Changes

|author=Christina Hammonds ReedLivi Michael|title=The Black Kids|rating=4.5|genre=Teens |summary=Christina Hammonds Reed's debut novel is set against the backdrop of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a reaction to the absolution of four police officers for beating a black man, Rodney King, nearly to death. Told from the perspective of Ashley Bennett, the novel follows her evolution from a silent bystander when confronted with matters of race, to a woman finding her voice Elizabeth and embracing her heritage.|isbn=1471188191}}{{Frontpage|author=Caroline Scott|title=When I Come Home AgainRuth|rating=43.5

|summary=1918 ''Elizabeth and a young man Ruth'' is arrested in Durham Cathedral. He refuses to give a namework of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, no matter how hard they push he will not say who he isbest known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the treatment of the working class published under a pseudonym. Eventually they determine this isnThe ''Ruth't wilful obstinance' from Livi Michael's title appears in her novel as Pasley, he doesna young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and finds herself in Manchester't answer because he doesn't knows New Bailey Prison after a difficult and unjust hand at life. He remembers being on the road for a long time, Set in Manchester between 1839 and being frightened1842, and some of the faces from novel examines the road, but other than that – everything that came before has gone. They need a name for harsh conditions endured by the forms Victorian working poor and so they call him Adam and, because he was found in interrogates the extent to which the Galilee Chapel, it becomes Adam Galilee. A fanciful name wealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for a tired young man in a dishevelled uniform who doesn't know who he is, where he is or how he got thereaddressing these injustices.|isbn=14711921721784633682

|isbnauthor=1405946172Tananarive Due|title=The Glass House|author=Eve ChaseReformatory|rating=4.5

|summary=Rita lost both her parents in Gracetown, Florida. June 1950. After a scuffle with a car crash when she was just white boy, twelve year-old Robbie Stephens Jr is sentenced to six years old: since then shemonths at the Gracetown School for Boys, otherwise known as the Reformatory. It's always craved a family. She'd lived place with her grandmother in Torquay until she got a job as a nanny with brutal and dark reputation. But the Harrington family in London. Soon her engagement to Fred, segregated reformatory is a Torquay butcherchamber of horrors, fell through and haunted by the Harringtons became her familyboys that have died there. In 1971, after a fire at order to survive the London house, Jeannie Harrington, her children, 13-year-old Hera school governor and 6-year-old Teddyhis Funhouse, along with Rita went to Robert must enlist the help of the familyschool's house in the Forest of Deanghosts – only they have their own motivations.. It wasn't ''quite'' dilapidated, but it certainly wasn't the same standard as the London house had been before the fire.|isbn=1803366532}}

|author=Sally MagnussonKatherine Howe|title=The Sealwoman's GiftA True Account

|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary= There Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a legend that God came family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. When she hears there is to visit Adam & Eve be a hanging of some pirates in the Gardentown, she decides to go and watch. Eve had not finished bathing her children Enthralled and ashamed of those still not cleansedhorrified in equal measure, she attempted to hide them from Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the eyes hands of Godtwo vicious pirates. She hides away, denying so that she had more children than thosethey don't find and kill her too, already bathed, that and then to escape them completely she willing paraded for him. God was not runs away to be deceived, howeversea, dressing as a boy and decreed that what was sought to be hidden from joining the eyes of God would henceforth be hidden from notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in the eyes thick of manthings when there is a mutiny on board, and so the Elves were born: from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the hidden folk. They can see man, but man can only see them if they so chooseocean waves.|isbn=14736389840861547438

|author=Wendy Cheyne Sarah Marsh|title=From the Auld Rock to a Hard PlaceA Sign of Her Own|rating=43.5|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary= After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the Jacobite defeat at the Battle use of Cullodensign language was seen as something only savages do, many Scottish estates were given Ellen is sent to English lords. They were not kind a school where she is taught to their crofting tenantslip read, but physically restrained from signing. Many on From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the mainland were cleared deaf and while this did not happen much on using a system called Visible Speech. At the islands such as Shetlandsame time, the new exploitative conditions led many Shetlanders to leave - to port cities Bell is working on the mainlandother inventions and ideas, to North America and even to Australia and New ZealandEllen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage. |isbn= 18385917531035401614

