse characters, and stunning historical detail, this book is completely absorbing. The author stirs together history, myth, political intrigue, and religious conflict to create a gripping, expertly researched story. Was it a curse, a medical condition, or the simple fears of local farmers that led to the legend of Count Dracula? See what you think after reading. Highly recommended.

J. Lynn Else

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16th century

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MURDER IN A CORNISH ALEHOUSE Kathy Lynn Emerson, Severn House, 2017, $28.99/£20.99, hb, 240pp, 9780727886767 In June of 1584, Mistress Rosamond Jaffrey learns of the death of her stepfather, Sir Walter Pendennis, and returns to Cornwall to see to her younger half-brother and her estranged mother.

When she arrives and begins looking into the death of her stepfather, she learns that his death was not caused by an accidental fall from his horse, but was in fact caused by murder. Rosamond sets out to find the truth and convince others of the cause of her stepfather’s death, but as in any good fictional thriller, the death toll continues to rise.

Rosamond works with Queen Elizabeth I’s own private secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, on her road to producing evidence of the truth behind Sir Walter’s death. Walsingham, a real character

set in a fictional backdrop, turns out to be just as important in Rosamond’s efforts as he was to Queen Elizabeth I herself, protecting her from a series of plots.

In this third book in a series featuring Mistress Rosamond Jaffrey, it is not required of readers to have read the first two books to understand Rosamond’s personality. Many readers will appreciate that while Rosamond is married, she is the one in charge of her own investigation, asking for help when needed, but not requiring the help of her husband to get her out of any mess.

Recommended for fans of cozy mysteries and armchair historians with a fascination with the 16th century.

Elicia Parkinson THE SECOND BLAST OF THE TRUMPET Marie MacPherson, Knox Robinson, 2016, £14.99, hb, 326pp, 8469736359781 John Knox, the 16th-century Protestant religious reformer, is the subject of this book, the second in a trilogy about his life and times. History has often cast him as a stern, misogynistic, biblethumping Calvinist, and this book seeks to get behind the myths and to discover the real man. He was probably educated at St. Andrews University and worked as a notary-priest. Knox was much influenced by George Wishart, and he joined the movement to reform the Scottish Church. He became a Royal Chaplain to Edward VI and had some influence in compiling the text of the Book of Common Prayer. We are told that he married twice and travelled extensively around Europe, always in the company of several women, and that on his return to Scotland he led the Protestant Reformation in Scotland.

Although I knew something of John Knox, and was keen to learn more, I found this book hard going. The pace is slow, and I was constantly skipping pages to get to the next point of the action.

This was not helped by the author’s constant use of the Scottish vernacular. To be fair, I could understand the gist of the sentences, but to an English reader it only serves to slow the pace even further. A glossary might have helped. The author’s notes help to paint in the background, but I am sad to say that I will not be using the other two books in the trilogy to follow the complete life and times of John Knox.

Marilyn Sherlock CLAIMED BY A HIGHLANDER Margaret Mallory, CreateSpace, 2016, $11.99, pb, 313pp, 9781535344746 This story takes place in Scotland in the year 1522. To say it’s a story about a Lowland noble marrying a Highlander may be technically correct, but it is so much more. The heroine, Lady Sybil Douglas, was brought up at court and trained to be the wife of a wealthy, landed gentleman. The more powerful, the better. That was until her family fell out of favor with the royal family and a price was put on her brothers’ heads. Abandoned by her family and awaiting the retribution of an angry Queen, she is rescued by a stranger claiming her as his betrothed. Enter our hero.

Rory MacKenzie survived the Battle at Flodden while others did not. Wanting only to return to the Highlands, his gamble for a horse and a sword 15th Century — 16th Century

lands him a betrothal to a Lowlander that he’d prefer to avoid. Years later, when he comes to honor the agreement, he finds his betrothed has become an easy target for the vengeful Queen because of her family’s dishonorable ways.

This book is full of clan rivalry and political intrigue, romance and secrets, which are all worked out with a satisfying happily-ever-after. With a strong-minded heroine and swoon-worthy hero, this story is an enjoyable read that I recommend.

Chas Forest THE QUEEN’S CHRISTMAS SUMMONS Amanda McCabe, Harlequin Historical, 2016, $6.50/C$7.25, pb, 276pp, 9780373299065 Lady Alys Drury, raised in isolation on the Irish coast, has grown up hearing stories of Queen Elizabeth’s court in London. Her quiet life changes drastically one September night when wretched survivors of the Spanish king’s Great Armada wash up on the beach outside her father’s tower house.

Sickened by the slaughter of innocent sailors, she saves the life of one wounded Spaniard, hiding him in a ruined abbey. They grow to care for each other as he recovers. But Juan disappears and Alys is summoned to serve the Queen at court. A dumbfounded Alys finds her Spaniard at court, now using the name John Huntley. Is he a spy for the Spanish king? Can Alys trust him, and can she trust the promptings of her own heart?

I thoroughly enjoyed this historical romance and found it wonderfully diverting during a difficult weekend. Alys and Juan are sympathetic characters, while the contrasts between the wild Irish coast and the sumptuous Elizabethan court provide a lovely treat. Recommended for historical romance lovers and those in need of a “Calgon take me away” read.

Susan McDuffie

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ANNE BOLEYN: A King’s Obsession Alison Weir, Headline, 2017, £18.99, hb, 528pp, 9781472227621 / Ballantine, 2017, $28/C$35, hb, 535pp, 9781101966518 This is a stunning, engaging, comprehensive and convincing novel. It opens with 11-year-old Anne about to depart from Hever to become one of Margaret of Burgundy’s maids of honour, exposing her to examples of women looking forward to power and autonomy and who question their place as decreed by medieval thought.

Anne’s early character established, Weir continues to create a woman who is bright, educated, thoughtful, caring, likeable, and different from the usual female courtier. She learned to play the game of chivalric love and use it to her advantage. Weir conveys to her readers that it is tragic that Anne was prevented from marrying her true love Henry Percy, and fatal that from 1524 the King relentlessly pursued her, changing the course of English history and setting the course for Anne’s personal tragedy and that of her brother and a group of male courtiers. Anne understood 16th Century — 17th Century

her power but overestimated it, having consciously decided to settle for queenship, despite not loving the king, yet desirous of using her position for good.

The journey as told by Weir is realistic, unsensational, and diligent in paying attention to details of court life and Anne’s trial and execution.

A genial, suggestible Henry is determined to get what he wants. Sparkling Anne cannot provide the longed-for son. She loses control over Henry as she ages. It is a very human tale of how power corrupts and creates neuroses, real and imagined.

Anne Boleyn: A King’s Obsession is important, page-turning biographical fiction, hauntingly and beautifully told in first-person narrative. It is psychologically penetrating and packed with wonderful, vivid scenes. Weir’s characterisation is superb, and this complex novel will be, without doubt, one of the most admired works of historical fiction of 2017.

Carol McGrath

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17th century

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THE REVOLUTION OF THE MOON Andrea Camilleri (trans. Stephen Sartarelli), Europa, 2017, $16.00/C$22.00/£10.99, pb, 240pp, 9781609453916 Andrea Camilleri, author of the popular Inspector Montalbano mystery series, brings us an entertaining historical novel, written with tongue firmly in cheek, set in 1677 Sicily. When Don Angel, the Spanish viceroy of Sicily, dies suddenly, he leaves a will naming his wife, Donna Eleonora, as his successor. She immediately dismisses the corrupt members of the royal council and passes laws lowering the price of bread and creating shelters for orphans and former prostitutes. In a land suffering from poverty and the resulting uprisings, she becomes a heroine of the common people. But the former councilors, who are afraid of having their crimes exposed and are horrified by the thought of a female ruler, plot their revenge. When Eleonora attempts to have the Bishop of Palermo tried for abusing choirboys, he asks the Pope to intervene and have her removed from office. The Bishop has people murdered to cover up his crimes, and with the choirboys’ families too afraid to testify against the Bishop, he may escape punishment.

Will Eleonora succeed in having him arrested before the Pope decides to put her reign to an end?

Camilleri brings this little-known historical episode to life and makes Eleonora an admirable, intelligent heroine we all hope will triumph in the end, although history tells us to expect a bittersweet ending. Camilleri takes liberties with some facts to suit his narrative, but since the episode is so obscure, these should not bother the reader. The novel is sprinkled with humor throughout, and it may take some readers a while to get used to Camilleri’s particular sense of humor. But those who persist will be rewarded, and Eleonora, a woman forgotten by history, will come alive to the reader. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to discover a remarkable, forgotten woman.

Vicki Kondelik

THE EXECUTIONER OF ST PAUL’S Susanna Gregory, Sphere, 2017, £19.99, hb, 456pp, 9780751552850 London, 1665. Plague is raging in the overcrowded city. Only the poor, or those struggling to keep the city’s infrastructure functional until the crisis is over, remain. There is another, longterm problem: what to do with the dangerously unstable St Paul’s Cathedral. One faction wants an expensive restoration; the other wants to demolish it and erect a magnificent new cathedral designed

by Christopher Wren. This is King Charles II’s preferred option, and those who support him are expecting huge economic benefits to come their way. Both factions have raised large sums of money, which have mysteriously gone astray, and there is a suspect: Canon Robert Kerchier. Then a body is found in another man’s tomb. Thomas Chaloner, spy to the Earl of Clarendon, reluctantly agrees to investigate. The body is Kerchier’s, and he was murdered. If he is not the thief, then who is? Chaloner learns that someone, known only as the Executioner, is determined to build Wren’s cathedral and will stop at nothing to silence his opponents. He has many hidden supporters, but who is he? Is Chaloner himself on the Executioner’s hit list?

Susanna Gregory is good at atmosphere. She gets across the horror of living in 17th-century plague-stricken London. The city is bone dry and sweltering in a heat wave. The stench of death from the open plague pits is horrendous, and there is little food. The authorities are doing their best: they have killed all the cats and dogs as a health measure, and ordered huge bonfires to purify the air. Neither, of course, works. I liked the rising tension as the death toll rises—and it’s not only from the plague. This is Thomas Chaloner’s twelfth adventure, and Susanna Gregory is well into her stride. Her fans will love The Executioner of St Paul’s.

Elizabeth Hawksley

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THE HOUSE AT BISHOPSGATE Katie Hickman, Bloomsbury, 2017, $27/C$36, hb, 448pp, 9781608199457 / Bloomsbury, 2017, £16.99, hb, 448pp, 9781408821145 1611: Merchant Paul Pindar and his wife, Celia, return to London after years spent living abroad in Aleppo and Constantinople.

But Celia’s past has scarred her, and the return to England is not easy.

Frances Sydenham, a widow, travels with the couple from Antwerp to England and remains with the Pindars as they settle in to Paul’s elaborate mansion, assisting Celia with the chores of setting up her new household. Celia waits impatiently for the arrival of her friend Annetta from Venice, while Paul mourns the disappearance of his old companion and servant John Carew.

Meanwhile, London gossip speaks of the miraculous diamond said to be in Paul’s possession, and the schemes of Paul’s brother threaten to engulf them all.

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Hickman’s novel transported me to the England of James I; Celia, Paul, Annetta, and John Carew swept me away. So engrossing were the plot and characters that I did not want their stories to end.

The author’s lush writing brings the characters and settings to life, whether she writes of Venetian convents, penniless rat-catchers, a miraculous diamond, or an abandoned English manor.

This is the third installment in a trilogy.

Although it can be read as a stand-alone, readers will no doubt want to delve into the earlier novels, The Aviary Gate and The Pindar Diamond as well.

Highly recommended.

Susan McDuffie PURITAN David Hingley, Allison & Busby, 2017, £14.99, hb, 413pp, 9780749020286 This follow-up to the outstanding Birthright continues the intriguing story of Mercia Blakewood. Having arrived in America and discovered the whereabouts of the Oxford Section, Mercia is looking forward to seeing a bit more of the New World and accepts an invitation from Governor Winthrop to visit Connecticut.

She befriends local healer Clemency Carter and travels into the countryside of New England and the town of Meltwater, where Puritan settlers have forged an uneasy alliance with the native tribes. The descriptions of both the landscape and the harsh lives of the New Englanders are vivid and captivating, and the new characters introduced in this novel, Clemency in particular, are fascinating. However, the peacefulness and beauty are shattered when one of the townspeople is murdered. Mercia is determined to discover why.

It soon becomes clear that the tensions between those who support the Restoration and those who fought for the Commonwealth are just as powerful and dangerous here in the New World as they were back in England. As more murders occur suspicion grows, and neighbour turns against neighbour.

Soon Mercia finds herself in danger and fighting for her life.

This is a thrilling follow-up, and I am eager to read more about Mercia Blakewood. A must for fans of historical crime fiction and ideal for fans of Andrew Taylor, S.J. Deas, and S.G. MacLean.

Lisa Redmond A WOMAN CALLED SELLERS Sarah King, CreateSpace, 2017, £10.99, pb, 354pp, 9781530965144.

In winter 1632, Jennet Sellers arrives at her cousins’ Lancashire farm. Only she and the cousins know that as a child she gave the evidence that condemned her whole family to hang for witchcraft. Guilt-stricken and living in fear of discovery, she has abandoned hope for a normal life. A family quarrel drives her to take refuge with Goodwife Lund, a wise-woman. When Jennet meets and falls in love with a sympathetic outsider, she dares dream of happiness, but her secret past is cruelly uncovered. With witch finders prowling the countryside, she and Goodwife Lund are in danger.

Based on fact, this is the second volume of the Witches of Pendle series. King reveals Jennet’s past gradually, which slows the pace, but as the authorities close in, the novel takes off and the reader is hooked. She is excellent on rural life in 24 | Reviews |

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17th-century Lancashire, and her characters are convincing products of superstition, prejudice and class divisions, particularly the helplessness of the uneducated faced with officials indifferent to their fate. Although the dialogue lacks period or local flavour, as the people are well-drawn, the plot and atmosphere carry the novel.

Lynn Guest THE BOY WHO WANTED WINGS James Conroyd Martin, Hussar Quill, 2016, $14.99, pb, 336pp, 9780997894509 In the tradition of Eric Kelley’s The Trumpeter of Krakow, James Conroyd Martin’s novel The Boy Who Wanted Wings tells the story of a heroic young Polish boy. Aleksy Gazdecki, a native Tatar raised by a family of Polish peasants, is a skilled archer who dreams of someday joining the ranks of the famed Polish hussars and riding into battle against the forces of the Ottoman Empire that are rampaging all over Europe in the year 1683. Aleksy’s simple life is complicated when Countess Krystyna, the daughter of the local lord, returns from years away at convent school and quickly captivates Aleksy’s heart. This classic different-worlds love affair provides the human grounding for a larger story replete with well-researched period details about the struggle of 17th-century Europe against the forces of Islam, and Martin is a skilled enough storyteller to keep the whole narrative moving forward briskly to a very satisfying conclusion. The author has written a pitch-perfect follow-up to his Poland Trilogy. Recommended.

Steve Donoghue THE TYRANT’S SHADOW Antonia Senior, Corvus, 2017, £17.99, hb, 360pp, 9781782396611 This is a passionate, richly imagined story set during Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth in London, with scenes also in the New World and Germany. It is a world turned upside down by civil war and power struggles between the victors.

The narrative sweep allows an intense flavour of what it was like to be part of a mid17th century family. Will Chandler, secretary to Oliver Cromwell, is an empty soul after his wife is killed on the day King Charles is executed.

His sister, Patience, convinced that she must be a preacher’s helpmate, marries fundamentalist Sidrach Simmonds, a man determined to mould the Commonwealth according to extremist belief.

Sam Challower, Will’s Royalist brother-in-law, returns from years abroad in exile. He is the catalyst who forces Will and Patience to query their loyalties and recognise what they really want.

The third-person viewpoint moves among these three protagonists as the story progresses. They are layered personalities accompanied by a gallery of diverse, vividly portrayed secondary characters.

Research underpinning the narrative is fascinating and seamlessly integrated into the story, and shines through its characters. They are individual and also of their times. As the story continues, they grow and change.

There are two tyrants in this novel and, indeed, The Tyrant’s Shadow is as much a thriller as an exquisite portrait of a 17th-century marriage.

It is compulsively page-turning and highly recommended. Antonia Senior’s writing is concise,

poetic and immediate. Every word is carefully selected so that every sentence is a joy to read. Her book reminds us of our human fragility and our strengths, and possesses a sense of universality that carries pertinent messages from a fundamentalist past into the world we inhabit now.

Carol McGrath

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THE WITCHFINDER’S SISTER Beth Underdown, Ballantine, $28, hb, 303pp, 9780399179143 / Viking, 2017, £14.99, hb, 368pp, 9780241978030 It’s 1645 in England as Alice Hopkins, a lost and penniless widow, returns to her brother Matthew’s home. Her once-shy brother has transformed into a man she cannot support or endure. Wealthy and respected but also feared, Matthew hunts witches on the recommendations of townspeople who hold irrational grudges against marginalized, deformed, weak or old women. Alice is unable to either convince Matthew of his moral depravity or stop him from travelling through Essex, interrogating suspected women, noting the testimony of complainants, and emotionally and physically breaking down the women’s barriers until they declare what he wants to hear. To control and break her will, Matthew even manipulates Alice into accompanying him and helping him do his interrogations.

The Witchfinder’s Sister is Alice’s story and also Matthew’s. In her debut novel, Beth Underdown unravels their complex histories slowly, adding layers of mystery as she reveals evils and personal agendas. No one is who he or she seems in this Papist community. Underdown brings to life the stories of the accused women as well as their accusers and delivers a haunting finale. The writing is superb and propelled me to read on while simultaneously pushing me away. Loosely based on fragments about a real witch hunter of the same name, The Witchfinder’s Sister is as compelling as it is disturbing. I highly recommend it.

Francesca Pelaccia

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18th century

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THE FATAL TREE Jake Arnott, Sceptre, 2017, £16.99, hb, 336pp, 9781473637740 London, the 1720s. The underworld here is known as ‘Romeville’, while the scaffold at Tyburn is ‘The Fatal Tree’. This is the story of Edgworth Bess, whore and pickpocket. From the condemned cell at Newgate, Bess dictates her story to Billy Archer, a Grub Street hack and aspiring poet, who rubs shoulders with Swift and Defoe, while moving through the murky underworld of molly houses and thievery. This is a time when Jonathan Wild, self-styled ‘Thief Taker General’, brutally controls organised crime in the city. Bess falls in love with 17th Century — 18th Century

Jack Sheppard, arch-criminal and escape artist, and together they defy Wild, a dangerous strategy which will have fatal consequences for them both.

Based on actual historical figures, this book works on so many levels. It is a social history, a love story, and a tale of subterfuge and treachery.

The times and culture of “Romeville” are effectively invoked by the clever use of language, supported by an extensive glossary at the end of the book. The reader is drawn in to a world of crime, punishment and rough justice. With a twist in its tail, this book makes for fascinating reading. Recommended.

Mike Ashworth THE ENEMIES OF VERSAILLES Sally Christie, Atria, 2017, $16.00/C$22.00/£9.99, pb, 416pp, 9781501103025 This is the last of the Mistresses of Versailles trilogy, focusing on the rivalry between Madame Adelaide, daughter of Louis XV, and the Comtesse du Barry, Louis’s last mistress. The chapters alternate between the two women as narrators.

Adelaide is pleased when La Pompadour dies, hoping her father will become closer to his legitimate children now that he has fewer distractions. But soon Jeanne Becu, later created Comtesse du Barry, comes to the king’s attention.

Adelaide’s attempts to reproach the king for bringing a prostitute to his court make him angry, and he refuses to listen. When Marie Antoinette arrives from Austria to marry the king’s grandson, she is adamant about not speaking to the lowborn Du Barry. Meanwhile, Adelaide is no longer officially “Madame,” since her place in the strict hierarchy is now below Marie Antoinette’s as the wife of the Dauphin. Du Barry hopes to obtain a divorce from her absent husband so she will be free to marry the king, but the Pope is reluctant. And while the intrigue and backbiting continues, the Revolution is looming.

Books set in the rarified world of Versailles have an undercurrent of doom, at least for those readers versed in the basics of French history and who know what’s coming. For those unfamiliar with the period, Christie skillfully foreshadows hints of social change, so that the collapse of Du Barry’s and Adelaide’s world of privilege is not a surprise. Du Barry is probably the more sympathetic character for modern readers. Madame Adelaide, while true to the period, is so unbending about court etiquette and the importance of birth status that she is a first-class snob for most of the story. The details of life at Versailles are absorbing. I enjoyed the novel and plan to read the others in the series.

B.J. Sedlock BIRDCAGE WALK Helen Dunmore, Hutchinson, 2017, £18.99, hb, 412pp, 9780091959401 / Atlantic Monthly, 2017, $25, hb, 416pp, 9780802127143 Bristol in the latter decade of the 18th century.

Elizabeth (or Lizzie as she is mostly known), narrates the story in the first person, and is a young bride, newly married to the speculative builder John Tredevant, generally known for some reason as Diner. He is constructing an ambitious terrace of large houses in Clifton, with spectacular and expensive views over the Avon. Lizzie’s mother is the political writer Julia Fawkes, who falls pregnant at the age of forty to her second husband, Augustus 18th Century

Gleeson.

When the political ferment with the French Revolution across the Channel starts to affect the economic climate in England, builders of expensive houses like Elizabeth’s husband suffer from the downturn. Tredevant has a secret about his first, deceased wife, Lucie, which the reader knows about from the very opening of the novel, but Elizabeth only uncovers slowly throughout the story. Elizabeth is a challenging (for her family) and quite complex individual for a woman of her time: headstrong and rather determined to do what she wants to do.

Helen Dunmore invariably writes accomplished, poetic fiction, and this is an engaging and absorbing read, but I was not quite so captured by this book as by her more recent publications—though this may be down to very high expectations of her ability to deliver superb writing. The novel has an underlying theme of mortality with the remnants of a life that is left behind us, understandable as we learn from the media that the author is suffering from a serious illness.

Douglas Kemp THE NEWCOMER Suzanne Woods Fisher, Revell, 2017, $15.99, pb, 336pp, 9780800727499 The Newcomer—2nd in the Amish Beginnings series—begins where the first book leaves off. Anna Konig and her group arrive in Port Philadelphia in 1737 and are eager to make their way into the frontier of Pennsylvania to set up their new community. While in port, they adopt a newcomer, Henrik Newman, into their community. Eventually, they are able to move out, but not until after their bishop, Jacob Bauer, has left with his wife and infant to prepare the settlement. The group suffers a third split when Bairn (Hans Bauer) decides to go on one more voyage before settling down. Can Anna’s love for Bairn survive the separation, or will the newcomer sweep her off her feet?

Peppered throughout the story are historical figures—Benjamin Franklin and Conrad Beissel— as well as historical places, including the Ephrata Cloister. These all lend an air of authenticity to the story, and Fisher does well in their portrayal in significance to the overall plot. Bairn’s story on the Lady Luck proves to be the most intriguing of the three subplots. While the writing is good, it was difficult for me to mesh with all the characters, and that made for a lumbering read. Overall, a sweet and, at times, historically informative inspirational romance.

Bryan Dumas

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THE MARK OF THE KING Jocelyn Green, Bethany House, 2017, $14.99, pb, 416pp, 9780764219061 This Christian fiction novel follows Julianne Chevalier, a 25-year-old Parisian midwife, after the tragic death of a client. She’s accused of fatal negligence, is branded with the Mark of the King, and sentenced to life in Salpêtrière prison. By chance, she is able to exchange her sentence for exile. She hopes to start a new life and find her brother Benjamin, a soldier in the French colony of Louisiana. However, only married women can make the journey, so Julianne must wed another convict.

When Julianne arrives in New Orleans in 1720,

her brother is not there, and military officer MarcPaul Girard fears telling Julianne the truth about Benjamin’s fate. When Julianne and her husband’s search for Benjamin turns deadly, Marc-Paul suspects something more sinister is at work, which may strain relations with their Indian neighbors and put everyone in the colony at risk.

Jocelyn Green uses artistic language when recounting the 18th-century living conditions, relationships between the colonists and Indians, and practices in midwifery and medicine.

Vivid imagery transports readers into the fledging colony. Themes of judgment and grace are contrasted thoughtfully and beautifully throughout Green’s narrative. The plot is layered and conveyed with much emotion. Julianne’s struggles with God and finding her place in the world provide compelling moments.

The real-life situations these colonists once lived through are harrowing, but skillfully and tastefully told through Green’s deft storytelling. Prepare to be shocked, angered, saddened, surprised, hopeful, and completely riveted as you read. Brimming with impressive historical details, complex characters, and an alluring plotline rich with unpredictable twists and turns, this is a touching novel that is highly recommended.

J. Lynn Else TRAIL OF MIRACLES Smadar Herzfeld (trans. Aloma Halter), AmazonCrossing, 2017, $14.95, pb, 128pp, 9781503943001 Israeli author Herzfeld’s first English-language release is short but lyrically powerful. Addressing the God she loves, Gittel, a Jewish woman born in a Ukrainian village in the late 18th century, delivers an account which simultaneously serves as an impassioned memoir, her expression of faith, and a lament for the path she didn’t choose. In her old age, Gittel lives in Jerusalem, a land of three faiths, working as a washerwoman and healing the sick.

As she reveals, her journey to the Holy City was an unusual one.

When she is just twelve, her devout parents arrange her hasty marriage to Avraham, son of the Maggid (itinerant preacher) of Mezeritch, a match suggested by his spiritual advisors in order to save Avraham’s life. Feeling abandoned by her father, who’s too busy studying Torah to tell her goodbye, and neglected by her silent, wraithlike husband, Gittel lives a frightened, lonely existence in her new home. Her main consolation is her growing friendship with her father-in-law, a prominent disciple of the new Hasidic movement. “A splendid future awaits you, Gittel,” he tells her, “and it is my voice and eyes that will follow you every moment.”

His words and support give her hope. Years later, after his death and her husband’s, Gittel refuses to remarry. Instead, she dares to pursue her childhood dream of a life in Jerusalem, leaving her two young sons in another’s care.

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thoughts, from her marriage’s unhappy early days to her present life of poverty and prayer to her earlier journey south, a rare feat for a woman alone.

The novel is replete with Eastern European Jewish customs, and its tone is frequently mystical. The details are specific to its time and place, while Trail of Miracles follows in the tradition of presenting little-known historical women’s voices.

Sarah Johnson FOOL ME TWICE Philippa Jane Keyworth, Madison Street, 2016, $14.95/C$19.55, pb, 269pp, 9780996264846 Driven by desperate financial circumstances, Caro Worth lives a double life, as a respectable young woman of Georgian society by day and as a shrewd card player by night. Inhabiting the guise of Angelica, a fabricated illegitimate half-sister, she frequents one of London’s many private gaming parlors and gambles to make a living.

With everyone in society circles talking about the scandalous, alluring Angelica, Caro must tread carefully to protect her secret. She manages to maintain the subterfuge with ease until a seemingly dissolute son of a respectable family crosses her path one night and surmises the truth.

Her dual identity becomes a terrifying trap when a malicious and powerful aristocrat she once admired attempts to ruin her. Only by revealing her shameful and humiliating situation to trusted allies can she avert disaster. Her troubles lead to a lifethreatening showdown that changes everything.

This story’s premise seems implausible at first, yet the characters, dialogue, and plot are engaging enough to draw one into the perils of its atypical heroine for an entertaining light read.

Cynthia Slocum

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GOLDEN HILL Francis Spufford, Scribner, 2017, $26.00/ C$35.00, hb, 336pp, 9781501163876 / Faber & Faber, 2016, £8.99, pb, 352pp, 9780571225200 In November of 1746, young Mr. Smith, fresh from London, hops off a ship in New York and hightails it to Lovell & Company on Golden Hill Street, where he presents an outrageous request – a bill saying he’s owed a thousand pounds. What could he want with such an enormous sum? What does he propose to do with it in the small town – waste it, go into trade, destabilize the government? Merchant Lovell and his coterie, including his shrewish daughter, the governor, the Assembly, and more, wait for the next ships to arrive to see if Smith is what he appears to be, or the worst kind of fraudster – a slightly eccentric businessman, or someone to be dangled from a gibbet. Meanwhile, Smith seems quite content to let speculation run amok.

Spufford’s novel seems far too accomplished to be a first try, yet this is his initial foray into fiction after several nonfiction works. The book is more crafted than written, its style and allusions heavy with Fielding and Smollett. Smith is a gem 26 | Reviews |

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of a character, and the smattering of humanity he encounters in colonial America is also drawn with color and depth. The setting and cultural ambiance are immersive. Much is made of the comparison between filthy, teeming London and the clean provinciality of New York, which in and of itself is satirically amusing when viewed through modern eyes. The research is everywhere yet completely unobtrusive – everything from the vagaries of colonial monetary systems to the game of piquet, presented in a literary style that is best described as eminently readable 18th-century pastiche. Personally, I found the “reveal” in the end to be a tad bit anti-climactic, but the events leading up to it and the entire flavor, tone, and prose of the book make this an exceptional read whose pages practically flew by.

Bethany Latham THE HIDDEN THREAD (US) / THE SILK WEAVER (UK) Liz Trenow, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2017, $15.99, pb, 384pp, 9781492637516 / Pan, 2017, £7.99, pb, 416pp, 9781509823253 This quiet novel centers on a gentle romance set against the backdrop of the silk industry in 1760s London. Inspired by the unknown early life of the most celebrated textile designer of the 18th century, Anna Maria Garthwaite, the narrative follows fictional character Anna Butterfield as she moves to London from her Suffolk country home, where she lives with her vicar father and younger sister.

Rather than enjoying her introduction into society, Anna, who longs to become an artist, finds herself stifled in the home of her wealthy aunt and uncle and decidedly put off by the wealthy young man who fancies himself her suitor. Thus, in forbidden outings, she explores her love for creating delicate drawings of flowers that are remarkably natural and beautiful.

A chance encounter between Anna and French immigrant Henri Vendôme early on leads to their growing attraction and respect for one another— he is an exceptionally gifted weaver, she the artist whose graceful designs will almost certainly make his name as a master weaver, while allowing Anna to achieve her own dreams of freedom. But this is a time of tumultuous social upheaval, and the two come from very different worlds. Anna’s life is dictated by the demands of her role as a proper lady, while Henri and his friends are caught in the growing wave of resentment against immigrants and wage riots that lead to imprisonment and hangings. The author’s family have been silk weavers for nearly three centuries. In this compelling story set at the time of the silk riots in the Age of Enlightenment, her knowledge of cloth and color shines throughout.

Alana White

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19th century

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SOMEONE TO HOLD Mary Balogh, Jove, 2017, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 400pp, 9780451477804 Someone to Hold, the 2nd book in the Westcott series, focuses on Camille Westcott. Camille is trying to come to grips with her father’s bigamy

and the fact that she is now penniless and no longer Lady Camille after Anna Snow—now Lady Anastasia—assumes the family fortune (as told in Someone to Love). With her sister, Camille moves to Bath to live with their grandmother. Stubborn and determined, Camille sets out to become her own woman. She starts teaching at the same orphanage where Anna once lived. But it doesn’t come easy.

Adding to her troubles is the art teacher, Joel Cunningham, who also lived in the orphanage and knew Anna. A stormy, feisty relationship begins between the two, culminating in a sweet ending.

Camille’s character comes off at times rigid and difficult to like, but that’s the charm of Balogh’s writing. She takes a mostly unlikeable character, pushes her boundaries and, in the end, she becomes someone that the reader cares for. A subplot of a surprise fortune feels too familiar from the first book and too coincidental, and a thinly drawn villain’s reappearance felt forced. However, these are not enough to spoil a nice Regency romance.

Bryan Dumas MISSION SONG: Chenoa’s Story Karen Dean Benson, Satin Romance, 2016, $15.95, pb, 274pp, 9781680462180 Set in the California Mission and hacienda seacoast of 1836, this romance concerns Chenoa, a mission-raised orphan who returns to her beloved homeland after a Boston convent school has not succeeded in “finishing” her. Her guardian, Don Sebastian, is immediately drawn to his courageous, sprightly and now grown-up charge. When he learns she seeks to start a school in the name of their beloved benefactor, he agrees to provide the funds.

But as open as Chenoa’s life has been, Don Sebastian’s past is clouded in secrecy and violence.

A former vigilante, he suffers from PTSD and self-loathing. As enemies gather, both must come together to fight for land and life. The scenes of Mission Song are strong with detail, knowledge and beauty and the characters are sympathetic and well-drawn. But this historical romance could have used another edit for repetition and grammar and fewer instances of “How dare you!”

Eileen Charbonneau LILLI DE JONG Janet Benton, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2017, $25.95/C$34.95, hb, 352pp, 9780385541459 In her debut novel, Janet Benton believably imagines the speed with which a young woman’s life can change from safe, happy, and privileged to miserable and outcast. The titular character, Lilli de Jong, lives with her Quaker parents and younger brother in late 19th-century Philadelphia. But then her mother dies, a relative sweeps in to usurp her mother’s place beside her weak-willed father, and a young man staying with the family seduces Lilli before leaving to seek his fortune in Pittsburgh, taking Lilli’s brother with him. When Lilli’s blackhearted stepmother discovers her burgeoning pregnancy, Lilli finds herself homeless.

Benton has Lilli relate her story by writing in a series of notebooks, a technique that allows the main character to reflect on ideas and events in ways that would have been difficult in a straight narrative. On the other hand, as Lilli’s circumstances become increasingly fraught, it’s 18th Century — 19th Century

hard to imagine her having the time or inclination to scribble out pages and pages of observations and events—with dialogue—as she attempts to find food, fend off villains, and care for her infant daughter.

To Benton’s credit, she doesn’t render caricatures of either good or evil. The headmistress of the Haven for Women and Infants is severe and exacting, but she is also dedicated to giving the young women in her charge the second chance that society is unwilling to grant. Lilli’s aloof employer, Clementina, is a talented musician who has been forced by convention into matrimony and motherhood; her disappointment makes her bitter and even cruel, but not inhuman. The same cannot be said for the rigid culture that dismisses the human dignity of those at its fringes.

Jennifer Bort Yacovissi YOU MAY KISS THE BRIDE: The Penhallow Dynasty Lisa Berne, Avon, 2017, $7.99/C$9.99, pb, 384pp, 9780062451781 The first of the Penhallow Regency series varies the traditional Cinderella story by introducing a heroine with a strong rebellious streak. Livia Stuart finds Gabriel Penhallow arrogant and patronizing, and when he insists they marry after they are caught exchanging an unexpected (and confusingly passionate) kiss, she runs away. Without money, however, her options are limited, and after a day of toil as a scullery maid in a nearby inn, that particular plan of escape loses its lustre. When Gabriel easily tracks her down, she decides to make the best of the situation: a marriage of convenience, without affection or even physical intimacy, both (uneasily) agree. That, he insists loftily, is the Penhallow way: duty, not personal feelings, is all-important.

Given their impulsiveness and powerful, shared attraction, this plan is equally implausible, but the bumpy, if at times rambling, road to mutual respect, true love, and happy marriage offers an entertaining journey. The strength of the story, however, is the satirical perspective with which characters are presented, especially members of the gentry. Vacuity, snobbery, thoughtlessness, spitefulness, slavish adherence to convention and superficial appearance: all are neatly skewered with a skill even Jane Austen might appreciate.

Definitely recommended to Regency lovers.

Ray Thompson THE WOMEN OF BAKER STREET: A Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson Investigation Michelle Birkby, Pan Macmillan, 2017, £7.99, pb, 358pp, 9781509809738 The Women of Baker Street is an entertaining historical thriller set in Victorian London. It is based on the Arthur Conan Doyle characters Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson. Told from the perspective of Mrs Hudson, Sherlock Holmes’ landlady, this is the second book in a series where the women solve their own cases. (I hadn’t read the first, but this book can stand entirely on its own.)

The novel opens with Mrs Hudson going into hospital. On the first night, dazed with drugs and pain, she sees what might have beenbe a murder, but in the light of day convinces herself that it had been a morphine-induced nightmare. However, what starts as little more than a game—observing 19th Century

the other patients in the ward to see how much she can deduce about them— takes a more sinister turn as she realises that there are more deaths than usual in the ward. Mary Watson, the wife of Dr Watson, has her own mystery to solve;: the disappearance of a number of boys from a variety of backgrounds. Sharing their concerns, the two women gradually uncover a series of links between the investigations, culminating in a gruesome find in Regent’s Park and leading them to discover the truth behind both mysteries.

With The Women of Baker Street, Michelle Birkby has created a fast-paced, entertaining and eminently readable novel. The central characters are likeable and well-rounded, and the first-person narrative gives the story an immediacy that is very appealing. I have to admit to finding some of the plot twists a little far-fetched, but this did not stop me from enjoying the book tremendously.

