Changes

|author=Freya MarskeLivi Michael|title=A Marvellous LightElizabeth and Ruth|rating=43.5

|summary=Robin Blyth ''Elizabeth and Ruth'' is nudged into a job in work of historical fiction wrought from the life of the Civil ServiceVictorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, much to his chagrin. There he meets Edwin Courcey and learns that best known for her first novel Mary Barton (1848), a radical critique of the streets treatment of London are threaded with magicthe working class published under a pseudonym. Desperate to remove The ''Ruth'' from Livi Michael's title appears in her novel as Pasley, a young Irish prostitute who was abandoned as a child and finds herself in Manchester's New Bailey Prison after a curse that threatens to swallow himdifficult and unjust hand at life. Set in Manchester between 1839 and 1842, Robin follows Edwin to the countryside, where novel examines the harsh conditions endured by the hedgegrows bristle with incantations Victorian working poor and interrogates the people shimmer with power. There they uncover a sinister plot that threatens the lives of all magicians in extent to which the British Isleswealthy (including Gaskell herself) were responsible for addressing these injustices. |isbn=15290808861784633682

|isbnauthor= B09F4CTKJRTananarive Due|title= Flights for Freedom|author= Steven BurgauerThe Reformatory|rating=4.5

|summary=Gracetown, Florida. June 1950. After a scuffle with a white boy, twelve year-old Robbie Stephens Jr is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, otherwise known as the Reformatory. It's the later stages of World War I a place with a brutal and dark reputation. But the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus segregated reformatory is a young American who has signed up and joined chamber of horrors, haunted by the 17 Aero Squadronboys that have died there. This company was the first US Aero Squadron In order to be trained in Canada, survive the first to be attached to the RAF school governor and his Funhouse, Robert must enlist the first to be sent into help of the skies to fight the Germans in active combatschool's ghosts – only they have their own motivations.. But before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|isbn=1803366532}}

|author= Christophe MedlerKatherine Howe|title=Madrigal: A Closely Guarded SecretTrue Account|rating=4.5|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary= Set against the backdrop of the English Civil WarHannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who run an inn, and being made to work there from a secret plan (code-named Madrigal) young age. When she hears there is discovered by Sir Robert Douse in the summer of 1642. As to be a loyal servant hanging of some pirates in the Kingtown, she decides to go and Head of the Secret Servicewatch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, it is RobertHannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's duty to uncover death at the details hands of the plan two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that they don't find and kill her too, and follow the clues then to escape them completely she runs away to uncover one of sea, dressing as a boy and joining the most guarded secrets notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds herself in history—especially since the plot could affect thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the Kingocean waves.|isbn=B095HY8SXQ0861547438

|isbnauthor=1471187179Sarah Marsh|title=A Beautiful Spy|author=Rachel HoreSign of Her Own|rating=43.5|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=Minnie is an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting 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 in a leafy provincial suburbchanges. The book is set Living in a time when the 1930s and Minnie use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is expected to live up sent to her mother's expectations and find a nice young man school where she is taught to marrylip read, produce children and spend the rest of her days looking after her husband and their homebut physically restrained from signing. UnfortunatelyFrom here, this isn't what she wants to do at all ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and neither does she want to continue working as using a secretarysystem called Visible Speech. As a result of a chance meetingAt the same time, Bell is working on other inventions and ideas, she and Ellen finds herself drawn into espionage, working for the secret service and effectively living unwittingly caught up in a double life - attempting to infiltrate the Communist Party complicated tangle of Great Britain. Minnie finds herself torn between what she perceives as her duty and the friends she has made - and likes - whilst working for the Communist Partyespionage.|isbn=1035401614

