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Newest Historical Fiction Reviews (view source)

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[[Category:Historical Fiction|*]]
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===[[The Parentations by Kate Mayfield]]===
 
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Fantasy|Fantasy]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
 
In eighteenth century London, sisters Fitzgerald, Constance and Verity are changed forever when they become entwined with the Fowler family - and charged with protecting a mysterious child. Fast forward to the London of 2015, and the sisters are still waiting - with no way of knowing if the boy is alive or dead. Far away, a hidden pool grants those who sup from it eternal life, but also forces them to keep a secret for two hundred years. As those years pass by, those who were granted immortality find that it's far from a blessing - with true darkness emerging in the absence of death. [[The Parentations by Kate Mayfield|Full Review]]
 
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===[[Munich: The Man Who Said No! by David Laws]]===
 
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Thrillers|Thrillers]]
 
I've played Neville Chamberlain in public, you know – a full one-line in a ''Beyond the Fringe'' sketch, where he says he has a piece of paper from Hitler. I then proceeded to prove it was a paper bag, in fact, by blowing it up and immediately bursting it. That is what that paper was to many – the indicator of a lot of hot air, and only leading to an unwelcome noise, when WW2 actually struck anyway. Certainly, not everyone was keen on his appeasement with the Nazis, and this book opens with the first-person reportage of one such man, keen on showing proof to Chamberlain that he should not sign the Sudetenland away. But he only got so far before his story was cut off entirely – leaving a grand-daughter, Emma, at Cambridge but under a cloud of ignominy, to pick the last, barest threads of the story up and see just what did happen to him. Oh, and her help has just come out of prison… [[Munich: The Man Who Said No! by David Laws|Full Review]]
 
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===[[Kin by Snorri Kristjansson]]===
 
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
 
Unnthor Reginsson is the uncrowned king of the valley; retired Viking farmer and rumoured owner of a large hoard of gold. He is gathering his clan, a grand reunion after ten years of absence. It is time for strengthening family bonds, feasting, telling tall tales and remembering shared history. [[Kin by Snorri Kristjansson|Full Review]]
 
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===[[Templar Silks by Elizabeth Chadwick]]===
 
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
 
''Templar Silks'' is a great example of historical fiction done well. It's a fictitious account of William Marshal's time in Jerusalem during the late 1100s during a brief spell of calm before the death of King Baldwin to leprosy in 1185. Elizabeth Chadwick has written a previous book about William Marshal but glossed over this period in his life for lack of research. In this book she goes back to fill in the gaps having spent time studying this particular period of his life. Her main problem, as she acknowledges at the end of the book, is that virtually nothing is known of Marshal's time in Jerusalem. We know when and why he went, we know who the major power players were, we know when he came back and that is about it. So understandably, this book is probably more fiction than history but it is brilliantly written none the less. [[Templar Silks by Elizabeth Chadwick|Full Review]]
 
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===[[Revenge by Mitchell & Mitchell]]===
 
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
 
''Revenge'' opens with the news that Charles Stuart is to return to the throne as Charles II of England. A young woman, Ruth Courtney, is returning home to her family's farmhouse, excited at the prospect of a new King. She arrives home, however, to find her home ablaze and surrounded by renegade soldiers, supporters of Cromwell, her family nowhere to be found. [[Revenge by Mitchell & Mitchell|Full Review]]
 
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===[[The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi]]===
 
[[image:2.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
 
''The Baghdad Clock'' is a tale of two friends growing up during the first and second Iraqi war. Shahad Al Rawi uses magic realism to illustrate the displacement felt by a young girl and her neighbourhood. The novel introduces us to the various characters surrounding the protagonist. They are full of life and yet never seem to add anything to the central narrative. Rawi, it would seem, has a problem with telling a story. [[The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi|Full Review]]
 
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===[[The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements]]===
 
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Horror|Horror]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
 
Maybe you've heard about Scarcross Hall? Hidden on the old coffin path that winds from the village to the moor top, the villagers only speak of it in hushed tones - of how it's a foreboding place filled with evil. Mercy Booth has lived there since birth, and she's always loved the grand house and its isolation, but a recurrence of strange events begins to unsettle her. From objects disappearing through to a shadowy presence sensed in the house, mysteries come to light that can only be solved by Mercy unearthing long-buried secrets. And will a dark stranger help Mercy protect everything she has come to love or tear it from her grasp? [[The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements|Full Review]]
 