Charlotte Wightwick THE DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER: The Choice Belle Blackburn, Demonbreun, 2016, $15.99, pb, 416pp, 9781535296427 This American Civil War story—second in a series, after The Doctor’s Daughter: Journey to Justice—opens in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1862. Kate Rockwell has married into a wealthy Confederate family but realizes that she still loves her old flame, country neighbor Danny Davis. When Kate’s father-in-law antagonizes the military governor, the entire extended family, including three slaves, are evicted from their city mansion. They all take refuge in Kate’s old home: her mother’s two-room cabin on a small farm in the fictitious community of Peony, Tennessee. The book is about family and friends learning how to work together to survive the hardships of wartime.

Other plot lines involve Kate’s marital issues, her mother’s love for a Union captain, the sad deterioration of a grandmother with early-onset dementia, and the fates of the three slaves.

This is a folksy, entertaining story with a regional flavor, as down-to-earth as a patchwork quilt or a rag rug. Readers will enjoy the accounts of old-time country life, although sometimes there is too much information, especially in the scenes of herbal healing. The book is marred by the vicious, macabre disposal of a not-quite-dead Yankee soldier—a tasteless, barbaric episode that will undermine the reader’s admiration for these valiant Southern women. Kate’s supposed forgetfulness about an incriminating item causes severe problems for a major character. It is difficult to believe that she could really be that careless, and leads the reader to suspect that she did it on purpose to achieve her own happy ending. Kate is not entirely likeable.

Errors in grammar and usage (other than those done on purpose for the dialogue) are distracting.

The novel needed more vigorous copy-editing before publication.

Elizabeth Knowles WEDDED BLISS Celeste Bradley, Berkley, 2017, $7.99/C$10.99, pb, 352pp, 9780451475985 In the latest in Bradley’s series on the highly eccentric Worthington family, Bliss Worthington plans a secret wedding to the Duke of Camberton,

only to discover, too late, that the groom is in fact the duke’s illegitimate half-brother. Undeterred, Bliss sets out to persuade Captain Morgan Pryce to grant an annulment. Does she not, after all, pride herself on the “ruthless patience” that lies beneath her “air of placid composure”? As is often the case in Regencies, however, the unlikely pair find themselves falling in love as they grow to realize how well-suited they really are.

Bliss is a delightful heroine, using charm, shrewdness, and unexpected resourcefulness to further her aims, whether it be cleaning house, cooking up mouth-watering meals, doctoring wounds, or battering a thief into submission with a brick inside her reticule. As the story progresses, however, it becomes increasingly melodramatic; the focus upon the lovers’ physical preoccupation grows repetitive; and though fans of the series will enjoy meeting her many unusual family members and friends again (including the indomitable Attie), and some interesting newcomers for good measure, the presence of so many minor characters does distract from the main plot. Recommended, nonetheless.

Ray Thompson A LADY IN DISGUISE: Daughters of Hampshire Sandra Byrd, Howard, 2017, $15.99, pb, 376pp, 9781476717937 Bereft at the unexpected loss of her father in 1883, Gillian Young returns from his funeral to discover a London Metropolitan Police sergeant searching her house. Her father is under suspicion for associating with and profiting from criminals; he may have been murdered. Although afraid, Gillian is determined to prove his innocence. She discovers a photograph of a beautiful stranger and a letter from her deceased mother that reveal her intentions to donate Winton Park to the Cause, a Christian mission for the poor. Her father never mentioned the letter, and Gillian had assumed her grandfather’s home was now hers. She just doesn’t have sufficient funds to restore the house to its former splendor.

Further investigation must wait when Gillian is asked to design and sew costumes for a new production of Cinderella at the Theatre Royal. The prestigious assignment will make her name known throughout London, but she needs additional seamstresses, an older woman and two young girls from the theater mission dear to her mother’s heart.

A handsome viscount and a police inspector’s son begin to court her, but she questions their motives. Lord Lockwood shares her passion for the theater, but also wants to purchase Winton Park. A childhood friend, Francis Collingsworth may just be trying to find the evidence to prove her father’s guilt. The closer to the truth she gets, the greater the danger she encounters. She needs to trust someone, but whom?

Byrd deftly intertwines research with love and murder in this final book in the Daughters of Hampshire trilogy. She transports us back to Victorian England to view the startling differences between the world of the ton and the seamier sections of London. Her tantalizing web keeps us enthralled until the truth about the perpetrator and the romance are finally revealed.

Cindy Vallar HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 27

AN EXTRAORDINARY UNION: The Loyal League Alyssa Cole, Kensington, 2017, $15.00, pb, 258pp, 9781496707444 Early in the Civil War, brilliant and beautiful Ellen (“Elle”) Burns and Malcolm McCall, a handsome Scot, spy for the North in Richmond, Virginia. She, a former slave now free, has been inserted into the home of a Confederate senator as a slave once more. He wears a gray uniform and worms his way into every important Southern group he can. Elle and Malcolm coordinate with the same network of Northern spies and couriers.

Elle has a special gift of great use in the spy game. She is able to recall word for word everything she has ever read or heard, but she pretends to be mute—to make it easier to go unnoticed and avoid having to answer questions. Malcolm is a charming liar and expert horseman, and handy with any weapon.

Elle and Malcolm begin a torrid romance, combine to gather information on the South’s progress in building an iron-clad ship of war, and save each other from a string of predicaments.

Questions of the heart dominate the storylines.

Is Malcolm playing her? Is she playing him?

Will their true relationship as lovers, as spies, be uncovered? Can these misfits stay together when the spy mission ends?

Episodes of spy work, sudden violence, escapes, and near death are intertwined with analyses of race, gender, oppression, and freedom, as well as the deeper impacts of sex and love. Cole tackles a lot, with mixed results. Keen readers of historical novels will note the overall modern tone and words (such as “electric zip” and “adrenaline”) that were not used until much later. But any reader should enjoy the tumultuous journey of this unusual couple.

G. J. Berger THE LIONESS OF MOROCCO Julia Drosten (trans. Christiane Galvani), AmazonCrossing, 2017, $14.95, pb, 448pp, 9781503941922 In 1835, Sibylla is rescued from a near-drowning accident at the London docks by Benjamin, a conniving clerk in her father’s shipping company.

At 23, Sibylla is attractive but still single, plus she’s headstrong and has progressive views—she’d even boxed one impudent suitor’s ears! She’s attracted to Benjamin, and with encouragement from her parents, they marry. At Sibylla’s prompting, her father selects Benjamin to fill a vacancy as the company’s agent in Mogador, Morocco, and she accompanies him there. Sibylla happily escapes the confines of pre-Victorian England to exotic Morocco, where she relishes in her freedom. They establish their new home and start a family. She appreciates the Berber culture and even starts a successful business of her own. Benjamin loves wealth more than he loves Sibylla, however, and, feeling neglected, she grows enamored of a handsome French soldier. Benjamin recklessly enters into shady deals and is arrested. Sibylla must decide whether to assist Benjamin or to leave him.

The Lioness was an Amazon bestseller in Germany. Although the English translation could use some structural and stylistic improvements, the story’s premise is alluring. The portrayal of Sibylla 28 | Reviews |

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as a strong-willed woman who travels willingly to a foreign country instead of living a life of luxury, and who runs a flourishing trading business, is depicted well. While Benjamin isn’t interested in Arab culture, Sibylla’s open-mindedness to all things Moroccan, her business acumen, and willingness to take risks, all propel the novel forward. Through Sibylla’s travels and dealings with local people, we learn a fair amount about Morocco, its land, and the culture, cuisine, and philosophy of Berber society.

Although light on coverage of world events, the novel is a thought-provoking historical romance.

Waheed Rabbani MY FAIR DUCHESS: A Dukes Behaving Badly Novel Megan Frampton, Avon, 2017, $7.99/C$9.99, pb, 384pp, 9780062412799 Unusually for a woman, Genevieve has inherited the Blakesley duchy. Unfortunately, her father neglected to train her for the responsibility, leaving her to be reared by servants on a remote estate.

Desperately, she appeals to her godmother, who sends her steward to help out. Though a younger son of a viscount, Archie Salisbury was disowned when he joined the army. Retiring as a captain, he must now make his way in the world.

He is strikingly handsome as well as protective; she is pretty as well as inexperienced and painfully shy; more importantly, both are determined to fulfil their duty to aid those whose livelihood depends upon them: ex-soldiers, servants, and estate workers. Unsurprisingly, they fall in love, but though well-suited, the barrier between their stations in life looms high in Victorian society.

The story focuses tightly upon the two protagonists as they struggle to adhere to conventions of the era, even as their relationship deepens from physical attraction to love. Both are very likeable people, and their self-deprecating humor and the device of writing letters to each other (not always sent) are entertaining. Strongly recommended to those looking for a charming romance.

Ray Thompson THE MAID’S COURAGE Rosie Goodwin, Corsair, 2017, £6.99, pb, 472pp, 9781472117786 Ginny Thursday loses her mother and three siblings when a ferocious ‘flu epidemic sweeps through Nuneaton in the English Midlands in 1860. Her father, wild with grief, is in gaol after a drunken brawl. Charlie, her surviving brother, aged eight, is in an orphanage. Ginny is strong, resolute, nearly seventeen, a pretty girl with promise of striking black haired beauty.

The Maid’s Courage is a saga, and she has a quest: to rescue Charlie. After some bad experiences, she remembers her mother’s advice: go to Mrs Bronson, housekeeper of Lamp Hill Hall. It is a house of secrets. Ginny becomes companion to Diana, nearly eighteen, profoundly deaf, inexperienced, and vulnerable to fortune hunters. Ginny is glad to gain the trust of this unhappy girl. Mrs Bronson surely holds the key to many mysteries, but why has she so willingly, even thankfully, accepted Ginny into this wealthy household?

The novel is multi-viewpoint, but it is Ginny Thursday’s story. Sharp-witted but sympathetic

and unfailingly honest, she is a forthright young woman who has suitors of her own, and she can tell a frank warm-hearted smile from an odious leer; she can take care of herself, but can she protect Diana? Lamp Hill Hall has its share of young men.

Some are good but some are very bad indeed, possibly even murderous. Expert storytelling makes this novel gripping. Life promises to be good, only for grief and fear to confront the tragic family repeatedly.

Nancy Henshaw AN UNCOMMON PROTECTOR: A Lone Star Hero’s Love Story Shelley Shepard Gray, Zondervan, 2016, $15.99, pb, 320pp, 9780310345428 While most of this novel’s action is set in 1867 Texas, there are also some flashback scenes set on Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie off the Ohio shoreline, which served as a prisoner of war camp for Confederate officers during the Civil War. Thomas Baker was a Sergeant in the war who served time on the island. But now he is a prisoner in Texas, jailed for not being able to pay his gambling debts. The county loans out prisoners to ranchers to perform work details, which is how rancher Laurel Tracy and Thomas meet. She sees something in him that is not present in the other work gangers, and arranges with the sheriff to hire Thomas as an indentured servant for a year, to help combat squatters on her land.

But Laurel’s erstwhile yet still hopeful suitor, Landon Marshall, and Laurel’s stepsiblings object to a convict living on the ranch. When her cattle start turning up dead, Laurel knows she can’t fight the sabotage alone. As Thomas and Laurel try to discover the culprit who seems to want Laurel’s ranch to fail, they begin to realize the depth of their feelings for each other.

I enjoyed the realistic, tender romance as it developed in this volume of the Lone Star Hero series. Gray is successful at creating “clean” yet believable sexual tension in this Christian romance story. Religious content is present yet not heavy.

The villain is a bit one-dimensional, and I spotted one or two historical anomalies (“game face” is a late 20th-century expression), but I didn’t mind because the romance was so delightful. Highly recommended to Christian romance fans.

B.J. Sedlock THE SIXTH VICTIM: A Constance Piper Mystery Tessa Harris, Kensington, 2017, $25.00/C$27.95, hb, 304pp, 9781496706546 London’s Whitechapel district is a frightening place to live and work in 1888. Constance Piper, a poor flower girl who follows the newspaper reports of Jack the Ripper, is visited in her sleep by images of her dear friend and mentor, Emily Tindall.

Constance has not seen her for weeks and sets out to trace her teacher’s steps to solve the mystery of her disappearance. A sixth sense she cannot shake tells her that Miss Tindall may have been murdered. Constance is befriended by the sister of yet another missing woman, Geraldine Cutler, who disappeared six weeks ago, after finding out that her husband, Dr. Cutler, has been associating with and operating on Whitechapel prostitutes.

Can the doctor be the Ripper? Which of these two 19th Century

missing gentlewomen is this latest victim, found without a head and limbs at a local construction site? Can Constance believe in her clairvoyant skills and open her mind to the spirit of Emily Tindall to help unravel these mysteries?

The story unfolds through Constance’s and Emily’s alternating narratives, and the reader is aware that Emily is a spirit speaking to us from the other side. There is a definite class distinction between the poor flower girl and Mrs. Cutler’s sister, Pauline, but with her faith in Constance’s abilities, the two become close. This engaging story held my interest, and the author has developed her characters and the mystery plotline nicely.

Beth Turza THE OPEN ROAD M. M. Holaday, Five Star, 2017, $25.95, hb, 443pp, 9781432833947 The post-Civil War settlement of the West is portrayed through the lives of Win Avery, Jeb Dawson, and Meg Jameson. Best friends since childhood, in 1865 Avery and Jeb leave their homes in Nebraska Territory and join a wagon train. They find a young woman, Meg, alone on the prairie and on the run from a brutal uncle. Meg is beautiful, fearless, and rides a horse better than most men.

Both Win and Jeb fall deeply in love with her, but they vow to not let Meg destroy their friendship.

Meg and Jeb build a home in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. Win journeys deeper into uncharted land, all the way to Alaska, but always comes back to his best friend and his one great love.

An array of memorable characters—gamblers and outlaws, scientists and mapmakers, wagon train bosses and Native Americans, even a river boat songstress and John Wesley Powell—cross paths with Win, Jeb, and Meg. Through Gray Wolf, an Arapaho man, members of his clan, and others, Holaday describes the heart-wrenching treatment of Native Americans. Narrative historical passages fill in some background.

The lifelong love triangle of Win, Jeb, and Meg rings true, and the story honors the grandeur, tragedies and opportunities along this open road.

Plot surprises and interesting bits of history are many. Despite lapses into conversations and tooperfect letters which read as if they were written in modern times, The Open Road is a well-paced, informative and enjoyable read.

G. J. Berger THE HUNTINGFIELD PAINTRESS Pamela Holmes, Urbane/Trafalgar Square, 2016, $14.95/C$19.95/£8.99, pb, 288pp, 9781910692660 Suffolk, 1848. After traveling the world for eight years with her husband, William, Mildred Holland is not prepared to live the quiet life of a vicar’s wife in the tiny village of Huntingfield. William thinks their lives are only just starting, but the move feels to Mildred like the end of her life. Bored with her new role and chafing at the villagers’ disapproval of her unconventional ways, Mildred drifts into apathy and depression, believing she is “destined never to be an active principle, fated only to watch others.” But Mildred is also being watched, and everything she does is reported to the village gossip, Judy Scott (a wonderfully comic character), who ensures that Mildred continues to be treated with 19th Century

suspicion.

But when a project seems to fall into her lap, Mildred renews her interest in art and takes on a task so large and so bold that even her usually supportive husband resists her plans. To be a woman artist in mid-Victorian England was to be morally suspect, but Mildred is willing to defy everyone to pursue her passion.

This is a quiet, lyrical novel that skillfully represents the constraints placed on middle-class women of the era. Mildred Holland was a real person about whom little is known, and Holmes’s reimagining of her life is believable and sensitively rendered. I was jarred by a few anachronisms (e.g., in 1848 William apparently sees a flush toilet at the Great Exhibition, but the Exhibition didn’t exist until 1851). There were also a few shifts from past tense to present, which seemed unnecessary.

Overall, an enjoyable read.

Clarissa Harwood BREATHLESS Beverly Jenkins, Avon, 2017, $7.99/C$9.99, pb, 376pp, 9780062389022 1880s Arizona Territory is caught between its Wild West traditions and the beginnings of the tourist industry in this well-wrought riff on Sense and Sensibility. Portia Carmichael and her beloved sister have come through a difficult childhood. Portia is now an independent woman and bookkeeper at a successful hotel. Distrustful of men, she has steered clear of suitors until a family friend comes into her life. Kent is a dashing cowboy looking to put down roots. He helps Portia to unlock her passion for love. Together they celebrate family connections, deal with murderous land grabbers, a kidnapping, and even a mystical visit with Geronimo’s on-the-run band.

Infused with extensive knowledge of the experience of people of color in the American West, endearing characters and a lively plot, Breathless is sure to please. The conventions of the romance genre are here. So are unique complications such as it being impossible to form a posse to go after murderers because there are no white people available to lead one.

Eileen Charbonneau FOR THE RECORD: Ozark Mountain Romance, Book 3 Regina Jennings, Bethany House, 2016, $14.99, pb, 329pp, 9780764211423 Little Betsy Huckabee (A Most Inconvenient Marriage) is all grown up and working for her uncle’s newspaper and struggling to declare her independence. A career as a newspaper writer seems the surest path to adventure, if she can only come up with a subject to excite big city readers— quite a feat in Pine Gap. When a good-looking Texas sheriff comes to town, Betsy sets her sights and pen on fictionalizing her hero in print.

Deputy Joel Puckett (from Jennings’ Ladies of Caldwell County series) knows all too well the consequences of a few well-placed tall tales, and the only job left to him is order to tiny Pine Gap, where he is unwanted and hindered by the locals, including an ambitious female reporter, and masked vigilantes. Joel and Betsy share some sweet chemistry as they hamper each other in the pursuit of ambition and the eradication of vigilante justice.

Perhaps in working to solve a local mystery, they may just find the love of a lifetime in this charming, fun Gilded Age romance.

Lauren Miller THE BEEKEEPER’S DAUGHTER Jane Jordan, Black Opal, 2016, $16.99, pb, 377pp, 9781626945685 This dark romance set on Exmoor in late 19thcentury England spans more than a decade in the lives of the two main characters. Annabel, the beekeeper’s daughter, and Jevan, the blacksmith’s son, develop a fierce and obsessional bond during their teenage years. Both are impulsive, wild, and volatile.

Annabel exerts an intuitive mastery over her father’s bees. As the daughter of a witch, she also has an ability to affect the natural elements through her emotions. When Jevan abruptly leaves to attend school in London, Annabel feels betrayed and refuses to ever speak with him again. Jevan returns a few years later to discover that the heir of a powerful family that owns Gothelstone Village is courting her. She declines the young gentleman’s marriage proposal until forced to accept it as the only means to free Jevan, who has been imprisoned by the sinister and secretive patriarch of the Saltonstall family.

Desire ignites again between Annabel and Jevan, with their romantic encounter turning into a brutal physical assault when he vents his rage over her marriage. In spite of this, Annabel’s love compels her to continue seeing him and to devise a plan to eliminate her arrogant, controlling husband.

An idyllic country setting effectively belies the story’s unsettling darkness. Annabel’s mystical connection with her bees is well integrated into the action of the plot, which incorporates romance with elements of mystery and the occult, and culminates in rapid-fire startling revelations and an explosive final battle of wills, with evil supernatural forces. The lovers are vivid and flawed individuals who become victims of circumstance in different ways. Despite a heroic light cast on them in the end, an ambiguous shadow lingers.

Cynthia Slocum BEEN IN THE STORM SO LONG Terry Jordan, Coteau, 2016, C$21.95, pb, 336pp, 9781550506877 John Healy, the hero of Terry Jordan’s latest novel, was born in 1853 in Sligo, Ireland. In an effort to give his family a better life, John’s father takes them to Canada, where John’s adventure truly begins. He falls in love with young and beautiful Odette, a childhood friend, though their relationship is complicated by the fact that John’s family essentially adopts Daniel, an orphan, who also has strong feelings for Odette. John and Daniel grow up as brothers, and what complicated and tragic parallel lives they lead. Tragedy follows both boys as they age, and their lives take vastly different paths for many years while it is assumed John has been killed.

Jordan takes us from the beauty of Nova Scotia to the energy of New Orleans throughout the mid-to-late 19th century as John’s story unfolds.

Readers who enjoyed Wayne Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams may also enjoy this book, not just for the Canadian connection but also for the HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 29

quality of writing that follows the life of characters whose connections are stronger than even they may wish them to be. It tells the story of the power of love and friendship, and how strong those bonds can be throughout adventure and misfortune.

Elicia Parkinson

own thoughts as he wrestled with these decisions.

In all, this is a good book for anyone interested in learning about John Brown, but not for those searching for a deeper understanding into this charismatic enigma.

Bryan Dumas

THE TRAITOR’S NICHE Ismail Kadare (trans. John Hodgson), Harvill Secker, 2017, £16.99, hb, 198pp, 9781846558450 The book opens at the heart of the Ottoman Empire. We are in a square in the ancient Imperial capital; and in this square, in the stonework of the Cannon Gate, has been carved a niche. In this niche is a severed head. The book revolves around the inhabitants of the niche—the current, historical, and potential occupants, plus Abdullah and the Doctor, the civil servants charged with maintaining the integrity of the grisly relics, and the corrupt courier whose job it is to speed newly decapitated heads to their care.

Each of the vignettes is sympathetically done.

The baroque madness of the Ottoman bureaucracy is beautifully drawn, and the characters are sketched well. Each time you find yourself hoping against hope that you aren’t meeting the next occupant of the niche. But I missed a narrative thread; the niche itself wasn’t enough of a unifying theme. I wanted something more: to know what brought each person to the point where the threat of the niche, or the consequences of a beheading, transformed their stories. I felt throughout that I was missing something with the allegorical nature of the story relating to Albania’s troubled history.

Nicky Moxey

THE SECRETS OF GASLIGHT LANE M. R. C. Kasasian, Pegasus Crime, 2017, $25.95, hb, 512pp, 9781681773582 This is the fourth book in the delightful Victorian Gower Street Detective series. Sidney Grice and his ward/assistant, March Middleton, take on a locked-room murder case. Cherry Mortlock’s father, Nathan, who was heir to the Garstang fortune, was murdered in his bed. Twelve years earlier, the Gartangs, his uncle and aunt, were murdered along with their servants. The only survivors were a maid, the valet, and Nathan, who were all cleared of the crime; but the murders remain unsolved. Cherry wants her father’s murder solved. Grice and Middleton see a connection to the earlier mass murder, so they set to work finding answers to both cases.

This series is reminiscent of Dickens and Lemony Snicket with reminders of Sherlock Holmes. The writing is funny, witty, and macabre, and the characters are eccentric and quirky. Sidney Grice is very precise and rigid in his ways. He is rude, blunt, and completely lacking in charm, and prides himself on not being encumbered by human emotion. Like Holmes, no detail goes unnoticed

by Sidney Grice. March Middleton, his assistant, is clever and smart. She is a good counterpoint to Grice’s quirks. Grice’s maid, Molly, is laugh-outloud funny with her challenges in following orders and bungling her words.

This book can be read as a standalone because there are only passing references to previous events, which doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of this wonderful book. This is one of my favorite series, and the fourth installment is as strong as the first three.

Janice Ottersberg

THE INSURRECTIONIST Herb Karl, Academy Chicago, 2017, $15.99/ C$21.99, pb, 352pp, 9781613736333 In May 1856, Charles Sumner was caned on the Senate floor by Preston Brooks, which would set off a firestorm that raged between abolitionist and pro-slavery forces. But one man would view this event as nothing short of a declaration of war.

The Insurrectionist follows the exploits of John Brown over three years, from the bloodied fields of Kansas, through Ohio and into Canada’s fugitive slave camps, and across the east coast—from his home in New York, to meetings with abolitionists in New England, and finally to his ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry and his subsequent trial and hanging.

Herb Karl explores the haunting mind of John Brown and paints a portrait of a deeply spiritual man driven by his faith to the abolitionist cause.

The Insurrectionist is a thoroughly researched and detail-driven book that does well in taming the notion of Brown as a wild zealot and portrays a man devoted to both his cause and his family. At times the book reads more like a textbook than a work of fiction, and in that lies one of the book’s flaws. Given the creative liberty that fiction allows, Karl shies away from this and sticks strictly to historical fact. Often, Brown’s actions are written in a way that there is only one option to take— such as his decision to take Harpers Ferry, splitting his troops, and his missed chances at retreat. The reader is left with more questions than answers here, whereas a work of fiction may have delved more into the mind of Brown and imagined his 30 | Reviews |

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THE VICAR’S DAUGHTER: A Proper Romance Josi S. Kilpack, Shadow Mountain, 2017, $15.99, pb, 336pp, 9781629722801 Cassie Wilton is eager to come out socially, but her vicar father has decreed only one daughter can be out at a time, and her older sister Lenora is so painfully shy she may never wed. So Cassie decides to speed things up by writing letters in her sister’s name to Evan Glenside, a likely prospect.

This could have turned into a light-hearted Regency romp of mistaken identities, but this is an inspirational romance, and the tone is decidedly puritanical. Offended at the deceit which would have wed him to the wrong sister, Evan withdraws his proposal; mortified, Lenora blames Cassie, and their angry parents mete out severe punishment to her. Worst of all, Cassie has herself fallen in love with Evan, but is now forbidden ever to have contact with him.

The focus is upon the pain caused to all parties by thoughtless, and partially selfish, action. As the Bible proclaims, however, a broken and contrite heart is the beginning of wisdom, and forgiveness is ultimately earned through patient submission to

higher authority. A didactic variation on the story of Jacob and his two wives?

Ray Thompson A STRANGER AT FELLSWORTH: A Treasures of Surrey Novel, Book 3 Sarah E. Ladd, Thomas Nelson, 2017, $15.99, pb, 336pp, 9780718011857 A Stranger at Fellsworth opens in 1807 as the young Annabelle Thorley discovers she is in a state of financial ruin with no prospects after her father has died and her betrothed has abandoned her. After her brother makes their household miserable with violent parties and insists she marry the unsavory Mr. Bartrell, she flees with her maid Crosley to Fellsworth, the home of her distant aunt and uncle. They offer her a teaching position, which she accepts. She befriends Owen Locke, the gamekeeper, whose child Hannah she teaches at the Fellsworth school. In turn Owen Locke realizes that Annabelle represents the love he has missed since his wife died. When Annabelle’s brother and Mr. Bartrell come to Fellsworth on a hunting expedition, Annabelle and Owen face not only a threat to their peace but also to their future dreams together.

This novel reads well and fast; its vivid imagery and likeable characters fill the pages. The wellcrafted metaphors and tight sequences make for an absorbing read. Though set around the Regency period, the style is fresh and the voice genuine. The spiritual aspect of the novel does not overpower; it is woven into the plot and provides a graceful way to unite the beliefs and morals of Annabelle and Owen Locke. I want to read more in the series.

Gini Grossenbacher WOMEN OF STRAW Carole Llewellyn, Robert Hale, 2016, £19.99, hb, 224pp, 9780719819223 Set in Luton, a market town just north of London, Women of Straw centres on the straw hat industry of the late 1860s. Using straw from wheat threshing, an Irish family on hard times runs a plaiting business employing school children out of hours. Mother Rose Devlin, with her nowfatherless children, Liam and Kate, live on Plaiters Way. Liam works and boards on a local farm whilst Kate supervises the plait school.

The lengths of plaited straw cut to a measured length are bundled and supplied under contract to a local hat maker by Kate’s uncle and his horse and cart. In the evening, when the children have gone home, ever-resourceful Kate is becoming proficient at making straw hats and bonnets. Trouble brews when Kate’s drunken uncle claims to be the new owner of their house. Secretly he changes the measure of the plaits they sell to the hat-making Stratton family, which brings a police visit with accusations of overcharging. The family moves house, and the romance between Kate and Luke, the younger son of the Strattons, takes a new turn.

This is a cheerful book about overcoming misfortunes and a developing relationship between a young man and woman from different classes.

After initial scene setting, the book continues mainly in dialogue, hinting at future conflicts, enlarging characters, foreshadowing romance and predicting characters yet to appear. It benefits from Victorian dialect words and idioms derived from 19th Century

the naval tradition, like ‘show ‘em the ropes’. The joy of handling this Robert Hale hardback is surpassed only by its brilliant and page-turning story.

Geoffrey Harfield A FUGITIVE IN WALDEN WOODS Norman Lock, Bellevue Literary Press, 2017, $16.99, pb, 240pp, 9781942658221 Samuel Long escapes slavery in 1844 and travels the Underground Railroad until he reaches Concord, Massachusetts, and eventually Walden Pond. There, he is quickly befriended by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who adopt Samuel into their Transcendentalist group.

Samuel builds his own cabin across Walden Pond and is hired by Emerson to watch out for his tenant and friend.

Ostensibly written by Long in 1862 as a eulogy for Thoreau, A Fugitive in Walden Woods is partly a story of the Transcendentalists from an outsider’s perspective, watching the luminaries debate the mundane (weather, water, nature) and the significant—most importantly the issue of slavery in the late 1840s. It’s also partly introspective rhetoric on the meaning of manhood and the idea of self, where Long questions freedom and a sense of home, self-reliance and ultimately civil disobedience.

As in many of Lock’s works (this is the 4th in the American Novel Series), the plot takes a long time to finally come to a head. Much of the book is spent with Long and Thoreau sparing verbally and Long wrestling with his own past and “finding the man” inside him and being more than a “wellspoken Negro” for the abolitionist cause.

Despite the often slow, introspective dialogue A Fugitive in Walden Woods shines in Lock’s ability to capture the essence of Thoreau and Emerson. Their mannerisms, speech and thought are rendered such that you wouldn’t know that they hadn’t actually spoken those words. A deeply insightful book that will force the reader to question race, social standing, and what it means to be truly free.

Bryan Dumas GIRL IN DISGUISE Greer MacAllister, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2017, $25.99/C$35.99, hb, 320pp, 9781492635222 Kate Warne was born in New York State in 1833. By the time she was 23, she was a widow ready to challenge convention by becoming the first female operative at the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

MacAllister opens her novel, based on Kate Warne’s real-life investigations, at this crucial point in Kate’s history. Pinkerton and many of his staff have reservations about hiring the first woman detective, but Kate is persuasive, brave and intrepid, and Pinkerton quickly realizes that she can go places and hear things that no male detective can. Told from Kate’s point of view, Girl in Disguise charts Kate’s many adventures in the 1850s and 1860s.

In addition to charting the perils of Kate Warne’s chosen occupation, the novel provides a fascinating window on a turbulent period in American history as the slavery debate and ultimately Civil War both beckon. An early encounter with a lawyer named Lincoln sets the scene very nicely for Kate’s investigation into the attempt to assassinate then19th Century

President Lincoln as he travels by rail through Baltimore. Readers who enjoy historical events told from the point of view of an engaging character will be well-served by Girl in Disguise.

There is an episodic quality to the narrative— essentially following Kate’s career through the decades—that means that in some ways the novel lacks drama. There is no overarching question to keep readers turning the pages, and Kate is something of a loner who avoids the kind of personal or relationship crises, but her story is undoubtedly fascinating. Kate’s voice is fresh and compelling, and therefore, overall, this is a very well-written and enjoyable novel.

Kate Braithwaite THE BAD LUCK BRIDE: The Cavensham Heiresses Janna MacGregor, St. Martin’s, 2017, $7.99, pb, 352pp, 9781250116123 1811 and 1812: Alex Hallworth, the Marquess of Pembrooke, blames his former companion, Lord Paul Barstowe, for the suicide of his younger sister, Alice. Rather than killing him in a duel, Alex decides to ruin Lord Paul by purchasing his vowels (IOUs) and forcing him to abandon his wealthy fiancée.

During their betrothal ball, Lady Claire Cavensham receives Lord Paul’s note and discovers she now has four broken engagements.

Humiliated, she knows the ton will make her the center of gossip for weeks. All she wants is a loving spouse and a family, and Paul’s letter assures her she will have neither. Alex proposes a marriage of convenience to save Lady Claire. She accepts, thereby unknowingly guaranteeing Lord Paul’s ruin. But love has a way of unlocking the most frozen heart. Alex and Claire find that telling the whole truth is always better, and revenge is not always sweet.

I enjoyed MacGregor’s debut novel. Alex’s need for revenge casts an unnecessary pall over the story with his using Claire’s marital misfortunes for his own benefit. Throughout the tale, I felt sorry for Claire, who is a strong woman with a giving heart.

Luckily for them, as well as the reader, the story has a happy ending.

Monica E. Spence WHO IS TO BLAME?: A Russian Riddle Jane Marlow, River Grove, 2016, $14.91, pb, 301pp, 9781632991041 Jane Marlow’s debut novel begins with the doomed relationship between two young serfs, Elizaveta and Feodor, in Russia in 1840. Their families prevent them from proceeding in their relationship, and their lives are taken out of their hands. Theirs is a heartbreaking story of poverty and pain during an unforgiving time, and Elizaveta’s story, in particular, transports the reader to a cold and hard Russian izba as her life unfolds.

In alternating chapters, Marlow tells about the Maximov family, the nobility for whom the serfs work. By showing the families side by side, the reader gains an appreciation for the trials and tribulations of both, recognizing that money and circumstance cannot dictate any certain outcome.

Their stories cover the next 25 years, a span which includes the Emancipation Reform of 1861, which abolished serfdom, during Emperor

Alexander II’s reign. Inclusion of this historical event gives Marlow the opportunity to show both sides of that affair, from the serfs’ perspective and how the events financially impacted the nobility.

The riddles preceding each chapter give clues to what one may expect to encounter in the next few pages, and also allow readers to question the overall nature of who is to blame in the game of life.

Readers with an appreciation for mid-19thcentury Russian literature will enjoy this book.

Marlow captures a lot of the storytelling skills of the masters, though unlike the masters, Marlow’s book is short in comparison and may have benefited from even more details about Russian history and culture. Still it will be exciting to see what Marlow brings us in the future. My hope is for a sequel.

Elicia Parkinson CALLED TO JUSTICE Edith Maxwell, Midnight Ink, 2017, $14.99, pb, 296pp, 9780738750323 Called to Justice is Edith Maxwell’s second Quaker Midwife Mystery, but it can very easily be enjoyed as a stand-alone novel. Rose Carroll is a brave and committed young midwife. She has a strong sense of justice and a thirst for truth, which leads her to look for answers when a 17-year-old mill worker is shot dead only a short time after confiding to Rose that she is pregnant out of wedlock. As the police’s eyes fall quickly on Akwasi Ayensu—a freed slave and fellow Quaker who Rose implicitly trusts—Rose finds herself looking for other suspects who might have a motive for committing the murder.

Called to Justice mixes Rose’s investigating with her budding romance with local doctor David Dodge as well as her busy midwifery practice. She is an appealing character, grounded in her Quaker faith, caring and professional but also vulnerable and charmingly suspicious of everyone in the small Massachusetts town of Amesbury.

Although there is a cozy mystery feel to Called to Justice, Maxwell is not afraid to depict the harsher realities of life in the 1880s. Sexual assault, sexually transmitted diseases, racial discrimination, and religious prejudice all feature, as do the realities of life where the telephone was a luxury and many young women worked in mills and factories to support their families.

Overall, this is an engaging murder mystery with likable characters, a page-turning plot and a vivid historical setting.

Kate Braithwaite STRANDED: A Story of Frontier Survival Matthew P. Mayo, Five Star, 2017, $25.95, hb, 239pp, 9781432834043 1849, the American West: a little family moves for a better life from Missouri to Oregon. It just seems our forebears were so much tougher than us.

This short novel, based on a historical fragment, is convincing. Fourteen-year-old Janette Riker reluctantly departs with her father and brothers to a better land. Over 50 years later, her spoiled great-granddaughter, who discovers and reads an ancient diary, ensnares us in the first few pages into Janette’s tragic but incredibly triumphant ordeal.

In the foothills of the Rockies as winter approaches, Janette’s kin leave to find food as she stays behind.

The worst happens, and the teenage girl is suddenly HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 31

alone in the most hostile environment imaginable.

Narrated in simple country prose, pleasing to the reader, Janette’s impressive efforts to keep herself alive entrance us, especially considering she is alone, with only her father’s lessons to guide her.

Interludes with bears, wolves and especially a rapacious mountain lion are as terrifying as any horror novel. Present-day adults and kids will be proud of Janette. Highly recommended.

Thomas J. Howley THE IRISH MILLINER Cynthia G. Neale, Fireship, 2017, $19.95/ C$26.50, pb, 270pp, 9781611793802 The Irish Milliner is the author’s third novel about protagonist Norah McCabe.

Set against the backdrop of the beginning of the Civil War, The Irish Milliner follows Norah as she struggles to set up her millinery business in Lower Manhattan. Now a widow, Norah must care for her young daughter, Katie, on her own. Norah has escaped Ireland, but Ireland has not let go of her.

She has come to rely upon her childhood friend Sean, while a chance encounter with Edward Knox, heir to the famous Knox Hat Enterprise, leaves her realizing she longs for more than the Irish poverty that surrounds her.

Caught in the turmoil of trying to survive financially in New York City and befriending Elizabeth Jennings, a young black woman who supports the abolitionist cause as Norah does, her life becomes more complicated as the poor working-class Irish of Five Points see Norah as trying to better herself at their expense. When the draft riots erupt, both Sean and Edward disappear, leaving Norah to fend for herself. Determined and courageous, Norah McCabe is made from the strength of the Irish, as this novel so deftly shows.