|author= Alison WeirClaire North|title= Six Tudor Queens: Katheryn Howard The Tainted Queen|rating= 4|genre= Historical Fiction|summary= ''Katheryn was seven when her mother died'', thus we are thrust into this tumultuous time in young Katheryn's life, trying to find a home, both figuratively and literally, where she can grow and grieve. Unfortunately, Katheryn is followed by bad luck and she learns an important lesson, she is too young, too poor and too unimportant to be House of any value to anyone, but she is beautiful and surely, that will count for something in the end, won't it?|isbn=1472227778}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529123763|title=Miss Austen|author=Gill HornbyOdysseus

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=It's long been known that Cassandra Austen burned most of 'What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the letters which she and other members palace of the extensive Austen family had exchanged Odysseus, with or about delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her sister Janehusband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. What is not known is ''why'' As ever she did this remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and at this stage - more than two hundred years after Janephysical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's death - shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a definitive answer is unlikely to forthcomingfragile peace. Gill Hornby has provided us One that shatters however with some possible answers in a book that proved to be far more emotionally complex than I was expectingthe return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075

|isbn=1471186393B0C7J9D21B|title=Photographer of the LostA Captive in Algiers (Muhammed Amalfi Mysteries)|author=Caroline ScottA J Lewis

|summary=May 1921When we first meet our hero, his name is Ettore and he lives at The House of Beautiful Swallows. Edie receives Idyllic as this might sound, it's a photograph through the post. There is no letter or note with itbordello and Ettore's mother died when he was born. There is nothing written on the back He's not been short of the photograph. It is a picture mothers, though - but for someone of her husbandhis background in late-eighteenth-century Amalfi, Francisit's difficult to obtain decent employment. Francis has been missing for four yearsThe stint working with the preparation of anchovies didn't work out and bastards are considered bad luck on fishing boats. Technically, Ettore was nothing if not resourceful - and determined - and it was not long before he has been "missing, believed killed" but that is not something that had a successful business as a young widow can believeguide for visitors. She hangs on the word 'missing', disbelieving the word killedHe was even saving some money.

|isbnauthor=099944235XEssie Fox|title=The Man Who Killed Hitler|author=Andre PronovostFascination|rating=34

|summary=Germany The Victorian era is split. Some of her is in favour of Hitler and the Nazisincredibly over-romanticised as a setting for historical fiction (matched only, but much isn't. Some of her is stuck to the east fighting the Soviets, but some will soon have to be on the other frontperhaps, against by the Americans coming into the continent Second World War) which has often led to put things right as they see more than a few writers mishandling it. Finding out There's such a glut of media set in the era that the war to the east isnhallmarks we't working, due ve come to Hitler's tactical ineptitude and inability associate with it are familiar to heed advicethe point of being cliched, some people reckon Stalin is five seasons away from being in Berlinhackneyed even. The only way to shore things up, and repair the splits, All this is simply to kill Hitler, and luckily Baron Nicholas is the man illustrate that it would be an easy thing to do itpoorly. He's aristocratic enoughBut despite that, he knows enough people in industry, society something about it still grabs me – and other circles of power, so once hesomething about this book's succeeded he might be able to keep a German presence in Europedescription did as well. But will he still be able to keep the "predatory American capitalists" and the blatantly communist Soviets from meeting in the middle?|isbn=1914585526

|isbnauthor=1789018625Nicole Jarvis|title=Just Another Girl on the Road|author=S KensingtonA Portrait in Shadow|rating=4 .5

|summary=When Sergeant Farr and Corporal Valentine first encountered Katrinka Badeau she was just eighteen years old and fleeing ''I want all of Florence to know my name'' Cast out from Rome, Artemisia Gentileschi arrives in Florence seeking an oasis in which her art can find a farmhouse home and a group of German deserters who had raped where herfuture can thrive rather than stagnate. Despite being outnumbered she was giving just about But as good some as she got when Farr enters Florentine society she faces great opposition from the powerful Accademia, the self-proclaimed guardians of the healing magics that through paintings have the power to protect the city and Valentine intervened its citizens from plagues and finished the group offcurses. It was 1944 The all-male Accademia has hoarded power over art and Farr architecture for centuries and Valentine were part of the Jedburgh unitguard it above all else. To them, EDMOND, lead by Major Willoughby Nye. Nye recognised Katrinka immediately - he'd worked on her father's merchant ship Artemisia – an ambitious young woman who promises trouble and change – has no place amongst them and Katrinka had once had a crush on Nyetheir society. When he offered her a job with his unit, she accepted|isbn=1803362340