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===[[Walking Wounded by Sheila Llewellyn]]===
 
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
 
David Reece was called up in 1941 and sent to fight in Burma. On his return in 1946, he finds a return to civilian life quite beyond him and, after a brawl, is sent to a military psychiatric hospital. There, he is treated by Daniel Carter, a psychiatrist whose instincts tell him that talking therapies can work with men like David, but who is working in a profession enthusiastically adopting invasive procedures such as ECT and lobotomy. ''Walking Wounded'' follows both men as they both try to come to terms with traumatic experiences and find a place in a world moving on from WWII. [[Walking Wounded by Sheila Llewellyn|Full Review]]
 
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===[[The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris]]===
 
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
 
So, you arrive in all ignorance at Auschwitz, and see the horror there, and immediately swear to survive the ordeal to see retribution dealt on those behind it, but what do you do to see that oath out? Do you get to work diligently as the Nazis demand, to the extent you get the word ''collaborator'' muttered behind your back? Do you dare to stick your neck out and get a job that means you're actually a Jew working in the political wing of the SS, answerable to Berlin? Do you dare get contacts with civilian workers building the place, and trade the loot purloined from the incoming victims' belongings with food they smuggle in for you, under the eyes of all the camp guards? The man whose real life story inspired this novel did all that, and survived to tell the tale, but he also managed to do something even more daring, and unexpected – he dared to invest hope in a burgeoning love that he found in the camp. [[The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris|Full Review]]
 
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===[[The Optickal Illusion: A very eighteenth-century scandal by Rachel Halliburton]]===
 
[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
 
Rachel Halliburton's debut novel opens in London in January 1797. Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy, is reflecting on the past year's scandal involving the Provises, father and daughter, and worries that he handled everything poorly. From the start the book's figurative language is appropriately full of colour and painterly techniques: 'He had intended to deal with them honourably, but now everyone in London was saying he had not. It was as if somebody had dropped a small amount of ivory black paint into yellow orpiment on a palette – the more he prodded and stirred the memory, the murkier it became.' [[The Optickal Illusion: A very eighteenth-century scandal by Rachel Halliburton|Full Review]]
 
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===[[W by John Banks]]===
 
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
 
On the slopes of Mt Hood in Oregon, an 1000-year old Viking is discovered frozen - three thousand miles further west than any previously known Viking exploration. Josh Kinninger is inspired by the Viking discovery - three personal catastrophes having left him angry, unmoored and with his world in turmoil. Beginning a journey westward, he's filled with a desire to wreak vengeance on the individuals he finds morally corrupt. [[W by John Banks|Full Review]]
 