I feel this book would appeal mostly to hat enthusiasts and those interested in details about Irish immigrants’ experience in New York City during the 1860s. While the story could have contained more conflict to sustain my interest, it glides along on a fairly even keel.

Linda Harris Sittig THE HALF WIVES Stacia Pelletier, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017, $26.00, hb, 336pp, 9780547491165 May 22, 1897, is the day young Jack Plageman died, leaving his parents, Henry and Marilyn, forever seeking some sense of normalcy and control. We don’t learn how Jack died until well into the story, but we follow his parents through this horrendous anniversary day that doesn’t quite proceed in the usual pattern.

Henry, a former Lutheran minister, has been chucked in jail for protesting the moving of the cemetery where Jack is buried. It’s not the protest that’s the problem; it’s Henry’s discombobulated, loud presentation that offended the other people present at the hearing. Henry fills his days memorizing Lutheran quotes and vague works of philosophy, while Marilyn makes sure every second of her day is full of busywork, whether at home or at the charitable groups where she volunteers and finds purpose. At the same time, the narrator gives us gorgeous details about the once-intimate bond between the couple, juxtaposed by their jagged connection in the present. We also experience the 32 | Reviews |

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confused thoughts of Lucy, once Henry’s lover, and their daughter, Blue, now separated from Henry.

Lucy, tortured by her need to be with him, has been apart from him for months, much to Blue’s chagrin.

The revelations and shocks of that day will be challenged by one man’s generous but simple offer to save the sanity of the main characters, one astonishing to all and therefore, cause for suspicion.

The musings of each character, not just about the loss of Jack, are the essence of this mournful day.

It’s the evolving muddle of their thoughts and feelings that rivets the reader’s attention to the last humbling page.

Viviane Crystal MURDER ON THE SERPENTINE: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel Anne Perry, Ballantine, 2017, $28, hb, 275pp, 9780425284988 / Headline, 2017, £8.99, pb, 336pp, 9781472234087 Commander Thomas Pitt, Head of Special Branch, is summoned to Buckingham Palace.

Queen Victoria needs Pitt to fully investigate what police have ruled the accidental drowning in a shallow body of water of her close friend and confidante, John Halberd. She fears his death is a result of her request to ensure that a close friend of the Prince of Wales has not misused his influence with the future king to sully the reputation of the Crown.

This is not an obvious Special Branch case, so Pitt is on thin ice about who he can trust and how he can mix with high society to discover any clues. Fans of the series will recognize that this cries out for the intervention of his mentor, Victor Narraway, and Charlotte’s aunt Vespasia, both of whom have been Pitt’s entrée into the affairs of the high and mighty in past adventures—but they are out of the country on their honeymoon.

This 32nd entry will be the last in the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series of Victorian novels, but Perry vows to pick up the thread 10 years in the future with a new generation. The numerous allusions to past cases in Pitt’s career that hinge on the struggle for power, and the delicate way it must be used so as not to abuse it, can become tedious.

But I promise you, the ending contains a treasure worthy of the conclusion of any series.

Tom Vallar

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THE ESSEX SERPENT Sarah Perry, Custom House, 2017, $26.99, hb, 432pp, 9780062666376 / Serpent’s Tail, 2016, £14.99, hb, 432pp, 9781781255445 The 2016 UK edition of The Essex Serpent received widespread acclaim, and the novel is sure to garner an enthusiastic U.S. audience as well.

Inspired by reports from 1669 of a winged serpent which plagued (or appeared to have plagued) Henham-onthe-Mount in the Essex countryside, Sarah Perry imagined such a beast visiting late 19th-century Essex, when evolution was a thrilling (or horrifying) new theory

and educated men and women set out to find fossils in the country.

Perry’s novel is the brilliant fruit of this imagination. Dickensian in scope, depth, and exquisite use of language, The Essex Serpent reveals the landscapes, links, and conflicted longings of a fascinating cast of characters. A widow liberated by death from an abusive husband and her (probably) autistic son rebuild their lives with bits of bones and shells; a pious vicar confronts unwelcome passions, collisions of faith and science, the ravages of tuberculosis, and a traumatized congregation.

A gifted surgeon utterly devoid of social skills struggles to heal himself.

With a deft hand, Perry takes us into class struggles, politics, women’s issues, and the profound anxieties that marked these times. At once love story and mystery, deeply penetrating layered characters with wit and grace, The Essex Serpent reveals the mundane beast that spawned wild rumors, and the stranger, less easily unmasked beasts within us.

Pamela Schoenewaldt LADY CLAIRE IS ALL THAT: Keeping Up With the Cavendishes Maya Rodale, Avon, 2017, $7.99/C$9.99, pb, 384pp, 9780062386786 Lady Claire Cavendish is not a typical young lady of the ton. For one thing, she is an American whose brother has inherited a title and, therefore, resettled his family in London. For another, she is a brilliant mathematician. The only reason she went out in society was to make the acquaintance of a particular gentleman who is a mathematical genius.

As luck will have it, he is away from London on his honeymoon, which leaves Lady Claire, with her eyeglasses and fashionable, if usually askew, ball dresses, an object of scornful ballroom gossip. Easy prey for Lord Fox, whose good friend, Mowbray, has bet him that, in two weeks, Fox cannot make Lady Claire “the most desirable and attractive woman in London.” If the wager had been for money, Fox might not have tried so hard to win, but it was for Stella, the best hunting dog in England.

Although this is a typical Regency romp, Maya Rodale has written it with intelligence and humor.

Lady Claire is not just a bluestocking who bores people with her equations, and Lord Fox is more than a handsome, idle, wealthy gentleman of the ton.

Audrey Braver LINCOLN IN THE BARDO George Saunders, Random House, 2017, $28.00/ C$37.00, hb, 343pp, 9780812995345 / Bloomsbury, 2017, £18.99, hb, 368pp, 9781408871744 Saunders’ first novel is surreal, with a meandering plot and 100+ garrulous characters who are invisible, at least to us. The death of 11-year-old Willie Lincoln in 1862, followed by the inconsolable President’s visits to the crypt, prompt vigorous discussions which, combined with excerpts from (real and fabricated) 19th-century sources, comprise the book. These discussions, which touch on the costs of war, the onus of decision-making, regrets, fears, and empathy, among other things, take place in the Bardo. A waystation between death and whatever lies after, the Bardo is inhabited by the recently deceased, like Willie, and countless souls who linger 19th Century

there before facing the great unknown.

The Bardo can be dangerous. Willie is warned but, expecting a visit from his father, the child refuses to budge. The souls of men and women with nothing in common but death and knowledge of the Bardo unite to manage Willie and his father— from within—and impel the child to leave. Thus are Lincoln’s innermost thoughts revealed, even his heartbreaking admission that, in the second year of war, he is not “well thought of, or succeeding in much of anything.” The intense struggle over father and son has many and unforeseen results, inside and outside of the Bardo, and a dénouement that is, amazingly, satisfactory.

Painful, raw, and occasionally humorous, Lincoln in the Bardo is an experience rather than a story. Like all good history, it is cautionary as well as informative but never dull, and deserves to be read more than once. You may also want to read the short stories (e.g., Tenth of December, 2013) for which Saunders is well known.

Jeanne Greene SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE Sarah Schmidt, Hachette Australia, 2017, A$32.99, pb, 9780733636882 / Atlantic Monthly, 2017, $25.00/C$34.50, hb, 324pp, 9780802126597 / Tinder, 2017, £12.99, hb, 336pp, 9781472240866 Lizzie Borden’s acquittal for the murder of her father and stepmother has already generated numerous books, films and plays, even musicals.

Whether the world needs another retelling of this infamous “did she, or didn’t she” story is debatable, but there is no doubt it ranks along with Jack the Ripper as an enduring subject of fascination.

Told through four first-person narratives— those of Lizzie, her elder sister Emma, Irish maid Bridget, and a fictional character, Benjamin— this is a new exploration of what might really have happened at 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, on August 4, 1892.

This is not an easy read and comes with a warning if you are at all squeamish. The writing is powerful, abrupt and confrontational, with startling, offbeat metaphors that grab hold and forcibly drag you into this oppressive world of locked doors, unjust accusations and abusive family power. There are sinister undercurrents in everything, from house timbers that “whip” rather than creak, the sensuous symbolism of a hot summer and biting into juicy pears, to the “thick stain of heat and blood, of broken muscle and bone,” and everywhere there are rotting smells, like sulphuric bad breath and the all-pervasive week-old mutton stew that bubbles not just on the stove but through the bowels of its residents, with inevitable consequences.

Because each narration is in this style, the individual voices are not always as distinct from one another as they might be, and Bridget’s is perhaps the most cohesive. Benjamin’s story isn’t wholly convincing, perhaps because he is basically a device to explain how some forensic evidence might have gone missing.

So, did she do it? The fact that the 19th-century all-male jury couldn’t believe a delicate young woman capable of such horrendous acts may help you to decide.

Marina Maxwell

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MR. ROCHESTER Sarah Shoemaker, Grand Central, 2017, $27.00/ C$35.00, hb, 449pp, 9781455569809 / Headline Review, 2017, £7.99, pb, 464pp, 9781472248930 In the early 1800s, young Edward Rochester roams the estate of Thornfield Hall, his beloved home. His father is aloof, his mother dead, his older brother callous and cold, and Edward seeks comfort with the servants. Suddenly, at age eight, he’s sent away for education at an idiosyncratic scholar’s home, where he makes his first friends.

When older, Edward is ordered to work at a mill to learn business. He finds a father figure in his employer. Then his real father, still distant, sends him to Jamaica, where the older Rochester has business interests. Edward is encouraged to court and marry the beautiful, alluring Antoinetta “Bertha” and, in his inexperience, he dismisses the strange quirks of his new wife. But soon Bertha shows signs of mental disintegration. Edward discovers he’s an astute businessman, nevertheless, and after he learns of the deaths of his father and older brother, he’s now the heir to Thornfield Hall.

Edward leaves steamy Jamaica with his mad wife, despondent of ever finding true love, until he meets his ward’s quiet yet stalwart young governess, Jane.

Fans of Jane Eyre will recognize the rest of the story, but through Edward’s eyes. His upbringing reveals the enigmatic, volatile character he is as a man, his father’s (and brother’s) betrayals, and why he doesn’t put Bertha in an asylum. He struggles to form deep relationships, but his blustery veneer hides a sensitive and damaged soul. I wish Jane had been shown as a more complex character.

The childhood scenes drag on a bit, though Shoemaker’s elegant prose is worth reading at every step. Charlotte Brontë’s mercurial hero is brought to brilliant life in this novel. Highly recommended.

Diane Scott Lewis WHAT THE DEAD LEAVE BEHIND Rosemary Simpson, Kensington, 2017, $25.00/ C$27.95, hb, 304pp, 9781496709080 A massive, unexpected March snowstorm overwhelms New York City while Prudence MacKenzie desperately awaits the arrival of her fiancé. His sudden death in this 1888 blizzard nullifies the plans that her recently deceased father, a prominent judge, had meticulously laid to ensure her future security and places Prudence under the thumb of her father’s hostile second wife.

Initially hindered by a haze of grief and dangerous medication that has kept her docile and vulnerable, she struggles to extricate herself from the situation.

Her quest to regain her rightful inheritance and freedom soon includes investigating the strange accident that killed her fiancé, and she enlists the help of his loyal friend, who shares her suspicions.

Relying on lessons her father taught her about the law and how to outmaneuver an adversary, Prudence covertly defies her stepmother’s attempt to control her and concentrates on finding and interpreting a set of abstruse clues the judge left behind. She makes significant progress in sorting through the past misdeeds, deceit, and machinations that have led to her plight, yet she is unaware of the present danger posed by a vengeful foe lurking in plain sight.

This intricate mystery unfolds by exposing layer after layer of hidden facts and surprising

connections between the worlds of the Fifth Avenue elite, their servants, and the criminal denizens of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.

The varied characters are well-drawn, with the protagonist’s mix of emotional depth, canniness, and courage fueling the story. A rich prose style and sweeping glimpse of life during New York’s Gilded Age complement the intriguing plot.

Cynthia Slocum

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OUTCASTS: A Novel of Mary Shelley Sarah Stegall, Wings Press, 2017, $16.95, pb, 272pp, 9781609405168 We are given a rare glimpse into the genesis of the first horror story— Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus— during three seminal days on Lake Geneva during June 1816.

Living by the lake are radical poet Percy Shelley; his 18-year-old second wife, Mary (daughter of philosopher William Godwin) and their infant son, William; poet George, Lord Byron; Mary’s half-sister, Claire Clairmont, who is Byron’s lover; and Dr. John Polidori, who is Byron’s physician. The days are chilly and rainy, filled with philosophical arguments about the nature of man, good and evil, sex and love. The relationships are often strained: Mary, intensely in love with Shelley, and Claire, who is pregnant by Byron and who loves a man perhaps incapable of love; Polidori, a brilliant young doctor philosophically unaligned with the poets, and his sulking patient, Byron, often abusive and immoral; Mary and her estranged philosopher father, William Godwin, regularly demanding money from Shelley and refusing to correspond with her.

Byron dares Mary, Percy and Polidori each to write a ghost story. On the final dark and stormy night, Mary comes to recognize her own independence, her own ability to be and become her own person without the two men most consequential in her life. That is the night that she sits down to write Frankenstein, published anonymously in 1818.

Stegall’s Mary is the voice we hear throughout the novel, extremely young but clearly brilliant and talented—clearly the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the great advocate of women’s rights, yet depending on the men in her life to define her. So intensely written are these days that I could actually hear Lake Geneva lapping at the shore, smell the rain, and hear the thunder.

Stegall captures this time in mundane detail while recognizing the historical importance of the relationships and the literary works that found their roots in them. Absolutely wonderful!

Ilysa Magnus DARK ASYLUM: A Jem Flockhart Novel E. S. Thomson, Constable, 2017, £19.99, hb, 384pp, 9781472122315 This is the second in the series that features Jem Flockhart, the young apothecary, who made her debut in Beloved Poison (reviewed in HNR 77).

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Jem’s big secret is that although being a female, she has passed herself as a boy and then man for most of her life—a ploy by her dead father to allow her to learn and continue the family apothecary business. Her large facial strawberry birthmark would also have persuaded her father that Jem would have found it highly difficult to make any sort of worthwhile marriage. With St. Saviour’s hospital having relocated, most of the action in the novel takes place in the adjacent, eponymous Angel Meadow asylum, where Jem makes up prescriptions for the medical staff there. Just like the hospital in the previous novel, the asylum is a hotbed of intrigue, jealousy and hatred amongst the staff, and there is a murder or two for Jem and her friend Will Quartermain to investigate. The author is clever in scattering enough clues, with a back-story, for the reader to follow what is going on and consider so that you have a fairly good idea who is responsible for the deaths. But with a series of coincidences, the truth is a little more complex.

Jem, as one would expect, discovers all, but nearly at the cost of her own life.

It is a well-written and carefully plotted gothic tale, though perhaps not quite as absorbing as Beloved Poison, as the atmosphere and the grandguignol assaults on the reader (of which there are many) may seem rather too rooted in the grungy atmosphere of the previous novel. Enjoyable and engaging nevertheless, and E.S. Thomson is already writing the third of this pungently murderous series.

Douglas Kemp RETRIBUTION ROAD Antonin Varenne, MacLehose, 2017, £18.99, hb, 525pp, 9780857053749 Sergeant Arthur Bowman is a veteran of war, a member of the army of the East India Company, fighting in the Second Anglo-Burmese War. He and a select team of troopers are sent on a secret mission deep into the Burmese jungle. Meeting him are death, pain and torture. Years later, trying to dull his memories with drink and opium, he’s confronted with a mutilated body in a London sewer during the Great Stink. The victim has been subjected to the same tortures that Bowman and his men endured. Who has done this? Who has woken these terrible memories? Beginning in the steamy jungles of Burma, Bowman is driven from the stifling streets of London to the wide-open country of the United States. He’s driven by the knowledge that whoever is replicating the tortures he and his men survived, must have been there.

One of his tortured team is torturing. Why? How can Bowman stop them and, in that way, stop the horrors that he lives with day and night.

A dark and brutal read, this is not for the fainthearted. There is humour, there is romance, and there is redemption in Retribution Road. It’s wide in scope, it’s personal in feel, and it draws the reader into the story and makes us care about Sergeant Bowman and what happens to him.

Alan Cassady-Bishop ELEMENTARY MURDER: A Lancashire Detective Mystery A. J. Wright, Allison & Busby, 2017, £19.99/$25, hb, 320pp, 9780749019495 1894, Wigan in Lancashire. Miss Dorothea 34 | Reviews |

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Gladstone applies for a teaching post at George Street Elementary School, a post for which she seems eminently suitable. However, although initially promising, the face-to-face interview with the school board does not go well, and her application is dismissed. The following Monday morning her body is found in a locked classroom with a note by her side. The door is locked from the inside, and the initial consensus is suicide, but DS Michael Brennan is not convinced. Staff members seem to have a great deal to hide, and are reluctant to cooperate. When a young pupil disappears, and members of staff are attacked, DS Brennan, aided

by Constable Jaggery, a man of few words, little imagination, but very handy fists, finds himself investigating a tangled web of deceit, with links to a murky past.

This is the second novel featuring DS Brennan from an award-winning writer. This Victorian crime novel has strong, believable characters, red herrings and clues a plenty. A cracking crime novel in the style of Edward Marston. Pour yourself a cup of your favourite tipple, sit back and enjoy.

Mike Ashworth THE RUSTED SUN Michael Zimmer, Five Star, 2017, $25.95, hb, 270pp, 9781432832308 Gil Ryan, riding from personal tragedy in Idaho, arrives in the small frontier town of Larkspur injured, suffering from pneumonia, and minus most of his possessions, which have been lost in a flood. As the townspeople care for him, he realizes that everyone in town is being victimized by rancher Art Quinlin and the hired thugs that he calls cowboys. Once recovered Ryan is reluctantly drawn into supporting the townspeople against Quinlin.

While this is a classic stranger-in-town-saveseveryone western, it is well-researched and true to both the reality and the mythology of frontier life in the west. Descriptions are vivid and accurate to the period, the place, and the sense of the Old West. Characters are fully developed, and the action is suspenseful and realistic. The author’s extensive knowledge of firearms of the period adds that extra “you are there” touch.

I especially liked the maturity of the protagonist; this is no hot-shot young cowboy. The very minor love interest is no nubile young maiden, nor yet a feisty red-headed schoolmarm, but a mature woman. Bravo! An entertaining and brilliantly realistic addition to the genre.

Val Adolph

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DISPLACED Stephan Abarbanell, John Murray, 2017, £17.99, hb, 329pp, 9871473635448 In his afterword, the author declares that he wanted to describe Germany in the ‘time between the times’ at the end of WW2, when the dazed population came out of their shelters to pick over the ruins under the eyes of their conquerors.

The end of the war also found tens of thousands of people in Germany who had been uprooted from their homes throughout Europe to be slave

labourers in the Reich or to escape the advancing Russians. These were the Displaced Persons (DPs), now eking out their lives in refugee camps, mentally as well as physically displaced, poised between a world that was lost and one yet to be born.

Abarbanell succeeds brilliantly in evoking this moment in history. I wish I could be as complimentary about his story. It is told through the eyes of Lilya, a young Jewish woman from what was then still the British mandate of Palestine. She belongs to an underground organisation fighting against British rule, but rather than blowing up bridges in Palestine, as she prefers, her boss sends her on a mission to Germany to track down a scientist who may or may not have survived the war. This allows her to tour the country and the DP camps, seeing them through fresh eyes.

I never understood why the Jewish ‘resistance’ wanted to find the missing scientist, or why the British should not be left to do it by themselves.

Instead the British trail Lilya, who leads them to him. Nobody seems to gain anything from this, except for Lilya, who falls in love with an American officer. There is one attempt on her life, but otherwise the ‘thriller’ is played out in interviews, letters and reports. A slight story in a powerful setting.

Edward James THE HOLLYWOOD DAUGHTER Kate Alcott, Doubleday, 2017, $26.95/C$35.95, hb, 320pp, 9780385540636 New York City, 1959. Jessica Malloy is a struggling journalist who has left her Hollywood childhood behind. But when she receives a mysterious invitation to the 1959 Academy Awards, she goes back to Los Angeles to confront the ghosts of her past.

Most of this coming-of-age novel is focused on Jessica’s teenage years in 1940s Hollywood.

Caught between her strict Catholic mother and her publicist father, Jessica lives for the brief encounters she has with Ingrid Bergman, her father’s most famous star. When Ingrid plays a nun in The Bells of St Mary’s, which is filmed at Jessica’s own Catholic school, Jessica’s happiness seems complete. The Hollywood star in the role of a saintly nun brings together the competing impulses in Jessica’s life.

Jessica remains Ingrid’s staunch supporter even after the star’s adulterous affair with Roberto Rossellini is made public. As McCarthyism and censorship take over the Hollywood studios and Jessica’s heroes let her down, she learns that Ingrid and her parents are more fallible—but also more admirable—than she could have imagined.

I came to this novel already a fan of Alcott’s The Dressmaker, but I didn’t find The Hollywood Daughter quite as compelling. There are certainly some sparkling moments, such as Jessica’s confrontation with Ingrid on the island of Stromboli and a dramatic high school debating tournament. I also appreciated the way Alcott avoids both positive and negative stereotypes of nuns: the Mother Superior of Jessica’s school is particularly complex and well-drawn. My only complaint is that the last section of the novel, which returns to 1959, drags a little as it relentlessly ties up every loose end. Readers with an interest in Ingrid Bergman or 1940s and 50s Hollywood will 19th Century — 20th Century

enjoy Alcott’s latest offering.

Clarissa Harwood

UNDER A SARDINIAN SKY Sara Alexander, Kensington, 2017, $15.00, pb, 321pp, 9781496706362 On the beautiful Italian island of Sardinia in 2007, Mina has just buried her beloved aunt Piera.

Now her mother is dying. The family has been haunted for decades over the disappearance of her aunt Carmela. Mina is compelled to write and piece together the hidden story while her mother still lives.

Mina’s story of Carmela begins in 1952, when the large Chirigoni family lives on and works the fertile farmlands, orchards, and vineyards surrounding the village of Simius. Carmela is one of six siblings and enjoys her life as a seamstress in the village while working side-by-side with her family on the farm. She is engaged to Franco, a wealthy young man from the village, but her world is disrupted when she meets an American captain, Joe Kavanaugh, stationed at the army base in Simius. Her dissatisfaction grows as she begins to question what she wants in life and starts looking toward all the possibilities outside of her small village. Franco’s flaws become more apparent to her as she falls in love with Joe. This secret love between Joe and Carmela, plus Franco’s jealousy, starts in motion the tragedy that devastates the family and takes Carmela from them.

Sara Alexander’s presentation of the Sardinian countryside is exquisite and brings the landscape to life. She also has a talent for mouthwatering food descriptions. I could say that there were far too many elaborate feasts of food served up at nearly every turn of the page, but this flaw was overlooked because the depictions were so well done. This is a wonderful book for those who appreciate colorful images of food and scenery along with a good storyline.

Janice Ottersberg

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THE BUTTONMAKER’S DAUGHTER Merryn Allingham, HQ, 2017, £7.99, pb, 382pp, 9780008193836 It is May 1914, and self-made man Joshua Summer’s plan to create a magnificent Italian garden at his Sussex home Summerhayes is nearing completion.

However, the building of a summerhouse and temple by the lake brings Joshua’s beloved daughter Elizabeth in contact with Aiden Kellaway, a young architect’s assistant with ambitions for his future. But Joshua has a very different vision of Elizabeth’s future and, as the threat of war grows closer, so Elizabeth finds herself torn between loyalty to her family and her burgeoning love, while the long-running family feud between her father and her uncle Henry Fitzroy escalates to dangerous levels.

I expected this book to be a typical saga/ romance - a pleasant enough read but nothing to write home about. What I discovered instead was 20th Century

an absorbing, atmospheric novel, with nuanced characters and a plot that gradually winds tighter and tighter towards its dramatic climax. It would have been very easy to turn Elizabeth’s parents into flat stereotypes, but Allingham goes much deeper than this, showing how their very different upbringings influence what they want for Elizabeth and her delicate, sensitive brother William.

Admittedly the characters occasionally seem a little too accurate in their predictions about the long-term consequences of the war, which is still only a few days old by the end of the novel; there are slight misunderstandings about what the technical terms “in a minor key” and “outflanked” actually mean; and most historians seem to agree nowadays that the summer of 1914 was a bit of a washout rather than the golden summer of myth—but none of that matters in a work of this high quality. I’m eager now to read the sequel to this book, as well as Allingham’s earlier novels. Highly recommended.

Jasmina Svenne

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AN AMERICAN DECADE Richard Aronowitz, Accent, 2017, £8.99, pb, 319pp, 9781786150011 In 1930 Christoph Rittersmann leaves Germany for America to make a new life for himself. At first he is lonely and disorientated, but he gradually builds up a career as a Broadway singer. He marries and has a family, and appears to have achieved success. But growing tension in his homeland is mirrored by the activities of the German Nazi movement in the U.S., and he cannot remain unaffected by the news that war has broken out in Europe. At the same time the events of Christoph’s previous life continue to haunt him.

Eventually he has to return to Europe to confront a past he thought he had left behind.

An American Decade is based upon the author’s own family history. It focuses upon some lesser known aspects of the Second World War: Nazism in the US, and the Kindertransport that took Jewish children to safety in other countries. The existence of German Nazis in 1930s America was unfamiliar to me, and I found this part of the novel fascinating. I also enjoyed the way that Christoph’s personal past was intertwined with the unfolding history of his country. The book is well written and a compulsive story. Recommended for anyone who likes a good read, as well as those who are interested in World War II. Karen Warren THE YANKEE YEARS: Books 1-3 Dianne Ascroft, CreateSpace, 2016, £8.99, pb, 334pp, 9781907530487 These novellas (The Shadow Ally, Acts of Sabotage, Keeping Her Pledge) introduce Ruth Corey, a young woman in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, in 1941, just as an American aircraft base is being secretly built in the area.

Ruth’s boyfriend, Harry, is a journalist who seems to take a special interest in this secret endeavour.

Her loyalties are tested when she realises that he might trade his knowledge about the plans, which could have huge repercussions for the course of the war. The second and third books in this omnibus edition deal with similar personal conflicts within the setting of WW2 in Northern Ireland.

The historical and political facts are plentiful and make for an informative and very rewarding reading experience, with excellent background research and attention to detail. I chose this book because I knew little of this particular theatre of war, and I was not disappointed. The stories are somewhat linear and focus more on the human aspects of war as well as on the romantic relationships portrayed. While I sometimes would have liked the historical aspects to take centre stage, I found myself rather engaged in these books and enjoyed them to an extent that I rarely do with historical romances. Ascroft has chosen some interesting and fascinating aspects of WW2 and should find grateful readers in those curious to know more about the war in Northern Ireland.

Christoph Fischer THE LOST HISTORY OF STARS (US) / THE UNDESIRABLES (UK) Dave Boling, Algonquin, 2017, $25.95, hb, 352pp, 9781616204174 / Picador, 2016, £7.99, pb, 256pp, 9781447233251

By September 1900, the Anglo-Boer War has been fought for a year. Members of the Venter family are Afrikaners trying to protect their land from British invaders. Living on their farm are adolescent sisters Lettie and Cecelia, along with their little brother, Willem, and their mother.

The children’s father, grandfather, and older brother are soldiers in the Afrikaner army, who are away fighting the British. Eventually British soldiers arrive at the farm, burn the buildings, and transport the family to a concentration camp, where they, along with many of their friends, are constantly under the threat of starvation and disease. Lettie keeps a journal of their experience while befriending a young British soldier guarding their encampment.

This novel of survival under harsh conditions is told from her young girl’s perspective. Prepare to be immersed in the story. Boling has based his novel on his grandfather’s experience as a camp guard for the British Army during the war. He portrays the women’s strength in dealing with life-and-death struggles and their loss of freedom while trying to provide a home for their family. This story will remain with you long after you have finished the book.

Jeff Westerhoff THE PICTURES Guy Bolton, Point Blank, 2017, £14.99/$24.99, hb, 389pp, 9781786070395 Los Angeles, 1939, and The Wizard of Oz is just about to premier. MGM Studios is at the height of its power, but this depends on stars who are paragons to their adoring public. If the studio needs anything covering up—any drunken car wrecks, backstreet abortions, drug overdoses— the go-to man is Detective Jonathan Craine of the LAPD. Craine has made a good living out of studio backhanders for ten years, but, when called upon to smooth over the murder of a call girl, he’s ready HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 35

to get out. Recently widowed and with a young son to raise, he has other things on his mind. This seemingly routine case, however, will go right to the heart of the studio and will change Craine’s life forever.

Bolton openly acknowledges his heavy debt to Chandler, Hammett, Leonard and their ilk, and this novel hits all the markers you would expect of a hard-boiled murder mystery set in 1930s Hollywood. Most of its set-pieces are genre clichés, with femmes fatales and silent men in fedoras and sharp-shouldered suits a-plenty. But, while Bolton doesn’t aspire to the linguistic fireworks of Chandler, he writes with pace and verve and gives the reader a cast of endearingly flawed characters who are easy to like. Craine himself goes on a profound personal journey, much of which revolves around his relationship with his son. This is neatly balanced by his sidekick, O’Neill, who lives in the shadow of his heroic father. The result is a novel which is, on one level, an accomplished crime thriller but, on another, a sensitive and serious exploration of the relationships between fathers and sons. A thoroughly enjoyable read, best accompanied by popcorn, a soda, and an old MGM movie.

Sarah Bower THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES John Boyne, Doubleday, 2017, £16.99, hb, 598pp, 978085723471 / Hogarth, 2017, $28, hb, 598pp, 9781524760786 In a small parish in West Cork in 1945, Catherine Goggin, aged just 16, is pregnant and unmarried and with the intolerance and bigotry of Irish society in those days, that is not a good place to be. Her moral turpitude is brutally exposed by the priest in her local church, and she is violently expelled from the village. She goes to Dublin to find work and have the baby, who is the first-person narrator. When he is born, the baby is promptly handed over to nuns, who then sell him to a childless couple—Charles & Maude Avery— a rather louche and wealthy pair, with a relaxed marriage, and Cyril, as he is called, has a lonely and emotionally chilly childhood. As Cyril grows into maturity in the 1950s and early ‘60s, it soon becomes apparent that he has a big problem integrating into the regimented Irish society of the times in that he is gay. The trials and tribulations that he experiences in an intolerant Irish society are narrated in a weird combination of zany humour allied with the serious and nasty sides of such chauvinism.

This is a lengthy novel with a wide scope that covers the life and times of Cyril as a gay man in a repressed society. There’s much pathos and humour as well as episodes of violence, hatred and intolerance, and it is highly sexually explicit; it is a ribald and entertaining blend that makes for a highly readable account. However, I was perplexed by the numerous historical errors and oddities in the text, as well as some “continuity” issues, but the reader cannot be fully sure if these are mistakes made by the less-than omniscient narrator, Cyril, or whether they are just errors from the author. I rather think it is the latter.

Douglas Kemp

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SHOW ME A KINDNESS Nancy Brandon, Lake Union, 2017, $14.95, pb, 270pp, 9781503943193 In South Georgia during the Great Depression, a young woman with a troubled life steps off the train in Vidalia. Making a new life for herself, Oma finds a job where she excels at making pies that have customers flocking to the local café. Yet something isn’t quite right. She’s losing days of her memory and many times awakening to some disaster or other. With the help of Comfort, a local day-maid attached to her boardinghouse, she soon discovers the reality of the situation: she’s suffering from multiple personality disorder, and her other self, named Marthanne, has a completely different personality. As Oma desperately wants to work and save money for her own pie-making business, Marthanne turns to a widower who has been paying her attentions. They fight each other over important decisions, all the while struggling to keep the true nature of their condition under wraps. In a time when a mental health concern meant harsh treatments at an asylum—Milledgeville in this case—it is no wonder that Oma/Marthanne is determined to hide her predicament.

The story handles Oma and Marthanne as separate characters, which works well in making her condition relatable to readers. As they communicate through a notebook—when one is “awake,” the other is “asleep”—their past is slowly revealed, bringing the tale to a heartrending climax and unexpected ending. Historically, the author pads her story with details of Prohibition, farming (specifically the famous Vidalia sweet onions), and Jim Crow laws. All of the characters, especially the sardonic Comfort, are well-fleshed and interesting.

Handling a delicate subject empathetically, the quirky narration beautifully encompasses a range of emotions that will enthrall readers through the final page.

Arleigh Johnson MY LAST LAMENT James William Brown, Berkley, 2017, $26.00, hb, 352pp, 9780399583407 In a present-day remote Greek village, an American scholar seeks out an old woman who is the last living person gifted with the ancient tradition of lamenting. For her research, she asks Aliki to record her laments. But a lament is not something Aliki can conjure on demand. It is a spontaneous utterance from the depths of her soul, and not just a grieving, but also a celebration of the life of the deceased. Aliki struggles to begin, so instead she tells her own life story. At the end, it becomes clear that Aliki’s story is her own lament—her last one.

During WWII and the Nazi occupation, 14-year-old Aliki is left an orphan and taken in by a neighbor, Chrysoula, and her 10-year-old son, Takis. Takis and Aliki become like brother and sister. Sophia and her son Stelios are Jewish refugees hiding in Chrysoula’s basement. The three children develop a friendship and perform shadow theatre plays to pass the time. A chain of tragic events is set into motion when someone alerts the Germans to the Jews hidden in their midst, and the Germans leave behind a burning village while escaping the Allies’ advance.

Aliki, Stelios, and Takis, left with no parent

or home, travel to Stelios’ home in Athens. Takis suffers from breaks with reality, and creates more problems with his unpredictable and violent behavior. After WWII, the three stick together and navigate a country riddled by civil war and violence. They earn food and shelter by performing their shadow theatre, which becomes an allegory of their lives: “We’re the shadows on the screen. We can’t grasp the actual lives we’re shadowing… not while we’re living them.”

This novel tells the love story of Aliki and Stelios and a heart-wrenching story of struggle. An excellent read, it is also very informative on the civil unrest and political upheaval suffered by the Greek people following Nazi occupation.

Janice Ottersberg ALPINE BALLAD Vasil Bykau, Glagoslav, 2016, €19.10/£13.50, pb, 200pp, 9781784379445 This short but powerful novel begins with Ivan Tsyareshka escaping from a Nazi concentration camp in the Austrian Alps and embarking on a desperate flight to reach safety in Trieste. He is joined by another prisoner, an Italian woman, Giulia, whom he is at first reluctant to take along, fearing she will hold him back. But Ivan is an upright and compassionate man and cannot bring himself to abandon her.

What follows is a tense and gripping tale of two people fighting against the odds to escape the Germans who are close behind them. As the two face inhospitable terrain, cold, and hunger, and in spite of the language barrier, feelings begin to develop between them as Giulia gradually wins Ivan over. Although essentially a nail-biting story, flashbacks to earlier times round out the characters and give context to their predicament. Giulia comes from a bourgeois background, which makes Ivan suspicious of her at first, although she considers herself a Communist, whilst Ivan, although loyal to his country, is aware of the faultlines in Soviet society. This added complexity helps to draw the reader in, and I found the book both immersive and compelling.

Bykau writes vividly, with not a word wasted.

The descriptions of the landscape sing out, while the suspense and dramatic tension are expertly maintained right to the end. It’s a sad and haunting tale, reflecting a harsh and brutal era. The author (1924-2003) is well-known in his native Belarus, but we have had to wait until now for an English translation of this excellent novel. His work often features WW2, which he knew from first-hand experience, adding to the authenticity of the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and recommend it wholeheartedly. There is a 1965 Soviet film version to be enjoyed too.

Mandy Jenkinson THE ILLUSIONIST’S APPRENTICE Kristy Cambron, Thomas Nelson, 2017, $15.99, pb, 368pp, 9780718041502 Behind every great illusionist is a powerful and intelligent woman who holds the key to all of the secrets and tricks kept hidden from the public.

In The Illusionist’s Apprentice, we meet Wren Lockhart, Harry Houdini’s fictional assistant.

It is New Year’s Eve of 1926, and Harry Houdini has been dead for two months. The story 19th Century

opens at a cemetery, where Houdini’s nemesis, Horace Stapleton, has gathered crowds to witness his attempt to resurrect a dead man. But when something goes terribly wrong, the federal agents who had been dispatched to witness the show start to believe that something more sinister was at play than just an unfortunate accident. They turn their focus to Wren, a vaudeville illusionist, whose previous association with Houdini, as well as her mysterious past, propels her to become a person of interest. As Agent Elliot Matthews begins to unravel the truth, Wren becomes more elusive than ever.

Cambron has created a wholly original character in Wren Lockhart. She defies the convention of her time in everything from her dress to her occupation to her stubborn independence. The storyline is intriguing, and the vaudeville scenes are captivating. Period details are spot on, as the reader is transported to the dusky shadows of 1920s Boston.