|author=Afonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)Claire North|title=Kokoschka's DollHouse of Odysseus|rating=2.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Well, this looked very much like a book I ''What could matter more than love from the get?'' The follow-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of it. I found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a chapter whose number was in few months after where we left off. In the 20palace of Odysseus,000s, letters used as narrative formwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and so onthen by divine intervention never returned home. It intrigued with As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew throne of it mentioned, toothe Western Isles. But youHaving survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca've seen s shores, Queen Penelope is on the star rating brink of a fragile peace. One that comes shatters however with this reviewthe return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and can tell that if love was on these pageshis sister Elektra, it was not actually caused by themseeking refuge. So what happened?|isbn=15294026970356516075

|authorisbn=Christina Hammonds ReedB0C7J9D21B|title=The Black KidsA Captive in Algiers (Muhammed Amalfi Mysteries)|author=A J Lewis

|genre=Teens Historical Fiction|summary=Christina Hammonds Reed's debut novel When we first meet our hero, his name is set against the backdrop Ettore and he lives at The House of the 1992 Los Angeles riotsBeautiful Swallows. Idyllic as this might sound, it's a reaction to the absolution bordello and Ettore's mother died when he was born. He's not been short of four police officers mothers, though - but for beating a black mansomeone of his background in late-eighteenth-century Amalfi, Rodney King, nearly it's difficult to deathobtain decent employment. Told from The stint working with the perspective preparation of Ashley Bennett, the novel follows her evolution from anchovies didn't work out and bastards are considered bad luck on fishing boats. Ettore was nothing if not resourceful - and determined - and it was not long before he had a silent bystander when confronted with matters of race, to successful business as a woman finding her voice and embracing her heritageguide for visitors. He was even saving some money.|isbn=1471188191

|author=Caroline ScottEssie Fox|title=When I Come Home AgainThe Fascination|rating=4.5

|summary=1918 and The Victorian era is incredibly over-romanticised as a young man is arrested in Durham Cathedral. He refuses setting for historical fiction (matched only, perhaps, by the Second World War) which has often led to give more than a name, no matter how hard they push he will not say who he isfew writers mishandling it. Eventually they determine this isn't wilful obstinance, he doesnThere't answer because he doesn't know. He remembers being on the road for s such a long time, and being frightened, and some glut of media set in the era that the faces from hallmarks we've come to associate with it are familiar to the roadpoint of being cliched, but other than hackneyed even. All this is simply to illustrate that – everything it would be an easy thing to do poorly. But despite that came before has gone. They need a name for the forms and so they call him Adam and, because he was found in the Galilee Chapel, something about it becomes Adam Galilee. A fanciful name for a tired young man in a dishevelled uniform who doesnstill grabs me – and something about this book't know who he is, where he is or how he got theres description did as well.|isbn=14711921721914585526

|isbnauthor=1405946172Nicole Jarvis|title=The Glass House|author=Eve ChaseA Portrait in Shadow

|summary=Rita lost both her parents in a car crash when she was just six years old: since then she's always craved a family. She'd lived with her grandmother I want all of Florence to know my name'' Cast out from Rome, Artemisia Gentileschi arrives in Torquay until she got a job as a nanny with the Harrington family Florence seeking an oasis in London. Soon which her engagement to Fred, art can find a Torquay butcher, fell through home and the Harringtons became where her familyfuture can thrive rather than stagnate. In 1971But as some as she enters Florentine society she faces great opposition from the powerful Accademia, after a fire at the London house, Jeannie Harrington, her children, 13self-yearproclaimed guardians of the healing magics that through paintings have the power to protect the city and its citizens from plagues and curses. The all-old Hera male Accademia has hoarded power over art and 6-year-old Teddy, along with Rita went to the family's house in the Forest of Deanarchitecture for centuries and guard it above all else. It wasn't ''quite'' dilapidatedTo them, but it certainly wasn't the same standard as the London house had been before the fireArtemisia – an ambitious young woman who promises trouble and change – has no place amongst them and their society.|isbn=1803362340