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|author=Patricia FalveyElaine Everest|title=The Girls of Ennismore: A Heart-Rending Irish SagaChristmas at Woolworths|rating=43.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Ireland 1900: Ennismore House's young heiress Victoria had hoped that she and Rosie Killeen would be friends forever. Rosie soon comes to know better as there's a social chasm between those who live in the House and those, like Rosie's family, who have been brought up merely to serve them. The days of innocence are coming to an end in many ways. Soon, as the cry for Irish Home Rule becomes louder, there'll be more than steps on society's ladder between them as each must discover their own way in a nation that will never be the same again.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786490625</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Elaine Everest|title= The Butlins Girls|rating= 4
|genre= Historical Fiction
|summary=Fresh''Christmas at Woolworths'' is the sequel to wartime saga ''The Woolworths Girls,'' and continues the story where the first book left off. Members of the close-faced Molly Missons has just arrived knit community in Skegness Erith are doing their best to start her new job as a Butlins auntiepull together and keep morale high, even though the future is uncertain. Behind At the heart of the neighbourhood, the smiles home of kindly matriarch Ruby is a beacon where family and confident appearance, she hides friends can gather for good food and conversation: a secretway to forget the troubles outside. Spirits remain high; she has taken even when the job bombs are falling so close to escape escalating problems at home. She soon finds good We catch up with the three friends in her chalet-mates Bunty from the first book: Sarah yearns for peace and Pluman end to the war, and it turns out that they each have their own reasons Maisie is desperate for wanting a fresh start. Meanwhile, Molly is shocked child and Freda would love to discover that her movie-star crush Johnny Johnson is working as an entertainment adviser at the campfind romance. Is he really as suave as his on-screen persona? And why is he working at the camp anywayWill they all get their wishes this Christmas? As hidden secrets become discovered, Molly and her new friends face new threats and dangers that may threaten their new-found freedom.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>14472955361509843655</amazonuk>
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|author= Geraint JonesMinette Walters|title= Blood ForestThe Last Hours|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical Fiction|summary= FelixIn June 1348 the Black Death came into the country through the port of Melcombe in Dorset. The lucky oneIgnorant of many rules of hygiene which we'd find basic nearly seven hundred years later, the disease rages through the country. He doesn't feel especially lucky when he staggers out into On the estate of Develish, Lady Anne Develish took control of the grove and finds twelve future of his comrades butchered and mutilated the people who lived in the worst possible waysdemesne after her husband had ridden off to try and secure a marriage for his daughter. He felt even less lucky Two hundred bonded serfs lived on the estate and when Lady Anne realised the virulence of the soldiers arrivedplague she ordered that the estate refuse entry to anyone, Roman cavalry. He might have runincluding her husband and his entourage, but he knew he'd never make it. He stepped out for fear that they would bring the disease to face whatever came nexther people.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>07181848151760632139</amazonuk>
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|author= Dominic SmithLars Mytting and Paul Russell Grant (Translator)|title= The Last Painting Sixteen Trees of Sara de Vosthe Somme|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical General Fiction|summary= If you find While his grandfather lived the techniques used by Rembrandt and Vermeer fascinating, ''The Last Painting past was an area of Sara de Voscertainty for Edvard. At aged 4 he'' provides a masterclass in how d been taken to work up a canvas in stages. Framing the novel as the story of a seventeenth century Dutch paintinglive with his grandparents, Dominic Smith vividly sketches out having survived the main contours of accident that killed his characters and the three time periods they inhabit before we are even one fifth of the way throughparents. Sara is one of the few women artists of the period and her painting is of children skating on a frozen canal, her now dead daughter its central figure. The painting Now his grandfather has been in Marty de Groot's died revelations are coming to light showing Edvard his family since before Isaac Newton was born and he history is the patent lawyer different from whom it is stolen in 1950s Manhattan. Ellie Shipley forged a copy of the painting in her postgraduate student years and in 2000 finds herself at the centre of a gathering storm which threatens to destroy her reputation as one of Sydneywhat he'd believed… his mother's foremost fine art academics. Satisfying though those first descriptions arebirthplace, we then understand these are merely the authorhis mother's equivalent of name, the delicate chalk lines used by painters whereabouts of late Great-Uncle Einar… and that's without looking more deeply into the Dutch Golden Age fatal accident itself. Edvard is determined to mark out solve the composition which puzzle, a determination that will followtake him away from his native Norway to an area of France synonymous with devastation and a remote Scottish island loaded with secrets. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>192526680X0857056069</amazonuk>
