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[[Category:Historical Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Historical Fiction]]__NOTOC__==Historical fiction==  {{newreview|author=Robyn Young |title=Requiem (Brethren Trilogy)|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=It's December 1295, and the bedraggled remnants of the Third Crusade are returning home. Not all have given up the dream of a Christian Jerusalem, and Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Templars, is eager to find patrons to fund a fresh invasion. But the West has turned inward, and, with the Order's reason for existence vanished with the Crusader states, factions within both the English and French courts covet the wealth and military might of the Temple. With his homeland of Scotland under assault by his old rival Edward, and his position usurped by former comrades who wish to turn the Order to sinister ends, peace for series protagonist Will Campbell seems far away.|amazonuk=<amazonuk!-- Remove -->0340921420 </amazonuk!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anthony RichesTananarive Due|title=Wounds of Honour (Empire)The Reformatory|rating=45
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Riding Gracetown, Florida. June 1950. After a scuffle with a white boy, twelve year-old Robbie Stephens Jr is sentenced to six months at the Northern outpost of Gracetown School for Boys, otherwise known as the Roman Empire to deliver Reformatory. It's a place with a message, Marcus Valerius Aquila brutal and dark reputation. But the segregated reformatory is seemingly attacked by a band chamber of barbarianshorrors, but is rescued haunted by a group of Tungrian irregulars, fighting as part of the Roman armyboys that have died there. Arriving at In order to survive the school governor and his destinationFunhouse, it soon becomes clear that Robert must enlist the help of the attack was deliberate, as his father has been condemned as a traitor back in Rome by Emperor Commodus and his whole family school's ghosts – only they have been put to the swordtheir own motivations...|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340920300</amazonuk>1803366532}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Freda Lightfoot Katherine Howe|title=House of AngelsA True Account
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=The novel focuses on the Angel Hannah Masury is living in Boston, having been sent to live with a family who live in the Lake District in the late 1900srun an inn, and being made to work there from a young age. Josiah Angel When she hears there is the head of the family and appears to be a respectable business man, bringing up his three daughters after the death hanging of his wife. The family live some pirates in a beautiful house and – to outsiders – the daughters seem town, she decides to have everything – comfort, money, beauty go and watch. Enthralled and an easy lifehorrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in great contrast to the poverty around them. Not far from Josiaha young boy's department store are the workhouse with its brutality and death at the blocks hands of slum flats infested with ratstwo vicious pirates.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007125</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Faye L Booth |title=Trades of the Flesh|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=I read Trades of the Flesh in about 2 hours She hides away, speeding through itso that they don't find and kill her too, and think I've spent about double that time figuring out how then to escape them completely she runs away to review it! Apart from anything elsesea, it's taken me well over an hour to settle on dressing as a genre (boy and I reserve joining the right to change that by the end of the review, although if I do I guess I could just delete this part…)|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230743412</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith |title=Pride and Prejudice and Zombies|rating=4.5|genre=Humour|summary=Ah, the benefits to notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a good book of a classic first line. 'Call me Ishmaelcabin boy.' 'It was a bright cold day She soon finds herself in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' Who can forget Iain Banks' 'It was the day my grandmother exploded'? Or those timeless words by Jane Austen, 'It thick of things when there is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie mutiny on board, and from there we are caught up in possession her rip roaring tale of brains must be in want of more brainslife on the ocean waves.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1594743347</amazonuk>0861547438
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chandra PrasadSarah Marsh|title=Breathe the Sky: A Novel Inspired by the Life Sign of Amelia EarhartHer Own
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=Prasad's first novel [[On Borrowed Wings by Chandra Prasad|On Borrowed Wings]] followed After a bout of scarlet fever as a child, Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a young girl entering the male-dominated arena world of Yale silence, everything about her life changes. Living in a time when the 1930suse of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a school where she is taught to lip read, but physically restrained from signing. Her heroine took inspiration from the likes of Amelia Earhart (From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the deaf and using a walk-on part in system called Visible Speech. At the book)same time, women who were finding their way in the world Bell is working on their own terms other inventions and refusing to let their womanhood get in the way of it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1932279393</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Hilary Mantel|title=Wolf Hall|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A revisionist look at Henry VIII's minister, Thomas Cromwell. Richideas, absorbing and intelligent, it's Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a beautiful, beautiful bookcomplicated tangle of espionage. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007230184</amazonuk>1035401614
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shandi Mitchell Claire North|title=Under This Unbroken SkyHouse of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A photograph opens the story. A black and white picture of a family, husband, wife and their three children, smiling for the camera. Thin, underfed, in their summer clothes despite the four inches of snow, they smile. Partly they smile because they do not know what is to come. ''What could matter more than love?''
