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<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Martha ConwayTananarive Due|title= The Floating TheatreReformatory|rating= 5|genre= Historical Fiction|summary=When young seamstress May Bedloe Gracetown, Florida. June 1950. After a scuffle with a white boy, twelve year-old Robbie Stephens Jr is left alone sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, otherwise known as the Reformatory. It's a place with a brutal and penniless on dark reputation. But the shore segregated reformatory is a chamber of horrors, haunted by the boys that have died there. In order to survive the Ohioschool governor and his Funhouse, Robert must enlist the help of the school's ghosts – only they have their own motivations...|isbn=1803366532}} {{Frontpage|author=Katherine Howe|title=A True Account|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Hannah 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 young age. When she hears there is to be a hanging of some pirates in the town, she decides to go and watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds work on herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the famous floating theatre hands of two vicious pirates. She hides away, so that plies its trade along the river. Her creativity they don't find and needlework skills quickly become invaluable kill her too, and then to escape them completely she settles into life among runs away to sea, dressing as a boy and joining the colourful troupe of actorsnotorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a cabin boy. She soon finds friendsherself in the thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and possibly from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the promise ocean waves.|isbn=0861547438}}{{Frontpage|author=Sarah Marsh|title=A Sign of Her Own|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=After a bout of morescarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. But cruising the border between the Confederate South and the 'free' North is fraught with danger Suddenly plunged into a world of silence, everything about her life changes. For Living in a time when the sake use of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a debt that must be repaid, May school where she is compelled taught to transport secret passengerslip read, but physically restrained from signing. From here, she ends up in another school studying under cover of darkness, across Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the river deaf and using a system called Visible Speech. At the same time, Bell is working onother inventions and ideas, along the underground railroadand Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage. But as May|isbn=1035401614}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire North|title=House of Odysseus|rating=5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= ''What could matter more than love?''s secrets become harder to keep, she learns she must endanger those now dear to her.
And The follow-up to save the lives excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of othersOdysseus, she must risk with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her ownhusband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home.As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles.Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785762907</amazonuk>0356516075}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0C7J9D21B|title=A Captive in Algiers (Muhammed Amalfi Mysteries)|author=A J Lewis|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=When we first meet our hero, his name is Ettore and he lives at The House of Beautiful Swallows. Idyllic as this might sound, it's a bordello and Ettore's mother died when he was born. He's not been short of mothers, though - but for someone of his background in late-eighteenth-century Amalfi, it's difficult to obtain decent employment. The stint working with the preparation of 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 successful business as a guide for visitors. He was even saving some money.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Jenny AshcroftEssie Fox|title= Beneath a Burning SkyThe Fascination|rating= 4|genre= Historical Fiction|summary=Young bride Olivia Sheldon finds returning to her childhood home in Egypt The Victorian era is incredibly over-romanticised as a bitter-sweet experience. On the one handsetting for historical fiction (matched only, she has been reunited with her estranged sister Claraperhaps, and by the pair have formed Second World War) which has often led to more than a deep and loving bondfew writers mishandling it. On There's such a glut of media set in the era that the other, she has an unhappy marriage hallmarks we've come to her domineering husband Alistair, who only married her associate with it are familiar to spite Clarathe point of being cliched, who had refused him previouslyhackneyed even. Life with the sadistic Alistair All this is unbearable, with Olivia subjected simply to illustrate that it would be an easy thing to horrific abuse at his hands, daily. As a lady with no means of supporting herself, Olivia seems trapped without any means of escape, only finding solace in the company of her sister and friendsdo poorly. But when her dear sister goes mysteriously missing in the bustling streets of Alexandriadespite that, something about it is up to Olivia to try still grabs me – and solve the mystery of her disappearance before it is too latesomething about this book's description did as well.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0751565032</amazonuk>1914585526
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Conn IgguldenNicole Jarvis|title=Dunstan: One Man Will Change the Fate of EnglandA Portrait in Shadow
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=The young Dunstan shows no sign of the sainthood he'll later attain. Son 'I want all of a Wessex thane and sent Florence to a monastery for educationknow my name'' Cast out from Rome, this isn't Artemisia Gentileschi arrives in Florence seeking an oasis in which her art can find a lad who responds to disciplinehome and where her future can thrive rather than stagnate. However an enquiringBut as some as she enters Florentine society she faces great opposition from the powerful Accademia, intelligent mind begins the self-proclaimed guardians of the healing magics that through paintings have the power to emerge protect the city and then comes the big breakits citizens from plagues and curses. Lady Elflaed calls to put a proposal to him after hearing about what she considers to be a miracle The all-male Accademia has hoarded power over art and architecture for centuries and the monks consider another in a long line of excusesguard it above all else. Yet Dunstan will outshine all his teachers as well as knowing seven kings To them, Artemisia – an ambitious young woman who promises trouble and change – has no place amongst them and holding responsible positions in their courts, as the book's title suggestssociety. Whether we believe in the miracles or not, Dunstan certainly had quite a life!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718181441</amazonuk>1803362340
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Simon EdgeThomas D Lee|title= The Hopkins ConundrumPerilous Times|rating= 53|genre= General Fiction Fantasy|summary= Tim Cleverley inherits a failing pub in Wales, which he plans to rescue by enlisting an American pulp novelist to concoct an entirely fabricated mystery about Gerard Manley Hopkins, who composed ''The Wreck Hate is the path of the Deutschlandleast resistance'' nearby.