At once a love story and a mystery, The Illusionist’s Apprentice will appeal to anyone who likes novels about strong, enigmatic women, as well as to those curious about what goes on behind the curtains on a magician’s stage.

Hilary Daninhirsch

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THE STOLEN CHILD Lisa Carey, Harper Perennial, 2017, $15.99/ C$19.99, pb, 400pp, 9780062492180 This mesmerizing novel, set on an isolated, rocky island off the west coast of Ireland in 1959, fairly pulses with passion and magic.

Carey blends the real and the mythic so seamlessly and with such insight that “magic realism” seems a poor name for the vibrant genre in which she’s working. The women of her story—fierce Emer, loving Rose, and fey Brigid—are drawn so finely and precisely that they seem figures from a fairy tale brought to messy, utterly believable life, their joys and sorrows immediate and heartrending.

The plot focuses on the intense relationship between Brigid, a newcomer to the island whose healing hands are small compensation for a life of trauma, loss, and childlessness; and Emer, who up until Brigid’s arrival has loved only her otherworldly son, Niall. Both women are caught in a maelstrom of desire, fear, and fate, in a place where the real-life challenges of daily life without modern conveniences are balanced by the enchanting Celtic and Christian mysteries surrounding the legends of the island’s patron, St. Brigid, reenacted generation after generation by the tenacious island women and their children.

This highly recommended novel invites rereading, just to admire how skillfully Carey has woven into her narrative allusions to Celtic myth and legend, the poetry of Yeats and Heaney, and the heartbreaking historical realities of an ancient community making its final exodus into the modern era.

Kristen McDermott 20th Century

MARION HATLEY Beth Castrodale, Garland, 2017, $16.95, pb, 277pp, 9781940782027 Is it possible to outrun your past? To begin anew? Those are the questions that plague Marion Hatley in 1931 when she flees a scandal in Pittsburgh and escapes to Cooper’s Ford, a small western Pennsylvania town.

Marion is a talented seamstress who works in a dress shop in Pittsburgh. An affair with a married man leads to the loss of her job. Marion is unmarried and still in mourning from the recent loss of her mother, a fellow seamstress. When she is summoned to take care of her dying aunt, an aunt she knew only from whispers and fragments of stories, she takes the opportunity to leave town.

In addition to caring for her aunt, Marion takes on a teaching job. Soon she becomes enmeshed in the community and in the lives of some of the children in her classroom. Based on the visions and dreams of her late mother, she also creates and markets a comfortable corset, the first of its kind, which becomes a success among the locals. But just when Marion is settling in, she discovers that long-buried secrets are destined to come to light.

Marion Hatley is an engaging portrait of a modern woman ahead of her time. She’s talented, courageous, devoted to her students and aunt, and not afraid to speak up for herself and others.

A subplot featuring the relationship between a townsperson, Elder Baines, who was injured in the war, and his friendship with Walter, the son of Marion’s friend, is less interesting. Although it provides some insight into Walter and his relationship with his abusive father, I didn’t feel that it added anything to the storyline and was a bit superfluous.

Strong female characters and authentic historical details transform Marion Hatley into a worthy read with a satisfying ending.

Hilary Daninhirsch JERZY Jerome Charyn, Bellevue Literary Press, 2017, $16.99, pb, 240pp, 9781942658146 By peeling off layers of fiction to expose the facts of Jerzy Kosinski’s life, author Jerome Charyn chops through the façade of a man and the creation of his art. Although the novel is about Kosinski himself, the star is actually Kosinski’s best-selling novel, Being There, and the lies surrounding its origins. Kosinksi is simply the vessel through which its story is told. Multiple narrators—a homicidal actor, a dominatrix, and Joseph Stalin’s daughter— lend insights as the reader travels down an everdarkening road exposing the author’s personal and professional deterioration.

Jerzy is not an easy read, but it is a gripping one, a worthwhile novel that will challenge the reader’s mind. When layers of seeming truth are stripped away through words to reveal reality—no matter how affecting—the reader will be uncomfortable.

But isn’t this the purpose of literary fiction, to move the reader away from their comfort zone into the swirling chaos of the unknowable and unbelievable? In this respect, Jerome Charyn will expertly guide you through the shadowy life of this most enigmatic of artists in this imaginative and provocative novel.

Andrea Connell

A SINGLE SPY William Christie, Minotaur, 2017, $25.99/ C$36.99/£19.99, hb, 400pp, 9781250080813 It is 1936 in Soviet Azerbaijan when we meet Alexsi, a 16-year-old orphan who has managed to survive on his own because he can read and write, pick locks, and speak Russian and Farsi. When Alexsi is caught and sent to the secret police, they are just as interested in these skills. Alexsi is given the “opportunity” to join State Security as a secret agent in Nazi Germany. If he agrees, in return they will provide well for him. The position teaches him even greater skills and allows him to interact with a variety of people (more often than not female).

Alexsi’s story unfolds for the reader through flashbacks in time to the orphanage where he has his first sexual experience. While Alexsi’s history is pretty unbelievable, the plot moves quickly, and there is plenty of action, especially that of a carnal and explicit nature. The author manages to express just how dangerous the work of a spy in the 1930s in the Soviet system and Nazi Germany could be. As Alexsi proves himself trustworthy, he is chosen by the Gestapo to be in charge of an effort to assassinate Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt at the Tehran Convention in 1943, also known as Operation Long Jump.

The character of Alexsi does not speak or behave like any 16-year-old I have ever met, and there is no real difference between his 16-year-old personality or behavior and that of 12-year-old Alexsi in the orphanage. Without any formal training, Alexsi’s skills at that age surpass that of any adult spy.

While based on research by the author, it seems the historical information about Operation Long Jump is of greater interest than a fictional account of the same.

The story will appeal to fans of James Bond and other espionage or spy thrillers where the action and sex is of more interest to the reader than the historical context, character development, or realistic dialogue.

Elicia Parkinson CORPUS Rory Clements, Zaffre, 2017, £12.99, hb, 368pp, 9781785762611 Set in Cambridge in 1936, Corpus is Rory Clements’ first novel to depart from the Elizabethan era. At first glance it may not seem a promising set-up for an espionage thriller— from a comfy armchair in 2017, the abdication of Edward VIII feels a rather quaint and parochial affair compared to the horrors that followed—but Clements soon convinces. His Cambridge is a dense and smoky world where fascists and communists are operating as secret societies, with both sides recruiting idealistic students and plotting to destabilise England for their own gain.

The stakes are high, and Clements skilfully shows what the conflict between these two ideologies could do to a country by keeping the spectre of the Spanish Civil War looming in the background. The world is superbly evoked, from the growl of a Rudge Special motorbike to the enormous quantity of alcohol drunk. (Do not attempt to recreate any kind of “Withnail and I” drinking game while reading this novel.)

The list of characters and subplots is huge, and at times bewildering, but all have depth and HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 37

there are more hits than misses. Best of all is the delightful Sophie von Isarbeck, a German aristocrat and socialite who is a friend to Wallis Simpson, a Nazi agent, and dominatrix prostitute.

Unfortunately, though, the protagonists are pale and dull compared to the supporting cast and, while some of the plot turns are gripping, others are flimsy and one is outright ludicrous. Clements’ prose is also grey and mechanical, save for the occasional burst of flair that comes out of nowhere (Cambridge’s city and university are “host and worm intertwined, and yet the worm grown more magnificent than the host”). Clements has created a vivid and convincing tableau full of possibilities, but sadly this fairly sedate story does not do it justice.

Tom Graham

people is her relatively unknown niece. There is a whole other subplot about family secrets, but it is really only used to set up the wartime scenario.

Overall this novel is a classic tale of good and evil with close escapes, tense moments, ingenious deception, and a nasty collaborator who thankfully gets the comeuppance the reader has been willing to happen. The reader wants the courageous nuns to succeed and the dastardly Nazi officers, Colonel Hoch in particular, to get what he deserves.

Although perhaps not an entirely new idea or setting, the story is still described with verve and excitement. The characterisation is clear and the action is gripping. This is a page-turner and a perfect light holiday read. Take care not to get sunburnt while engrossed in its pages.

Ann Northfield

THE SPY Paulo Coelho, Knopf, 2016, $22, hb, 190pp, 9781524732066 / Hutchinson, 2016, £12.99, hb, 208pp, 9781786330543 Why was an adventuress, who rose to notoriety as an exotic dancer in pre-World War I Paris, executed by firing squad in 1917? Was she a double agent, as the French prosecution claimed, or had she been framed? Before Mata Hari perished, she swore to her innocence, and the government dossier, made available 68 years later, corroborated her testimony. This led to a re-assessment of her character, which had been depicted as devious—a fille de joie who had accepted payments from the French and the Germans, her treason causing the deaths of thousands of allied troops. By contrast, the journalist to have insight into her legal files, Russell Warren Howe, painted Mata Hari as a sad, pathetic figure—a convenient scapegoat, sacrificed by the French to supply an excuse as to why the nation had incurred heavy losses in the trenches.

Paulo Coelho, in The Spy, adheres to this later view, opening his novel shortly before her death, as she pens a (fictional) letter to her attorney, telling the story of her life and explaining why she became embroiled in espionage—she wanted to earn money for her Russian lover. Was Mata Hari an accidental spy, who loved too much, or an early feminist, taking unprecedented freedoms? Coelho suggests that she was a living contradiction, a brilliant dreamer, who misunderstood the complex politics of the Great War. The Spy resurrects this fascinating personality and shows that she was not a femme fatale, but a hapless victim. Yet, a few nagging questions remain by the end of the novel. Would a woman counting the days to her execution embark on a lengthy memoir? Would she not rage more at the injustice of her fate and mourn her existence being cut short? The book is a compelling read, but somewhat lacking in gravitas, considering Mata Hari’s tragic ending.

Elisabeth Lenckos

A RING OF TRUTH: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel Michelle Cox, She Writes, 2017, $16.95, pb, 307pp, 9781631521966 In Depression-era Chicago, Henrietta Von Harmon is newly engaged to Inspector Clive Howard. Hen is overwhelmed when she visits his parents, since Clive had said little about his family’s wealth. How can an impoverished former taxi dancer be accepted into their rarified world? Hen is more comfortable talking to the servants than enduring tea with Clive’s parents. Distraction from these problems is provided when a retired servant claims someone stole her valuable ring. Henrietta tries to help, but her good intentions lead her into danger: the villain from the previous volume of the series is not through with her.

Though there is a mystery thread, the story concentrates more on the class differences theme. I enjoyed the author’s exploration of how intimidated Hen would feel at a society party, or being torn when she can’t help the servants with their tasks if she wants to please her future in-laws.

The characters are well-drawn, with depth. Cox builds anticipation by foreshadowing issues that will come up in future volumes of the series. Hen and Clive’s romance is real and touching. I’m sorry the cliffhanger ending means I’ll be kept waiting to find out what happens to the characters next.

B. J. Sedlock

THE SISTERS OF ST CROIX Diney Costeloe, Head of Zeus, 2017, £7.99, pb, 433pp, 9781784972615 Nuns in occupied France face the Nazi menace, struggling and scheming with the Resistance to smuggle Jews and British airmen to safety. The Reverend Mother is originally from the UK, and the secret agent sent out to facilitate the network with the intention of saving and hiding these at risk 38 | Reviews |

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MISS BURMA Charmaine Craig, Grove, 2017, $26, hb, 368pp, 9780802126450 Miss Burma opens with an attention-grabbing prologue that sees fifteen-year-old Louisa, a young woman of mixed racial heritage, crowned in her country’s first national beauty pageant in 1956. This short scene raises many impossibleto-ignore questions.

Why is her father under house arrest?

Why do soldiers with rifles stand in the audience? Moreover, how does Louisa feel about representing Burma like this, at this time, and what are the consequences?

These issues, and many more, are addressed with

striking perceptiveness and poignancy in Craig’s second novel, which is based on the courageous lives of her mother and grandparents. The storyline spans four decades in Burma, the ‘20s through the ‘60s, years which saw considerable political unrest and violence during the Japanese invasion in WWII and subsequent civil war—a lengthy conflict that remains largely hidden to the Western world. The author evokes the protagonists’ innermost selves with uncommon candor and provides a sense of realism so vivid that it reads like a lived experience.

Louisa’s parents are an unlikely couple.

Benny comes from a Portuguese Jewish family; Khin belongs to an ethnic group, the Karen (pronounced Kar-EN), who have long been oppressed by her country’s Burman majority but are favored by the British during their colonial rule.

In their impulsive marriage’s early years, Benny and Khin need an interpreter to communicate.

As Burman nationalism overtakes the country, their relationship and family life—which include relocations through beautiful but harsh terrain, concealments, and forced separations—are tied to Burma’s internal battles. The complicated history is coherently explained, and the novel offers powerful commentary on the Karens and their situation: pawns in the games of global power politics, yet with a determined “mandate to survive.”

This epic yet deeply personal novel about war, love, loyalty, and heroism deserves to be widely read, especially by anyone unfamiliar with this history.

Sarah Johnson ROADS Marina Antropow Cramer, Chicago Review, 2017, $15.99/C$21.99, pb, 352pp, 9781613735565 “Under the surface, they felt the whirling currents pull at their bodies, twisting their clothing as if demanding ransom for the passage. I am stronger than you, the river proclaimed. Just let go.”

“There is going to be a child.”

Having survived the Russian Revolution, music lover Zoya and her husband, postal worker Vadim, now have a son. They raise Filip in Yalta, “Russia’s riviera,” providing him with an education that nourishes an artist’s soul: literature, opera, and the study of the distant lands whose stamps he collects.

Filip’s classmate and friend, Galina, daughter of craftsman Ilya and his wife, Ksenia, doesn’t share Filip’s love of learning; but, practical and loyal— and knowing him to be something of a weakling— she proposes marriage on Fillip’s 18th birthday, when he faces a choice from which married men are exempt: join Russia’s Red Army or be shipped to Nazi Germany’s mines and work camps.

They marry, but Germany’s fortunes soon slip, and the occupying Nazis begin to recruit married men, offering “better conditions” to volunteers and their families than they will to men they must conscript. When Filip volunteers, he, Galina, Ilya, and Ksenia embark on a chaotic odyssey: a yearslong struggle through deprivation, brutality, and disease. Near the end of the war, after surviving the bombs and fires of Dresden, the men and women are separated, and the four—plus, eventually, Galina’s newborn baby—must make their perilous way back together, to a new life.

Close third-person narration and a clear, chronological timeline transport the reader into 20th Century

story. Style derives not from emotionally-charged prose but from elegant syntax and precise word choice. Historical and psychological research clearly informs this tale, but author Marina Antropow Cramer remains in the shadows, never revealing her hand. Highly recommended.

Rebecca Kightlinger HADRIANA IN ALL MY DREAMS René Depestre (trans. Kaiama L. Glover), Akashic, 2017, $15.95/C$22.95, pb, 160pp, 9781617755330 The Haitian Carnival takes place over the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras. René Depestre’s novel, originally published in 1988 and translated into English for the first time, takes place during the Carnival in 1938. A young Creole woman, Hadriana, is set to marry a young man in Jacmel, a village in Haiti. But on the morning of the wedding, Hadriana drinks from a mysterious drink and dies. The story turns into a magical-realism ride wherein the celebration of a wedding turns into the mourning of a funeral, while Hadriana herself becomes a zombie in a traditional Haitian voodoo.

This is not a standard zombie novel, however, nor is it a horror novel, so one should not be turned off by the terminology. The story is beautifully written in lyrical prose; Depestre was known as a poet first and foremost. This novel was the winner of the Prix Renaudot in 1988, a highly esteemed literary award, and it’s not difficult to understand why, even almost 30 years after its publication.

Readers interested in Haitian culture will appreciate this novel and will enjoy Depestre’s details about the voodoo culture as it was understood in the first half of the 20th century Elicia Parkinson CATCHING THE WIND Melanie Dobson, Tyndale, 2017, $22.99/C$31.99, hb, 416pp, 9781496424785 / also $14.99/ C$20.99, pb, 416pp, 9781496417282 Quenby Vaughn, an American journalist working in London, reluctantly accepts an assignment to try to find Brigitte, a child who fled from Germany during WWII. She finds herself helping elderly recluse Daniel Knight, who had fled with Brigitte, promising to save her but who was separated from her when they arrived in England.

He has never forgotten that he promised to be her knight, and to find her and protect her. This, his final attempt as he lies dying, challenges Quenby to search with her heart as well as her head.

The trail leads Quenby to Breydon Court in southern England and to the discovery that the child Brigitte was used by a network of spies to translate and send messages guiding German bombers to targets in England. Helping and supporting Quenby as she searches through WWII history is lawyer Lucas Hough, infinitely resourceful and knowledgeable, but definitely not a man Quenby is ready to trust.

The author spans the transitions between WWII and the present skillfully. Her characters are realistic for their time, and she develops a complex plot, bringing it to a satisfying conclusion. The novel sheds a light on the few—but devastating— English people who spied for Germany in WWII. Val Adolph 20th Century

PEARL HARBOR AND MORE: Stories of WWII—December 1941 R. V. Doon, Vanessa Couchman, Alexa Kang, Dianne Ascroft, Margaret Tanner, Marion Kummerow, Robyn Hobusch Echols, and Robert A. Kingsley, CreateSpace, 2016, $11.95, pb, 354pp, 9781544671055 When Pearl Harbor is attacked on December 7, 1941, military personnel and civilians react and overreact. Murder is committed in Hawaii; German residents betray and protect resistors; shysters destroy the dreams of innocent dreamers in America; Irish volunteer defense force personnel resent American civilian workers; and couples find love. Japanese Americans gain and lose friends before they are interned for the war’s duration.

In Shanghai and on islands between Japan and America, residents doubt they will be attacked and then suffer the horror of being wrong. Who are one’s friends and enemies? Why had people not recognized the obvious warning signs of impending global conflict?

The war exposes the hopes, dreams, and true mettle of men and women in all the countries involved in the conflict, which the authors perceptively realize in eight brief yet remarkable stories. These talented writers depict the unbearable events and the subsequent reactions to this horrendous day, when thousands died following the attack by Japanese planes. Before the stories begin, summaries of the facts and motives leading up to the attack are clearly stated.

Afterward, each author offers sources, a brief bibliography, and websites with photographs and more information. These simple stories, nicely crafted accounts of the notorious “day of infamy” 75 years ago and its aftermath, depict the diverse responses to this event that changed lives forever.

Highly recommended historical fiction.

Viviane Crystal MISS TREADWAY AND THE FIELD OF STARS Miranda Emmerson, Harper, 2017, $26.99, hb, 368pp, 9780062476722 / Fourth Estate, 2017, £12.99, hb, 304pp, 9780008170578 In 1965 London, successful American actress Iolanthe (Lanny) Green walks out of the theatre where she had been starring and disappears. Lanny’s dresser, Anna Treadway—unemployed when the starless show shuts down—feels compelled to search for the woman she soon realizes she doesn’t know very well.

Anna ignores repeated warnings to stay out of the investigation by the detective assigned to the case, Barnaby Hayes, a tightly disciplined Irishman whose real name is Brennan. She finds a lead through Aloysius, a Jamaican accountant, who joins Anna in the pursuit.

Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars is a consideration of identity: of the intentional and unintentional reinvention of identity, of the identity we project out to the world compared to the one we live with inside ourselves, and of how the world perceives us compared to how we imagine we’re perceived. This point is underlined when Aloysius suffers a beating by police and is coldly leveraged into becoming an informant, despite having committed no crime. “He realized now that the man he had become inside his head

was far whiter and more handsome than the outer Aloysius… would never have been beaten… would never have had the experience of handcuffs.”

It also explores how often we disappoint ourselves and those around us for not being who we—or they—thought we were or ought to be. The most poignant example is Brennan’s relationship with his wife Orla, which is so filled with mutual disappointment they are incapable of speaking to each other.

In some ways, Lanny is too unevenly drawn to be entirely believable, and Anna’s past remains unsatisfyingly oblique, but Emmerson’s debut is a touching, thought-provoking read.

Jennifer Bort Yacovissi THE ONE TRUE LOVE OF ALICE-ANN Eva Marie Everson, Tyndale, 2017, $22.99, hb, 432pp, 9781496422347 / also $14.99, pb, 432pp, 9781496415905 Alice-Ann Branch was set to celebrate her 16th birthday and declare her love for Boyd MacKay. However, this birthday happens to fall on December 7, 1941. Twelve days later, at her delayed party, she tells Mack of her love for him.

They promise to write each other. When Mack’s letters stop, Alice fears the worst.

Carlton Hillis is the older brother of Alice’s friend, Maeve. When he comes home from the war blind and unable to walk, Alice agrees to read and talk with him every day after work. Slowly, the two quietly fall in love. But in her heart, Alice still pines for Mack. As things begin to grow serious between Carlton and Alice, she learns that Mack is alive and coming home. Where will her heart lead her?

Eva Marie Everson has written a touching and compelling story of following God’s plan versus our own desires. In Alice, she has created a sweet teen protagonist through whose eyes we see the impact of the war on small-town America as well as her own heart. This tender coming-of-age story is immersed in history and blessed with a wonderful setting and graceful writing. Don’t let the inspirational tag dissuade you; this historical romance is one for everyone to read.

Bryan Dumas THE GIRLS OF ENNISMORE Patricia Falvey, Kensington, 2017, $15.00/ C$16.95, pb, 358pp, 9781496709950 / Atlantic, 2017, £7.99, pb, 480pp, 9781786490629 Rosie Killeen and Victoria Bell are the girls of Ennismore, the Irish estate of Lord and Lady Ennis. Rosie is a farmer’s daughter and Victoria is Lady Victoria, the daughter of the estate.

When eight-year-old Rosie rescues seven-yearold Victoria’s toy boat, Victoria is determined to make this brave girl her friend and sets in motion a relationship that both sustains and bedevils them as they grow to womanhood. Victoria causes the first rupture in their friendship when they are young women, and she offers Rosie the position of her maid, insensitive to how Rosie would receive that offer.

Both women end up in Dublin, during the Great War and the Easter Rebellion. Home Rule and class are two strong themes. Rosie falls in love with Valentine, the younger son of Lord and Lady Ennis, while Victoria finds herself drawn to Brendan, the estate’s footman turned rebel. In keeping with how HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 39

their friendship began, Rosie is the stronger of the two in her relationships, but Victoria grows a spine and leaves off nursing society women in a clinic to take up nursing the war wounded and the poor in a public hospital.

Falvey excels at creating atmosphere. The grit and poverty of Rosie’s life in Dublin stand in sharp contrast to the cocoon of Ennismore. The Easter Rebellion is a series of violent, confusing episodes, which leave portions of the city smoking and in ruins. Witnessing it through Rosie and Victoria’s eyes gives it a different perspective, as both women face terrible losses and find their friendship affords them a measure of comfort.

Some broad characters and heavy-handed exposition didn’t prevent me from reading this book in one sitting.

Ellen Keith THE OTHER HOFFMANN SISTER Ben Fergusson, Little Brown, 2017, £14.99, hb, 434pp, 9781408708897 In 1902, Ingrid Hoffmann’s family moves to German South West Africa, where her father makes his fortune, but the seeds of disaster are sown when her older sister, Margarete, is entered into a childhood engagement to Emil von Ketz, the son of their neighbour, impoverished but aristocratic. The Herero uprising of 1904 drives both families back to Germany, and, in August 1914, just after her wedding to Emil, Margarete disappears. Although Ingrid becomes involved in politics and has some success as a translator of poetry, what drives her is a need to discover what happened to Margarete.

This is a clever and accomplished novel, in which everything happens off-stage. The wars which shape Ingrid’s life do not involve her directly. The fate of her sister reveals truths about her family of which she remains naively and egotistically oblivious. Ingrid is not a poet, but a translator of poetry. Again, the experience is at one remove, though Fergusson, who is himself a literary translator, has huge fun making translations of famous English poems from German back into English, and coming up with versions which, like Ingrid’s understanding, just miss.

Although I enjoyed the translation games, and the quality of the writing, which is both precise and sensual, many of the family’s secrets revealed themselves to me long before Ingrid understood them, and this became irritating. I wanted to shake Ingrid for her obtuseness and was tempted to skim the final third of the book, which struggles with the complexities of Weimar Republic politics as well as the challenge of sustaining suspense. The conclusion, however, is strong in irony as Ingrid throws in her lot with her Jewish friend, Hannah.

Sarah Bower THE PRINCIPLE Jerome Ferrari (trans. Curtis Howard), Europa, 2017, $16.00/C$22.00/£9.99, pb, 135pp, 9781609453527 In this delicate novel, award-winning French writer Jerome Ferrari has created a sparse, elegant story about German physicist Werner Heisenberg and the juxtaposition between beauty and evil in our world. Nobel Prize winner Heisenberg is famous for his revolutionary “uncertainty principle” 40 | Reviews |

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in quantum mechanics, as well as his participation in Nazi efforts to build a nuclear bomb.

Writing with lyric precision, Ferrari creates a relationship between a young philosopher of the current day and the long-dead Heisenberg.

Through this epistolary novel, the reader can see Heisenberg’s attraction to the beauty of physics and mathematics as well as his love of art and family. It seems impossible that such a man could support the Nazis in their efforts to make a bomb, yet that is exactly what Heisenberg does. And it is through the questions the contemporary man asks of Heisenberg and history that make this novel memorable.

Probing the nature of evil and the complicit actions of one man caught in the web of time that was WWII, Ferrari creates a story that carries a horrifying punch: human beings are capable of creating beauty but are also capable of great destruction, even the destruction of their own humanity. The metaphysical questions raised in this novel will haunt readers long after they have put the book down.

Anne Clinard Barnhill

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LITTLE DEATHS Emma Flint, Hachette, 2017, $26.00/C$34.00, hb, 336pp, 9780316272476 / Picador, 2017, £12.99, hb, 320pp, 9781509826575 A single mother of two children in 1965 Queens, New York, faces the oppressive and narrow-minded world where a woman is judged harshly when she doesn’t fit into the norms of what society expects.

Ruth Malone wakes one morning to find her two young children, Cindy and Frankie, gone.

When the children are later found murdered, the police immediately focus on her. After all, her husband is gone, and she is a cocktail waitress.

What about the liquor bottles in the trash, the way she dresses, and the men she sees? The neighbors watch her every move and see she isn’t grieving as she should. The fact is Ruth is a single, beautiful woman with few options to support herself and her children. She loved her children dearly, worked tirelessly to care for them, and her grief is private and profound.

The detective on the case, Sergeant Devlin, is retiring soon, and it would be great if he went out with credit for solving such a high-profile case. He is determined to make a case against her. Maybe she didn’t do it, but she is guilty of loose morals and failing to protect those two innocent children.

The Herald reporter assigned to the story, Pete Wonicke, is pressured to write about the case the way his editor wants, slanting the facts to fit what Sergeant Devlin wants them to be, but his conscience has him leave his job to do his own investigation. Inevitably she is arrested and tried for the crime, which is no spoiler since the book begins with her in prison.

I loved this book and its portrayal of 1960s society. I had just finished it and was thrilled to see it long-listed for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize

for Fiction. It is a wonderful read and suspenseful throughout. The question remains until the end: was she a victim of a judging society, or did she kill her children? If she didn’t, then who did?

Janice Ottersberg

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ABIGALE HALL Lauren A. Forry, Skyhorse, 2017, $24.99, hb, 376pp, 9781510717268 / Black and White, 2016, £7.99, pb, 384pp, 9781785300097 Orphaned teenage girls Eliza and Rebecca live with their Aunt Bess in post-WWII London, but she sends them to work for sinister housekeeper Mrs. Pollard at Abigale Hall in the Welsh countryside. Abigale Hall is filled with mysteries: What happened to the previous servants? Who is the woman depicted with her back turned in all the paintings? What are the strange groans emanating from the bowels of the house? Why are there bloodstains in the library? I won’t give away any secrets, but I will say that Eliza is rarely certain whether the horrors she experiences are real or in her mind (rest assured that Forry plays fair with the reader, and I never once felt cheated). Eliza is the elder sister, and her desire to escape is complicated by her strong sense of responsibility towards Rebecca, a strange child who seems to flourish in her macabre surroundings and who becomes increasingly loyal to Mrs. Pollard.

This is the kind of book that grabs the reader by the throat and doesn’t let go. I am usually a silent reader, but this story made me squirm, gasp and even scream several times. Forry expertly ratchets up the tension on every page, using sensory details so vivid that I can still taste Mrs. Pollard’s Spam salad, which to Eliza is “a gooey, pale pink chunk on a bed of browned salad plucked from the compost pile.” And while the story is timeless, as all good tales of terror are, Forry anchors it with period details that explain the psychology and concerns of the characters.

Fans of gothic classics such as du Maurier’s Rebecca and James’s The Turn of the Screw will love this creepy, gruesome tale of terror. Just don’t read it before eating or going to bed. Highly recommended.

Clarissa Harwood NINE FOLDS MAKE A PAPER SWAN Ruth Gilligan, Tin House, 2016, $15.95, pb, 336pp, 9781941040492 / Atlantic, 2017, £8.99, pb, 336pp, 9781782398592 What’s nu? Irish Jews. Who knew?

Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan chronicles the history of Jews in Ireland through three separate stories, beginning with Ruth Greenberg, whose family accidentally arrives in Cork in 1901; moving into the mid-century with Shem, who is institutionalized after having become mute the day before his bar mitzvah; and then onto contemporary times with Aisling Creedon, a young Irish-Catholic woman living in London whose 20th Century

boyfriend has asked her to convert to Judaism. All three stories examine family, love, and the desire to belong, to family as well as to society. The first two stories cover decades, while the contemporary one takes place in a matter of days, tying all three together into a satisfying and inevitable conclusion.

Each story is haunting and heartbreaking on its own with characters that face discrimination with determination. Gilligan’s lyrical prose sounds like Ireland, even when mashed with Yiddish, and is made all the more poignant by her use of metaphor and storytelling as themes. In a time when discrimination and immigration are headline news, Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan reminds readers that people cannot be constrained by the labels others use to define them.

Meg Wiviott ISADORA Amelia Gray, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017, $26.00/C$37.00, hb, 386pp, 9780372901745 In her fifth book, Amelia Gray crafts a historical novel based on the life of the mother of modern dance, Isadora Duncan. The story begins in 1913, when Duncan is at the height of her fame, both as a dancer and as a free-spirited woman. She is mother of two children, both born out of wedlock, and is in the process of starting schools to teach her concepts of what dance should be: a combination of technique, emotion, spirit and freedom from traditional form. She lives in Europe, though she was born in the U.S.; she admits to being bisexual in a time when such activities were considered salacious and scandalous; she loves her children, but refuses to marry the father of either.

That year, in a sudden tragedy, Duncan’s children, Deirdre and Patrick, die in a terrible accident, along with their nurse. Gray picks up the story at that moment and paints a portrait of maternal grief that is visceral and devastating. As Duncan begins to unravel after losing her children, Gray shows each step, from Duncan eating their ashes mixed with various dishes to her attempts to have another child.

The writing is unflinching and strong, as the story careens around family and fame, art and the artist, the dance between life events and their expression in art. Yet, in spite of a richly imagined story, the novel feels empty, as if, like Duncan’s dancing, the words pirouette across the page— daring and experimental—but sadly, they find no entry into the heart.

Anne Clinard Barnhill

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A LETTER FROM ITALY Pamela Hart, Hachette Australia, 2017, A$29.99, pb, 353pp, 9780733637544 / Piatkus, 2017, £7.99, pb, 224pp, 978-0349417127 Brindisi, 1917. Rebecca Quinn says farewell to Jack, her husband and fellow journalist, who is off on a secret investigation into Albanian smugglers.

She is left to manage on her own and report to various world newspapers on the naval campaign in the Mediterranean.

She meets Italian-American photographer, Sandro Panucci. As a team they become a formidable thorn in the side of the conservative naval information services and all-male contingent of reporters who are either sceptical or openly hostile to the idea of any woman reporting on war.

20th Century

After Rebecca uncovers a betrayal of trust by Jack that complicates her growing attraction to Sandro, she has to fight all the harder to stay focused and prove she can do her job better than the men. When the chance comes to get a scoop interview following the sinking of an enemy ship by the Italian navy, Rebecca and Sandro face many dangers together to get there first.

Australian author Pamela Hart has come up with another winner.

Not only does she take us into an arena of World War I that is little known, the bittersweet tensions between the pair are skilfully negotiated, and the actions and responses of all her characters always fit perfectly with the values relevant to their time and place. Although Rebecca is determined to be the modern woman her suffragette mother has raised her to be, she is still bound to slow-changing conventions and her marriage vows. There is nothing fast or clichéd either about Sandro, a man with an uncompromising integrity born out of his beliefs and loyalty to the traditions he holds dear.

(Besides, his grandmother, the marvellous and feisty Nonna Rosa, wouldn’t let him be otherwise!)

Highly recommended.

Marina Maxwell FROZEN VOICES Lynne Heinzmann, New Rivers, 2016, $17, pb, 295pp, 9780898233506 This is a crisp and readable novelization of the steamship Larchmont disaster, which claimed the lives of 137 people off the Rhode Island coast in February 1907.

The best historical fiction often simultaneously relates little-known or forgotten events while breathing life into the people affected by them.

Frozen Voices is in this category, despite its occasional lack of dimensionality. Heinzmann’s cast of historical characters, while small in number, all speak in a closely similar inner narrative voice.

Her rendition of spoken dialog is better, if a little stereotypical in spots, and conveys the Yiddishisms of young seamstress Sadie Golub alongside the Swedish smatterings of Anna Jenson, an older and more well-to-do immigrant to the U.S. Locksmith’s apprentice and aspiring magician Millard Franklin is among the livelier personae, despite a certain “gee whiz” enthusiasm which may appeal more to a YA reading audience. Perhaps her most fascinating character, the magician Harry Houdini plays a relatively minor but pivotal plot role as Millard’s prospective employer.

Realism asserts itself, however, in the tragic and dismal climax, and the starry-eyed quality of the story’s beginnings serves as a stark contrast to this poorly understood event. Contrast is the book’s strongest suit. Well worth reading.

Jackie Drohan WAR, SPIES, AND BOBBY SOX Libby Fischer Hellmann, Red Herrings, 2017, $15.95, pb, 308pp, 9781938733970

A loosely connected pair of long stories and one short one set in WWII Chicago and the Midwest, War, Spies, and Bobby Sox covers the war on the home front. In “Incidental Spy,” a Jewish woman who works at the Chicago atomic bomb plant is forced into becoming a spy. As her life becomes more and more complicated and frightening, she winds as a triple agent, for the Germans (who turn out to be Communists, not Nazis), a rogue army officer, and the FBI. A few glitches—the first use of the word “intel” wasn’t until 1961, for instance—do not affect the strong emotion and sense of threat that carry the story along.

In “POW,” a German POW working on a farm in America uses a naïve girl’s love to escape and flee to Chicago. Although many of the German POWs are glad that for them, the war is over, one is determined to continue the fight. But he doesn’t count on the interference of a fellow POW, or on the girl’s strength and anger when she discovers he’s merely used her. The author again evokes a solid sense of time and place (although it’s unlikely a German POW would own a copy of Steppenwolf, as the book was banned in Germany from 1939 to 1945).

“The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared” is the shortest and least effective of the three stories. A young actress in the Chicago Yiddish theater is murdered, and only a teenage boy who admired her understands why someone killed her. While the period work is good, this is a very slight story, not in the same class as the other two.

While a bit melodramatic in spots, the stories are well-crafted and interesting. I’ll certainly look for more by this author.

India Edghill

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CHILD OF THE RIVER Irma Joubert, Thomas Nelson, 2016, $15.99, pb, 416pp, 9780718083106 Three stories converge within these pages. Put yourself into the shoes of the major and even minor players within, and then talk about “consequences.” Persomi is a young white woman living on a farm in the South African Bushveld.

Her story begins just before WWII breaks out, and her brother is forced to fight in the English army although their family is Afrikaner in loyalty. Persomi doesn’t know who her real father is, a condition that will shape her sense of integrity forever. The child of a poor bywoner or sharecropper, Persomi possesses intelligence that will free her from poverty but never destroy her deep love for the surrounding Bushveld rivers and mountains, described in mesmerizing language.

As Persomi becomes older and educated, she works to become a lawyer and represent the victims of the Ghetto Laws, Indian settlers in South Africa who experience a form of apartheid hardly known by the outside world. Laws have heart-wrenching, far-reaching consequences. Persomi fights for these settlers to remain where they have lived and done business for decades; their plight is hardly HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 41

recognized by those who rule according to Aryan theory. Her courage in the face of this travesty is astounding, Another nice touch concerns her friendship with a male character, someone who knows her better than her own brother. Finally, there is the looming romance between Persomi and Boelie Fourie, which is forsaken because of a familial connection Persomi falsely believes. However, their love story adds a wonderful balance to this novel’s pages, which are fraught with hard living. True love touches every fabric of life in and around Persomi and other characters. Potent, stunning historical fiction that is an amazing read!