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|author= Caro FraserToby Clements|title= The Summer House PartyKingmaker: Kingdom Come: (Book 4)|rating= 4.5|genre= General Historical Fiction |summary= In 1470 dawns and the gloriously hot summer next chapters of 1936, a group the War of people meet at a country house partythe Roses are ready to play out. Within three years, England will be at war, King Edward thinks that the future has been settled but for now, time stands treachery is stilllurking. Dan Ranscombe is clever Meanwhile Katherine and good-looking, but he resents the wealth and easy savoir-faire of fellow guest, Paul Latimer. Surely a shrewd girl like Meg Slater would see through Thomas also have their world turned upside down when that, wouldn't she? And what about Diana, Paul's beautiful sister, Charles Asher, the Jewish outsider, Madeleine, restless ledger and dissatisfied with her role as children's nanny? And artist Henry Haddon, their host, no longer young, but secure in his power as a practised seducer. As these guests gather, none has any inkling the choices chance comment threaten all they make will have fateful consequences, lasting through the war and beyondincluding their lives. Or that the first unforeseen event will be a shocking death… |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786691485178089466X</amazonuk>
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|author= Matthew HarffyP F Chisholm|title= Guns in the North (The Serpent SwordSir Robert Carey Mysteries Omnibus)|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical Fiction|summary= 1592: Sir Robert Carey flees the strictures of Elizabethan court – and his creditors – in order to become Deputy Warden of the West March in Carlisle. The Scottish/English borders and those who inhabit them are different from the world he's left behind but it will have to become his world. It's AD 633 now his job to bring law to the lawless. This isn't easy when every local he comes across has an affinity and Albion is a divided island made up heritage of petty warlords who want crime to be treated like honourable royalty but act like gangsterssome degree. Romans are a memory that have entered into myth and For Robert the souls of Albion are torn between best thing about the old Gods and the new Christ. It job is in this world that we follow its proximity to the adventures of Beobrand as woman he loves but he doesn't know what he undertakes the classic hero’s journey'll do about that yet either. Beobrand moves from wide-eyed teenager Meanwhile he soon realises that those who are supposed to hardened and honourable warrior through a brutal rite of passage as he hunts the killer of be on his brother and seeks to become a true warriorside are plotting against him but they don't realise what they're up against. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>17866924061786694719</amazonuk>
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|author=Zanna Sloniowska and Antonia SeniorLloyd-Jones (translator)|title=The Tyrant's ShadowHouse with the Stained-Glass Window
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|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Warning: spoilers ahead for ''Treason's Daughter''.Patience lives with her widowed brotherMarianna, William, helping an opera singer in the soon-to care for his son Richard (nicknamed Blackberry). Despite the Civil war ending-be Ukrainian city of Lviv, the times are still uncertain. Cromwell is increasingly annoyed with mistakenly shot dead at a parliament political rally in the dying days of rebels refusing to go to the electorate for ratificationSoviet Union. William sees this problem at close quarters once heThis novel begins with both anger and hope, as Marianna's effectively forced to become Cromwell's legal advisor coffin is covered in an atmosphere poisoned by espionage the illegal blue and religious factions. However when Patience comes across Shadrick Simpsonyellow flag, and her death seems to herald the birth of a charismatic preacher, all becomes clearer for new nation. But the day of her funeral is also the day of her at least. Meanwhile Sam Challoner, Williamdaughter's brother first period – a girl who must learn how to be a woman in lawthis time of drastic change, comes home after privateering with Prince Rupert and realises that no mother to guide her along the fight at sea is better than peace at home. At least when you're privateering you know who your enemy isway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>17823966160857057138</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author= David BarbareeK J Whittaker|title= DeposedFalse Lights
|rating= 4.5
|genre= Historical Fiction
|summary= A.D 68. A deposed emperor lies in a prison cellCornwall, betrayed and newly blinded by those who were sworn to protect him1817. He is now crippled and deprived  What if your worst mistake changed the course of history? Napoleon has crushed the Duke of power, left completely on Wellington at the edge Battle of despair with a frightened young slave named Marcus as Waterloo, and his only companionex-wife Josephine presides over French-occupied England. Ten years later Cornwall erupts into open rebellion, and it is Emperor Vespasian who wears the purple. Things may have settled since the civil war but Vespasianyoung heiress Hester escapes with Crow, Wellington's son Titus is plagued former intelligence officer, a half-French aristocrat haunted by worry about plots to murder his fatherpart in the catastrophic defeat. Gruesome atrocities and mysterious disappearances are rife throughout Rome; it is Together, they become embroiled in a city full web of falsehoods treachery and intrigues with espionage as plans are laid to free Wellington from secret captivity in the fear of rebellion lurking beneath Scilly Isles and lead an uprising against the surfaceFrench occupation. FurthermoreIn a country rife with traitors, a man who used Hester and Crow know it is impossible to be emperor still lives – play such a blind man who everyone believes to be deadgame as this for long.. His name is Nero and he seeks revenge against those who wronged him. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>17857626721786695340</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author= Diney CosteloeJ Jefferson Farjeon|title= The Married GirlsSeven Dead|rating= 4.5