|author=Sally MagnussonThomas D Lee|title=The Sealwoman's GiftPerilous Times|rating=4.53|genre=Historical FictionFantasy|summary= There ''Hate is a legend that God came to visit Adam & Eve the path of least resistance'' Set in the Garden. Eve had not finished bathing her children and ashamed of those still not cleansednear-distant future, she attempted to hide them from in a world on the eyes verge of Godclimate collapse, denying that she had more children than those, already bathed, that she willing paraded for himBritain is in great peril. God was not The British Isles desperately needs a hero (or several) to be deceived, however, save the day and decreed that rescue what little remains. What no-one expected was sought to be hidden from the eyes that one of God would henceforth be hidden from the eyes Knights of man, and so the Elves were born: Round Table would answer the hidden folk. They can see man, but man can only see them if they so choosecall.|isbn=14736389840356518523

|author=Wendy Cheyne G K Holloway|title=From In the Auld Rock to a Hard PlaceShadows of Castles|rating=4.5

|summary= After We begin after the Jacobite defeat at momentous battle in 1066 and on the Battle day of Culloden, William of Normandy's coronation as King of England. William's position is not secure and the new king has many Scottish estates were given to English lordschallenges. Imposing authority through a coronation is important. They were not kind And William is right to their crofting tenantsworry. Many on While the mainland were cleared previous king, Harold, is dead and while this did not happen much on the islands such as Shetlandlikelihood of more pitched battles is over, the new exploitative conditions led many Shetlanders to leave - to port cities on rebels are stirring and much of the mainland, country does not wish to North America and even to Australia and New Zealandrecognise a new overlord. |isbn= 18385917531800422466

|authorisbn= Alison Weir3949666079|title= Six Tudor Queens: Katheryn Howard The Tainted QueenNoema|author=Dael Akkerman|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical General Fiction|summary= ''Katheryn was seven when her mother diedThis is a story about some things that happened to me about twelve thousand years ago.'' Maya is a young girl living in a hunter gatherer village during the Mesolithic era. Climate change is occurring, thus we are thrust the Sea of Grass encroaches further and further into this tumultuous time in young KatherynMaya's life, trying to find a forest home, both figuratively and literally, where she can grow food is becoming more and grievemore scarce. Unfortunately, Katheryn is followed by bad luck and she learns an important lesson, she is too young, too poor and too unimportant What to be do? Can the law givers in the federation of any value villages muster peaceful ways to anyonecope? Can the Traveller, but she is beautiful and surely, that will count for something in a spiritual figure who interprets the endwisdom of All Life, won't itprovide solutions?|isbn=1472227778

|isbn=15291237631529125898|title=Miss AustenGodmersham Park

|summary=It''If it were not for the casual dereliction of the odd gentleman's long been known that Cassandra duty, there would no women to teach well-bred daughters at all.'' Anne Sharpe was thirty-one years old when she arrived at Godmersham Park to take up the position of governess to twelve-year-old Fanny Austen burned most . She had no experience of teaching but this was a case of necessity. Until the letters which she death of her mother, Anne had a comfortable life and other members of was loved by both parents although her father was frequently absent from the extensive Austen family had exchanged household. When her mother died, her father cast her off and would have nothing more to do with or about her sister Jane. What is not known is No explanation was offered but she would receive an annuity of £35 a year. Her maid, Agnes, would receive nothing but was fortunately taken in by some neighbours.}}{{Frontpage|author=Melissa Fu |title=Peach Blossom Spring |rating=3.5|genre=Historical Fiction |summary= I loved the prelude to Peach Blossom Spring, a short chapter entitled ''whyOrigins'' she did this and at this stage - . Unfortunately it is the only truly poetic part of a book that I expected more than two hundred years after Janefrom. Covering Chinese history from 1938 to 2005 as viewed through one family's death perspective. When their home city is set ablaze during the war with Japan, a young mother (Meilin) and her four-year- a definitive answer is unlikely to forthcomingold son (Renshu) are among those who flee. Gill Hornby has provided us with some possible answers The story follows them on their journey across China, and in a book that proved Renshu's case eventually to be far more emotionally complex than I was expectingAmerica. |isbn=1472277538

|isbn=14711863931916072038|title=Photographer of The House in the LostHollow (The Talbot Saga)|author=Caroline ScottAllie Cresswell