Viviane Crystal

reveals the identity of the man he’s really been sent to watch.

More than a spy thriller, Defectors is also a study in fidelity, a portrait of a man weighing loyalty to his older brother against the certainty that his brother wouldn’t hesitate to betray him again. The narrator’s fast-moving, muscular prose contrasts with the bitten-off cadences of the CIA defectors, a speech pattern reflecting the captives’ constant vigilance in the presence of ubiquitous KGB microphones. Complex plot twists skillfully laid out keep the reader riveted, always wondering what’s ahead but never confused. Joseph Kanon’s Defectors is recommended reading.

Rebecca Kightlinger

SOMETIMES A RIVER SONG Avril Joy, Linen Press, 2017, £7.99, pb, 192pp, 9780957596801 The river of the title is a tributary of the ​ Mississippi. The book opens with “River in our blood”, a monologue in the hesitant, uneducated voice of fifteen-year-old Aiyana, who is part of a riverboat community in 1930s Arkansas. The story continues in her voice, apart from a few later chapters which are narrated by Silas, the mysterious incomer to whom she is given by her abusive father.

Aiyana is desperate to learn to read and to escape male domination and brutality. Her only comfort is with those around her: her grandmother, a Native American; December, her mulatto sweetheart; and her brother Lyle, with whom she plots escape.

However, December and Lyle both leave the river.

Aiyana, determined, spirited, and with insight beyond her years, makes her own plans.

Sometimes a River Song is a poignant, harrowing, tale of secrets, lies, scores to be settled, and the river in its moods and seasons. It is written in beautiful, fluid prose. I could hear Aiyana’s voice and longed for her to triumph. Recommended.

Janet Hancock

THE DANCING GIRL AND THE TURTLE Karen Kao, Linen Press, 2017, £7.99, pb, 288pp, 9780993599705 When Song Anyi is orphaned, she decides not to wait for her uncle to fetch her and sets out on the long journey to Shanghai. But a brutal attack when she is almost within sight of her destination leaves Anyi physically, emotionally, and mentally scarred.

Her self-indulgent cousin Cho and upright brother Kang both want to save her from the demons that torment her, but Anyi is determined to make her own decisions in life, even if they lead to selfdestruction.

This novel is set in 1937, as China teeters on the brink of war with Japan, but political events take a backseat in this very personal story of fatally flawed characters. Anyi and Cho can both be frustrating protagonists, trapped like real-life addicts in destructive patterns of behaviour, but this is precisely what makes them so real. Their redeeming qualities—Cho’s devotion to his cousin, Anyi’s intelligence and sense of humour—mean that a grain of sympathy is retained for them, even when their behaviour is at its worst.

The secondary characters are equally complex, many of them eager to help but lacking insight into the self-loathing that underpins everything Anyi does. I thought it was clever of Kao to leave it to the reader to decide whether the ghosts Anyi sees are real, symptoms of mental illness, or even the side-effects of the drugs she takes. This is quite a dark and disturbing novel, dealing with opium addiction, self-harm, prostitution and the ongoing psychological legacy of rape. There is a fair amount of violence, much of it kept off-stage, but those scenes that are included all advance the plot towards its dramatic conclusion. Not a light read, but a story I will go on thinking about for a good while.

Jasmina Svenne

DEFECTORS Joseph Kanon, Atria, 2017, $27.00, hb, 304pp, 9781501121395 / Simon & Schuster UK, 2017, £14.99, hb, 400pp, 9781471162619 Moscow, 1961. It’s been twelve years since CIA agent Frank Weeks betrayed his country —and his own brother—then disappeared behind the Iron Curtain. Now a KGB officer, Frank lives in Moscow under the eye of his “protector,” KGB Colonel Boris Vassilchikov. Having completed a tell-all memoir, Frank summons his brother, Simon, now a publisher, to take it to press. But when Simon arrives, Frank employs his old boyish charm to overcome Simon’s misgivings and inveigle him, once again, into playing a pivotal role in a scheme that could go very wrong.

Knowing his brother for a cool, accomplished liar, Simon keeps his eyes open as he makes his first irrevocable move in what feels like a high-stakes chess match: “He had raised his eyes so that for a second they seemed to be looking over a handful of cards, and Simon saw that it wasn’t chess they were playing, but some elaborate game of poker, all of them playing, all of them cheating.”

But the truly baffling nature of the game and its many players—Frank, Simon, the press, the KGB, the CIA, and a community of CIA defectors— becomes apparent to Simon only when Boris 42 | Reviews |

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HIMSELF: A Novel Jess Kidd, Atria, 2017, $26.00/C$35.00, hb, 384pp, 9781501145179 / Canongate, 2017, £8.99, pb, 368pp, 9781782118480 Mahoney is a 26-year-old Dubliner in 1976, searching for how he ended up in an orphanage and, equally, what happened to his wayward mother. His only clue is a photo of her, a 16-yearold girl holding a baby that must be him, with an inscription that brings him to the town of Mulderrig, on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. There he meets mostly friendly characters who are not forthcoming about his mother or the town’s soiled

past. Mahoney does find allies: three women and a dead girl who do their best to help him. Debut novelist Jess Kidd is so sure-handed that this reader didn’t blink an eye about that dead girl, or any of the other dead characters loitering about the town’s streets, homes, and stores. Don’t think that the sight gives Mahoney an edge over those who would thwart him; the dead have their own agendas.

As it dawns on Mahoney that his mother was murdered (a point the reader assumes from the beginning, since the first chapter, set 16 years before most of the book, shows the murder; other scattered chapters, set in 1950, give readers even more clues), the women who have taken Mahoney into their homes and hearts become vital to his quest’s success. Indeed, an ancient, long-retired actress, holed up in the guesthouse where he’s staying, may be the most memorable fictional character I’ve met in years. She’s fully original and fearless, and her machinations with both Mahoney and the local priest are laugh-out-loud funny.

Kidd’s memorable page-turner features a unique voice, a concoction brewed of magical realism and dark humor. The book was shortlisted for the 2016 Irish Book Awards and is a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Choice. It would be a pity to miss reading this fine, funny and entertaining story.

Kristen Hannum

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THE BAKER’S SECRET Stephen P. Kiernan, William Morrow, 2017, $26.99/C$32.99, hb, 320pp, 9780062369581 Emma, 22, is the baker with a secret. She lives in occupied Normandy in the months and hours leading up to the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion, and finally through the invasion itself.

Author Stephen Kiernan tells his sometimes heartbreaking story with a quiet elegance, almost Buddhist in its matter-of-fact yet moving episodes of Nazi brutality and the courage of the French townspeople in the resistance. That resistance, for some, is made up of actual sabotage and collaboration with the Allies. For others it’s survival in the face of injustice. An important part of the story is that Emma does not believe that there will be an end to the occupation. She doesn’t believe the Allies will come. Even so, she puts as much finely ground straw as she can into the flour with which she bakes the Nazi commandant’s dozen loaves of bread, thereby baking fourteen instead of twelve loaves, and being able to daily give bread to the neediest townspeople. Like Jane Austen’s famous Emma, she also connects people and solves problems—finding rationed fuel for a fisherman who can then make extra trips to sea, for 20th Century

instance, thus augmenting the people’s food supply rather than turn his entire catch over to the Nazis.

So although Emma resolutely refuses to let herself hope, she daily offers hope to her fellow villagers.

This book, although set in a heartbreaking time, is ultimately uplifting, and readers don’t need to wait until the book’s ending for that. The triumph of the spirit moves throughout its pages. No matter how many World War II novels you’ve read, don’t miss this exquisite story.

Kristen Hannum

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THE PATRIOTS Sana Krasikov, Spiegel & Grau, 2017, $28.00/ C$37.00, hb, 538pp, 9780385524414 / Granta, 2017, £12.99, hb, 560pp, 9781783781812 Florence Fein leaves Brooklyn during the Depression for promises of love and a future in accord with her communist idealism in the Soviet Union, a place her parents escaped. Abandoned by the country of her birth, she soon finds herself entrenched in the horrors of the Stalinism she cannot escape.

This is the best book I’ve read in years: beautifully written, evocative, smart, and challenging. The author and publisher are to be congratulated. We’ve all read enough black-and-white gulag tales that leave us numb, judgmental, and holier-than-thou. Exquisite, full, and imperfect characters here created revive the most terminal numbness.

Perhaps the most compelling part is how Florence’s trials (including a show trial, all the more terrifying because of the seemingly brief and distant way it is expounded) are spun down through the lives of the son she had to abandon to be raised in state orphanages when she was sent to Siberia, and then to her grandson. These men are embroiled in modern globalization with a Russian mafia bent that can force its citizens into betrayals and moral contortions with no good options, similar to those of the worst denounce-yourneighbor-before-he-denounces-you communism.

Nothing could be of more immediate purport in a world where patriotism of a hateful sort has invaded the very centers of U.S. power.

Krasikov even finds brilliant immediate and telling ways to show us that patriotism to a corporate military-industrial America is no panacea in a Cold War of invasions and forced spread of democracy as ideology.

Not only do I recommend this, I beg you to read The Patriots.

Ann Chamberlin THE SIGNAL FLAME Andrew Krivák, Scribner, 2017, $26.00/C$35.00, hb, 288pp, 9781501151477 The Signal Flame is a sequel, generations later, to Andrew Krivák’s exquisite debut, The Sojourn. Josef Vinich, a veteran of WWI, dies just before Easter in 1972, leaving behind a close-knit Hungarian family and two thousand acres in the Pennsylvania mountains. War twines throughout the Vinich 20th Century

family history: from Josef ’s conscription in the Austro-Hungarian army during WWI, to his daughter Hannah’s marriage to a deserter during WWII, to his grandson Sam, missing in action in Vietnam. As Hannah writes letter after letter to find her youngest son, her oldest, Bo, quietly and patiently tends both the farm and the memory of his grandfather as he waits for his brother to come home.

So real are the characters that the reader waits willingly with them in this quiet unspooling of time. Though Josef only appears in flashbacks and memories, his presence is felt in the people and places left behind. It is a human story, one laden with the small decisions that make up a long life.

When does one decide that a loved one will never return? When does one decide to move on? The characters, together and alone, struggle with these questions. The reader can be forgiven for wanting to reach into the pages and cushion their fragility.

Krivák’s prose is achingly beautiful, brimful with emotion on each and every page. It does not disappoint.

One criticism, with readers of this publication in mind, is that, compared to Krivák’s first novel, this has only a faint dusting of history. This mattered not in the least to this reader, but it may to others looking for a more immersive dip into a period of history. Read it not as a work of historical fiction, but simply as an outstanding work of fiction.

Jessica Brockmole WHEN THE SKY FELL APART Caroline Lea, Text, 2016, £8.99, pb, 371pp, 9781911231073 The Channel Islands were one of the more peaceful places to spend the Second World War. They were occupied by the Germans in June 1940 without opposition, there was only one air raid during the war (the raid which gives the book its title), and they were liberated peacefully after the war was over. At the islanders’ request, the British called off their commando raids to avoid reprisals against the civilian population. There was no armed resistance.

But this was no paradise. Hunger became starvation, although the story in this book ends before the brutal starvation winter of 1944. There was also a lack of medicines for the chronically sick. Hunger ate away not only bodies but souls, destroying conscience, kinship and community.

Lea describes the first two years of the occupation through the eyes of three islanders and an English doctor, following the compromises they made and the deceits they practised to survive. Eventually four of them and a defecting German soldier try to escape, with mixed success.

This is a book about moral choices, and once the choices are made, it becomes a tense thriller. My only reservation is that the German commandant in the book is almost a caricature of evil, far worse than either of the real life commandants. The moral choices would have been more difficult if he too had had his problems of conscience.

Edward James HER MOTHER’S SECRET Natasha Lester, Hachette Australia, 2017, A$29.99, pb, 390pp, 9780733634659 Leonora (Leo) East has been running her

father’s pharmacy business in Sutton Veny when World War I finally ends. In her spare time, she experiments in making women’s cosmetics even though she is well aware most people think it is shocking for ordinary women to wear lipstick and mascara; that they are “only for actresses and ladies of the night”. But as the world moves into a new era, Leo is determined to prove that younger women will demand the right to use such beauty products and eventually they will be acceptable.

When the Spanish Flu sweeps through the town with tragic consequences, Leo decides to take up a friend’s suggestion and follow her dream in New York. While en route, she meets handsome store-owner, Everett Forsyth, who steals her heart, although circumstances will conspire to drive them apart, and both are forced to make compromises.

The novel is at its best where we follow Leo’s challenges in developing her business and marketing her products with the help of famous individuals such as the Morgan sisters, but the layers of subterfuge behind the “secret” are too farfetched to be believed. Plus there are similarity/ stereotype problems with four of the other main characters: two charismatic and wealthy men, both with positive personalities who are pitted against a couple of spoiled and nasty, manipulative women who are difficult to tell apart. The later chapters featuring Everett’s ballerina daughter Alice also have some credibility issues.

After enjoying the author’s earlier title set in the same era, A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald, this novel was a disappointment for me personally, although it is sure to still find favour with others who enjoy lush and extravagant romances set against the glamour of the Roaring Twenties.

Marina Maxwell THE LAST DEBUTANTE Lesley Lokko, Orion, 2017, £14.99, pb, 322pp, 9781409142546 It is 1938, and 15-year-old Kit Algernon Waters is the ugly duckling in her aristocratic family. Bookish, clever, and a little awkward, Kit has little patience for social conventions, and cares even less for her beautiful sister Lily’s whirlwind wedding to a much older and very wealthy German count—who turns out to be one of that alarming Adolf Hitler’s aides. When things turn ugly, Kit is despatched to Germany, together with her uncle, to bring back home the disgraced, Nazi-sympathising Lily. Except Uncle Faunce is actually a (rather ineffectual) spy, with more on his mind than just retrieving his errant niece. Luckily little Kit is there to save the day—although with disastrous consequences that will shape the rest of her life.

Alas, general plausibility, German grammar, social mores, succession matters and the passage of time are all treated in the same erratic fashion, in the rather disjointed story of a frankly unappealing heroine and her daughter—bouncing between Germany, Baghdad, the Caribbean and London, and going nowhere in particular.

Chiara Prezzavento THE IRREGULAR: A Different Class of Spy H. B. Lyle, Hodder & Stoughton, 2017, £17.99, hb, 282pp, 9781473655348 The Irregular is an amazing mix of actual persons and events, persons and events from the HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 43

author’s imagination and some from other authors’ imaginations. So we find Winston Churchill and Sherlock Holmes both playing key roles in the story. They never meet, but then they would not have got on well together.

The principal real-life character is Captain Vernon Kell, who set up the British Intelligence Service almost singlehandedly in the years before WW1 in the teeth of severe Government scepticism (thank goodness he did, or the fortunes of war might have been very different). In 1909 he is at a low point. He has lost almost all his agents, Britain’s technical secrets are leaking to Germany, and Russian anarchists are active in London. The now-retired Sherlock Holmes refers him to ‘Wiggins’, a former member of his team of ‘irregulars’ (street urchin informers). Wiggins becomes Kell’s star operative, stops the leaks, foils the anarchists and is awarded the title ‘Agent 00’.

His successors are to be known as 001, 002, etc.

Wiggins may be an Edwardian James Bond, but he is from a very different social level—an orphan who has absconded from a Children’s Home— and although handsome, he is rather reticent with women. Not that he lacks female associates. He has a very expressive style of speech, although I suspect this is more 21st-century Estuarine than Edwardian Cockney.

This is a fast-moving, hugely enjoyable story with interesting characters and authentic background. and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is the first of a series, and I look forward to the sequels.

Edward James SWIMMING HOME Mary-Rose MacColl, Allison & Busby, 2016, £9.99, pb, 380pp, 9780749020545 / Penguin, 2017, $16, pb, 432pp, 9780143129967 MacColl gives us a thoroughly enjoyable read in this book describing the changing circumstances of 15-year-old Catherine Quick in 1925. Catherine is a swimmer who spends part of her childhood in Australia. Due to family circumstances she ends up having to move to England to live with her aunt, Louisa Quick, whom the author models on Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson. Catherine draws attention to herself by swimming in the Thames, but although it results in her being expelled from school, she and her aunt receive an opportunity to move to New York. Manfred Lear Black, who owns a Baltimore-based newspaper, becomes her benefactor in training to swim the English Channel.

As the story moves along, we discover that secrets have been hidden along the way. Some people involved thought they were doing the right thing; others perhaps not. There is also a misunderstanding that has the potential to cause grave consequences. It shows how complicated families can be and the lengths that people go to for the ones they love. MacColl succeeds in bringing all the various places to life, whether it is humid Australia, murky London or exuberant New York.

A highly engaging read.

Cathy Powell EARTH AS IT IS Jan Maher, Indiana University Press, 2017, $20, pb, 276pp, 9780253024046 Earth As It Is is a complex and deeply emotional 44 | Reviews |

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novel which explores a rarely discussed aspect of gender identity in the post-war Midwest.

Charlie Bader is a straight male cross-dresser.

He often acts out his need by trying on women’s clothing. Failing to keep his secret costs him his marriage to a conservative wife in 1933. In an effort to move on, Charlie leaves his small, constricting town in Texas for Chicago, where he risks going out in public as a woman. He joins in the Full Self Sisterhood, a secret organization with which he forms a connection and begins to explore his identity. He remains living secretly from those to whom he is closest, but eventually makes the decision to live openly as a woman.

He leaves his past behind to become the resident of a small town in Indiana, where he opens a beauty salon. Here Charlie is accepted as Charlene and begins her new life. Charlene manages to keep her true identity hidden until she falls in love with Minnie, her best friend. Charlene then faces the choice to continue as Charlene and keep her life secret, or return as Charlie, in either his new home or elsewhere, as he seeks to make a life with Minnie.

Charlene’s journey is illuminating, but the story has a bit of a gender fantasy quality to it. Her ability to pass, and her option to live secretly, rings more as the acceptance she would hope for than what a person in her circumstances might actually face. Nonetheless, the emotions and dialog have a compelling and authentic quality.

A captivating novel that attempts to bring a softer perspective to gender identity. It is definitely worth reading.

Jackie Drohan WHO KILLED PIET BAROL? Richard Mason, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016, £14.99, hb, 378pp, 9781474602334 / Knopf, 2017, $27.95/C$36.95, hb, 367pp, 9780385352888 This is the sequel to the author’s History of a Pleasure Seeker, published in 2010, which focused on the hedonistic life of Piet Barol in Amsterdam in the early years of the 20th century. It is now 1914, and Piet and his wife, Stacey, are struggling with a furniture business in Cape Town. Their creditors are closing in, and the Barols come up with an idea to save the business, which involves Piet making a trip with two black South Africans to find a source of mahogany in a distant forest, as Europe distantly collapses into war. The story then changes tack, and centres on the Bantu village where Piet is taken by one of his companions, Ntsina, in order to buy timber. Richard Mason writes of the (to us) superstitious, spirit-filled world of the villagers and attempts to show how they would view the world and arrival of the white man (one of the Strange Ones, as they are known). Their worlds come together when Piet starts to fell and then make furniture from the Bantus’ sacred trees in the forest.

It is a well-narrated and absorbing story, though the constant switch from the white Western mentality and the black Bantu state of mind is quite destabilizing—which is most probably precisely the author’s intention. Without giving anything away, the author’s choice of the title is a bit of an oddity as well!

Douglas Kemp THE UNQUIET GRAVE Sharyn McCrumb, Atria, 2017, $26.00/C$35.00,

hb, 358pp, 9781476772875 Lakin, West Virginia, 1930. Attorney James P. D. Gardner, confined to an asylum after an unsuccessful suicide attempt, tries the “talking cure” under the care of young Dr. James Boozer. During the treatment, Gardner recounts one of his most unusual cases, the story of how he, a black attorney, helped defend a white man on trial for the murder of his lovely young wife. The prosecution’s initial inquiry into the case was based on the testimony of a ghost—the spirit of the dead woman herself, Zona Heaster.

The story of what led up to the trial, and the trial itself, is told primarily from the point of view of Zona’s mother, Mary Jane Heaster. She describes the courtship and marriage of her daughter to the handsome Erasmus Trout Shue, the unexpected death of Zona, and the ghostly visitation that led to the exhumation of Zona’s body and Shue’s trial for murder. Gardner’s voice punctuates the tale, as he recounts the story, and tells his own story, to his psychiatrist.

This retelling of a true incident brings West Virginia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to life. Sharyn McCrumb understands the South, and her understanding and storytelling ability are evident in every page of this well-crafted novel.

The Unquiet Grave will delight McCrumb’s many fans, but all lovers of the South, mysteries, and unusual crime stories will be in for a treat as well.

Recommended.

Susan McDuffie SPINDRIFT Tamara McKinley, Quercus, 2017, A$29.99, pb, 405pp, 9781782066675 Late 1904, Tasmania. Christy announces to her family that she is planning a visit to her Scottish homeland on the Isle of Skye. They try to dissuade her, saying that the distance is too great at her age, but she is adamant she must return, face her fears, and find closure. A compromise is reached that her daughter Anne and granddaughter Kathryn will accompany her, even though Anne is a bitter, angry woman after discovering something that has eroded her trust in her mother.

While the women are away, Christy’s sons Hamish and James are served with a legal claim that threatens to destroy everything they own and, in an emergency meeting, they agree that Anne’s husband Harold will try to unearth the Australian secrets from Christy’s past that may help their defence.

The flashbacks are smoothly incorporated into the narrative, with the best and most moving part where Christy relates all that she and her family endured during the Highland Clearances. The retelling of her later life in Australia is rather compacted in order to reach the tidy conclusion.

This relationships-and-secrets novel will find favour with a readership not bothered by historical errors, of which there too many to list. Examples include mid-19th-century colonial immigrants stamped as “citizens of Australia” long before that nation existed, and luxury liners on impossible diversions from the established shipping lanes of 1905. But most glaring of all are the technological slip-ups in communications which are vital components of the plot. There is mention of “twoway radios” long before they had been invented, 20th Century

plus wireless telegraph messages to and from a ship in the Indian Ocean many years before repeater stations had been erected in the Southern Hemisphere. If only greater care had been taken with such details, this might have qualified for recommendation.

Marina Maxwell

anyone who has struggled against society’s views of traditional gender roles, it is filled with themes any reader can connect with. Knowing the story is based on real events made it all the more inspiring.

It certainly left me feeling motivated to face my own hopes and fears.

Jenna Pavleck

THE PRACTICE HOUSE Laura McNeal, Little A, 2017, $14.95, pb, 492pp, 9781503937253 The dusty Great Plains of Kansas provides a stark backdrop to an unconventional love story set in the early 1930s. Aldine McKenna and her older sister are young, orphaned Scotswomen who had immigrated to New York. Aldine feels like a third wheel in her sister’s new marriage, so when an opportunity to become a schoolteacher in Kansas presents itself, she jumps at the chance, despite knowing nothing about Kansas, teaching, or the family who hired her. Once the naïve Aldine arrives, she encounters obstacle upon obstacle, including the potential of a forbidden love affair.

Aldine lives with the family who placed the ad in the New York papers. She catches the attention of the young teen boy who has fallen a bit in love with her, and she develops a special closeness with the younger child. Both the wife and the elder daughter are less welcoming and are suspicious of her motives; these characters serve to set up some of the conflicts throughout the book.

The Depression-era Kansas landscape is a harsh environment, and McNeal adroitly depicts the primitiveness of the surroundings, planting readers squarely in the middle of the Dust Bowl. Aldine’s charming lilt and her struggles to communicate are well-executed; readers can almost hear her Scottish accent leap off the pages. One can’t help but feel sympathetic toward her as she attempts to make sense of her new world. At times, the book moves a little slowly, then almost too quickly at the end. But ultimately, this is a mostly interesting story about an immigrant, family dynamics, and the varying definitions of love.

Hilary Daninhirsch

WHERE DEAD MEN MEET Mark Mills, Blackstone, 2017, $26.99, hb, 448pp, 9781504779739 Where Dead Men Meet is a taut thriller set in 1937 Europe. From the opening scene, even the opening line, we know we’re in the hands of a master storyteller. Luke Hamilton has a mysterious past, and someone is attempting to kill him for it.

Although he knows he was orphaned before his parents adopted him, Luke has no idea what that past entails. A stranger appears to help him, but Luke fears the man intends to harm him. He meets a woman who might facilitate his escape; however, it is just as likely that she might intend to betray him. Nothing is what it seems, and Luke has no idea who to depend on.

The story unfolds through multiple threads, each thread adding to the tension such that the reader experiences the same sort of chaos and confusion that Luke Hamilton does. We are never quite certain who the ‘good guys’ are or whether Luke will make it out alive.

Moving from Paris to Germany, then Switzerland and Italy, Mills exposes us to the increasingly dangerous world of Nazi Germany.

Jews attempt to flee. Committed individuals attempt to help them. Betrayals occur when least expected. Long-ago hatreds resurface. Innocent people die. My only caveat: the novel could benefit from a more immersive sense of the historical time period. Highly recommended.

M. K. Tod

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH Damian McNicholl, Pegasus, 2017, $25.95, hb, 352pp, 9781681774268 This is a coming-of-age story inspired by real events in the life of the first American female bullfighter. Kathleen Boyd leaves behind her life as a college student in 1950s Texas to take up residence in Mexico, where she serves as an apprentice to a retired matador named Fermin Guzman. Although the dangerous world of bullfighting has always been dominated by men, Kathleen pursues her dream to become a full-fledged matador and perform at the renowned Plaza Mexico. However, as she begins to fill arenas and her fame as the “Texan Goddess” of the bullring rises, so does her suspicion that she is being used as a pawn to line Guzman’s pocketbook, and she is ultimately faced with a decision that will change the course of her life.

This novel is a triumphant celebration of women’s equality and empowerment. McNicholl writes with equal grace about the art of bullfighting, the traditions of the matador de toros, and Kathleen’s journey through love and heartbreak.

While Kathleen’s story will surely resonate with 20th Century

THE BEACHCOMBER’S WIFE Adrian Mitchell, Wakefield Press, 2017, A$24.95, pb, 184pp, 9781743054550 Edmund Banfield, Australian journalist and natural history aficionado, was known for his numerous writings about early 20th-century life on Dunk Island, just off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Banfield had a long career in journalism and political organizing, in spite of suffering from blindness in one eye and repeated nervous breakdowns. In 1897, he obtained a 30-year lease on Dunk Island and lived there for most of the rest of his life, dying of peritonitis in 1923.

Like Thoreau, Banfield dreamed of living off the land, surrounded by glorious, generous nature, and unencumbered by the worries of work and meaningless toil suffered by those living in dusty, crowded cities. Unlike Thoreau, Banfield had someone to do much of the hard work of planting, gathering, and milking, not to mention cooking, cleaning, and providing innumerable other services.

The Beachcomber’s Wife is an ode to the rarelymentioned Bertha Banfield (née Golding), and imagines her life as the companion to an irascible but brilliant chronicler of everything around him… except his wife. Bertha converses mostly with herself, partly because Edmund is often out communing with the flora and fauna, and also because she’s become increasingly deaf over the

years. She can’t hear Edmund, and he isn’t much for anyone else’s input. The interior dialogue reveals much about the harsh living conditions and the enormity of effort needed to create and maintain a semblance of a home on this tropical island. Readers can revel in the treatise about local Australian politics, the limited options for women at the time, and Bertha’s terror of the storms that batter Dunk Island, including the 1918 cyclone which destroyed much of the area’s coral reefs.

Of her life, Bertha says, “I would have liked to have known that I mattered.” Thanks to Mitchell’s efforts, we can assure her that she did.

Helene Williams

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THE GIRL FROM SIMON’S BAY Barbara Mutch, Allison & Busby, 2017, £12.99, hb, 413pp, 9780749021207 Simon’s Town is on the coast of South Africa and dominated by the Royal Navy port. In 1937, the dockyard is busy with ships from all over the world coming and going, but two years later, at the outbreak of WWII, it is busier than ever. At this time the population is categorised into three sections: the white people, the “coloureds” (those of mixed race), and the native Africans. Our heroine, Louise Ahrendts, the narrator of the story, is of mixed race, and thus there are few careers open to her beyond cleaning and other menial occupations, but from a child she dreams of becoming a nurse.

To everyone’s surprise, she is taken on as a trainee at the prestigious Victoria Hospital, the first coloured girl to do so. With the outbreak of war Louise finds herself seconded to the naval hospital, and when casualties begin to arrive, Lieutenant David Horrocks, DSO, is brought in needing an urgent operation. Louise is assigned to care for him afterwards. The story continues with life in South Africa, the loves and pitfalls encountered and, with the ending of the war, the beginning of apartheid.

I became totally absorbed by this book. The characters live, the pace is well-balanced, and the eventual outcome not quite as the reader might expect. This one will sit quite happily on my bookshelf and will probably be read again, as there is so much in it. Highly recommended.

Marilyn Sherlock DANCING WITH DEATH Amy Myers, Severn House, 2017, $28.99/£20.99, hb, 224pp, 9780727886859 Crackling cauliflowers and suffering stockfish!

The heroine of Myers’ diverting new country house mystery is a feisty young woman known for her culinary delights and colorful expressions. In 1925, Nell Drury is the chef at Wychbourne Court, a stately home in the Kentish countryside where the upper-class Ansley family has lived for centuries.

The manor has its share of resident ghosts, and Lord Ansley’s sister, Lady Clarice, claims to communicate with them.

A fancy-dress ball brings many of London’s Bright Young Things to Wychbourne, including HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 45

friends and frenemies of Lord and Lady Ansley’s grown-up children. Nell’s preparations for the evening get complicated when she’s asked to serve a leader for a late-night “ghost hunt.” She’s also caught off guard by an old flame’s reappearance.

When Nell comes upon the stabbed body of a houseguest during the spook-catching exercise, Scotland Yard gets called in, and Lady Ansley, rightly concerned about her family’s reputation, asks Nell to go sleuthing on her own in case the police mess things up.

Nell is entertaining company. Born within the sound of Bow Bells, Nell had trained as the apprentice of a renowned French chef at a fine London establishment. She now occupies a unique position in the household (she’s a chef, not a cook, and will correct anyone who gets it wrong). This helps with her investigations. The plot and cast list feel overcrowded, and some people’s personalities don’t seem to extend beyond their eccentricities.

However, the story picks up steam once the victim’s secrets come to light. Myers does a good job depicting the reckless jubilance of the Roaring Twenties and the darkness lurking beneath the surface gleam. The crime is also resolved more realistically than is typical in mysteries with amateur sleuths.

Sarah Johnson THE ROAD TO ITHACA Ben Pastor, Bitter Lemon, 2017, $14.95/£8.99, pb, 396pp, 9781908524812 While stationed in Moscow in 1941, Baron Martin von Bora, a captain in the German Wehrmacht, is ordered to the isle of Crete to purchase wine and have it delivered to Moscow.

While there, he is also told to investigate the murder of a Red Cross representative and Swiss citizen who happens to be a friend of SS Chief Himmler. All fingers point to German paratroopers, led by a boyhood friend of von Bora’s.

During his investigation, he meets resistance from his old friend and his superiors on Crete. Von Bora also faces danger from local bandits and foreign resistance fighters when traveling in the countryside alone or with a guide.

Initially, I wasn’t sure I would enjoy reading a story where the protagonist was a German officer during World War II, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much compassion I felt for von Bora. This well-researched novel provides a rich, provocative picture of life on Crete after the German invasion. Bora is an interesting character full of many emotions. He is a product of the 1940s German elite who joined the army and, in his own words, was “brought up [in Germany] to care, to carry out my duty, [where] duty is an obligation, however minor the task.” Even though his character is instilled with discipline, self-control, and firmness—qualities praised by his superiors— he must face his past, particularly because he was raised in a wealthy environment compared to that of his boyhood paratrooper friend, who now feels nothing but animosity towards him. I may have to read the previous books in this series to help better understand the background of von Bora and what led him to become a criminal investigator during his army career.

Jeff Westerhoff 46 | Reviews |

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DANGEROUS TO KNOW: A Lillian Frost & Edith Head Novel Renee Patrick, Forge, 2017, $24.99/C$34.99, hb, 336pp, 9780765398543 Dangerous to Know reunites social secretary Lillian Frost with costume designer Edith Head in Hollywood in 1938. No longer an aspiring actress, Lillian works for Addison Rice, while Edith heads up the wardrobe department at Paramount. Edith summons Lillian when Marlene Dietrich asks for help tracking down a fellow German expat, musician Jens Lohse. Lillian’s search takes her into the German immigrant community of Hollywood.

Who is a Nazi sympathizer, and who is horrified

by Hitler?

As in Frost and Head’s previous adventure, Design for Dying, Patrick uses real-life figures judiciously, so they don’t outstay their welcome.

Besides Dietrich, Dorothy Lamour, Jack Benny, George Burns, and even Hedy Lamarr make appearances. Lillian is the protagonist, though, with Edith as her supportive sidekick. Patrick, a pseudonym for a husband-and-wife team, captures Hollywood from the superficial concerns (who will play Scarlett O’Hara?) to the mounting tension of German nationalism. Lillian’s boyfriend, Detective Gene Morrow, gets some competition in the form of Simon Fischer, but can Lillian trust Simon? The mystery is suspenseful, but as in the first outing, the strength of the story is in its characters and atmosphere.

Ellen Keith THE MIDNIGHT COOL Lydia Peelle, Harper, 2017, $26.99, hb, 368pp, 9780062475466 In the summer of 1916, Irish immigrant, Billy, and young Charles, the son of a prostitute, are grifters who have made their way into the state of Tennessee. Skilled with the ability to pass off any old mule as new, they find themselves with a dangerous horse named The Midnight Cool. As they try to tame the wild beast, Billy falls in love with Catherine, the spunky daughter of Leland Hatcher, the original owner of the horse. His friendship with Charles begins to fall apart as his feelings for Catherine deepen and the certainty of America’s involvement in the war grows closer. As the story progresses, their business grows stronger, and we learn piece by piece, in a slow unfolding, the true connection between Billy and Charles, which goes beneath the surface of the primary storyline.

This isn’t just the story of grifters in the hills of Tennessee; Peelle tells the story of immigrants to America in the late 19th century as well. The stories come together seamlessly by the end, but patience is required to allow the story to unfold at the author’s pace. This is a strong debut novel, and I look forward to seeing what Peelle brings us in the future.

Elicia Parkinson MURDER ON LOCATION: A Charlotte Brody Mystery Cathy Pegau, Kensington, 2017, $15.00/C$16.95, pb, 274pp, 9781496700582 This is the third in Pegau’s Charlotte Brody series, so I felt a little as though I was coming in on the middle of a movie, as I had not read the first two. No matter, though, as Charlotte is an utterly

engaging character, and the setting, the Alaska Territory in the 1920s, is equally fascinating.

Charlotte, a reporter (the only reporter) for the Cordova Daily Times, is covering the arrival of movie people from California. They’ve come for the on-location shooting of the film North to Fortune, and their welcome isn’t the warmest from the native Alaskans, who have issues with their portrayal in the film. As is the way with movie sets, a whole host of suspects are gathered together to film on a glacier when the film’s director, Stanley Walsh, is found dead in a crevasse. Charlotte’s brother Michael is the town coroner, and the verdict is murder rather than misadventure.

Pegau captures the rough-and-tumble aspect of the Alaska Territory, where liquor was outlawed, but for a wink and a fee you could join a club that looked the other way. Charlotte is the guardian of a half-Alaskan teenage girl and best friends with a woman who runs a brothel. And, in a nod to fans of the show Northern Exposure, there are two characters named Cicely and Roslyn. This is one of those books where character outweighs plot.

I wasn’t as interested in who murdered Stanley Walsh as I was in daily life in Cordova, where Charlotte is dating the deputy and gets birth control from Brigit, the brothel owner. It’s not that Cordova is lawless; it just runs by its own rules, and Pegau makes that world very appealing.

Ellen Keith IN THE SHADOW OF DENALI Tracie Peterson and Kimberley Woodhouse, Bethany House, 2017, $15.99, pb, 320pp, 9780764219238 In 1917, three men ascend the great Alaskan mountain Denali; only two return alive. For years Allan Brennan has been told that his father died on the mountain that day because of the carelessness of the guide. But when, six years later, as an adult, Allan visits Denali and meets this guide, he becomes convinced that the story told him by his father’s partner cannot be true. The guide, John Ivanoff, who had led his father’s party up the mountain, is the most careful and conscientious of men. And he has a beautiful daughter that Allan falls in love with. Learning to become a guide himself Allan must work with John, but besides learning about the mountain he must also discover the truth about his father’s death however painful that might be.

The book’s main character is the great mountain Denali. Descriptions of this mountain are gripping, and this is fortunate because the human characters are flat and spend much time on internal monolog.

The authors missed an opportunity here to show their skills in structuring and pacing a novel.