|genre= Historical Fiction
|summary=WynsdownTed Lyte was petty criminal, 1949. In but not usually the small Somerset village of Wynsdown, Charlotte Shepherd is happily married to farmer Billyhousebreaking type. She arrived from Germany on He lacked the Kindertransport as a child during the war and now feels settled in her adopted homecourage. MeanwhileHowever, the squire's fighter pilot sonneeds must, Felix, has returned and whilst feeling down on his luck he decided to the village try his chances at an isolated house with a fiancée in towshuttered window. Daphne is beautiful, charming''... and harbouring secrets. After meeting during the war, Felix knows some he might find a bit of Daphnealright behind those shutters! Wot abart it?'s past, but she has worked hard to conceal that which could unravel her carefully built life. For Charlotte, too, a dangerous past is coming back in ' Ted does indeed find something interesting behind the shape of fellow refugee, bad boy Harry Black. Forever bound by their childhoods, Charlotte will always care for himshutters, but Harryit definitely isn's return disrupts the village quiet and itt what he's not long before gossip spreads. The war may have ended, but for these girls, trouble is only just beginning...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784976121</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Philip Kerr|title= Prussian Blue: Bernie Gunther Thriller 12|rating= 3.5|genre= Crime (Historical) |summary= Bernie Gunther is not your typical herod hoped. In 1939, a locked room he was stationed in Berlin as finds seven dead bodies; six men and a police officer handling murder cases and occasionally doing work for some high-ranking Naziswoman. Although never a Nazi party member himself (he was a known member of Fleeing the Social Democratic Party)house in horror, he understood that the best thing he could do for himself at that time was to make himself indispensable to men like Reinhard Heydrich is pursued and Martin Bormann. So when he is assigned caught by a passing yachtsman, Thomas Hazeldean, who also happens to solve be a murder that has occurred at Hitlerjournalist. Fascinated by Ted's Berghof in the Bavarian mountains, he knows that he needs to do it quickly story (and discreetly – not just for justice's sakea possible scoop), but for his own. He is given exactly one week Hazeldean decides to apprehend the suspect, investigate this curious case and he hopes that with the help its assortment of his friend Friedrich Korschodd clues, an investigator with including a portrait shot through the Krimialpolizei (or Kripoheart, for short) he just might get lucky. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784296481</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Stephan Collishaw|title= The Song an old cricket ball and a mysterious note written by one of the Stork|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Stephan Collishaw has achieved a rare feat – a novel set amidst the horrors of Nazi tyranny that does not shy away from human suffering, but does not drown in it eithervictims. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>17850791900712356886</amazonuk>
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|author=Alan Kennedy|title=A Time to Tell LiesSalt Creek|rating=4|genre=Crime (Historical) |summaryauthor= Psychologist Alan Kennedy's fifth novel continues the story he began with [[Lucy by Alan Kennedy]]. In the autumn of 1942, Captain Alex Vere and Justine Perry are among the men and women picked up and taken to a stately home in Scotland, where they are trained in spy skills. After this first encounter, Alex is smitten yet uncertain if he will ever see Justine again. The spy's life is dangerous and unpredictable, after all. Six weeks later, though, they meet up again in southwest France, where they have been sent to collect Simone, a Special Operations Executive agent. It's Alex's first mission (Justine's fourth) and all goes horribly awry. Alex ends up in custody at the Gendarmerie, facing a German who knows he has a false passport.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993202322</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Alex Nye|title=For My Sins|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=1586: Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, has time to look back over her past life as she sits, incarcerated by her second cousin Queen Elizabeth I. Mary's life hasn't been one of totally pampered royalty. Growing up in France, away from her mother, widowed and then returning to Scotland to claim the throne before she was even 19, her struggle with fate started early. The tensions between Mary the woman, Mary the Catholic and Mary the political force continue through three marriages, an unsolved murder and the thwarted desire to serve her people. Now it's come to this prison cell but while there's life, there's still hope…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905916787</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Grace Macallister|title= The Magician's Lie|rating=4|genre= Thrillers|summary= The Amazing Arden is the most famous female illusionist of her day, renowned for her notorious trick of sawing a man in half on stage. But one night she swaps her trademark saw for an axe. When Arden's husband is found dead later that night, the answer seems clear, most of all to young policeman Virgil Holt. Captured and taken into custody, all seems set for Arden's swift confession. But she has a different story to tell. Even handcuffed and alone, Arden is far from powerless, and what she reveals is as unbelievable as it is spellbinding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1787199967</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Helen Dunmore|title=Birdcage Walk|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Bristol 1792: Lizzie married well. John Diner Tredevant is a property developer who has reached the zenith of his life's work: building a terrace of prestigious houses overlooking the Avon Gorge. In a time of turbulence as France reaches the dawn of revolution, Britain, including Diner, fears it may spread. This puts Lizzie in a difficult position since her mother and step-father both believe in propagating pamphlets and ideas of egalitarianism for and to all, including women. In other words, they think nothing of spreading ideas of the sort that fanned the French flames. However, that's not Lizzie's only problem… there is a darkness in her husband's past of which she's unaware.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091959403</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Beth Underdown|title=The Witchfinder's SisterTreloar