In Victorian EnglandSet in the near-distant future, Gerard Manley Hopkins lives in a life full world on the verge of confusion and contradictionclimate collapse, but discovers Britain is in great peril. The British Isles desperately needs a calling for poetry that threatens hero (or several) to overrule his calling to Godsave the day and rescue what little remains. And, speaking What no-one expected was that one of the Knights of God, Five nuns leave persecution to travel to a new world – only to find themselves in more trouble that they could ever have imagined… the Round Table would answer the call.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785630334</amazonuk>0356518523
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne O'BrienG K Holloway|title=The Shadow QueenIn the Shadows of Castles
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Born We begin after the momentous battle in 1328, Joan 1066 and on the day of Kent may be William of royal blood but sheNormandy's from a family tainted by treachery. Her father Edmund Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, was executed for his part in the infamous Montague plot. However Joan has grown up under the protection of her cousin, coronation as King Edward III with all the advantages and attributes of a princessEngland. Yet, much to her motherWilliam's chagrin, obedience isn't one of these attributesposition is not secure and the new king has many challenges. Joan's head strong feist takes her on Imposing authority through a varied journey in lifecoronation is important. And William is right to worry. Having said thatWhile the previous king, three husbandsHarold, five marriages (technically) is dead and a son destined for the English throne means that it's also been one heck likelihood of more pitched battles is over, the rebels are stirring and much of the country does not wish to recognise a life!new overlord.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848455070</amazonuk>1800422466
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patricia Falvey3949666079|title=The Girls of Ennismore: A Heart-Rending Irish SagaNoema|author=Dael Akkerman
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''This 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, the Sea of Grass encroaches further and further into Maya's forest home, and food is becoming more and more scarce. What to do? Can the law givers in the federation of villages muster peaceful ways to cope? Can the Traveller, a spiritual figure who interprets the wisdom of All Life, provide solutions?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529125898
|title=Godmersham Park
|author=Gill Hornby
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Ireland 1900: Ennismore House''If it were not for the casual dereliction of the odd gentleman's young heiress Victoria had hoped that duty, there would no women to teach well-bred daughters at all.'' Anne Sharpe was thirty-one years old when she and Rosie Killeen would be friends foreverarrived at Godmersham Park to take up the position of governess to twelve-year-old Fanny Austen. Rosie soon comes to know better as there's She had no experience of teaching but this was a social chasm between those who live in case of necessity. Until the House death of her mother, Anne had a comfortable life and thosewas loved by both parents although her father was frequently absent from the household. When her mother died, like Rosie's family, who her father cast her off and would have been brought up merely nothing more to serve themdo with her. The days No explanation was offered but she would receive an annuity of innocence are coming to an end in many ways£35 a year. SoonHer maid, as the cry for Irish Home Rule becomes louderAgnes, there'll be more than steps on society's ladder between them as each must discover their own way would receive nothing but was fortunately taken in a nation that will never be the same againby some neighbours.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786490625</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elaine EverestMelissa Fu |title= The Butlins GirlsPeach Blossom Spring |rating= 43.5|genre= Historical Fiction|summary=Fresh-faced Molly Missons has just arrived in Skegness I loved the prelude to start her new job as Peach Blossom Spring, a Butlins auntieshort chapter entitled ''Origins''. Behind Unfortunately it is the smiles and confident appearance, she hides only truly poetic part of a secret; she has taken the job to escape escalating problems at home. She soon finds good friends in her chalet-mates Bunty and Plum, and it turns out book that they each have their own reasons for wanting a fresh startI expected more from. Meanwhile, Molly is shocked Covering Chinese history from 1938 to discover that her movie-star crush Johnny Johnson is working 2005 as an entertainment adviser at the campviewed through one family's perspective. Is he really as suave as his on-screen persona? And why When their home city is he working at set ablaze during the camp anyway? As hidden secrets become discoveredwar with Japan, Molly a young mother (Meilin) and her new friends face new threats four-year-old son (Renshu) are among those who flee. The story follows them on their journey across China, and dangers that may threaten their new-found freedomin Renshu's case eventually to America. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447295536</amazonuk>1472277538