Val Adolph A FORTUNE FORETOLD Agneta Pleijel (trans. Marlaine Delargy), Other, 2017, $14.95, pb, 256pp, 9781590518304 Mid-twentieth century Sweden. By the time Neta is in the 6th grade, she has been “the new girl” so many times, “she feels the familiar chafing of being an outsider, the gnawed sensation that comes from being painfully compelled to see herself through the eyes of others. That is the worst thing of all. You are out of yourself, fumbling blindly.”

An outsider at school, Neta becomes increasingly 20th Century

embroiled in her parents’ failing marriage. “Dad tells stories, does the dishes, and tries to cheer everyone up, but it doesn’t help. When he notices that none of this makes Mom feel any better, he becomes distant, as if a veil is drawn over his face.”

As her father retreats, Neta becomes the bulwark between her depressed mother and her mother’s disappointing, unfulfilled life.

It is therefore Ricki—Neta’s calm, stable aunt, an architect “surrounded by a magic all her own,”— whom Neta most wishes to emulate. “I am trying to remember Ricki, but I am the one who takes center stage. Or rather she does—the girl.”

The narrator relates her coming of age in third-person, present-tense, non-linear scenes, referring to her younger self as “the girl” or “she” and peppering her story with first-person, past-tense reminiscence and commentary. This dissociated narrative style occasionally proves unwieldy when time and place become unclear or when the identity of “she” comes into question, but it adroitly complements the narrator’s striving to reassemble and reconcile a distant, chaotic, peripatetic life.

Highly recommended.

Rebecca Kightlinger THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH Amanda Quick, Berkley, 2017, $27.00/C$36.00, hb, 368pp, 9780399174476 Anna Harris finds her boss Helen Spencer bloodily dead. Following directions left by Spencer to “take the notebook… run for your life,” she changes her name to Irene Glasson and heads for California. But Irene can’t escape death there, either. She discovers a woman’s body in a secluded hotel swimming pool. The hotel’s owner, Oliver Ward, is attracted to Irene, and tries to help her as they become entangled in multiple plots: the movie studio tries to keep fast-rising actor Nick Tremayne’s private life “clean” and cover up his connection with the dead woman, and Irene and Oliver must elude Julian Enright, a shady lawyer who is after the missing notebook at any cost.

Short chapters propel this story of Hollywood’s Golden Age forward at a breathless pace. Irene and Oliver are likeable characters, and Oliver’s background as a former magician whose final performance nearly killed him adds spice to the romance. I thought the scene where the villain’s motives are revealed was presented in a somewhat clumsy, protracted manner, but I’m sure Quick’s fans and lovers of romantic suspense will enjoy the characters and atmosphere.

B. J. Sedlock

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THE ALICE NETWORK Kate Quinn, William Morrow, 2017, $16.99/£8.99, pb, 528pp, 9780062654199 1949 London: Charlie St. Clair is unmarried, pregnant, and unwilling to end her “little problem.”

She is also dealing with the death of her brother and a determination to find her cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi Germany during WWII. Charlie refuses to accept that Rose is probably dead. Through a series of unlikely circumstances, Charlie becomes acquainted with Eve Gardiner, a hard, disgruntled woman with mangled hands. Eve has a passionate obsession as well: to find the man who was her boss, in 1915, in a restaurant catering to German officers.

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This novel doesn’t have the usual plot about the Resistance in WWI and WWII. The “Alice” in the title is the head of a widespread female WWI resistance group.

The bond and the passion of each spy’s work are the center and essence of the story. The reader comes to feel their fear before, during and after they complete each mission, as well as the exhilaration experienced with each success. The German enemies are shown as foolishly arrogant and careless in their conversations, which become fodder for the Resistance’s victorious actions.

Seduction and pregnancy are volatile and dangerous acts that could easily end in a woman’s death as a collaborator. Advising and protecting each other become pivotal in surviving the numerous overt and covert ways a spy can be exposed.

The reader follows Charlie, Eve, and Eve’s driver Finn through a series of nerve-wracking events that end with a breath-stopping scene, and eventually an acceptable resolution that gives a form of peace to the characters’ numerous traumatic memories.

Amazing historical fiction that this reviewer recommends as a must read!

Viviane Crystal

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THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION Joy Rhoades, Bantam Australia, 2017, A$32.99, pb, 416pp, 9780143782131 / Chatto & Windus, 2017, £12.99, hb, 416pp, 9781784741341 Kate Dowd and her father, Ralph, wait on the railway platform to collect two Italian prisoners of war who have been assigned to work at Amiens, their farm in northern New South Wales. Kate is startled by her reaction to one of the men, Luca, sensing he might be a threat to her emotional well-being.

Ralph displays increasingly erratic behavior—echoes of trauma from the Great War—and he has extended the drought-ravaged farm’s mortgage and overdraft to breaking point. When the bank manager tells Kate they will soon foreclose, that she must pack up and leave within weeks, she is devastated. With an incapacitated father and no help from her husband, Jack, who is away on army service, Kate is forced to find her own way to save Amiens.

The descriptions of life on a 1940s Australian sheep station are authentic, as are all the characters that inhabit this often confronting landscape.

Although a little naïve and rather too quick to make assumptions, Kate does accurately reflect a woman of her era who had been raised to be reliant on men and has to learn to assert herself.

Just when she thinks her problems are solved, there are new shocks, and she must extend her courage even further to include responsibility for the young

Aboriginal maid, Daisy, as well as risk her heart with Luca. The conclusion has a bittersweet quality that may make you a little teary eyed, so if you need comfort food just check out the famous Country Women’s Association recipes provided in the end notes.

This subtle and perceptive debut novel by Joy Rhoades was inspired in part by her own grandmother’s experiences on a farm during WW2.

Its honesty and truth shine through on every page, and it deserves the highest recommendation.

Marina Maxwell A TIME FOR PEACE Marg Roberts, Cinnamon Press, 2016, £9.99, pb, 346pp, 9781910836378 A veteran of earlier conflicts with the Turks, Colonel Stefan Petrovic ought to be accustomed to the horrors of war when the Austrian army invades Serbia in August 1914. Ellen Frankland, a middleclass volunteer with the Women’s Medical Corps, has only the haziest idea what to expect when she is deployed to Serbia. But neither of them is prepared for what they will endure when the help promised by the Serbs’ allies fails to materialise and the Serbian army and cadets are forced to evacuate through the Balkan Mountains during the worst winter in living memory.

I was excited by the unusual setting of this novel, having recently read a non-fiction book touching on the subject. But it took me a while to get into the book, and at times I felt distanced from the central characters. However, as the action progressed, I found myself drawn into Ellen’s story in particular. (I’m not sure whether the author is familiar with the story of Flora Sandes, the only British woman known not only to have served in the Serbian army, but to have been decorated and promoted to sergeant major).

Generally I found Stefan’s story less convincing.

There seemed to be an abundance of majors, lieutenants and corporals in his regiment and a strange absence of captains, second lieutenants, sergeant majors and sergeants. His headquarters staff seemed to be oddly few in number and he seemed to spend very little time actually commanding his troops.

Occasionally I found myself reaching for my red editing pen, to correct idiosyncratic punctuation or to point out that “dissembling” and “disassembling” are not synonyms. A cast list and a glossary of Serbian terms might have been useful too. A brave attempt at an unusual subject which, for me, didn’t quite come off.

Jasmina Svenne GOODNIGHT FROM LONDON Jennifer Robson, William Morrow, 2017, $15.99, pb, 384pp, 9780062674289 Goodnight from London is the latest from Jennifer Robson, author of Moonlight Over Paris, Somewhere in France, and After the War Is Over.

It’s the early days of World War II, and American journalist Ruby Sutton is seconded to London magazine Picture Weekly. She is on her own in the vast metropolis of London, but quickly acclimates and grows to love the city with the help of her new coworkers and her friend Captain Bennett. On her own since childhood, Ruby has learned to rely only on herself, but as the Blitzkrieg hits London, she HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 47

tastes the triumphs and tragedies of friendship and love.

Inspired by the memoirs of her own grandmother, Robson once again excels at portraying a country at war. Ruby is a likeable if somewhat vanilla protagonist; she is easy to root for and sympathize with as the secrets of her childhood slowly unravel throughout the story.

Robson’s novels are also well-researched without getting bogged down with extraneous details; the plot moves quickly even though it is fairly mundane in parts. The horrors suffered by Londoners during the many months of the Blitzkrieg are movingly portrayed. The addition of Ruby’s slow-blossoming relationship with Captain Bennett brings hope to an otherwise dismal landscape, and will appeal to romantics while not turning off those who are seeking mainstream historical fiction.

As the historical fiction market is flooded with World War II novels, readers can pick and choose amongst the worthy entries. Goodnight from London is well worth the read.

Caroline Wilson WINDY CITY BLUES Renee Rosen, Berkley, 2017, $16, pb, 480pp, 9781101991121 Leeba Groski, the daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants, becomes a filer and receptionist for a new record company in Chicago, Illinois, in the post-WWII years. She’s working for Leonard and Evelyn, mismatched partners who are spotlighting new talent in music specifically catering to “colored” (the word used appropriately for that time) folks.

The business collapses, and a fluke accident enables Leonard and his brother to open a new music production company (the Chess brothers).

Leeba, or Leah as she renames herself, very slowly evolves into a fine writer for blues musicians.

Red Dupree ( Jimmy Rogers in real life), a young black man, has come to Chicago to make his mark as an electric guitarist initially and then to write and have his music produced. Acknowledged as a superb guitarist, he fails to get a contract for his own compositions. However, after tremendous struggles, he gets hired as a band member for the notable “Muddy Waters,” and their music takes off. Leah, Leonard, and Phil make new friends and business contacts who they will sign on as future “blues” stars.

However, the equally dominant story behind the music concerns the virulent storm created by the fiery love, romance and marriage of Red Dupree and Leah. They become part of the Freedom Riders movement and ultimately the Civil Rights Movement created by Dr. Martin Luther King. The majority of this fine novel offers a constant tension, which is lowered at just the right moments, along with the magic of creating and playing music and the passionate love and troubles of Red and Leah.

Out of the suffering of racial prejudice arises a vibrant sound that changed the course of American history. Finely crafted historical fiction.

Viviane Crystal THE QUIET DEATH OF THOMAS QUAID: Lennox 5 Craig Russell, Quercus, 2016, £13.99, hb, 384pp, 9781780874890 Glasgow in the late 1950s. Lennox is a private 48 | Reviews |

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investigator, of Canadian birth, who works on the margins of legality amidst the crime and criminals of the gritty Scottish city. He is asked to do a job, which involves stealing some work papers from a foundry in Glasgow. The money seems suspiciously generous for what appears to be a simple task, and when he subcontracts out the theft to a friend, the eponymous Thomas Quaid, it all goes badly wrong, ending in Quaid’s death. The police are sure it was just an accident, but Lennox, and Quaid’s attractive sister Jennifer, both believe that it was murder.

Jennifer asks Lennox to look into the case, and he uncovers a web of foul corruption and perversion that goes to the very top of Glaswegian society.

Lennox comes under great personal jeopardy as his investigations proceed, and he is assisted by a variety of Glasgow’s underworld mob to confront and extirpate the horrors and to avenge the death of his friend Quaid.

Although this is the fifth in the series, I did not feel that I was missing out on the narrative in not having read the previous books. The feel of the novel is distinctly noir-ish, with Lennox (who, in the best traditions of hard-boiled PIs, does not use his given name) the first-person narrator, who appears to be nigh on irresistible to the women of Glasgow, specialising in smart one-liners, dealing out justice to those who deserve it, but with a conscience.

Douglas Kemp A TOUCH OF SCARLET Renee Ryan, Waterfall Press, 2017, $12.95, pb, 318pp, 9781503938663 In New York City in 1901, Elizabeth St. James is the perfect upper-class daughter: lovely, obedient, faultless. To please her father and grandfather, she’s headed to England to trade her family’s money for a titled husband. But Elizabeth isn’t as flawless as she seems, nor as willing to marry a title. She desires, however briefly, a life of adventure and passion. She makes a list of actions to achieve this before she sails, and to accomplish such items as “kiss a man under the moon and stars,” she seeks help from her childhood friend, Lucian Griffin. However, Luke is appalled and plans to prevent Elizabeth from ruining her reputation, even if he has to help her accomplish the items on her list.

Unfortunately, while the setting is Gilded Age New York City, there’s little to give a real sense of time and place. Descriptions are vague, of the “elegant ball gown” type, and the story could really have taken place almost anywhere. Although Elizabeth is very devout, and New York City has some very fine old churches, she never attends church, which I found disappointing. For fans of Downton Abbey and turn-of-the-century romances who want a simple romance.

India Edghill

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THE WINTERLINGS Cristina Sánchez-Andrade (trans. Samuel Rutter), Restless, 2016, $16.99, pb, 240pp, 9781632061096 At the start of the Spanish Civil War in the summer of 1936, young orphaned sisters Dolores and Saladina (nicknamed “the Winterlings”) are cared for by their grandfather. During those desperate times, Grandfather has money, food, and more influence than anyone else in their poor village in northwest Spain. But one day soldiers

seize him, strip him naked and shoot him. A stranger secretes the Winterlings away to England.

Decades later, the sisters come back to the rundown family home.

They arrive with a cart full of provisions, one cow, four sheep, two sewing machines, and hopes of a peaceful country life. Their uncle, the village schoolteacher, is still at his post, as are the gluttonous village priest and the dentist who extracts teeth from corpses.

The Winterlings’ return stirs up all manner of strange goings-on. The now-grown son of Grandfather’s former household maid pays them a visit, which does not end well. Farm animals scatter or die. The village dentist “comes out” as a flamboyant cross-dresser. The local expert in chickens, roosters, and capons becomes more and more like his fowl. Rumors of old murders and burials consume the villagers, and the villagers wonder why the Winterlings have returned.

The enigmatic characters and storylines prod the reader about the deeper, darker aspects of what it is to be human. Sánchez-Andrade’s writing is lyrical, never dull, and a joy to read. Details and dialogue are spare and well-chosen—tragic, humorous, often jarring. Every page contains surprises. The Winterlings is hard to put down and harder to forget.

G. J. Berger THE WOMEN IN THE CASTLE (US) / THE WOMEN OF THE CASTLE (UK) Jessica Shattuck, William Morrow, 2017, $26.99, hb, 368pp, 9780062563668 / Zaffre, 2017, £12.99, hb, 368pp, 9781785762710 Near the end of 1938, Marianne throws what will be the last party to be held in the von Lingenfels castle for a very long time. The festive feeling is dampened as word spreads among the guests of rioting in the streets of Munich and the SA destroying the property of Jewish residents.

Marianne discovers that her husband is a resister and involved in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

He warns her that if he fails, he and his coconspirators will be tried and executed. If this should happen, Marianne is asked to look after the men’s wives and children.

After the war, the castle is a battered shell of what it once was. It becomes a refuge for Marianne, fellow widows Benita and Ania, and their children.

Initially bound together by their husbands’ failed attempts to end the war, the women become unlikely friends.

Telling her story with alternating viewpoints from before, during and after the war, Shattuck creates three dynamic and complex characters. The three women are forever changed by the brutality of war and forced to make choices they might never have made otherwise. Each has secrets to keep and finds sharing her whole self impossible, even with her new friends. Completely engrossing, with unforgettable characters, The Women in the Castle is a must read.

Janice Derr 20th Century

AFTER THE BLOOM Leslie Shimotakahara, Dundurn, 2017, $21.99/ C$21.99, pb, 328pp, 9781459737433 In her contemplative first novel, Shimotakahara explores the long-lasting aftereffects of a disgraceful historical episode: the incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry during WWII. As she explains in an introduction, Lily Takemitsu is partly based on her paternal grandmother, who denied this part of her past.

In Toronto in 1984, Lily’s daughter Rita, a high-school art teacher and single mother, panics when she learns Lily has vanished. Her mother has the tendency to wander, but she’s never gone missing for days before. As Rita pursues leads to Lily’s whereabouts, she uncovers fragments of her hidden family history, including secrets about her father, Kaz, who she never met, and the time he and Lily spent in a place where “the sand blew so fiercely that stepping outside was like standing under a shower of pinpricks.”

The novel devotes equal time to Lily, a young woman once runner-up in the Cherry Blossom Pageant, who has been forced from one troubled living situation into another. The author paints a meticulous portrait of the dreary geography and fiery internal politics at the camp at Matanzas in California in the 1940s. Rescued by a rebellious photographer named Kaz after a fainting spell, Lily gets drawn into the ongoing animosity between Kaz and his father, the camp doctor.

Awareness of this novel’s topic is necessary for anyone living in today’s world. After the Bloom presents an affecting inside view of what JapaneseAmericans endured, both within the camps and afterward. Indecisive and easily manipulated, Lily is an atypical heroine. While she loves her mother, Rita also feels frustrated by her silences and eccentricities. However, Lily’s character feels real, and her disconnections from reality are understood in the context of what she’s survived. Slow-moving at first, the story gains momentum as it continues, and the conclusion is especially satisfying.

Sarah Johnson THE STARS ARE FIRE Anita Shreve, Knopf, 2017, $26.95, hb, 241pp, 9780385350907 / Little Brown, 2017, £18.99, hb, 256pp, 9781408702987 When Gene and Grace Holland married, life looked rosy. After all, he is kind and good-looking, she is in love, and they are happy. Grace’s friends live in tiny apartments, but Gene’s job pays well, so they own a house. He even bought her a washing machine. But now, Grace feels life souring. Gene is uncommunicative, their sex life goes from bad to worse, she struggles to raise children born 13 months apart, and is pregnant again.

Maine’s austere weather doesn’t help. Everyone in Hunts Beach longs for winter snow and spring rain to end, but in 1947, drought follows. Usually dank forests become dry as dust, one spark away from disaster. Grace prays for rain, but in October she hears of fires to the north. Then smoke and charred paper waft into her yard.

Grace gathers valuables while Gene joins the fire crew defending Hunts Beach. The flames are unstoppable, so Grace and her toddlers retreat to the ocean, and bury themselves in cold sand at the waterline. Grace miscarries her baby, the Hollands’ 20th Century

home is gone, and Gene was last seen walking into a wall of fire.

The Stars are Fire is a tale of survival on many levels. Award-winning Anita Shreve’s novel is terrific entertainment, and Grace’s personal story is particularly compelling. A once-naïve woman who doubted herself pulls her family and herself together after losing everything. Hunts Beach isn’t the only community which has to rebuild, just as Grace must reconstruct herself after her long emotional drought with Gene. I won’t reveal a spoiler which tests Grace even more deeply than flames, so you’ll just have to read The Stars are Fire to find out.

Jo Ann Butler WAR CRY: A Courtney Family Novel Wilbur Smith and David Churchill, William Morrow, 2017, $29.99/C$35.99, hb, 512pp, 9780062276490 / HarperCollins, 2017, £20, hb, 512pp, 9780007535866 Saffron Courtney grows up in 1920s Kenya at the sprawling estate of her widowed father, Leon.

She loves horses, takes part in show jumping, and plays polo at the gymkhana. Saffron later attends the prestigious Roedean School in South Africa and, subsequently, Oxford in England. Although friendly with the local white landowners and the Masai, Leon remains an enigma. It’s rumored that he was just a hunting guide when he met his wife, Eva. She had been the mistress of a wealthy German nobleman, Count von Meerbach, who died in a Zeppelin crash, but Eva had parachuted out. How Eva and Leon acquired all their wealth is still a mystery, and Saffron is shocked to hear the truth from her father. The plot thickens when Saffron meets Meerbach’s son, Gerhard, while on a skiing holiday in St. Moritz. They have to deal with not only their love, but also their past, and the blowing winds of WWII. This fourteenth book in Wilbur Smith’s Courtney family saga reads like a stand-alone, as snippets of backstory are injected into passages where necessary. The events that precipitated WWII, chiefly those affecting West Africa, are presented in an interesting way by involving the Courtneys in the action. The British fascists’ viewpoints are highlighted via Leon’s brother’s reverence of their leader, Oswald Mosley, and its impact on the Courtneys’ business. Much like in a film, the story moves along rapidly between its numerous locales. The dialogue is crisp and humorous at times, and the scenes depicting life in Kenya, England, Germany and elsewhere transport us to those lands in an entertaining and informative way. Although the plot has some coincidences, they aren’t significant enough to affect readers’ enjoyment. The novel should interest fans of Ken Follett and other writers of epic historical sagas.

Waheed Rabbani THE CHOSEN MAIDEN Eva Stachniak, Doubleday Canada, 2017, $18/ C$24, pb, 464pp, 9780385678568 In her fifth novel, Eva Stachniak tells the story of real-life dancers Bronia Nijinska and Vaslav Nijinsky, siblings who took the world of dance by storm in the early 20th century. In this fictionalized version, we see clearly the ambition of art juxtaposed against the need for human

companionship and love. The role assigned to female dancers at that time was always secondary to the fantastic leaps and exuberance of the male, though the female dancers were expected to be skillful en pointe.

Born on the road to parents who are also dancers, brother and sister compete for parental praise. Vaslav, the son, devotes himself to art, to movement, to breaking with tradition. Always in his shadow as a dancer and choreographer, Bronia struggles to find a painful balance between art and domesticity.

Many tensions complicate the story of Bronia and Vaslav: the tension between the traditional and the new, between man and woman, between the idea of revolution and the status quo. The very nature of artistic expression and passion is gracefully discussed in a pas de deux between madness and sanity.

As events unfold around this talented family— the outbreak of WWI, the Russian Revolution, the beginnings of WWII—Bronia must find a way to express her art and protect her family. The sensitive nature of the artist and the constant pressure to out-perform oneself take a toll on Vaslav as he struggles to free the dance, to become the dance.

His success is magnificent, but the cost is high.

This novel is thoughtfully expressed, conveying the darker side of ambition. Some readers might find the long discourses about the nature of art and the artist tedious. The plot follows real events, but the overall story lacks a narrative arc. However, for those who enjoy such discussions, they will partner well with this novel.

Anne Clinard Barnhill BENEATH A SCARLET SKY Mark T. Sullivan, Lake Union, 2017, $14.95, pb, 534pp, 9781503943377 In 1943, 17-year-old Pino Lella strolls along the streets of Milan, Italy. Outside a bakery, he meets the beautiful Anna. He pesters her for a date, and she accepts. Despite being stood up, Pino cannot get Anna out of his mind. When an Allied bomb wrecks his family home, Pino’s parents send him north to Casa Alpina. There he assists Father Re in his dangerous missions of transporting Jews to safety in neutral Switzerland. Near Pino’s eighteenth birthday, he’s recalled to Milan, his father suggesting enlistment in the German Army to avoid being drafted. Pino becomes the chauffeur/translator for General Leyers, Hitler’s left-hand-man in Italy. Surprisingly, he meets Anna again, working as a maid to Leyers’ mistress. Pino uses the opportunities of his position not only to spy for the partisans but also to romance Anna.

Pino expects to fulfill his dream of spending a lifetime of happiness with her.

Mark Sullivan, a bestselling author who has co-authored novels with James Patterson, acknowledges that this book “is a novel of biographical and historical fiction.” His trips to Italy, discussions with the now-elderly Pino Lella, and painstaking research are all shown in his detailed narrative. These make the book read much like a work of narrative nonfiction. Readers will be amazed at Pino’s numerous successful wartime efforts. These include guiding Jews through several dangerous hindrances to the Swiss border, driving the general around like an experienced chauffeur, HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 49

acting like a trained secret agent by retrieving and making photographs of top-secret documents from the general’s briefcase, assisting the arriving American soldiers, and more. These can only be attributed to the adage: truth is stranger than fiction. The historical details are generally presented in the characters’ clear dialogue, and the scenes are effectively dramatized up to the terrific ending. Highly recommended.

Waheed Rabbani SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE NINEDRAGON SIGIL Tim Symonds, MX Publishing, 2016, $16.95/£11.99, pb, 364pp, 9781787050358 The game’s afoot and we are off, in this homage to the Great Detective. In 1906 Holmes is keeping bees in Sussex, and Watson practices medicine in London. Mycroft Holmes recruits the good doctor, encouraging him to accept the Imperial Chinese General Yuan’s invitation to assess the state of the Chinese army. This assignment takes Watson to China via an overland route across Russia and through exotic regions. A surprise encounter with a Chinese fortuneteller reunites Watson with Holmes and reveals the true nature of their mission as they arrive in the Forbidden City—a possible plot against the life of the young Emperor of China.

This far-flung novel contains numerous references that give the reader a sense of the era and the many settings included in the book. I enjoyed these obviously well-researched digressions, although at times I felt some of the inclusions might have slowed the forward momentum of the plot. The machinations against the Emperor are not totally mystifying, and Watson, in his role of foil to Holmes, seems surprisingly obtuse at times.

Still I enjoyed this Edwardian jaunt around the world with Holmes and Watson, and recommend it to lovers of the Great Detective and his faithful friend.

Susan McDuffie RACING THE DEVIL: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery Charles Todd, William Morrow, 2017, $26.99, hb, 341pp, 9780062386212 In November 1920, a motor car runs off a Sussex road, killing the young rector at the wheel, and prompting Scotland Yard to send Inspector Ian Rutledge to investigate. There is no telephone in the village, and the local constable rides a bicycle, so Rutledge is constantly on the road, keeping an eye out for red cars with green scratches and interviewing the villagers. Many, like the injured ex-officer and his jilted lover, the rector’s housekeeper and his (secret) fiancée, are cooperative, while others, like the rector’s taciturn replacement, force the inspector to venture farther afield. When he uncovers not one but a series of odd murders, some involving an automobile, perpetrator(s) unknown, he remembers something he heard: In 1916, a group of British officers, all with an interest in motor cars, agree to a road race after the war. When the ex-officer who was there refuses to name names, Rutledge gets a note to London. The reply is devastating—but it doesn’t tell him how a gentlemen’s agreement, made four 50 | Reviews |

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years ago, connects to recent murders in the south of England. Finding the answer will, as usual, test Inspector Rutledge’s powers of deduction.

Racing the Devil shows us what happens when old-fashioned crime-solving methodology is used by an experienced, highly intelligent policeman with a hidden disability. Rutledge, who was injured during WWI, suffers from something like PTSD. The struggle to keep his nightmares and hallucinations secret complicates his work and, to his mind, makes a private life impossible. This adds to the excitement in Racing the Devil and makes his accomplishments remarkable. A Fine Summer’s Day (2015) explains Rutledge’s nemesis Hamish, but all the Inspector Rutledge mysteries are highly recommended.

Jeanne Greene THE GIRL FROM THE TEA GARDEN Janet Macleod Trotter, Lake Union, 2016, $14.95, pb, 448pp, 9781503941137 This third book in the India Tea Series explores the life of Adela Robson, daughter to Clarrie and Wesley (from Book 1). While reading the first two is not necessary to enjoy this story, the backstory from those helps to understand character development and relationships here. The story begins in 1933 India, when Adela, an Anglo-Indian teenage girl, runs away from her Indian boarding school. She is determined to explore her passion for acting. Years pass and it is soon 1936; Adela is all grown up. During the summer, she goes to Simla, the summer seat of the Raj government, and is thrown into a life of glitz, glamour, and at long last, a budding acting career. But, when she catches the eye of a handsome, playboy prince, Adela’s life is irrevocably changed. Adela winds up in England, and when the Second World War breaks out, her passion towards acting turns into desperate need to find a way home to India.

By now, fans of Trotter will recognize a familiar pattern with the plotline: an ambitious but naive heroine makes shameful mistakes and learns about life the hard way. But, in the end, love and family win out. Again, Trotter does a wonderful job highlighting the changes in India at the time, the political upheaval, and the cultural identity issues Adela faces as both an Indian and English woman.

Recommended.

Rebecca Cochran KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT Steven Uhly (trans. Jamie Bulloch), MacLehose, 2016, £20, hb, 588pp, 9780857054968 This lengthy novel begins in German-occupied Poland towards the end of the Second World War, with the German forces in retreat from the advancing Red Army. The story focuses on three main protagonists: two Jewish survivors of the War, Anna Stirnweiss and Lisa Kramer, and a former S.S. officer, Josef Ranzner, who returns to Germany from captivity in the Soviet Union and takes on a new identity. The author shows how the war reverberates throughout the lives of the characters and even crucially influences those who either were just children or were born after the end of hostilities. For all of them the war is never over.

And even if they can find some form of peace or reconciliation, then the random nature of human life trumps all anyway.

There is no conventional linear narrative, and the author uses a variety of means to advance the meandering plot. It is literary, intelligent, reflective fiction that descends deep inside the protagonists’ consciousness, their motivations and most private thoughts—their various experiences of the horrors of the conflict and its aftermath are examined from unusual but intriguing perspectives. It demands the reader’s full alertness, but is rewarding and wholly engaging reading. The plot has a couple of blistering coincidences that keep the characters swirling together in the maelstrom of life, and there are a couple of historical errors. This is a deeply political novel, elements of which may irk the reader depending upon one’s own position and interpretation of events. Nevertheless, it is a superb account of humanity and what it means to be human.

Douglas Kemp MURDER BETWEEN THE LINES: A Kitty Weeks Mystery Radha Vatsal, Sourcebooks Landmark, 2017, $15.99, pb, 320pp, 9781492638926 This second volume in the Kitty Weeks mystery series sees part-time reporter Kitty interviewing students at an exclusive girl’s boarding school. Kitty finds student Elspeth Bright, a scientific prodigy studying batteries, particularly intriguing, and later meets with the young girl in Manhattan, planning a feature story on “women in science.” In addition, Kitty juggles her other assignment, a piece on noted suffragette Mrs. Alva Belmont and the women’s Congressional Union. Then, shockingly, Elspeth Bright dies, found frozen to death in a park. Although the budding scientist had a history of sleepwalking, Kitty suspects foul play, and Elspeth’s grieving mother, also a member of the Congressional Union, asks Kitty to make inquiries.

These inquiries not only endanger Kitty’s own life, but lead to more unexpected and tragic death.

This lively mystery moves along at a good pace.

The author has done her research well and skillfully weaves it into the story, which is set against a backdrop of WWI espionage and the suffragette movement; the reader gets a vivid feel for the era without any distracting “information dumps.” Kitty is an engaging heroine whose personal conflicts make her all the more likeable. She struggles with issues of the day, worries if too much reading can endanger one’s health, and wonders whether to leave the apartment she shares with her wealthy father to strike out on her own. I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of Kitty’s adventures.

Susan McDuffie THE OUTRAGE AT THE DIOGENES CLUB: Sherlock Holmes and the American Literati, Book 4 Daniel Victor, MX Publishing, 2016, $12.95/ 9.99, pb, 156pp, 9781780926780 Daniel Victor’s fourth imagining of Sherlock Holmes meeting an American author features Jack London at his crusading best, dressed in rags to finish his social commentary The People of the Abyss while also researching another eventually uncompleted manuscript. London posits the existence of a secret organization, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., which could well be behind the seemingly natural 20th Century

deaths of such prominent persons as Queen Victoria and her son King Edward VII, and several American presidents. But what brings the writer to the abode of Dr. John Watson at 221B Baker Street in 1902 is another potential victim on the bureau’s list: Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s brother, whose comings and goings and importance to the government Watson revealed in previous Holmes volumes.

Neither Holmes nor Watson fully believes London’s claim until 1912, when an assassination attempt on Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee convinces them that Mycroft may indeed be in the cross-hairs of the bureau. The meticulous schedule he keeps at his Diogenes Club and the dependability of Big Ben’s chimes hold the key in the race against time to unmask the villains and save Mycroft’s life.

Victor’s ingenious weaving of fact with fiction, and the inclusion of highly relevant Jack London quotes at the beginning of each chapter, make this a very interesting read. He takes obvious delight in dropping names while uncovering the arcane in the Holmes sagas and “editing” Watson’s mysteries to suit his device of uniting American literati with the great detective. All who relish Sherlockiana should enjoy this series.

Tom Vallar BECOMING BONNIE Jenni L. Walsh, Forge, 2017, $25.00/C$36.99, hb, 303pp, 9780765390189 How exactly did Bonnie Elizabeth Parker go from small-town Texas high school dropout to the female half of one of the 20th century’s most famous crime duos? That’s the story Becoming Bonnie aims to tell. When we meet Bonnelyn, as she’s called in this tale, she’s a choir girl intent on becoming a teacher. But soon her family’s financial troubles lead her to take up work in a Dallas speakeasy, where, with the help of her reckless friend Blanche and the gangsters employed there, she slowly embarks on increasingly illegal activities—all in the name of helping her family and clinging to her hope of living the American Dream.

With the subtitle “The Crash of the Century: When Bonnie Met Clyde,” it’s natural to assume this will be an action-packed book. Unfortunately, that is not the case. There are a few exciting moments here and there, but most of the story could have been condensed into the first third or fourth of a book that tells the tale the subtitle hints at: how Bonnie and Clyde came together to become the legends we know. The famous pair doesn’t even formally meet until near the end, making their instantaneous love hard to believe. Had the book been less focused on goody-two-shoes Bonnie’s hemming and hawing over committing minor illegal acts and upsetting her boyfriend/husband, and more on her interactions with Clyde, it would have been a more satisfying experience.

“Saint Bonnelyn,” as many of the characters call her, is so good that it’s hard to believe she’ll eventually become a gangster’s moll, even with the motivations the author has given her. As an origin story, this book isn’t bad, but it’s not captivating, either. I’m hoping the next book will have the pageturning adventure this one lacked.

Nicole Evelina 20th Century — Multi-period

BEFORE THE WAR Fay Weldon, St. Martin’s, 2017, $26.99/C$37.99, hb, 304pp, 9781250121233 / Head of Zeus, 2016, £7.99, pb, 304pp, 9781784082086 Weldon’s fans are in for a treat with her latest: a catty, chatty look at a family that from the outside may seem all Downton Abbey, but which, behind the façade, is full of characters who are anything but the post-Edwardian ideal. Readers of Long Live the King (2013) will remember Adela as young and beautiful; in 1922, she’s aged, but still sexually precocious. She and her publisher husband, the recently-knighted Sir Jeremy Ripple, have one daughter, Vivvie, who has been a disappointment in the catch-a-rich-husband department. At 24, Vivvie is tall, ungainly, and pregnant after an encounter in the stables. She’s also uncommonly smart, and knows she needs to get married, given the social mores of the time.

She narrows down her options to one of her father’s editors, would-be novelist Sherwyn Sexton, a known womanizer who is in debt. A mutually agreeable deal is struck, and the two head off to Bavaria for what outsiders are supposed to think is a long honeymoon but is of course Vivvie’s lyingin time. Events both obstetrical and farcical occur which leave Vivvie dead (that’s not a spoiler; the writer-as-narrator reveals this fact early in the first chapter), non-identical twins without a mother, and Sherwyn free to roam a slightly higher quality of dance hall, as he will now forever be Sir Jeremy’s son-in-law.

The author talks to the reader often, about the creation and actions of the characters as well as painful choices that have to be made in forming a coherent story. Some readers may feel intrudedupon at first, but this extra character, or perhaps vocal deus ex machina, is very much a part of the story, pointing out cultural, historical, and even medical facts that provide valuable context for this eminently readable inter-generational, inter-waryears saga.

Helene Williams BILLY PINTO’S WAR: American Legends Collection, Book 6 Michael Zimmer, Five Star, 2016, $25.95, hb, 231pp, 9781432832285 Book six of the American Legends Collection series, Billy Pinto’s War continues in its rich tradition of spurious interviews from the Federal Writers’ Project. In this volume, San Pedro County Sheriff Hudson (Hud) Pratt recounts his pursuit of a 16-year-old Native American boy, Billy Pinto.

Compelled by compassion and an unfailing sense of justice, Hud sets out to track Billy after the boy kills his mother’s murderers and kidnaps the judge’s daughter. His pursuit leads him to join up with mountain man Jess Harding, Billy’s mentor, in hopes of finding the young teen before search parties and bounty hunters with more sinister motives do. Zimmer captures the modern West of 1904 in the new gadgetries of automobiles, telephones, and electricity. The settlers juxtaposed with traditional Native tribes, cowboys, mountain men, and trackers, all nestled into the San Pedro Valley, create a mish-mash of surface harmony that seethes with underlying resentment.

The fable of Billy Pinto’s war, indeed. Sheriff Pratt’s self-reflective retelling reads like a memoir

meant to explore the conscience of a pioneer lawman at the head of the march to social activism, even then. The novel is rife with gun-smokin’ action, and Hud is the perfect, back-country narrator for this story of social injustice. His wizened, grizzled point of view flirts with the possibility of a tragic flaw in the evasive character of Billy Pinto. Handsdown a gripping read!

Kathryn Voigt CAST THE FIRST STONE: An Ellie Stone Mystery James W. Ziskin, Prometheus, 2017, $15.95/ C$17.00/£13.99, pb, 290pp, 9781633882829 It’s February 1962, and Ellie Stone, a reporter for a small paper in upstate New York, gets sent to Los Angeles to interview hometown boy-madegood Tony Eberle, who has just scored his first big movie role. Scored it and blown it just as fast, because Tony doesn’t show up for the first day’s rehearsal. So much for Ellie’s newspaper story— except that Tony’s disappearance seems related to the simultaneous murder of the producer.