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=The first chapter of ''Salt Creek'' opens in Chichester, England 1645: Matthew Hopkins , in 1874. Hester Finch is good at his chosen career: seeking, testing a respected and convicting those with the Devil in themreasonably wealthy member of her community. His sister, Alice, doesnBut she can't realise the full connotations of his actions until, widowed and pregnantstop her thoughts wandering back to her adolescence, she returns home. Alice is grateful to be allowed to live under Matthew's roof but then watches his sinister finger of suspicion point spent on Salt Creek Station in unexpected places. This is a man changed from the boy that Alice used to knowremote South Australian Coorong region. She Hester feels ''has never felt so alive as then realised that he, when we had so little'd be capable of killing hundreds of people and making her the Witchfinder's Sister.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>02419780331910709417</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Emma HendersonJamie Ford|title= The Valentine House|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= In June 1914, Sir Anthony Valentine, a keen mountaineer, arrives with his family to spend the summer in their chalet, high in the French Alps. There, for the first time, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one of the 'uglies' - village girls employed as servants Love and picked, it is believed, to ensure they don't catch Sir Anthony's roving eye. For Mathilde it is the start of a life-long entanglement with les anglais - strange, exciting people, far removed from the hard grind of farming. Except she soon finds the Valentines are less carefree than they appear, with a curiously absent daughter no one talks about. It will be decades - disrupted by war, accidents and a cruel betrayal - before Mathilde discovers the key to the mystery. And in 1976, the year Sir Anthony's great-great grandson comes to visit, she must decide whether to use it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444704028</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Polly Clark|title= LarchfieldOther Consolation Prizes
|rating= 5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary=I It's early summer when a young poet, Dora Fielding, moves to Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland and her hopes are first challenged. Newly married, pregnant, she's excited by the prospect of a life that combines family and creativity. She thinks she knows what being a person, a wife, a mother, means. She is soon shown that she is wrong. As the battle begins for her very sense of self, Dora comes to find the realities of small town life suffocating, and, eventually, terrifying; until she finds a way to escape reality altogether. Another poet, she discovers, lived in Helensburgh once. Wystan H. Auden, brilliant and awkward at 24, with his first book of poetry published, should be embarking on success and society in London. Instead, in 1930, fleeing a broken engagement, he takes a teaching post at Larchfield School for boys where he is mocked for his Englishness and suspected - rightly - of homosexuality. Yet in this repressed limbo Wystan will fall in love for the first time, even as he fights his deepest fears.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786481928</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dinah Jefferies
|title=Before the Rains
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Eliza has tragically punctuated childhood memories of India that have feed her desire to return. Therefore in 1930, following the death of her husband, when the British government commission her to photograph scenes of Indian life, she jumps at the chance. What she doesn't realise is that not everyone she comes across is delighted with the idea. Living within the Sultana's opulent palace complex is definitely an attraction for her, as is Jay, an Indian price who shows Eliza the real India. However, attractions are sometimes dangerous and even deadly.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241287081</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Otto de Kat and Laura Watkinson (translator)
|title=The Longest Night
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Emma has a philosophy – ''let the dead rest, and love the living''. The problem with that, as a 96-year-old, is that there are too few living left, and so while the love remains she will go through her memories, taking a woozy, diaphanous path through all the major events of her life. Starting in wartime Berlin with one husband, who gets snatched from her at work, fleeing to another place to wait for peace, and wait for him in vain, moving to Holland and finding new love, and so on – this wispy journey will show all the impacts of war, from rationing right up to exile, death and survival. The memories are coming strongly here and now, as Emma is waiting for at least one of her two sons to visit, and then she will die…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857056085</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Adrian Goldsworthy
|title= Vindolanda
|rating= 3.5
|genre= Historical Fiction