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Geraint Jones1916072038|title= Blood Forest|rating= 5|genre= Historical Fiction|summary= Felix. The lucky one. He doesn't feel especially lucky when he staggers out into the grove and finds twelve of his comrades butchered and mutilated House in the worst possible ways. He felt even less lucky when the soldiers arrived, Roman cavalry. He might have run, but he knew he'd never make it. He stepped out to face whatever came next.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718184815</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Dominic Smith|title= Hollow (The Last Painting of Sara de Vos|rating= 5|genre= Historical Fiction|summary= If you find the techniques used by Rembrandt and Vermeer fascinating, ''The Last Painting of Sara de Vos'' provides a masterclass in how to work up a canvas in stages. Framing the novel as the story of a seventeenth century Dutch painting, Dominic Smith vividly sketches out the main contours of his characters and the three time periods they inhabit before we are even one fifth of the way through. 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 has been in Marty de Groot's family since before Isaac Newton was born and he is the patent lawyer 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 Sydney's foremost fine art academics. Satisfying though those first descriptions are, we then understand these are merely the author's equivalent of the delicate chalk lines used by painters of the Dutch Golden Age to mark out the composition which will follow. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>192526680X</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewTalbot Saga)|author= Caro Fraser|title= The Summer House Party|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction |summary= In the gloriously hot summer of 1936, a group of people meet at a country house party. Within three years, England will be at war, but for now, time stands still. Dan Ranscombe is clever 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 that, wouldn't she? And what about Diana, Paul's beautiful sister, Charles Asher, the Jewish outsider, Madeleine, restless 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 they make will have fateful consequences, lasting through the war and beyond. Or that the first unforeseen event will be a shocking death… |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786691485</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Matthew Harffy|title= The Serpent SwordAllie Cresswell|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical Fiction|summary= It's AD 633 and Albion is a divided island made up of petty warlords who want to be treated like honourable royalty but act like gangsters. Romans are a memory that have entered into myth and the souls of Albion are torn between the old Gods and the new Christ. It is in this world that we follow the adventures of Beobrand as he undertakes the classic hero’s journey. Beobrand moves from wide-eyed teenager to hardened and honourable warrior through a brutal rite of passage as he hunts the killer of his brother and seeks to become a true warrior.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786692406</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Antonia Senior|title=The Tyrant's Shadow|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Warning: spoilers ahead for ''Treason's Daughter''.Patience lives with her widowed brother, William, helping to care for his son Richard (nicknamed Blackberry). Despite the Civil war ending, the times are still uncertain. Cromwell is increasingly annoyed with a parliament We meet part of rebels refusing to go to the electorate for ratificationTalbot family in Yorkshire in November 1811. William sees this problem at close quarters once he's effectively forced to become Cromwell's legal advisor in an atmosphere poisoned by espionage Twenty-seven-year-old Jocelyn Talbot and religious factions. However when Patience comes across Shadrick Simpson, a charismatic preacher, all becomes clearer for her at least. Meanwhile Sam Challoner, William's brother mother have travelled in law, comes some discomfort from their home after privateering with Prince Rupert and realises that the fight at sea is better than peace at home. At least when you're privateering you know who your enemy is.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782396616</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= David Barbaree|title= Deposed|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical Fiction|summary= A.D 68. A deposed emperor lies in a prison cellEcklington, betrayed and newly blinded by those who were sworn to protect him. He is now crippled and deprived of power, left completely on the edge of despair with a frightened young slave named Marcus as his only companion. Ten years later and it is Emperor Vespasian who wears house in the purplehollow. Things may have settled since the civil war but Vespasian's son Titus is plagued by worry about plots to murder his father. Gruesome atrocities and mysterious disappearances The two women are rife throughout Rome; it is a city full of falsehoods angry with each other and intrigues with the fear of rebellion lurking beneath the surface. Furthermore, a man who used to be emperor still lives – a blind man who everyone believes to be dead. His name Jocelyn is Nero and he seeks revenge against those who wronged him. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785762672</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Diney Costeloe|title= The Married Girls|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical Fiction|summary=Wynsdown, 1949. In the small Somerset village well aware of Wynsdown, Charlotte Shepherd is happily married to farmer Billy. She arrived from Germany on the Kindertransport as a child during the war and now feels settled in her adopted home. Meanwhile, the squiremother's fighter pilot son, Felix, has returned to the village with a fiancée in tow. Daphne is beautiful, charming... strengths and harbouring secrets. After meeting during the war, Felix knows some of Daphneweaknesses: ''s pastShe is practiced at subterfuge, but she has worked hard to conceal that which could unravel her carefully built life. For Charlotte, tooat concealing, beneath a dangerous past is coming back in the shape facade of fellow refugeerespectability, bad