|isbnauthor=1542007232Thomas D Lee|title=The Rabbit Girls|author=Anna ElloryPerilous Times

|genre=Historical FictionFantasy|summary=Berlin, 1989. Miriam ''Hate is the path of least resistance'' Set in the middle of a city freshly unitednear-distant future, with the Wall newly broken down and people able to cross at liberty for the first time in decades. She is in a world on the middle verge of such euphoriaclimate collapse, but cannot feel it, for she has not left her father's apartment Britain is in weeks, nursing him as he lies dyinggreat peril. One standard bed-bath, however, is very different, when he gasps the name ''Frieda'' that she does not recognise – and she sees for The British Isles desperately needs a hero (or several) to save the first time ever a tattoo for his camp inmate identity under his watch. One bombshell outside, then, day and two insiderescue what little remains. And inside her father, Henryk, what is going on, as he has a firstWhat no-person narrative alternating with her story? What will we find happened, as he remembers back to one expected was that one of the Knights of the real Frieda, a young woman that shook him to Round Table would answer the core when he was her literature professor? That's right, more bombshells… call.|isbn=0356518523

|isbnauthor=1529311446G K Holloway|title=The Long Flight Home|author=A L HladIn the Shadows of Castles

|summary=September 1940 - as WWII rages on, bombs rain down on Britain, destroying We begin after the homes momentous battle in 1066 and lives of a people on the edgeday of William of Normandy's coronation as King of England. In Epping Forest, Susan Shepherd William's position is not secure and her grandfather Bertie live together raising homing pigeons with the birds proving a comfort for Susan following the loss of her parentsnew king has many challenges. These pigeons are more than just birds to Susan though – in each one, and especially in Duchess, she sees Imposing authority through a distinct personality and forms a close bondcoronation is important. Meanwhile, young pilot Ollie Evans leaves Maine to head And William is right to Britain and join the Royal Air Forceworry. Working with While the National Pigeon Serviceprevious king, he soon meets Susan Harold, is dead and is tasked with air-dropping hundreds the likelihood of homing pigeons into German-occupied France, where many will not survive. As the mission more pitched battles is plannedover, the bond between Ollie rebels are stirring and Susan grows stronger, but when Ollie's plane is downed behind enemy lines, it may be Duchess who provides an unexpected lifeline and ensures that hope much of the country does not wish to recognise a reunion for Susan and Ollie remains…new overlord.|isbn=1800422466

|isbn=178747920X3949666079|title=Brightfall Noema|author=Jaime Lee MoyerDael Akkerman

|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=Robin Hood ''This is gone – denouncing both his former life and his love Marian, and retreating to a monastery – although no-one knows quite what led him story about some things that happened to abandon all that he had builtme about twelve thousand years ago. Marion's life since has been relatively quiet - but when her friends start dying, Marion ' Maya is tasked by Father Tuck to break a young girl living in a hunter gatherer village during the curse surrounding them and to save their livesMesolithic era. Setting off with a soldierClimate change is occurring, a Fey Lord the Sea of Grass encroaches further and a sullen Robin Hoodfurther into Maya's forest home, she becomes tangled and food is becoming more and more scarce. What to do? Can the law givers in a maze the federation of betrayalsvillages muster peaceful ways to cope? Can the Traveller, complicated relationships, and a vicious struggle for spiritual figure who interprets the throne…wisdom of All Life, provide solutions?