This isn’t Ellie’s first dance solving a mystery— although it was the first book in the Ellie Stone series that I had read. Even so, I never felt I was missing important information. Author James Ziskin efficiently recaps previous episodes in a couple of places, but that happens painlessly, without bogging the story down.

Ziskin has fun with California in 1962 as a character in the book. His descriptions are evocative.

I also enjoyed a thunderbolt of realization of how much our lives have changed when Ellie needed to find the “Charlie Horse Diner,” and it turned out not to be in the Los Angeles phone book. Google it! came my instinctive response. Alas. I enjoyed too Ellie’s growing understanding and sympathy for the gay and lesbian characters.

Recommended for mystery readers and anyone intrigued by mid-20th-century California.

Kristen Hannum

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TITIAN’S BOATMAN Victoria Blake, Black & White, 2017, £12.99, pb, 372pp, 9781785300813 This book is a wonderful collection of chapters, all of them exquisitely crafted, most of them small—some very small, like the golden tesserae on the ceiling of St Mark’s cathedral in Venice, an image drawn from the book. But the tesserae in St Mark’s form recognisable pictures and patterns.

The chapters in Titian’s Boatman take a long time to fall into a pattern, and I am not sure they all do.

Each chapter is written from the perspective of a different character from the preceding chapter.

Most of the many characters live in 16th-century Venice, but some are in 21st-century London and New York. The artist Titian is the central character in only two short chapters and is dead for most of the book, although the chapters do not follow a strict chronological order. His personal gondolier (the boatman of the title) has more to say, but even he has only a minor role. This is not the story of the great artist seen through the eyes of one of his servants, as I expected. The book is sub-titled The HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 51

Man with the Blue Sleeve, which is the title of one of Titian’s paintings, which is central to the London chapters, but the New York chapters centre on his painting of St Sebastian. None of his pictures is central to the Venetian chapters, which are mainly about what happened to Titian’s associates after his death.

This confusion of time, place and perspective is explicit. As the author says in her preface, ‘imagine you can begin anywhere… where will you start?’

This is an interesting book with vivid insights into many different settings and situations, but I found it easier to read each thread separately. But then, I am a traditionalist shackled to chronology, and you may prefer a more unconventional narrative.

Edward James THE LAST NEANDERTHAL Claire Cameron, Little, Brown, 2017, $26.00, hb, 288pp, 9780316314480 The Last Neanderthal is necessary commentary on the topics of feminism, motherhood, and gender, topics that have been dogging women literally since the dawn of humanity. Cameron handles the issues with grace through the dual tales of Girl, one of the last Neanderthals, and Rosamund “Rose” Gale, a modern-day archaeologist. Girl’s story follows her as she navigates through her coming of age and learning her place in the brutal world she inhabits. She eventually becomes responsible for Runt, a foundling child who may be at least part Homo sapiens, as they make their way to the annual meeting place of their families. Rose’s story unfolds at a dig site in France, where she has discovered the remains of a Neanderthal and modern human which could restructure the understanding of the earliest days of humanity.

Throughout the novel, Cameron tackles the deep issue of gender roles, particularly as they relate to motherhood. While we don’t know for certain what Neanderthals or early modern humans might have done in certain situations, we can make educated guesses based on evidence.

Cameron adroitly navigates some of these possibilities, showing the precariousness of Girl’s existence through a pregnancy and unexpected role as primary caregiver to Runt. Cameron further explores the themes of motherhood and its tandem feelings of ambivalence and helpless anger with Rose, who rails against patriarchal social assumptions that she will meekly give up her career and quietly go home to be a mother. Both women deal with uncertainty about becoming mothers, have to learn to juggle that role with survival, both literal and professional, and find out just what they are willing to give up to retain the most important parts of themselves. As both a feminist and a mother, I strongly recommend this book.

Kristen McQuinn DAUGHTER OF A THOUSAND YEARS Amalia Carosella, Lake Union, 2017, $14.95, pb, 442pp, 9781503941205 This dual-timeline novel follows the stories of two women: Freydis, daughter of Erik the Red in early 11th-century Iceland; and Emma Moretti, modern academic and daughter of a congressman running for reelection in a contentious campaign season. Freydis struggles to find freedom to 52 | Reviews |

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worship the old Norse gods while the new religion of Christianity encroaches into her society. She resists the end of her faith and way of life and is aided by a mysterious, possibly supernatural, man.

He can give Freydis exactly what she needs but also exactly what she wants, least of all to preserve her faith.

Emma deals with similar struggles. She was raised a Catholic but is now a practicing pagan devoted to Thor. She is afraid to practice her faith openly, not only because society generally is intolerant of non-traditional faith practices, but because any deviation from what is considered acceptable could cost her father the election.

Naturally, her secret is discovered and causes waves not only in the campaign but in Emma’s own personal and professional life as well.

This is an interesting read even though I didn’t find any of the characters likeable or sympathetic.

Freydis is overly hard and inclined to violence.

Emma seems more like a whiny teenager than a well-educated adult. However, they both deal with very real and relevant issues that many people face today. Religious tolerance and understanding is too often lacking in society, and keeping one’s faith hidden for fear of being persecuted is still a sad fact of life for many people. Discussing religious freedom in all its peaceful forms is necessary. I appreciated that this novel took a good, hard look at this important topic.

Kristen McQuinn STARS OVER CLEAR LAKE Loretta Ellsworth, St. Martin’s, 2017, $25.99/ C$36.99, hb, 320pp, 9781250097033 In 2007, widowed Lorraine Kindred walks into the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa; it’s the first time she’s been there since 1947, on the night of a terrible fire. She’s immediately transported back to her teenage years, when everyone went to the Surf, to listen to the music of bands like Jimmy Dorsey’s, to dance, and to flirt.

Lorraine had gone with her brother, Pete, and hoped to go with dreamy Scotty Bishop, on a real date. There was even a chance she could sing at venues like this. But in 1944 Pete enlisted, and Lorraine’s mother took to her bed; Lorraine assisted her father on the farm, which included feeding five men shipped in from a nearby POW camp who helped with the harvest. Nazis, right in her yard! A wary Lorraine agrees to teach English to one of the prisoners, Jens, and she discovers that not all Germans are monsters—some of them like music and singing, just like she does. Decades later, she still struggles, as her emotionally distant and technologically distracted daughter doesn’t want to hear Lorraine’s stories.

The dissonance between Lorraine’s evolving viewpoint and the attitude of her mother and the rest of the town—and now her daughter—is the novel’s focal point and strength. Chapters switch between the present day and the war years, and Ellsworth deftly moves between Lorraine as a confused and torn young woman and as a senior citizen trying to reconcile the present and the past.

Other characters, however, are drawn broadly with little development; each has only one note to sound in the story. Inspired by a real ballroom, Ellsworth’s story puts readers in the front row as big bands play and dancing couples swirl by, bringing the past to

life, and making a family story come full circle.

Helene Williams THERE YOUR HEART LIES Mary Gordon, Pantheon, 2017, $25.95/C$34.95, hb, 336pp, 9780307907943 In 1937, a year into the Spanish Civil War, New Yorkers Marian and Russell are on board the SS Normandie on their way to Spain to help the Republican cause. They are an unusual couple.

Marian is a naive 19-year-old from a wealthy Catholic family she has abandoned, and Russell is a Jewish doctor, the former lover of Marian’s late brother. Theirs is a marriage of convenience, to satisfy their idealism to care for the wounded in Spain. On the battlefront, Russell cannot endure the horrors and hardships of war and returns home. Marian is left to suffer more misfortunes and is confined in Spain in dangerous circumstances for nearly a decade. She is unable to talk about her experiences until, in her nineties, she is diagnosed with cancer and living in a cottage in Rhode Island with her granddaughter, Amelia. Amelia finds her grandmother’s disclosures extraordinary; they induce her to visit Spain to resolve them and seek her own identity.

In her eighth novel, Mary Gordon, winner of several literary prizes, presents important insight which inspires us to realize that lessons from the past can help improve our lives. This message is delivered aptly and progressively through the unique relationship between a grandmother and her granddaughter. Marian’s volunteering at a tender age to fight fascism in Spain—which turned out to be a dress rehearsal for WWII— not only shatter her idealism but shape her character, as do her experiences following that war and its fanaticism. Marian passes down these lessons, and Amelia learns more about them herself by traveling abroad. The shifts in the novel between wartime and Marian’s old age keep the storyline engrossing without being confusing. Highly recommended.

Waheed Rabbani THE BOOK OF SUMMER Michelle Gable, St. Martin’s, 2017, $25.99, hb, 416pp, 9781250070623 Physician Bess Codman returns to Cliff House, her family’s summer home in Sconset, on Nantucket. The house rests on a bluff that is rapidly crumbling after Hurricane Sandy and decades of beach erosion. Bess’s mother, Cissy, is a full-time resident and neighborhood activist who insists that the installation of geotubes will stabilize the bluff and save the historic home. Bess returns to the island in the middle of a divorce, running from an abusive marriage and hoping to persuade her mother to move before the house collapses around her. As Bess begins to pack, she rediscovers the “Book of Summer,” the journal in which generations of women in her family would record their time on the island. It’s in this journal that Bess learns more about her grandmother Ruby and the events the house has witnessed over the generations.

The premise—three generations of women and how their summer home has been an anchor in their lives—has enormous potential, but a plot to match that setting never emerges. The story feels far more soap opera than family saga. Chaos abounds: Multi-period

an unwanted pregnancy, unhappy marriages, abuse, scandal, alcoholism, adultery, miscarriages, war deaths, etc. A few of these challenges could be used to show character growth or historical insights over the story arc, but readers never learn how Bess, Cissy, and Ruby grow from these obstacles. A laundry list of crises does not provide the emotional depth one would expect from a family saga, and the fight to save the house feels like an afterthought.

A story about a family of strong females should be much more about the women.

Rebecca Henderson Palmer THE SHADOW LAND Elizabeth Kostova, Ballantine, 2017, $28, hb, 496pp, 9780345527868 / Text, 2017, £14.99, hb, 504pp, 9781911231103 Kostova’s third novel (after The Historian and The Swan Thieves) is a road trip adventure mixed with mystery, literary fiction, and a little suspense, but even that doesn’t encompass its full cross-genre appeal. The story opens in the spring of 2008, as Alexandra Boyd, fresh off a plane to Bulgaria to take an English teaching job, finds herself unintentionally entangled in another family’s private business. After briefly encountering an elderly couple and their middle-aged son outside a hotel in Sofia, Alexandra is horrified to discover she mistakenly took one of their bags into her taxi: a satchel with a carved box containing an urn filled with ashes. The box is labeled with the name of an elderly man, Stoyan Lazarov, who had died two years earlier. Alexandra’s determined quest to find the family and reunite them with their loved one’s remains is as deep and multi-layered as Bulgaria’s own history.

Although she’s cautious about strange men, Alexandra slowly befriends her taxi driver, Bobby, who becomes an active participant in her mission when it becomes clear that someone’s putting up roadblocks in Alexandra’s way. As they travel across the country, from tiny villages left nearly unchanged by time to the steep outcrops of the Rhodope Mountains, they encounter warm hospitality and also many signs of danger. Stoyan’s neighbors and relatives share memories that shed light on the talented violinist who suffered under Bulgaria’s communist regime. The country’s painful past is revealed through periodic flashbacks and through Stoyan’s own account, which is powerfully moving.

Kostova’s ability to paint images in the reader’s mind is exquisite. She clearly loves Bulgaria and writes passages that show its mesmerizing beauty.

The plot fits the definition of “meandering,” and Alexandra’s and Bobby’s travel route sometimes feels overlong, but this is a book in which the journey matters as much as the destination.

Sarah Johnson A BRIDGE ACROSS THE OCEAN Susan Meissner, Berkley, 2017, $15.00/C$20.00, pb, 352pp, 9780451476005 This is a complex novel that alternates between past and present, with slight elements of the paranormal. In 1946, World War II has just ended, and three very different European women board the Queen Mary, which will take them across the Atlantic to be reunited with their American husbands. Annalise, a Belgian ballerina, is on the run from her German Nazi husband and Multi-period

masquerading as her dead friend, Katrine. On board, she meets Simone, a Frenchwoman with a terrible secret, and Phoebe, an Englishwoman journeying with her young son. Through flashbacks, readers learn the histories of the women, their secrets, and their dreams.

In present times, modern girl Brette has always been able to see and hear ghosts. At the request of an old friend, Brette visits the famously haunted Queen Mary and is drawn immediately to an urgent apparition whispering for help. Brette is soon drawn into the mysteries and tragedies of the war brides, and tackles a historical puzzle that takes her on an incredible journey. Brette must discover who the voice is, what happened to her, and why. Along the way, she comes to understand more about her gift, and its power.

In this story told from multiple points of view, readers gain a sense of the struggles women in WWII faced, both tragedies and successes.

Brette’s story is less intriguing and feels a bit underdeveloped, but the mystery she unravels is surprising and engrossing. All in all, this is a fascinating read that will keep you up well into the night.

Rebecca Cochran THE HOURGLASS Tracy Rees, Quercus, 2017, £7.99, pb, 544pp, 9781784296261 Tracy Rees follows last year’s wonderful historical novel Florence Grace with a more contemporary tale set in London and the lovely coastal town of Tenby in Wales. The dual-time tale follows Nora in 2014, a burnt-out Londoner approaching forty and in need of a change, and teenager Chloe in 1950s Tenby, desperate to dance and experience the glamour and romance of adult life.

Nora has impulsively left both her boyfriend and her admin job behind to follow a startling vision of a beach which she knows will bring her peace and help her sort out what she wants to do with life. In the 1950s, Chloe clashes with her older cousin and befriends Leonard, a lonely young boy with a passion for photography. Nora has always felt drawn to Wales, and so she visits Tenby and tries to understand why her mother left it behind and refuses to return. It’s left to the reader to work out the connection between the two characters, and Rees does a wonderful job of overlapping and interweaving the two stories.

The author has a gift for creating powerful and distinct character voices, and reading a Tracy Rees novel is very much like sitting down for tea and a chat with an old friend. Well plotted and well written, The Hourglass will make a wonderful summer read for fans of Lucinda Riley, Rosanna Ley, Rachel Hore or Jojo Moyes.

Lisa Redmond THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atria, 2017, hb, $26.00/ C$35.00, hb, 392pp, 9781501139239 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a big, juicy read. Movie star Evelyn Hugo, famous in the Fifties and Sixties, decides to tell her life story to magazine writer Monique Grant. Monique is a relatively unknown reporter, but Evelyn insists that

she be the one. As Evelyn’s story unfolds, Monique learns the connection that they share.

Reid’s fictional movie star shares traits with reallife actresses. Evelyn has almost as many husbands as Elizabeth Taylor. Her Cuban background calls to mind Rita Hayworth, whose father was Spanish.

And her manipulation of the press could be any number of stars. Reid starts with what the public knows about Evelyn: although married several times, the love of her life was Harry Cameron, with whom she had a daughter. Her last husband was the brother of her acting rival, Celia St. James.

Evelyn surprises Monique by turning those stories inside out. Harry was a homosexual; Evelyn was in love with Celia, a lesbian; she and Celia lived together while Harry and Celia’s gay husband did the same. That brief summary makes the story sound salacious, but Evelyn has the luxury of time with Monique to explain why she married each husband—escape, security, career—and how Celia was the love of her life.

Reid expertly captures the hothouse nature of Hollywood, where a vicious gossip columnist could destroy a career and a star was only as good as the grosses of her last film. I think it’s tricky to create an alternate Hollywood, with fictional actors and actresses in real films—Little Women and Anna Karenina are two in this tale—but Reid makes it work, and I think that’s through the ultimate originality of her story. Evelyn, her husbands, and others may be composites, but the story is fresh, and the end reveal is worth the wait.

Ellen Keith THE SHADOW SISTER Lucinda Riley, Atria, 2017, $26.00/C$35.00, hb, 512pp, 97814767599444 / Pan, 2017, £7.99, pb, 704pp, 9781447288626 / Macmillan, 2016, £16.99, hb, 688pp, 9781447288602 This, the third book in the Seven Sisters series, follows Star D’Aplièse as she searches for her own family and discovers her connection to the enigmatic Flora MacNichol. The author deftly weaves together two romances, 100 years apart but linked by the house at High Weald. Star’s search leads her to the Forbes family and the house she quickly comes to love. She also loves most of the family there, despite the erratic behavior of the two men of the house: Orlando, who loves books to the exclusion of all else, and ‘Mouse,’ who seems just plain rude.

Through the Forbes family Star finds the Edwardian romance of Flora MacNichol, a woman taken from her happy, innocent life in the remote English Lake District and thrust into the whirlwind of Edwardian London under the guardianship of the king’s mistress. For reasons she does not understand, she is introduced to the king, spends time with him and receives an expensive gift from him. She is also welcomed at society events and becomes engaged to a rich young man of the nobility—no matter that he is louche and usually drunk.

The author is a master of plotting. We find Flora’s true love married to her sister, and when the king dies abruptly, so does Flora’s importance in society. Her engagement is broken, and she returns alone to the Lake District. But the story does not end there. We follow the many twists and turns of the two romances, and only slowly is the connection HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 53

between Star and Flora MacNichol revealed.

This substantial book is a surprisingly quick and easy read, with engaging characters, a tantalizing glimpse of Edwardian society, and dual storylines that are inventive and intriguing.

Val Adolph

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THE WORLD TO COME: Stories Jim Shepard, Knopf, 2017, $25.95/C$34.95, hb, 258pp, 9781524731809 When it comes to literary style, Jim Shepard breaks all the rules, yet this collection of short stories leaves the reader breathless and feeling like a firsthand witness to the most dramatic historical events.

Blending quoted and related dialog in what many copy editors might call run-on sentences, The World To Come leads us through a series of historic singularities, from an 18th- century balloon launch (“The Ocean of Air”) to the tragic death of courageous U.S. airmen on an offshore radar rig during a colossal storm (“Safety Tips for Living Alone”). Shepard’s voice is beautiful, reminiscent of Salinger. The stories are linked by themes of sometimes foolish individual courage in the face of chaotic and unreliable forces such as weather, technology, and the government.

The offerings span from the 18th century to the present. They are also permeated with a sensibility of what Cormac McCarthy termed “the dismal tide.” A young motorman on a doomed and rotting railway watches as his dangerous job devolves into a metaphor for his unravelling family life (“Positive Train Control”), and two isolated frontier housewives form an ethereal bond out of time in the collection’s title story.

Gorgeous writing. Be in the mood for a sad commentary, but Shepard’s latest offering is not to be missed.

Jackie Drohan IN THE SHADOW OF ALABAMA Judy Reene Singer, Kensington, 2017, $15.00/ C$16.95, pb, 314pp, 9781496709455 Farm owner Rachel Fleischer is busy handling a fragile contentedness when she gets a phone call that her estranged father, Martin, is dying. Still wrapped in the same anger and bitterness that drove her away in the first place, he doesn’t welcome her at his deathbed. A clue to his past comes from an unlikely source—a stranger at his funeral bearing an old record album and a cryptic apology.

What she learns, told over hospital cups of tapioca pudding by Willie, an old veteran who served under her father, is a wartime story of tenacity and quiet heroism. During WWII, Martin was a Jewish sergeant in charge of a platoon of black soldiers, maintaining and cleaning bomber training planes at a base in Alabama. They encounter the 54 | Reviews |

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expected prejudice, but also unexpected risk, as a series of events puts both Martin and his men in very real danger. As Rachel hears her father’s story and realizes how his persistent anger was built on a bitter and guilt-laden history, she begins to understand how to divest her own past to make room for the future.

In the Shadow of Alabama is partially based on the author’s own family history. As such, it’s a novel driven by people and their relationships. The earlier storyline, narrated by Willie, is compelling for its history more than its characters, who feel at times that they are playing an expected role.

But the later story line is rich in characterization, even if those characters are sometimes frustrating in their stubbornness and provinciality. This is a beautifully written and emotional novel about what happens when we hold too tight to the past and what happens when we refuse to let it go.

Jessica Brockmole BEFORE WE WERE YOURS Lisa Wingate, Ballantine, 2017, $26.00/C$33.00, hb, 333pp, 9780425284681.

Before We Were Yours begins in 1939 on a Mississippi River shanty, the Arcadia. The Foss family—parents Queenie and Briny, and their five children, Rill, Camiella, Lark, Fern and Gabion, the youngest and only boy—make their lives on the boat. Aboard the Arcadia, they fish, tell stories, swap goods with other riverboat people and learn the ways of the mighty Mississippi. Queenie teaches her children to read and Briny teaches them math. The family is swathed in love for one another until a tragedy changes everything.

Switch to the present day and you find Avery Stafford, privileged child of Aiken, South Carolina, who has returned home to help her senator father during a health crisis. She stumbles across an old woman in a nursing home while visiting her grandmother. This new resident hints at a mystery hidden in the Stafford family’s past, a mystery Avery cannot ignore.

This story is heartfelt and genuine, especially as Wingate explores the idea of home and family from a youngster’s point of view. In fact, Wingate is at her best as she describes the lives of Rill and Fern at the Children’s Home. One problem I found with the book is that the younger children blur together.

When they are adopted or simply disappear, we see Rill’s grief, but we don’t feel it ourselves. We simply don’t know the children well enough.

The modern story isn’t as riveting as the story of the children, but does include a budding romance between Avery and Trent, a young man who helps her discover her family’s past. And, though the ending grew a little confusing for this reader, the book was a good read.

Anne Clinard Barnhill

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timeslip

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THE PHANTOM TREE Nicola Cornick, HQ, 2016, £7.99, pb, 428pp, 9781848455047 Filled with romance, drama, mystery and intrigue, The Phantom Tree is Nicola Cornick’s follow up to the hugely popular House of Shadows, and once again the story is inspired by a real historical figure. The inspiration is Mary Seymour, daughter of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s last queen, and her fourth husband Thomas Seymour.

Mary disappeared from the historical record after her mother died in childbirth and her father was executed for treason. Nicola Cornick uses this mystery of Mary’s life and death to weave an exciting tale of secrets, treachery and time travel.

The modern-day protagonist, Alison, is wandering the streets of Marlborough when she sees a familiar face in a Tudor portrait.

Although the shop owner is insistent that the portrait is of Anne Boleyn, Alison knows that it is Mary Seymour, and that it is a vital clue to finding out what happened to Mary and to Alison’s own son. The timeslip tale is narrated by Mary in the 16th century and Alison in the present day, and it is carefully handled as the secrets and stories twist and turn. With the help and occasional hindrance of handsome TV historian and writer Adam, Alison is determined to uncover Mary’s story. However, to do that she will eventually have to reveal her own secrets: her lost son; her chaotic childhood at Wolf Hall; and her real identity. The two narrative threads are carefully interwoven, and the story is a genuine page turner. It’s perfect for fans of Tracy Rees, Barbara Erskine, and Kate Riordan.

Lisa Redmond THE JANE AUSTEN PROJECT Kathleen A. Flynn, Harper Perennial, 2017, $15.99, pb, 384pp, 9780062651259 Part science fiction, part fan fiction, this enjoyable adventure takes a common fantasy—traveling into the past to meet one’s favorite author—and treats it quite earnestly, sending a doctor, Rachel Katzman, and an actor, Liam Finucane, from the near future through a wormhole to Regency England, to befriend Jane Austen in the hopes of rescuing the lost manuscript of The Watsons from destruction. Flynn has great fun with Rachel and Liam’s discomfort adjusting to inconvenient daily 19th-century challenges, from restrictive clothing to restrictive social rules to typhoid, and her ear for dialogue is terrific, switching easily between Rachel’s personal Brooklynese and the Regency diction she and Liam must quickly master. Once the complicated exposition is out of the way, the reader can relax and enjoy watching two attractive, devoted Austen fans engage in the ultimate cosplay.

The more serious moral implications of timeMulti-period — Timeslip

travel creep up on the characters—and the reader— through deft character development and believable incidents. The end of the novel is especially engaging, as the consequences of dabbling in the past snowball in unexpected and satisfying ways.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that one novel couldn’t possibly succeed as Austen pastiche, science fiction, romance, and satire all at once, but Flynn has achieved this feat, and has written an excessively diverting tale.

Kristen McDermott A TWIST IN TIME Julie McElwain, Pegasus, 2017, $25.95, hb, 452pp, 9781681773643 Kendra Donovan is a crack FBI agent—or was, until she fell through a time anomaly and wound up in 1815 London. Her attempts to return to the present have so far failed, and she’s become, officially, the ward of the scientifically-minded Duke of Aldridge (no, he’s not the hero; he’s old enough to be her father, sorry), who knows the truth about her life in the future. To most people in 1815, Kendra is an odd, outspoken American.

But to the Duke’s nephew and heir, Alec, Kendra’s the woman he loves. Alec wants her to stay in 1815 and marry him. But, although she’s attracted to Alec, Kendra has refused to give up trying to return home.

Kendra’s modern forensic skills proved useful when she caught a serial killer near Aldridge Castle. Now, she must use those skills again, in London, for Alec’s former lover, Lady Dover, has been brutally murdered, and Alec is blamed for the crime. With no professional backup but a Bow Street Runner and the Duke, Kendra must find Lady Dover’s killer before Alec is either indicted by the House of Lords or murdered by one of Lady Dover’s other lovers. For Lady Dover was far from a perfect lady, and more than one person had a compelling reason to want her dead.

A Twist in Time is an engrossing, enjoyable book. Kendra’s struggles with the manners and mores of London Society in 1815 are both amusing and grimly serious, and she isn’t willing to throw over her own time and life just because Alec is super-hot. There are a few historical glitches, such as mauve clothing (a color invented in 1856).

But the book is fast and fun to read, and watching a modern FBI agent try to solve crimes without any 21st-century tech to help is intriguing.

India Edghill THE SCRIBE OF SIENA Melodie Winawer, Touchstone, 2017, $26.99, hb, 464pp, 9781501152252 In her debut novel, Winawer scratches one of my literary itches: plague! There is rather a shortage of decent novels about the Black Death, in my opinion. Admittedly, I have a morbid fascination with it, but I am still selective in what I read and expect that to be well-written and well-researched.

This novel hit most of my requirements.

The novel opens in modern New York where Beatrice Trovato, a neurosurgeon, has recently Timeslip — Historical Fantasy

learned that her brother, a medieval scholar based in Siena, has unexpectedly died and left his home and research to her. She travels to Siena and discovers that he was on the trail of an academic breakthrough which would explain why medieval Siena was hit so hard by the plague and failed to recover. During the course of following her brother’s academic investigation, Beatrice has a timeslip and falls into medieval Siena, à la Outlander, in 1347, just before the bubonic plague struck; she has to rely on her knowledge of the future to survive.

Along the way, Beatrice is astonished to realize not only the truth about her brother’s research, but also that she is becoming more at home in the past than in the future.

While this novel doesn’t incorporate the modern versus medieval elements quite as smoothly as some other timeslip novels, and it occasionally requires greater than the usual suspension of disbelief, it was still one of the most fun books I’ve read in a long time. It has quite a lot of great medical knowledge woven in, as well as a surprising amount of art history and information about scribes and papermaking. All in all, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Kristen McQuinn

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historical fantasy

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THE DEVIL’S BIBLE Dana Chamblee Carpenter, Pegasus, 2017, $25.95, hb, 352pp, 9781681773377 Carpenter’s follow-up to The Bohemian Gospel is similarly crammed with theological mystery and suspense, as we find her protagonist, Mouse, still alive more than 700 years after the events of the first novel. The daughter of Lucifer has spent the centuries hiding from her father, her memories, and her massive guilt over her origins, but a chance meeting with a priest-in-training conveniently named Angelo gives her hope that she can finally come to terms with her own infernal powers.

The Bible of the title is the real-life 13th-century manuscript, the Codex Gigas, and the first half of the novel alternates time periods as Mouse searches in the present day for missing pages from the text that contain clues to her true nature, while she remembers the experience of creating the miraculous manuscript in a Bohemian monastery in 1278.

In the second half of the novel, her relationship with Angelo creates satisfying character complexity as she struggles to choose between love and power, trust and control. Should she save her own soul, or save the world from her father’s designs? Readers will have to wait for the third novel to find out, but the journey through lesser-known landscapes and areas of religious history is absorbing in spite of the sometimes clunky dialogue.

Kristen McDermott BLACK CITY DEMON Richard A Knaak, Pyr, 2017, $18.00, pb, 340pp,

9781633882751 Sixteen hundred years ago, Nick Medea became Guardian of the gate between our world and the Feirie. Once known as Saint George, Nick now spends his days preventing those from the Feirie world from invading ours, but protecting the gate has come at great cost to him. To complicate matters further, a part of him contains the mythical dragon he once battled, and he must fight to maintain control of himself or risk unleashing a firebreathing terror upon Prohibition-era Chicago.

Yet, Nick soon finds he must trust this untrustworthy part of himself as a new threat emerges, one that even dragons fear. Can Nick and his motley group of friends protect the mortal world from the darkest of powers?

Despite the author’s overuse of contractions ending in “had” (but’d, Michael’d, body’d), I found the book’s setting intriguing and highly enjoyed Knaak’s creative blend of fantasy and history.

However, the novel spends a great deal of time reminiscing. Knaak spends so much time trying to catch readers up on past events that there’s little room for plot advancement in the first third of the book. Reading Nick Medea’s introduction story, Black City Saint (HNR 76, May 2016), is highly recommended. Unfortunately, the two books are not marked as parts of a series, and it’s hard to read one without the other. I hope readers will not miss out on Knaak’s otherwise absorbing urban fantasy novels; just be sure to pick up Black City Saint first.

I know I’ll be getting my copy soon! This is a wellimagined, entertaining story.

J. Lynn Else DRAKON A. M. Tuomala, Candlemark and Gleam, $22.95, 2016, pb, 549pp, 9781936460694 Chekov with dragons. Mildly steampunkish Dostoevsky. Yes, there will be Russian names, but they are cleverly handled so there is no confusion.

In 1881, two brothers, Kesha and Petya Tarasov—the one interested in philosophy and religion, the other an engineer with dreams of flight; the one a thief of his family’s money and a rebel, the other faithful—are called back from their studies in St. Petersburg to the family fortress on the desolate ice-bound Turkish border to help in the ongoing battle against Turkey. Turkey’s secret weapons are dragons, their bodies full of incendiary gases, which fled Russia one hundred years previously and now aid the enemy. Manning the fortress are Vladimir, the cruel, hard-drinking, cursing father, and his pants-wearing, dragonslaying, Gatling-gun-swinging favorite daughter, Liza. English allies? spies? get billeted at the fortress, too, and one dark night on his way home from the local tavern, Vladimir is murdered in the snow. Dark, Chekovian family politics ensue, with a mostly happy and satisfying ending.

Scenes in the Russian capitals are spot-on historical fiction, evocative and real. Kesha stumbles upon hidden, forbidden dragon texts and learns the language of shrieks and screams, writes messages in the snow for low-flying dragons to read. Did you HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 55

know dragons write poetry? The dragons are very well-drawn so you can believe in them, too. The scenes in Turkey are brief but interesting. I would have liked more. In a sequel?

Definitely worth the read—if you don’t mind dragons.

Ann Chamberlin

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AMBERLOUGH Lara Elena Donnelly, Tor, 2017, $25.99, hb, 400pp, 978076565383815 In this alternate history which is reminiscent of the 1920s, the glamorous city of Amberlough is home to underground agent Cyril DePaul and his lover, Aristide, club owner and cabaret dancer, along with a political tangle that threatens them all if the “Ospies” win election. Cyril is determined to keep Aristide (and his smuggling) from the eyes of the law, but when a mission goes awry, Cyril turns to an unlikely ally—Cordelia Lehane, dancer at the Bumble Bee Cabaret. The three band together for survival in a city that’s quickly falling to fascism, but in Amberlough, no one is to be trusted.

Donnelly sets the stage with bright lights, flashy dancing, and quirky slang, but more than the glitz and the show, this is a book full of political intrigue and corruption. The characters are delightfully gray in their ambitions and morals, so they certainly keep you guessing as their stories unfold. The dialogue is sharp and beautiful, though at times weighed down by slang without a reference as to what it might mean. A good portion of the plot moves forward solely with dialogue, so I had a hard time connecting with the city itself and wished we saw a bit more outside of the Bumble Bee Club.

Gedda, the country in which Amberlough rests, is large, and the geography is a bit confusing at first, as are the politics, but once settled in, names and places become familiar as we follow Cyril into the fantastical yet darkened world of Amberlough.

Overall, a rich debut with an incredible cast of characters.

Holly Faur

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children & young adult

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ASHES: Seeds of America Laurie Halse Anderson, Atheneum, 2016, $16.99/ C$22.99, hb, 304pp, 9781416961468 This story, third in the Seeds of America series, picks up in June 1781 with escaped slaves Isabel and Curzon in South Carolina. It has been four years since we left them in Forge, but their determined search for Isabel’s younger sister, Ruth, continues. Ruth is finally found on a plantation in South Carolina. The sisters’ reunion is not as 56 | Reviews |

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joyful as Isabel has hoped. Ruth only agrees to go north if accompanied by her friend Aberdeen.

Ruth’s contrariness towards Isabel and Aberdeen’s allegiance to the Loyalists add challenges to their already arduous goal of freedom and returning home to Rhode Island. All four characters make their stand in Yorktown, deciding where their deepest loyalties lie. Anderson provides an inevitable yet satisfying conclusion to this trilogy.

This story is set during the American Revolution, but it is not a story about the American Revolution. It is a tiny slice of that conflict filled with adventure, danger, romance and truth. The novel asks huge questions—What is freedom?

What is loyalty? What is worth fighting for?—of its characters and readers, and does not water down the horror or contradictions of war. Anderson’s honesty is admirable. The appendix and list of vocabulary words offer context and clarification for readers seeking more information. Having read Ashes within days of finishing Forge, I found it difficult to accept that Isabel questioned Curzon’s affection and loyalty, but that is my only complaint.

Isabel is prickly, bitter, stubborn, and riddled with self-doubt; and she has every reason to be. She is also dedicated and determined. She’s as complex as any human should be. It was a delight to join her and Curzon on their quest.

Meg Wiviott THE UNEXPECTED LIFE OF OLIVER CROMWELL PITTS Avi, Algonquin, 2017, $16.95/C$24.95, hb, 304pp, 9781616205645 Oliver Cromwell Pitts, born decades after the Restoration deposed his grim namesake, awakens in the middle of the night with his coastal home literally shaking around him. A terrible storm floods the first floor and rips part of the roof off.

Worse, his father is missing. That leaves Oliver an orphan, since his mother died at his birth and his sister, six years older, has gone to London for a chance at a life beyond their lawyer father’s bleak outlook, and drunken, albeit successful, gambling.

Oliver’s father has left a couple of notes behind, but whatever he had written on them was muddled by the flood, leaving them illegible—although Oliver surmises that his father has gone to London because of news about Oliver’s sister. There’s neither food nor money in the house, and Oliver is terrified of being sent to the children’s poorhouse, which he’s been told is as bad as the notorious Newgate Prison.

When Oliver comes across 30 shillings in a beached wreck on the coast, he cannot resist the temptation—although he only takes 23—despite the terrible punishment for thieves. He knows his father will pay the money back. But between the town’s “kindly” benefactors, who abuse the children in the poorhouse and a deadly gang of thieves, Oliver stays barely ahead of the entire adult world that is arrayed against him.

This book, by Newbery Medal winner Avi, may be aimed for 8- to 12-year-olds, but really it’s for all ages. This fast-moving story will remind you why

you fell in love with reading as a kid, and is sure to kindle a love of reading for today’s youngsters who read it. Recommended.

Kristen Hannum REFUGE FOR MASTERMINDS: A Stranje House Novel Kathleen Baldwin, Tor Teen, 2017, $17.99, hb, 352pp, 9780765376046 Set in 1814 England, during the Napoleonic era, Refuge for Masterminds focuses on Lady Jane Moore, one of the five young and gifted women sent to Stranje House, a school for unusual girls.

Their families believe these girls are having their “unusualness” knocked out of them, when in actual fact their gifts are being used: the girls are secretly trained and prepared to become spies.

In this third installment of the Stranje House series, it is up to Lady Jane and her sharp mind to find out who is passing information on to Napoleon’s spies. Not only is discovering the truth going to thwart Napoleon’s invasion of England, but it will also stop an attack on her love interest, American inventor Alexander Sinclair, whose prototype of his uncle’s steamship is set to be introduced to the British admiralty.

Lady Jane, along with the other girls and her headmistress, Emma Stranje, are witty, strong and passionate heroines who use their varied gifts while working behind the scenes (that is, behind the men with power) to make sure the right decisions are made to affect their country or to avert national disaster.

Refuge for Masterminds moves at a fast pace from the first page and doesn’t stop. Although it is written with a young adult audience in mind, it is a fun and enjoyable novel and will also appeal to adult readers.