|summary=May 1921. Edie receives a photograph through We meet part of the post. There is no letter or note with itTalbot family in Yorkshire in November 1811. There is nothing written on Twenty-seven-year-old Jocelyn Talbot and her mother have travelled in some discomfort from their home at Ecklington, to the back of house in the photographhollow. It The two women are angry with each other and Jocelyn is a picture well aware of her husband, Francis. Francis has been missing for four years. Technicallymother's strengths and weaknesses: ''She is practiced at subterfuge, he has been "missingat concealing, believed killed" but that is not something that beneath a young widow can believe. She hangs on facade of respectability, the word deplorable truth''missing. Hester is furious about Jocelyn's refusal to do as she was asked, disbelieving which has precipitated ''this violent and unexpected removal''. Then we are told of the word killedbirth of a child and, soon after, Hester Talbot departs, leaving Jocelyn in shame and isolation in Yorkshire.

|isbnauthor=099944235XAnnabel Abbs|title=The Man Who Killed Hitler|author=Andre PronovostLanguage of Food|rating=35

|summary=Germany Eliza Acton is split. Some of her is in favour of Hitler and a poet who has never had the Nazis, but much isn't. Some of her is stuck slightest inclination to the east fighting the Soviets, but some will soon have to be on the other front, against the Americans coming into the continent to put things right as they see itboil an egg. Finding out that the war to the east isn't workingWhen tasked with writing a cookery book, due to Hitler's tactical ineptitude and inability to heed adviceshe recruits Ann Kirby, some people reckon Stalin is five seasons away from being in Berlina local woman with a troubled home life. The only way to shore things upTogether, and repair the splitsthey test, is to kill Hitlercraft, refine and luckily Baron Nicholas is reshape the man to do it. He's aristocratic enough, he knows enough people in industry, society and other circles world of powerdomestic cookery, so once he's succeeded he might be able to keep a German presence in Europe. But will he still be able to keep reinventing the "predatory American capitalists" recipe book and changing the blatantly communist Soviets from meeting in the middle?face of cookery writing forever.|isbn=1398502227

|isbnauthor=1789018625Freya Marske|title=Just Another Girl on the Road|author=S KensingtonA Marvellous Light|rating=4

|summary=When Sergeant Farr and Corporal Valentine first encountered Katrinka Badeau she was just eighteen years old and fleeing from Robin Blyth is nudged into a farmhouse job in the Civil Service, much to his chagrin. There he meets Edwin Courcey and a group learns that the streets of German deserters who had raped herLondon are threaded with magic. Despite being outnumbered she was giving just about as good as she got when Farr Desperate to remove a curse that threatens to swallow him, Robin follows Edwin to the countryside, where the hedgegrows bristle with incantations and Valentine intervened and finished the group offpeople shimmer with power. It was 1944 and Farr and Valentine were part There they uncover a sinister plot that threatens the lives of all magicians in the Jedburgh unit, EDMOND, lead by Major Willoughby NyeBritish Isles. Nye recognised Katrinka immediately - he'd worked on her father's merchant ship and Katrinka had once had a crush on Nye. When he offered her a job with his unit, she accepted|isbn=1529080886

|isbn=1542007232B09F4CTKJR|title=The Rabbit GirlsFlights for Freedom|author=Anna EllorySteven Burgauer|rating=34.5

|summary=Berlin, 1989It's the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Miriam Petrol Petronus is in the middle of a city freshly united, with the Wall newly broken down young American who has signed up and people able to cross at liberty for joined the first time in decades17 Aero Squadron. She is in This company was the middle of such euphoria, but cannot feel it, for she has not left her father's apartment first US Aero Squadron to be trained in weeksCanada, nursing him as he lies dying. One standard bed-bath, however, is very different, when he gasps the name ''Frieda'' that she does not recognise – first to be attached to the RAF and she sees for the first time ever a tattoo for his camp inmate identity under his watchto be sent into the skies to fight the Germans in active combat. One bombshell outsideBut before that can happen, then, and two inside. And inside her father, Henryk, what is going on, as he Petrol has a first-person narrative alternating with her story? What will we find happened, as he remembers back to master flying the real Frieda, a young woman that shook him to the core when he was her literature professor? That's right, more bombshells… notoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.