|summary= AD 98: in the northern fields of Britannia lies Vindolanda, a Roman auxiliary base situated on the edge of the Roman world. Far from the prosperity and decadence of Rome, the wild and untamed lands around Vindolanda are ripe with rebel tribes and druids set against the destruction of Rome and its armies. In the midst of this destruction is Flavius Ferox; a Briton and Roman Centurion who has been given the task of keeping the peace in this desolate edge of the world. But life in Roman Britain is full of danger and betrayal at every turn, and Ferox knows it will take more than courage to overcome what lies ahead.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784974684</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeroen Blokhuis and Asja Novak (translator)
|title=The Yellow House
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you were the needy kind, would you really join in the drumming-out of town of two people accused of murder purely because of their nationality? Would you get a feeling of belonging just because you were there when someone carried a dead dog down off a mountain? The main character in this novel does. But he has something that will really get him noted, well-thought-of, included. He has come to the south of France to set up an artists' collective, where he can live and work alongside his counterparts, who can inspire each other and best each other to create wonderful art. In fact a much-respected guest is on his way now, so surely he can find kinship? The guest's name is, after all, Gauguin. The main character is, of course, Vincent van Gogh…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907320563</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)
|title=Retribution Road
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=''Sergeant Bowman wasn't just a hard man, he was something else: a dangerous man.'' If, indeed, there was someone who was ideal for a suicide mission, it was him. Working as a soldier for the East India Company in the rural, remote, outlaw hotbeds of Asia in the 1850s, he's tasked with taking a boat of unknown prospects up the Irrawaddy to try and combat local warlord Pagan Min. It doesn't go well – to start with, he's supposed to run the rule over ruffians saved from the gallows, but can't command them until he's forced his way to having the knowledge of the mission he needs first, only for all hell to break loose. But get back he does, only to find that while his nightmares about what really happened are met with equally dark goings-on, the official record suggests the mission never actually existed…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857053744</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Theodore Brun
|title=A Mighty Dawn (The Wanderer Chronicles)
|rating=3.5
|genre= Historical Fiction
|summary= A story like this needs a strong central character; it needs a warrior who has conviction, heart and honour. Hakan has all these in abundance, but he didn't get them easily. In this coming of age tale, he goes on a quest to find himself after experiencing the most tremendous of betrayals. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782399941</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=S J Hardman Lea|title=The Sins of Soldiers|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Anson Scott wants to join At the British army and World War I for a different reason than most of his fellow Americans. He's a journalist wanting the uncensored inside story to send back home; a deadly enterprise as, if the Germans don't get him, the Brits may deem him a spy. Unperturbed he carries his plan through and finds himself on the French front Fair in 1916. He has an ally in British officer David Alexander1962, which is just as well since not it seems that all his enemies eyes are across no man's landfocused on the future. The two men have a lot in common, more than they know and perhaps more than is good for them as Space Needle dominates the Somme approaches.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785890182</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=David Gilman|title=Viper's Blood (Master of War)|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Bowman and commander Thomas Blackstone is one of Edward III's greatest weaponslandscape, bringing him potentially head filling people with anticipation about things to head against the Dauphin once againcome. HoweverOne visitor, faced with an elongated stale matehowever, Thomas' role becomes that of scavenger leader as the chances of victory make way for a greater chance of starvation amongst has his mind firmly focused on the armiespast. There Ernest Young is helping his daughter Ju-ju with a light at the end of the tunnel though. Blackstone story she is to go on writing for her newspaper; a story about a trip: an escort mission to Italy, delivering the French King's daughter Isabelle to Milan and her wedding. Having said that, the light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming lance. Isabelle's prospective groom is one of the brothers young immigrant boy who killed Thomas' wife and daughter. Death is definitely on the cards… but whose?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784974463</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Rory Clements|title=Corpus|rating=5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=A suicidal overdose and the murder of upper class Cecil Langley and his wife are two events that may be unconnected. However this is England in 1936, was given away as a magnet for opposing forces and their first moves prize in preparation for the coming conflict, assisted or prevented by a royal crisis (depending on which side you're on). Cambridge history professor Tom Wilde may fall into raffle at the middle of this accidentally to begin with but his curiosity has been piqued enough to ensure heWorld's not walking awayFair in 1909.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>17857626130749022752</amazonuk>
}}
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