boy Harry Black. Forever bound by their childhoods, Charlotte will always care for him, but Harrythe deplorable truth's return disrupts the village quiet and it'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 Hester is not your typical hero. In 1939, he was stationed in Berlin furious about Jocelyn's refusal to do as a police officer handling murder cases and occasionally doing work for some high-ranking Nazis. Although never a Nazi party member himself (he she was a known member of the Social Democratic Party)asked, he understood that the best thing he could do for himself at that time was to make himself indispensable to men like Reinhard Heydrich and Martin Bormann. So when he is assigned to solve a murder that which has occurred at Hitlerprecipitated ''s Berghof in the Bavarian mountains, he knows that he needs to do it quickly this violent and discreetly – not just for justiceunexpected removal''s sake, but for his own. He is given exactly one week to apprehend the suspect, and he hopes that with the help of his friend Friedrich Korsch, an investigator with the Krimialpolizei (or Kripo, for short) he just might get lucky. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784296481</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Stephan Collishaw|title= The Song of the Stork|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Stephan Collishaw has achieved a rare feat – a novel set amidst the horrors Then we are told of Nazi tyranny that does not shy away from human suffering, but does not drown in it either. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079190</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Alan Kennedy|title=A Time to Tell Lies|rating=4|genre=Crime (Historical) |summary= Psychologist Alan Kennedy's fifth novel continues the story he began with [[Lucy by Alan Kennedy]]. In the autumn birth 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 child and unpredictable, soon after all. Six weeks later, thoughHester Talbot departs, they meet up again leaving Jocelyn 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) shame and all goes horribly awry. Alex ends up isolation in custody at the Gendarmerie, facing a German who knows he has a false passportYorkshire.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993202322</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alex NyeAnnabel Abbs|title=For My SinsThe Language of Food
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=1586: Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, Eliza Acton is a poet who has time never had the slightest inclination to look back over her past life as boil an egg. When tasked with writing a cookery book, she sitsrecruits Ann Kirby, incarcerated by her second cousin Queen Elizabeth I. Mary's a local woman with a troubled home life hasn't been one of totally pampered royalty. Growing up in FranceTogether, they test, away from her mothercraft, widowed refine and then returning to Scotland to claim reshape the throne before she was even 19, her struggle with fate started early. The tensions between Mary the womanworld of domestic cookery, Mary reinventing the Catholic recipe book and Mary changing the political force continue through three marriages, an unsolved murder and the thwarted desire to serve her peopleface of cookery writing forever. Now it's come to this prison cell but while there's life, there's still hope…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1905916787</amazonuk>1398502227
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Grace MacallisterFreya Marske|title= The Magician's LieA Marvellous Light
|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 Robin Blyth is nudged into a property developer who has reached job in the zenith of Civil Service, much to his life's work: building a terrace of prestigious houses overlooking the Avon Gorgechagrin. In a time of turbulence as France reaches There he meets Edwin Courcey and learns that the dawn streets of revolution, Britain, including Diner, fears it may spreadLondon are threaded with magic. This puts Lizzie in Desperate to remove a difficult position since her mother and step-father both believe in propagating pamphlets and ideas of egalitarianism for and curse that threatens to allswallow him, including women. In other wordsRobin follows Edwin to the countryside, they think nothing of spreading ideas of where the sort that fanned hedgegrows bristle with incantations and the French flamespeople shimmer with power. However, There they uncover a sinister plot that's not Lizzie's only problem… there is a darkness threatens the lives of all magicians in her husband's past of which she's unawarethe British Isles.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091959403</amazonuk>1529080886
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Beth UnderdownB09F4CTKJR|title=The Witchfinder's SisterFlights for Freedom|author= Steven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=England 1645: Matthew Hopkins It's the later stages of World War I and the United States has just entered the conflict. Petrol Petronus is good at his chosen career: seeking, testing a young American who has signed up and convicting those with joined the Devil 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the first US Aero Squadron to be trained in them. His sisterCanada, Alice, doesn't realise the full connotations of his actions until, widowed first to be attached to the RAF and pregnant, she returns home. Alice is grateful the first to be allowed sent into the skies to live under Matthew's roof but then watches his sinister finger of suspicion point fight the Germans in unexpected placesactive combat. This is a man changed from the boy But before that Alice used can happen, Petrol has to know. She never then realised that he'd be capable of killing hundreds of people and making her master flying the Witchfinder's Sisternotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241978033</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma HendersonChristophe Medler|title= The Valentine HouseMadrigal: A Closely Guarded Secret|rating= 4|genre= Literary Historical Fiction|summary= In June 1914Set against the backdrop of the English Civil War, a secret plan (code-named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Anthony Valentine, a keen mountaineer, arrives with his family to spend Robert Douse in the summer in their chalet, high in the French Alpsof 1642. There, for As a loyal servant of the first timeKing, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one and Head of the 'uglies' - village girls employed as servants and pickedSecret Service, it is believed, to ensure they don't catch Sir AnthonyRobert's roving eye. For Mathilde it is duty to uncover the start details 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 plan and a cruel betrayal - before Mathilde discovers follow the key clues to uncover one of the mystery. And most guarded secrets in 1976, history—especially since the plot could affect the year Sir Anthony's great-great grandson comes to visit, she must decide whether to use itKing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444704028</amazonuk>B095HY8SXQ
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Polly Clark1471187179|title= Larchfield|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>}}{{newreviewA Beautiful Spy|author=Dinah Jefferies|title=Before the RainsRachel Hore|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Eliza has tragically punctuated childhood memories of India that have feed her desire to returnMinnie is an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting life in a leafy provincial suburb. Therefore The book is set in 1930the 1930s and Minnie is expected to live up to her mother's expectations and find a nice young man to marry, following produce children and spend the death rest of her days looking after her husband, when the British government commission her to photograph scenes of Indian life, she jumps at the chanceand their home. What she doesnUnfortunately, this isn't realise is that not everyone what she wants to do at all and neither does she comes across is delighted with the ideawant to continue working as a secretary. Living within the Sultana's opulent palace complex is definitely an attraction for herAs a result of a chance meeting, as is Jayshe finds herself drawn into espionage, an Indian price who shows Eliza working for the secret service and effectively living a double life - attempting to infiltrate the real IndiaCommunist Party of Great Britain. However, attractions are sometimes dangerous Minnie finds herself torn between what she perceives as her duty and the friends she has made - and even deadlylikes - whilst working for the Communist Party.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241287081</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Otto de Kat Afonso Cruz and Laura Watkinson Rahul Bery (translator)|title=The Longest NightKokoschka's Doll|rating=32.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Emma has Well, this looked very much like a philosophy – ''let book I could love from the dead restget-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and love the living''flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of it. The problem with thatI found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, as a 96-year-oldchapter whose number was in the 20,000s, is that there are too few living leftletters used as narrative form, and so while on. It intrigued with the love remains she will go through her memories, taking subterranean voice a woozyman hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentioned, diaphanous path through all the major events of her lifetoo. Starting in wartime Berlin But you've seen the star rating that comes with one husband, who gets snatched from her at work, fleeing to another place to wait for peacethis review, and wait for him in vain, moving to Holland and finding new can tell that if love, and so was on – this wispy journey will show all the impacts of war, from rationing right up to exilethese pages, death and survivalit was not actually caused by them. 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…So what happened?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857056085</amazonuk>1529402697
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Adrian GoldsworthyChristina Hammonds Reed|title= VindolandaThe Black Kids|rating= 34.5|genre= Historical FictionTeens |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 Christina Hammonds Reed's debut novel is set against the destruction backdrop of Rome and its armies. In the midst of this destruction is Flavius Ferox; 1992 Los Angeles riots, a Briton and Roman Centurion who has been given reaction to the task absolution of keeping the peace in this desolate edge of the world. But life in Roman Britain is full of danger and betrayal at every turnfour police officers for beating a black man, Rodney King, and Ferox knows it will take more than courage nearly to overcome what lies aheaddeath.|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 Told from the needy kindperspective of Ashley Bennett, would you really join in the drumming-out of town of two people accused of murder purely because of their nationality? Would you get novel follows her evolution from a feeling of belonging just because you were there silent bystander 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-confronted with matters ofrace, 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 a woman finding her voice and best each other to create wonderful artembracing her heritage. 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…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907320563</amazonuk>1471188191
}}
 
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