Francesca Pelaccia SPY MASTER: Deadly Storm and Fatal Voyage Jan Burchett & Sara Vogler, Orion, 2017, £7.99, pb, 388pp, 9781444010749 This book contains two separate novels in a single volume.

In Deadly Storm, Henry VIII and Lady Anne Boleyn set off from Knole House, Kent, to return to Greenwich Palace amidst a terrible storm. The year is 1532, and it is up to a young scribe, Jack Briars, and his master, Thomas Cromwell, to keep the monarch safe as they continue their perilous journey with the Yeoman guard.

The storm intensifies and their entourage is split. King Henry, Master Cromwell, Mister Mountford and the ‘weasel faced’ scribe Oswyn Drage, who looks down upon foundling Jack, take shelter at Norbrook Castle, home of the recently widowed Lady Margaret.

With the king disguised and Mister Mountford acting as a courtier, the plan is to protect the monarch’s identity until the storm passes and they can reveal the truth before continuing their journey. But all is not as it seems at Norbrook. Jack’s real role as a spy is needed to unveil the secrets the castle holds and save his king’s life.

Alternate History — Children & YA

Jack is helped in this task by his fiery friend, young seamstress, Cat. The pair complement each other; when one falters the other steps in. Cat’s character is strong and quick-witted, and she desires to be thought of as Jack’s equal. Together, with his stealth, bravery and ability to observe and react quickly, they are the perfect balance.

I loved the way the king’s confidence, or arrogance, is captured. No one dares challenge his decisions directly. Expressions such as ‘mazed’ give the feel of the period, as does the passing mention of the textiles used in both clothes and buildings, as well as the use of herbs. The pace is swift, the action intense and the ending delights.

In the second book, Fatal Voyage, the Fair Anne, an impressively gilded galleon, is moored at Deptford Docks. King Henry has had it built to honour his love, Lady Anne Boleyn. Jack has been entrusted with the important task of keeping the plans safe. The king is delighted with a statue of the fair lady to be revealed to her when the galleon is launched on an auspicious day. The best laid plans can go astray, and soon they do.

Jack reacts on impulse and saves his monarch’s life. He is the hero of the day, but what follows provides high drama and continuous action. I do not want to reveal too much of the plot, as it is such a joy to follow with red herrings aplenty.

With Cat’s help, the two daringly use disguises and their wits to chase the perpetrators of the plan to steal the galleon’s secrets and bring Henry down.

The two bravely step onto internationally sensitive soil as well as doing all they can to unearth a plot.

Their friendship is always supportive despite their differences of opinion. The detail of the docks, ship, the food provided for the royal guests from gingerbread galleons to exquisite tarts, captures the feel and imagery of the period and setting.

Both books work as standalone novels, despite being part of a series. Highly recommended for 8+.

Valerie Loh

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MARGOT AND ME Juno Dawson, Hot Key, 2017, £7.99. pb, 401pp, 9781471406089 Fifteen-year-old Fliss and her mother, who is recovering from chemotherapy, move to Wales to live with Margot, Fliss’s grandmother. Fliss finds her previously comfortable London life thrown into disarray as she tries to cope with being the new girl at school, where she attracts the attentions of a vicious bully. She doesn’t get along with Margot and finds it a struggle to settle down to life at MariMorgan, the bleak Welsh farm where Margot has lived for the last few years. While exploring her new home, Fliss finds the diary Margot kept as a 17-year-old Blitz evacuee, and discovers her grandmother had lived at Mari-Morgan before, Children & YA

during the early months of the Second World War. Through the entries in the diary, Fliss gets to know a very different Margot, one she comes to like and admire, and she uncovers a shocking secret.

The story is told partly in the first person by the engaging and quirky Fliss, and partly in Margot’s voice through the pages of her diary.

Both are likeable and interesting characters, and the details of their lives, in the 1940s and 1990s, make fascinating reading. Margot writes about her romance with a young Canadian officer and as her story unfolds, Fliss realises there are good reasons why her grandmother is the harsh woman she is today. A heartbreaking event forces Fliss and Margot to make an effort to get along, and they finally come to understand and accept each other.

The people in both girls’ lives are beautifully drawn and rounded, and their friendships, loves and heartbreaks make for an engrossing read. This is a wonderful book, suitable for readers of 12+, but it will be enjoyed just as much by adults as younger readers. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Pat Walsh ALEX & ELIZA: A Love Story Melissa de la Cruz, Putnam, 2017, $17.99/ C$23.99, hb, 368pp, 9781524739621 Young Colonel Alexander Hamilton works as secretary to General George Washington in Albany, New York, in 1777. Hamilton begs for a command of his own so he can fight the British during America’s Revolution, but Washington depends on Alex’s diplomatic skills. Alex is sent to deliver news of a court-martial for General Schuyler after the loss of Fort Ticonderoga. The Schuylers are throwing a party, and Alex reports his ugly mission as the general’s middle daughter, Eliza, overhears. An energetic, practical girl who is working for the rebel cause, she dislikes Alex at once. But Alex is instantly smitten with her. The Schuylers are a prestigious family, while Alex is an illegitimate child born in the West Indies to a Scottish aristocrat who abandoned him. He’s penniless, with little hope of marrying one of Albany’s “princesses.”

This novel is a good introduction to Hamilton, one of our Founding Fathers, and Elizabeth Schuyler, a formidable woman and humanitarian.

Details of the American Revolution are worked in with the horrible conditions of the war for soldiers.

The story focuses on Hamilton’s determination to rise in importance and win Eliza’s hand—even after she’s promised to a wealthy cad. The author admits to embellishing much of the private moments, since scant information is known of their courtship. De la Cruz’s writing is fluid, intelligent and beautiful, with spurts of humor and witty dialogue. The characters are well drawn. Recommended for teens who are interested in a lively tale and one of history’s great love stories. For ages twelve and up.

Diane Scott Lewis THE NOBLE SERVANT Melanie Dickerson, Thomas Nelson, 2017, $14.99/

C$18.50/£7.99, hb, 336pp, 9780718026608 This is the latest offering from Melanie Dickerson, who has found her niche in the genre of Christian YA romance by re-imagining medieval fairy tales. It is a retelling of Grimm’s The Goose Girl.

The heroine, Lady Magdalen, is an impoverished gentlewoman whose inheritance, copper mines, is considered worthless because the mines are exhausted. Therefore, she’s surprised and thrilled to receive a marriage proposal from a handsome young duke she’d met two years previously at a ball. Such a match is an opportunity to help her people. Moreover, since she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about the duke since the ball, she sees it as an opportunity to marry for love.

However, on her way to his castle, she’s forced by her servant, Agnes, to change places under threat of death. On their arrival, she’s sent out to tend the geese. Magdalen is humiliated and heartbroken, but finds herself even more at a loss when she catches sight of Agnes’ intended: it’s not the duke she met before. Then she comes across a shepherd, Steffan, who cannot disguise his noble bearing well enough to fool her. Despite initial mistrust, she and Steffan, the true duke, come to depend upon one another and work together to regain their rightful places.

They put their confidence in God, turn often to prayer, and are quick to forgive their persecutors.

Although readers will likely anticipate the outcome, the protagonists are in constant peril, making for an exciting adventure. The prose is a bit stilted at times, but the story is told in a straightforward manner and likely to please Dickerson’s devoted fans.

Sue Asher MAUD: A Novel Inspired by the Life of L. M. Montgomery Melanie J. Fishbane, Penguin Teen Canada, 2017, $17.99/C$22.99, hb, 400pp, 9780143191254 Lucy Maud Montgomery isn’t sure where she fits in. She’s lived with different relatives since her mother’s death and is now in the care of her grandparents on Prince Edward Island. She loves school and dreams of attending college and becoming a published author. But it’s the early 1890s, and her grandfather doesn’t think it’s right for women to get a higher education. When Maud, a Presbyterian, develops a relationship with the Baptist minister’s stepson, Maud is sent away to live with her father and avoid a scandal. Unfortunately, her new stepmother is anything but motherly. When Maud’s inept teacher begins to call on her as a suitor, Maud knows she must find a way to support herself if she’s ever to make her dreams a reality.

Maud’s ambition and hard work to get her writing published, while still a teenager and against gender constraints, are inspiring but I worry teen readers will find it hard getting drawn into Maud’s historical mindset (e.g., there’s no talking back to adults—even to stand up for yourself ). This is my only minor concern with the book’s young adult categorization. However, the author wisely includes a short section at the end describing the time period and why some plot choices were made.

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Fishbane’s historical research is thorough and comes out beautifully in the narrative. Additionally, the spirit of Montgomery’s writing breathes subtly within the pages. You do not need to read L. M. Montgomery’s work to enjoy this story. Knowing it will enhance your experience, as many parallels can be seen, but this novel stands on its own.

I immensely enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it; it’s a very well-written story about a girl discovering what she wants out of life and love.

For Montgomery fans: this is where Anne of Green Gables begins.

J. Lynn Else

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AUDUBON: On the Wings of the World Fabien Grolleau & Jérémie Royer, Nobrow, 2017, $22.95, hb, 184pp, 9781910620151 In 1820, John James Audubon—an illegitimate child born in Haiti and sent away to live with relations in America—had failed at almost everything he’d tried. Facing bankruptcy and debtors’ prison after another disastrous business venture, Audubon decided to set out on a quest across North America to pursue his true passion: painting birds. The trip resulted in the collection of paintings that became Audubon’s celebrated Birds of America. His journey, and the breathtaking abundance of life he found across the as-yetunexploited continent, is beautifully captured by Grolleau & Royer in graphic novel form.

Audubon’s all-consuming passion for birds is the through line of the narrative—sometimes humorous, sometimes mystical, but always perfectly in character. Early in the narrative, as his wife is about to reveal that she is pregnant, Audubon suddenly hears an unfamiliar bird call and darts off to find the source, cutting her off midsentence, to her great exasperation. But as the narrative progresses, his obsession, mocked by many around him, takes on a more transcendent quality. While traveling the Mississippi, Audubon’s boat is wrecked in a storm—a reality he ignores as he wades awestruck out of the wreckage to admire the hundreds of herons, egrets, and ibises gathered on the shoreline. The text and visual narrative magnify this epiphany in unison, as the protesting voices of his companions become smaller and smaller and the field of vision is taken over by an abundance of wild winged things. In thrall to the glory of nature, Audubon finally finds perspective on his own life.

Grolleau & Royer have created a beautiful tribute to one of America’s first voices for conservation. For any student of history or lover of the natural world, setting aside an hour or two to experience this book will be well worth the time.

Ann Pedtke 58 | Reviews |

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THE RAVENMASTER’S BOY Mary Hoffman, Greystones, 2017, £8.99, pb, 231pp, 9781911122135 ‘Being friendly with the king is like playing with a tame lion.’ As it turns out, Thomas More couldn’t have been more right in his assessment of Henry VIII, and the quote sets the mood for The Ravenmaster’s Boy. Orphaned Kit is brought up by the Ravenmaster at the Tower of London and discovers he can communicate with the ravens in his adopted father’s charge. A relationship of trust and affection develops between Kit and the ravens, which lends a semi-magical and, at times, humorous element to the story-telling.

The main action of the story takes place when, aged sixteen, Kit meets King Henry and Queen Anne Boleyn, who’s later imprisoned in the Tower on charges of adultery. Enchanted by the diminutive queen, Kit vows to do what he can to help her. When the ravens alert Kit to a plot which could have dire consequences for the future of the monarchy, he enrols the help of friends Isobel, the baker’s daughter, and Alice, daughter of Sir Edmund Walsingham, Lieutenant of the Tower.

The trouble with historical fiction using real people is that we know the outcome for them, even as we hope that it turns out differently. Having said that, the tense political atmosphere of 1536 is so skilfully recreated in this story that is has that elusive page-turning quality, and it almost doesn’t matter.

Although the number of characters called Thomas, including one of the ravens, is a little confusing, The Ravenmaster’s Boy is written in an easy, accessible language, and there’s more than a nod to Norse mythology in the names of two of the other ravens, Huginn and Muninn (named after Odin’s ravens).

This novel is suitable for teenagers aged 14 and up, as the many references to torture and beheadings may upset younger readers.

Henriette Gyland FOUR-FOUR-TWO Dean Hughes, Atheneum, 2016, $17.99/C$23.99, hb, 272pp, 9781481462525 The title of Dean Hughes’s latest YA novel about World War II refers to the US 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Fighting the Germans in Europe, this unit became the most decorated troop in the history of American warfare. Such recognition measures the 4-4-2’s military efficacy and inferentially honors its ability to sustain enormous casualties. What frames the story of its warriors’ gallantry is the startling—even ironic— fact that the team was composed almost entirely of young men of Japanese ancestry.

That reality is the author’s fictional fulcrum. In 1942, the novel’s protagonist, 18-year-old “Yuki” Nakahara, became by governmental edict an “enemy alien” evicted from his family’s California farm and incarcerated in an internment camp in Utah.

Anxious to prove his Americanism (especially since his innocent father had been arrested as a

spy), he not only enlists in the US Army but also encourages his best friend to accompany him on what proves, for his compatriot, a fatal journey.

Hughes deftly—if too delicately—parses the gore of war through Yuki’s eyes. Young readers who follow Yuki’s journey will learn about prejudice and patriotism, duty and dirty work, caring and killing. The author’s preface is a superb historical introduction into the novel’s narrative. As a moral tale about immigration restriction, racism, and “white nationalism,” the novel is accidentally, if providentially, timely.

John O’Donnell THE ROMAN QUESTS: The Archers of Isca Caroline Lawrence, Orion, 2017, £6.99, pb, 225pp, 9781510100268 Britannia, AD 95. Fronto, Juba and Ursula, Roman refugees from the Emperor Domitian’s murder squad, are now living in a Belgae village in Britain with Bouda, whom they rescued from slavery. It’s supposed to be a safe haven, but some villagers resent their presence, and there are rumours, too, of a possible druid uprising.

Fronto, who has autistic traits, longs to join the Roman Army. He and Vindex, his new friend, set out for the army camp at Aqua Augusta to begin their training. It’s tough but, at last, Fronto is where he wants to be. Then Juba arrives with terrible news: Bouda and Ursula have been kidnapped by druids.

What can Fronto do? Desertion is punishable by death. But he cannot fail his sister…

This is the second in Caroline Lawrence’s new Roman Quests series, and it’s a gripping tale. What I always enjoy about her stories are the details of everyday life which are carefully woven into the story, for example, where people slept, what they ate, what they wore, and how they thought in the Iron Age village where the children are staying.

And what, exactly, Roman Army training was like and how the system worked.

Back in Rome, the children had had a pampered upper-class Roman upbringing. Now they must cope on their own and develop their own inner resources. Fronto, who isn’t naturally brave, must learn courage; and Ursula, a bit of a wild child with an affinity with animals, must learn how to harness her gifts. Then there’s the handsome Castor, doted on by both Ursula and Bouda, whose father’s ship brought them to Britain. Will the two girls’ rivalry bring disaster? There is plenty of scope for development in future books in the series. I can’t wait. For children of 10 plus.

Elizabeth Hawksley

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A BERLIN LOVE SONG Sarah Matthias, Troika, 2017, £7.99, pb, 426pp, 9781909991408 Perfectly pitched to YA readers, this is a beautifully evoked love story between a Romani girl and a German soldier during WWII. The events unfold from both viewpoints: Max, who looks back to the feelings that overwhelmed him as a seventeen-year-old, encountering dark-haired Children & YA

Lili for the first time. And Lili, a trapeze artist from a circus family, whose love for a middle-class Berlin gadjo was always doomed.

Sarah Matthias set out to write about the u n d e r- d o c u m e n t e d persecution of Romani people under Hitler.

She succeeds here quite brilliantly. We see the build-up of the Reich, the events of war and the dire experience of the camps through the disbelieving eyes and love-fogged brains of these two characters and their very different families.

The main story thread is a poignant one and has the ring of emotional truth, but the novel touches on many other emotional complexities in war.

Max, a reluctant conscript, gets sucked into the camaraderie and glory of being a gunner. Not all the SS guards in the Romani concentration camp lack humanity.

This is a long read that is well-paced and always absorbing. Matthias is adept at evoking family life and its daily details: ‘I stared at her legs with a brotherly eye. Were those real silk stockings or just gravy browning and a line of pencil?’ She skilfully weaves in Romani words, stories and customs, such as when Lili risks telling a long Zigeuner (Roma) story to Doktor Mengele, notorious in real life for his experimentation on prisoners.

I loved everything about this book, from the freshness of the writing: ‘Helmuth roared into the farmyard on his motorbike, scattering hens like skittles’, to the harsh intensity of a romance ensnared in the dark events of the Romani Holocaust. One for every library and older-teenage bookshelf.

Marion Rose MARK OF THE CYCLOPS: An Ancient Greek Mystery Saviour Pirotta, illus. Freya Hartas, Bloomsbury, 2017, £6.99, pb, 222pp, 9781472934147 Classical Athens. Nico, a thwarted writer, is secretary to Master Ariston, a professional poet and singer. Thrax is Ariston’s personal slave, an intelligent and observant boy desperate to gain his freedom. When Ariston takes them both by ship to Corinth, Thrax works out which of the two quarrelling crew members is guilty, and the captain and Nico are impressed.

Ariston has been hired to perform at the wedding of the rich merchant Zenon’s daughter.

But things do not go smoothly. An expensive vase, bought specially for the ceremony, is broken.

Zenon blames the slave girl, Gaia, and vows to sell her. Zenon’s younger daughter, Fotini, is upset; Gaia has been with her since childhood. She, too, has noticed that Thrax is good at picking up clues and she begs him and Nico to discover who broke the vase, and why.

The friends soon discover that there’s more Children & YA

to the mystery than one broken vase. A gang of thieves are operating a crime ring and the cryptic Cyclops’ design on other vases indicates something important—but what?

I enjoyed Mark of the Cyclops; I love the way the author introduces the playwright Euripides and brings in characters from Greek mythology in an entirely natural way. We learn a lot about Greek pottery making, Greeks customs, religion and mythology—all woven in seamlessly and painlessly.

I particularly like the way that the author doesn’t shy away from using correct Greek names for things, like ‘chiton’, ‘aulos’ and ‘trireme’, and uses the context to make the words clear. There is also a useful Glossary at the back.

Freya Hartas’s lively and informative illustrations help the reader to see what places, objects and people would have looked like. I’m looking forward to more Nico and Thrax Ancient Greek Mysteries. For 8 plus.

Elizabeth Hawksley CITY OF GRIT AND GOLD Maud Macrory Powell, Allium Press of Chicago, 2017, $16.99, pb, 164pp, 9780996755856 1886 Chicago is the setting for this YA historical novel centered around the Haymarket Affair. Addie is the fast growing twelve-year-old daughter of a German Jewish hat shop owner and his arthritic wife. Her extended family includes her favorite Uncle Chaim, who is actively engaged in protests for the eight-hour workday and the rights of working people. But Addie’s gruff papa thinks the newer immigrants are dangerous troublemakers giving all of them a bad name. Also part of Addie’s world is her lovelorn sister, seeing a boy behind her father’s back, a sickly brother, and twin cousins who Addie loves dearly.

When one of the twins becomes sick with consumption, Addie is sent out onto the Chicago streets to fetch a sympathetic doctor. On one of her travels she runs straight into the aftermath of the rioting in Haymarket Square, on another she discovers harsh working conditions in a walkup sweat shop. Addie finds her ostracized Uncle hiding. She helps bring about a reunion with her mother before the uncle is forced to flee west. Both Uncle Chaim and the doctor urge Addie to stand tall and proud, and the doctor even suggests she might be a doctor or nurse someday. Times are changing in their new country, and she can be part of it all.

Sensitive and beautifully told, City of Grit and Gold captures the 19th-century immigrant experience with its hopes and sorrows. Young readers will find much to compare with today’s refugee crisis as they identify with its resourceful and brave heroine.

Eileen Charbonneau

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WHEN MORNING COMES Arushi Raina, Tradewind, 2016, $10.95/ C$20.00/£6.50, pb, 232pp, 9781926890142 This young adult novel tells the story of the planning and impetus of the 1976 Soweto Uprising

in South Africa—a student-led protest on June 16, 1976, when an estimated 20,000 students protested against the Baas Laws, which required subjects be taught in Afrikaans. Rania uses four distinct and vastly different characters to tell this powerful story.

Zanele is a student plotting to overthrow the apartheid government. Her best friend, Thabo, is a gangster, making his own way in troubled times.

Jack, white, privileged and spoiled, and biding his time until he leaves South Africa for Oxford, has his character tested when he becomes involved with Zanele after a chance meeting. Meena, intrigued by banned pamphlets she finds in the trash outside her father’s shop, is drawn to the student movement by her sense of justice and her own chance meetings with Zanele and Thabo. With the exception of Zanele and Thabo, who have known each other since childhood, the characters are strangers with different racial identities who become closely entwined as the story progresses, each of them saving the other in some way.

This will appeal to fans of historical fiction as well as those who prefer fast-paced novels.

Readers will be seized by the opening pages.

From there, it is a pageturner filled with intrigue, injustice, and murder. When the violence erupts, it is heart-wrenching, and inevitable. Raina brings history to life by focusing on a small slice of a dark time in a nation’s history. As with the best historical fiction, readers will finish this book wishing to know more. Raina provides an extensive glossary to assist with foreign words (Zulu, Afrikaans, and South African) which delightfully pepper the story with authenticity. She also provides historical information for those readers wishing for a bit more context.

Meg Wiviott TIMEKEEPER Tara Sim, Sky Pony Press, 2016, $17.99/C$27.99, hb, 424pp, 9781510706187 Seventeen-year-old Danny Hart is a recently graduated clock mechanic in an alternate England where every town’s local clock tower controls the fabric of time. Mechanics like Danny are in a valued and controversial profession maintaining the clocks, because in the world of Timekeeper, time is a near sentient being. It is embodied in Danny’s culture as mythology—gods Chronos and Aetas—when clock spirits reveal themselves in human form.

Danny is dealing with recent trauma, an explosion at a clock tower on one of his first assignments, and the imprisonment of his father—a senior clock mechanic—in the town of Maldon where time has stopped. Sabotage is suspected as more goes wrong with clocks in London and its surrounding towns. When Enfield’s clock HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 59

experiences repeated injury—a missing numeral, a crack to the clock face—Danny is sent to make repairs and meets Colton, the beautiful clock spirit of the Enfield tower. His relationship with Colton provides Danny insight on the dangers and rewards of romantic attachment between humans and clocks spirits. His interactions with the Lead Mechanic, his mentor Matthias, and his peers, also bring Danny closer to understanding what went wrong in Maldon.

This is an enjoyable read featuring a wellconstructed world and characters with meaningful relationships and conflicts. As with any fantasy novel, disbelief must be suspended, and in Timekeeper a weird typography is accepted as a reflection of warping and other time disruptions.

With the inclusion of steam-powered autos and women in the professional workforce, I did not realize until reading the author’s note that the setting is an alternate Victorian England. This matters little because it has an absorbing story, contains some quite beautiful prose, and seems to carry a deeper message about love and its consequences.

Eva Ulett THE WARDEN’S DAUGHTER Jerry Spinelli, Knopf, 2017, $16.99/C$22.99, hb, 352pp, 9780375831997 In the summer of 1959, Cammie O’Reilly is about to turn thirteen. Cammie’s mother died in an accident when she was a baby, and her father is the warden of the Hancock County Prison.

She and her father live in an apartment above the prison entrance, and Cammie has been through a succession of “Cammie-keepers,” who are trusted female inmates who dust, cook and help take care of her. This summer her keeper is Eloda Pupko, and Cammie decides she wants Eloda to be her mother. She implements a series of events to try to bring out Eloda’s maternal instincts, most of which leave Cammie frustrated and enraged.

Cammie is a soup of teenage emotions: sometimes good-hearted, sometimes verging on evil, a friend, a bully, angry, sad, and always unhappy. She hangs out with the female inmates (which I found odd and a little unrealistic) and her best friend, Reggie, who wants more than anything to be famous. Spinelli does a good job of bringing 1959 alive, with the music, soda fountains and pedal pushers. Cammie seems headed for an emotional breakdown, and the suspense of what will come of her crazy behavior is engaging.

Unfortunately, the climax left me disappointed, as it was too easy. An epilogue of sorts explains more clearly what Cammie’s father and Eloda were doing and thinking, but I would have preferred for that to be integrated into the actual story. The intended audience, ages 9-12, may have an easier time than me relating to Cammie and her coming-of-age summer.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt THESE DARK WINGS: The Ravenmaster Trilogy, Book 1 John Owen Theobald, Head of Zeus, 2016, £6.99, pb, 292pp, 9781784974367 Set during the Second World War, this novel is about 12-year-old Anna Cooper, who goes to 60 | Reviews |

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live in the Tower of London after the death of her mother in an air raid. She must live with her uncle, whom she has never met before because of some ancient quarrel. The story is written in first person through her eyes, and as such the reader gets an unusual perspective on London through the Blitz and the experience of living somewhere so iconic yet so unknown in many ways.

The Tower has its own school and community, and Anna struggles to fit in with her classmates.

She is given the task of helping to feed and care for the famous ravens of the Tower by her uncle, who is the Ravenmaster. The mantra that if the ravens ever leave the tower the kingdom will fall is repeated many, many times. The fears of a German invasion are very evident. In a way Anna feels that she is doing something for England by keeping the ravens safe. This is the first book in a trilogy and a satisfying read for young and more mature adults.

Ann Northfield MIDNIGHT BLUE Simone van der Vlugt (trans. Jenny Watson), Harper, 2017, £7.99, pb, 327 pp, 978008212100 Following the sudden death of her husband after a short-lived, disastrous marriage, young widow Catrin leaves her stifling life in a small village and moves to Amsterdam to work for a well-connected family. In Holland in 1654, society is evolving rapidly, and new exciting vistas are opening up both for Catrin and her employers.

Her new life shows her many things she has dreamed of and a chance to explore her talent for painting. A figure and a secret from her past catch up with her and force her to move on to Delft where she becomes involved in the Delftware potteries and the lives of two brothers. Her painting enables her to work in a way unusual for a woman of her era. Her private life is dramatic and haunted by her past.

This author is apparently well known in the Netherlands, and the novel is translated from Dutch and marketed for young adults. It mixes fictitious story lines with historic facts, including characters such as the painters Vermeer and Rembrandt and the plague which swept Holland at that time. The narrative is written in the first person and the present tense, which means that events are only seen from Catrin’s point of view.

It’s an interesting story, but somehow the drama lacks realism and the style seems a little stilted. The historical elements are wrapped up in a fairly light romance, and the dialogue often seems a little too modern. However, this could be either as a result of translation or deliberate, given that the target market is young people who might be bored by more in-depth historical facts. Overall it is a light and pleasant read about a fascinating period in Dutch history.

Maggi de Rozario THE PEARL THIEF Elizabeth Wein, Bloomsbury, 2017, £7.99, pb, 391pp, 9781408866627 / Disney-Hyperion, 2017, $18.99, hb, 336pp, 9781484717165 Elizabeth Wein is a prolific writer, but this is her first book ‘set where I live’. It portrays a deep love for her adopted Scottish countryside, its culture and

history.

The story takes place in the summer of 1938. Its heroine is the Earl’s daughter, Julia. We meet Julia just after her grandfather’s death, at a time when her ancestral home must be sold and bricks and mortar are transforming the estate into a school.

The tale begins with a bang, a bang on the head that propels Julia into unconsciousness and also into a murder mystery.

Rescued by two young Travellers, Ellen and Euan, whose respect for nature and their indomitable spirit exemplify a proud and vanishing way of life, Julia’s worldview is changed. Pearlfishing and pearl-theft provide an unlikely but brilliant narrative structure. Whatever else the book leaves you with, and Julia’s emotional journey is by no means a conventional one, it leaves you with a longing to see and even handle some of the ‘beautiful fat Tay river pearls’ that form the treasure at the heart of the story.

The story is told through dialogue and from Julia’s perspective, and both are charged and quirky.

The language is plain but evocative: Julia leans out of a window of a car, ‘the fingers of wind rumpling the tufts’ of her hair. The Scottish countryside is rich with the tumble of burns and the song of birds, with otters and kingfishes, salmon and sticklebacks.

But this is a book with its feet on the ground. Its research is thorough: you are quite sure Ms Wein has waded the streams and handled those fat, silver pearls herself. Her depiction of the Travelling People is warm but never cloying.

A book for young adults, written with girls of 13-16 in mind.

Jane Burke BEYOND THE BRIGHT SEA Lauren Wolk, Dutton, 2017, $16.99/C$22.99, hb, 304pp, 9781101994856 In 1913, a baby is born. A few hours later, the infant is placed in a boat and set to sea. She is rescued by a fisherman named Osh, who lives alone on a small, nameless island, one of the Elizabeth Islands off the coast of Massachusetts. Osh names the baby Crow and raises her with the help of Miss Maggie, who lives in nearby Cuttyhunk.

Osh and Miss Maggie aren’t afraid of Crow, but many of the islanders are. It’s possible that Crow was born on Penikese Island, where leprosy patients were quarantined. Also, Crow has dark skin and all her neighbors are white. By the age of twelve, Crow’s curiosity about herself is set to bursting. Was she from the leper colony? Was she from somewhere else? The hospital on Penikese Island was shut down years ago and all the patients moved, so Crow writes to a doctor, hoping to discover if a baby was ever born on the island. Osh is hurt that Crow is not satisfied with her life and him as her father.

This is the story of a girl trying to discover who she is and who she wants to be, but it is also a fastpaced thriller with kidnapping and buried treasure, a murderous escaped convict, and a shipwreck.

Crow, Osh and Miss Maggie are wonderful characters, quirky and lovable and real. The lessons Crow learns about people and herself are profound.

The sea crashes, and the smell of salt and fish and ocean spray will make you feel drenched as you read. The writing is fabulous. For ages 10 and up.

Children & YA

Highly recommended.

Elizabeth Caulfield Felt

MY NAME IS VICTORIA Lucy Worsley, Bloomsbury, 2017, £6.99, pb, 369pp, 9781408882023 1820s. Princess Victoria is being brought up in almost total isolation in Kensington Palace. Her mother is under the thumb of Sir John Conroy, who has instituted ‘The Kensington System’ designed, so he says, to keep the princess safe. Victoria herself thinks it’s designed to keep her lonely and unhappy.

Sir John’s quiet and obedient daughter, Miss V., is taken to the palace to be Victoria’s friend—and to spy for her father. But Miss V soon discovers that things are badly wrong at the palace and, against her will, she starts wondering just who is benefitting from the Kensington System, because it’s certainly not Victoria.

I really enjoyed this. Lucy Worsley manages to get under the skin of the two children and allow the reader to see clearly what the psychological effect is of their isolation from the real world. The claustrophobia of the way of life they are forced to lead is very real, and Victoria, in particular, is worryingly ill-equipped for her future role as queen.

This alternative history, with Miss V Conroy as heroine and narrator, is gripping. It is also deeply rooted in Lucy Worsley’s own knowledge of the period. I enjoyed it tremendously.

Elizabeth Hawksley Lucy Worsley’s My Name is Victoria gripped me from the start to the very end. Her balance of fiction and history made the book extremely captivating and, although it was a novel, it felt that life at Kensington Palace was portrayed very accurately. The book demonstrated all kinds of loyalty and sacrifice, and wasn’t only very enjoyable but educational as well. I think that My Name is Victoria is aimed at eleven plus, as it is written clearly and is easy to feel very much part of the story.

Freya Sutcliffe, age 14

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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN IN LONDON: The British Life of America’s Founding Father George Goodwin, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017, £9.99, pb, 365pp, 9781780227351 This fascinating book follows Benjamin Franklin’s life in Georgian Britain from 1757-1775, with a brief intermission back in Philadelphia. He came in an official capacity to halt the British Government’s proposed Stamp Act—at least until it had been approved by the Philadelphia assembly in America. This wide-ranging tax covered anything which needed an official stamp: like newspapers or tea. He found the British ill-educated about Americans; the official British view was that America was British territory to be ruled by Britain for British interests. Franklin thought of himself as a loyal British American and felt passionately that both countries had much to gain from a relationship that recognized the different needs of America as Children & YA — Nonfiction

valid and important. Alas, his vision went unheeded, and we know what followed.

Franklin was also a man of science, recognized throughout Europe. He made many scientist friends in Britain and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He also invented the lightning conductor, bi-focal spectacles, and mapped the course of the Gulf Stream, amongst many other things.

George Goodwin’s elegantly written book illuminates the complicated politics of the day, Franklin’s home life and his interlocking interests with a wealth of anecdotes. Highly recommended.

Elizabeth Hawksley MOZART’S STARLING Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Little, Brown, 2017, $27.00/ C$35.00, hb, 288pp, 9780316370899 Like its two subjects – Mozart and the European Starling – this natural history is virtuosic, lively, affectionate, and entertaining. Haupt offers a deep dive into a tiny anecdote from the composer’s life – his purchase of a pet starling that had been taught to whistle an air from one of his piano concerti – as the inspiration for a wide-ranging consideration of the songbird’s role in the development of Enlightenment natural philosophy. She adopts and hand-raises a pet starling of her own, the better to understand its true nature, and falls in love with her bright, charming Carmen in the process.

Tucked into her erudite but accessible discussion of the starling’s dual reputation as an intelligent, prized singer and a despised, overpopulated agricultural pest is a jewel of historical fiction in which she imagines the household life of Mozart and his pet starling’s place in it.

The achievement of this book is that it makes us love Carmen too, teaches us to look at both the natural world and the cultural history of 18th century Europe with new, avian eyes, and to recognize the enchanting trill of the starling woven throughout Mozart’s beloved Piano Concerto in G. Kristen McDermott THE APPRENTICE OF SPLIT CROW LANE: The Story of the Carr’s Hill Murder Jane Housham, Riverrun, 2016, £20, hb, 368pp, 9781786481580 In April 1866, in the small village of Carr’s Hill, in the north-east of England, the murdered body of Sarah Melvin, a five-year-old girl, was found by passers-by in the evening. She had been strangled and raped. Jane Housham provides a fascinating study of the circumstances surrounding Sarah’s death. She narrates the efforts to uncover the perpetrator, and then a local youth Cuthbert Carr confesses and, after insisting on pleading guilty at his trial (and therefore forcing the judge to pass a capital sentence on him), he is found to be insane and is incarcerated at the newly opened Broadmoor asylum for the criminally insane. The rest of the story covers his bizarre life there, and the tale reveals much about Victorian society, morals and culture, in particular the 19th-century treatment of the insane, which, in the case of Carr and some other discussed, seems to be relatively enlightened and benign.

This is a very well researched, written and fascinating account of the killing of poor Sarah Melvin and moves into the more challenging issue

of how to appropriately treat crimes committed by those suffering from psychiatric disorders.

Douglas Kemp THE LATE LORD: The Life of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham Jacqueline Reiter, Pen & Sword, 2017, £19.99, hb, 269pp, 9781473856950 John Pitt was the son of a great man (William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham) and the brother of another (William Pitt the Younger), but he never aspired to greatness himself. Indeed his political enemies derided his incompetence and tardiness, calling him in his lifetime ‘the Late Lord Chatham’.

Does Jacqueline Reiter succeed in rehabilitating him? She makes the case that he was not as lacklustre as he has been painted and that he had more than his share of bad luck. Overshadowed by his father and brother until middle age, his chance to make his mark was lost in the shambles of the Walcharen campaign of 1809. His wife’s long bouts of insanity were also a severe drain on his time and energy.

This is an interesting study of a little-known politician, and it contains an excellent account of the Walcharen campaign, which was a bigger expedition than Wellesley’s expedition to the Peninsula.

Edward James CITY OF LIGHT, CITY OF POISON: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris Holly Tucker, W.W. Norton, 2017, $26.95, hb, 336pp, 9780393239782 The Affair of the Poisons rocked the glamorous world of Louis XIV in the 17th century. A series of arrests led to the discovery of an underworld of fortune-tellers and poisoners operating in Paris, with clients high in the ranks of the Sun King’s many courtiers.

Holly Tucker has tackled the complex primary sources of the Archives of the Bastille, and particularly the notes and records of Nicholas La Reynie, Paris’ first chief of police, to produce a compelling account of this complex investigation.

City of Light, City of Poison expertly charts La Reynie’s rise to power and establishment of order on the streets of Paris. La Reynie, though, is challenged greatly as his investigation into a number of potential poisonings mushrooms.

Hundreds of suspects are arrested and imprisoned in the Chateau de Vincennes, and accusations of attempted murder, satanic masses and infanticide are even linked to Louis XIV’s long-time mistress, Athenais, Madame de Montespan.

Moving between suspect courtiers and a motley crew of charlatans, priests and palm readers, City of Light, City of Poison is an excellent companion to read to the work of other popular historians, including Anne Somerset and Antonia Fraser, on this subject. Concise, clear and thorough, it is a highly readable and even gripping account of the affair.

Kate Braithwaite

HNR Issue 80, May 2017 | Reviews | 61

© 2017, The Historical Novel Society ISSN: 1471-7492 | Issue 80, May 2017