|isbnauthor=1529311446Christophe Medler|title=The Long Flight Home|author=Madrigal: A L HladClosely Guarded Secret|rating=4.5

|summary=September 1940 - as WWII rages on, bombs rain down on Britain, destroying Set against the homes and lives backdrop of a people on the edge. In Epping ForestEnglish Civil War, Susan Shepherd and her grandfather Bertie live together raising homing pigeons with the birds proving a comfort for Susan following secret plan (code-named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Robert Douse in the loss summer of her parents1642. These pigeons are more than just birds to Susan though – in each one, and especially in Duchess, she sees As a distinct personality and forms a close bond. Meanwhileloyal servant of the King, young pilot Ollie Evans leaves Maine to head to Britain and join Head of the Royal Air Force. Working with the National Pigeon Secret Service, he soon meets Susan and it is tasked with air-dropping hundreds Robert's duty to uncover the details of homing pigeons into German-occupied France, where many will not survive. As the mission is planned, plan and follow the bond between Ollie 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 clues to uncover one of a reunion for Susan and Ollie remains…the most guarded secrets in history—especially since the plot could affect the King.|isbn=B095HY8SXQ

|isbn=178747920X1471187179|title=Brightfall A Beautiful Spy|author=Jaime Lee MoyerRachel Hore|rating=4.5

|summary=Robin Hood Minnie is gone – denouncing both his former an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting life in a leafy provincial suburb. The book is set in the 1930s and his love Marian, and retreating Minnie is expected to a monastery – although no-one knows quite what led him live up to abandon all that he had built. Marionher mother's life since has been relatively quiet - but when her friends start dyingexpectations and find a nice young man to marry, Marion is tasked by Father Tuck to break produce children and spend the curse surrounding them rest of her days looking after her husband and to save their liveshome. Setting off with a soldier Unfortunately, a Fey Lord this isn't what she wants to do at all and neither does she want to continue working as a sullen Robin Hood, she becomes tangled in secretary. As a maze result of betrayalsa chance meeting, complicated relationshipsshe finds herself drawn into espionage, working for the secret service and effectively living a vicious struggle double life - attempting to infiltrate the Communist Party of Great Britain. Minnie finds herself torn between what she perceives as her duty and the friends she has made - and likes - whilst working for the throne…Communist Party.

|isbnauthor=1784631647Afonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|title=A Perfect Explanation|author=Eleanor AnstrutherKokoschka's Doll|rating=2.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Enid Campbell Well, this looked very much like a book I could love from the get-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of it. I found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, a chapter whose number was a woman whoin the 20,000s, letters used as narrative form, and so on . It intrigued with the face subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of itmentioned, had everythingtoo. Leading But you've seen the life of an aristocrat – full of inherited wealth star rating that comes with this review, and splendourcan tell that if love was on these pages, glamourous locales and high expectationsit was not actually caused by them. So what happened?|isbn=1529402697}}{{Frontpage|author=Christina Hammonds Reed|title=The Black Kids|rating=4. Only Enid5|genre=Teens |summary=Christina Hammonds Reed's life has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnoseddebut novel is set against the backdrop of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, untreated and threatening both Enid and those close a reaction to her. After losing custody the absolution of her childrenfour police officers for beating a black man, Rodney King, Enid sells her son nearly to her sister for £500 – but is this an act death. Told from the perspective of greedAshley Bennett, or an act of desperation? Exploring the true story novel follows her evolution from a silent bystander when confronted with matters of race, to a woman finding her own grandmother, Eleanor Anstruther has found the perfect subject for an explosive, moving voice and beautifully well-written debutembracing her heritage. [[A Perfect Explanation by Eleanor Anstruther|Full Review]]isbn=1471188191