|isbn=17846316471529125898|title=A Perfect ExplanationGodmersham Park|author=Eleanor AnstrutherGill Hornby

|summary=Enid Campbell ''If it were not for the casual dereliction of the odd gentleman's duty, there would no women to teach well-bred daughters at all.'' Anne Sharpe was a woman who, on thirty-one years old when she arrived at Godmersham Park to take up the face position of it, governess to twelve-year-old Fanny Austen. She had everythingno experience of teaching but this was a case of necessity. Leading Until the life death of an aristocrat – full of inherited wealth and splendourher mother, glamourous locales Anne had a comfortable life and high expectations. Only Enid's life has been plagued was loved by mental illness – undiagnosed, untreated and threatening both Enid and those close to parents although herfather was frequently absent from the household. After losing custody of When her childrenmother died, Enid sells her son father cast her off and would have nothing more to do with her sister for £500 – . No explanation was offered but is this she would receive an act annuity of greed£35 a year. Her maid, or an act of desperation? Exploring the true story of her own grandmotherAgnes, Eleanor Anstruther has found the perfect subject for an explosive, moving and beautifully well-written debutwould receive nothing but was fortunately taken in by some neighbours. [[A Perfect Explanation by Eleanor Anstruther|Full Review]]

|isbnauthor=0857058738Melissa Fu |title=Equator|author=Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)Peach Blossom Spring

|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=It strikes me that nobody can speak well of I loved the Wild West outside the walls of prelude to Peach Blossom Spring, a theme parkshort chapter entitled ''Origins''. Our agent to see how bad Unfortunately it was here is Pete Ferguson, who bristles at the indignity only truly poetic part of the white man against Native 'Indian', who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo hunt, and who hates the way man – and woman, of course – can turn against fellow man at the bat of an eyelid. But this book is about so much that I expected more than the 1870s USA, and the attendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocidefrom. He finds himself trying Covering Chinese history from 1938 to find this book2005 as viewed through one family's version of Utopia, namely perspective. When their home city is set ablaze during the Equator, where everything is upside down, people walk on their heads war with rocks in their pockets to keep them on the ground to counter the anti-gravityJapan, a young mother (Meilin) and where, her four-year-old son (Renshu) are among those who knowsflee. The story follows them on their journey across China, things might actually be better. But that equator is a long way away – and therein Renshu's a whole adventure full of Mexico and Latin case eventually to America between him and it… . |isbn=1472277538

|isbn=14722277271916072038|title=Six Tudor Queens: Anna of Kleve, Queen of SecretsThe House in the Hollow (The Talbot Saga)|author=Alison WeirAllie Cresswell

|summary=Poor, frumpy Anne We meet part of Cleaves always gets a raw deal by historythe Talbot family in Yorkshire in November 1811. Twenty-seven-year-old Jocelyn Talbot and her mother have travelled in some discomfort from their home at Ecklington, of all to the wives of Henry VIII she is house in the one who hollow. The two women are angry with each other and Jocelyn is known for being rejected. Anne Boleyn well aware of her mother's strengths and Katheryn Howard were the sexy onesweaknesses: ''She is practiced at subterfuge, at concealing, Jane the dutiful one who delivered beneath a sonfacade of respectability, Katherine of Aragon clung on the deplorable truth''. Hester is furious about Jocelyn's refusal to her crown and Katharine Parr clung on to her life but poor frumpy Anne of Cleaves just rolled over do as she was asked, which has precipitated ''this violent and moved alongunexpected removal''. Not any more! Alison Weir presents us with a different view  Then we are told of this young woman who saw the opportunity to live an independent life birth of a child and, soon after, Hester Talbot departs, leaving Jocelyn in shame and took itisolation in Yorkshire.

|isbnauthor=0718187091Annabel Abbs|title=Liberation Square|author=Gareth RubinThe Language of Food

|summary=In an alternate 1952, Soviet Troops control British Streets. After D-Day goes horribly wrong, Britain Eliza Acton is first occupied by Nazi Germany – only a poet who has never had the slightest inclination to be rescued by Russian soldiers from the East, and Americans from the westboil an egg. Dividing the nation between themWhen tasked with writing a cookery book, London soon finds itself split in twoshe recruits Ann Kirby, a wall running through it like local woman with a scartroubled home life. When Jane Cawson's husband is arrested for the murder of his former wifeTogether, they test, Jane is determined to clear his name. In doing socraft, Jane follows a trail of corruption that leads her right to refine and reshape the highest levels world of domestic cookery, reinventing the state – recipe book and soon finds herself desperate to stay one step ahead changing the face of the murderous secret police…cookery writing forever.|isbn=1398502227

|isbnauthor=191236266XFreya Marske|title=The Boy in a Turban|author=Joseph HucknallA Marvellous Light

|summary=You might not think Robin Blyth is nudged into a job in the Civil Service, much to his chagrin. There he meets Edwin Courcey and learns that Georgian the streets of London contained many black peopleare threaded with magic. But it contained more than you think. You may have heard of Francis BarberDesperate to remove a curse that threatens to swallow him, Robin follows Edwin to the black African slave who became countryside, where the friend of lexicographer Samuel Johnson hedgegrows bristle with incantations and was the people shimmer with power. There they uncover a beneficiary sinister plot that threatens the lives of his willall magicians in the British Isles. |isbn=1529080886}}{{Frontpage|isbn= B09F4CTKJR|title= Flights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer|rating=4. 5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=It''The Boy in a Turban'' tells s the story later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is a fictional black character, Jamesyoung American who has signed up and joined the 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in Canada, the first to be attached to the RAF and the first to be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in Georgian Londonactive combat. JamesBut before that can happen, then Quaccoe, is brought Petrol has to master flying the capital from a Jamaican plantation by a ship captain who wanted a servant for his two daughtersnotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.

|isbnauthor=034901082XChristophe Medler|title=In The Full Light of the Sun|author=Clare ClarkMadrigal: A Closely Guarded Secret|rating=54

|summary=In 1930's BerlinSet against the backdrop of the English Civil War, three people obsessed with art find themselves swept up into a scandalsecret plan (code-named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Robert Douse in the summer of 1642. Emmeline, As a wayward young student, Julius, an anxious middle-aged art expertloyal servant of the King, and Rachmann, a mysterious art dealer, live in Head of the politically turbulent Weimar BerlinSecret Service, and soon find themselves whipped up into excitement over it is Robert's duty to uncover the surprise discovery details of thirty-two previously unknown paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. Based on a true story the plan and unfolding through follow the subsequent rise clues to uncover one of Hitler and the Nazis, most guarded secrets in history—especially since the discovery of plot could affect the art allows these characters to explore authenticity, vanity and self-delusionKing.|isbn=B095HY8SXQ

|isbn=07490248011471187179|title=The Phoenix of FlorenceA Beautiful Spy|author=Philip KazanRachel Hore|rating=54

|summary=Deep Minnie is an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting life in a leafy provincial suburb. The book is set in the 1930s and Minnie is expected to live up to her mother's expectations and find a nice young man to marry, produce children and spend the Tuscan countryside rest of fifteenth-century Italy, Onoria survives a massacre that destroys her family days looking after her husband and their home. Alone in the forest Unfortunately, this isn't what she meets wants to do at all and neither does she want to continue working as a secretary. As a band result of soldiers whoa chance meeting, she finds herself drawn into espionage, believing her working for the secret service and effectively living a double life - attempting to be a boy train and develop infiltrate the Communist Party of Great Britain. Minnie finds herself torn between what she perceives as her – duty and the determined Onoria becomes a mercenary – desperate to avoid any situation in which friends she may feel vulnerable againhas made - and likes - whilst working for the Communist Party. Along }}{{Frontpage|author=Afonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|title=Kokoschka's Doll|rating=2.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Well, this looked very much like a book I could love from the way, she meets exget-soldier Celavinigo, whose journey to Florence sees him investigating two brutal murderswhich is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of it. As he digs further and uncovers links I found things to his own family historypotentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, Celavini must revisit a chapter whose number was in the past he shares 20,000s, letters used as narrative form, and so on. It intrigued with Onoriathe subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentioned, in too. But you've seen the hope star rating that they comes with this review, and can lay tell that if love was on these pages, it was not actually caused by them. So what happened?|isbn=1529402697}}{{Frontpage|author=Christina Hammonds Reed|title=The Black Kids|rating=4.5|genre=Teens |summary=Christina Hammonds Reed's debut novel is set against the backdrop of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a reaction to the ghosts absolution of their shared history four police officers for beating a black man, Rodney King, nearly to rest before it's too late.death.Told from the perspective of Ashley Bennett, the novel follows her evolution from a silent bystander when confronted with matters of race, to a woman finding her voice and embracing her heritage.|isbn=1471188191