A page and five years later we catch The follow-up with to the Mykolayenkosexcellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the Spring palace of 1938 Ivan Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and his cousin are catching mice in then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the barn Western Isles. Having survived – politically and taking bets on which of physical – the farm cats will pounce chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the individually released rodents first. The game is interrupted by a man with brink of a loaded fragile peace.22 rifle. It takes a while for it to sink in, One that this is Ivan's fathershatters however with the return of Orestes, TeodorKing of Mycenae, free after a prison sentence for stealing and his own grainsister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297856588</amazonuk>0356516075
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate FurnivallB0C7J9D21B|title=The Concubine's SecretA Captive in Algiers (Muhammed Amalfi Mysteries)|author=A J Lewis|rating=34.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=As a sequel to Kate Furnivall's When we first bookmeet 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'The Russian Concubine'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, The Concubineit's Secret helps difficult to tie up some hanging storylines and in general provides an entertaining follow-upobtain decent employment. In The stint working with the first book, we watched Chang An Lo preparation of anchovies didn't work out and Lydia Ivanova fall in love against all the oddsbastards are considered bad luck on fishing boats. Here, they must remain in love despite being separated by most of Ettore was nothing if not resourceful - and determined - and it was not long before he had a successful business as a continentguide for visitors. As you might expect, the reader spends most of the book hoping for them to find a way to finally be togetherHe was even saving some money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751540455</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philippa GregoryEssie Fox|title=The White QueenFascination
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=ItThe Victorian era is incredibly over-romanticised as a setting for historical fiction (matched only, perhaps, by the Second World War) which has often led to more than a few writers mishandling it. There's 1464 and such a young widow stands at glut of media set in the side of era that the road, clutching hallmarks we've come to associate with it are familiar to the hands point of her two young sonsbeing cliched, waiting for the new King to ride pasthackneyed even. She All this is Elizabeth Woodville and the King is Edward IVsimply to illustrate that it would be an easy thing to do poorly. What happens is a matter of history: a secret marriage, a shocking revealBut despite that, something about it still grabs me – and a vicious contest for the young Kingsomething about this book's ear (and purse) that forces civil war to drag on in England for much longer than perhaps it would have. Without this meeting, English history would have been critically differentdescription did as well. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847374557</amazonuk>1914585526
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate Pullinger Nicole Jarvis|title=The Mistress of NothingA Portrait in Shadow|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon was a well-known figure in Victorian London when tuberculosis forced her to move to a hot climate. She travelled to Egypt, accompanied only by her Lady's Maid, Sally Naldrett and left her husband and children in London, not knowing if she would ever see them again. Lady Duff Gordon's story is told in ''The Mistress I want all of Nothing'Florence to know my name' but it's Sally Naldrett who is the focus of the book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687098</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Irène Némirovsky |title=All Our Worldly Goods|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Pierre Hardelot and Agnes Florent were Cast out from Rome, Artemisia Gentileschi arrives in Florence seeking an oasis in love which her art can find a home and had been since they were childrenwhere her future can thrive rather than stagnate. But as some as she enters Florentine society she faces great opposition from the powerful Accademia, but there were problems the self- not proclaimed guardians of the least of which was healing magics that Pierre was engaged through paintings have the power to marry Simone Renaudin. Simone was an appropriate match for protect the grandson of a mill owner city and member of the bourgeoisie, but Agnes was descended its citizens from brewers plagues and lower middle classcurses. In northern France, just before the outbreak of the First World War, such distinctions mattered. But Pierre The all-male Accademia has hoarded power over art and Agnes meet alone architecture for centuries and rather than ruin her reputation Pierre proposesguard it above all else. In doing so he alienates his grandfather To them, Artemisia – an ambitious young woman who promises trouble and the wealthy Renaudins. Pierre change – has no place amongst them and Agnes' marriage and its consequences would reverberate for decadestheir society.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099520443</amazonuk>1803362340
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Thomas D Lee
|title=Perilous Times
|rating=3
|genre= Fantasy
|summary= ''Hate is the path of least resistance''
{{newreview|author=Mary Hoffman |title=Troubadour|rating=4|genre=Teens|summary=In ''Troubadour'', 13Set in the near-year-old noblewomandistant future, Elinor de Sévignan, flees from her parents' choice of suitor by posing as in a boy singer with a group of travelling minstrels in 13th century Southern France. As her transition from her pampered but restricted existence to roaming troubadour takes place world on the roads verge of Provenceclimate collapse, so begins the Albigensian CrusadeBritain is in great peril. Forces from Northern France attempt The British Isles desperately needs a hero (or several) to crush save the Cathars, whose religious beliefs are seen as heretical, making their lands day and wealth fair game for both fanatical followers rescue what little remains. What no-one expected was that one of the Pope, and opportunistic mercenariesKnights of the Round Table would answer the call.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0747592519</amazonuk>0356518523
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Margaret RedfernG K Holloway|title=FlintIn the Shadows of Castles
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Will We begin after the momentous battle in 1066 and his brother Ned have been plucked from their home in on the Fens. They're on their way to Flint, ditch diggers for Edward Iday of William of Normandy's new castlecoronation as King of England. Will is unwilling to go, and heWilliam's only eleven, but he can't abandon his strange older brother to strangers. Ned can't talk position is not secure and most people dismiss him as an idiot, but he the new king has skillsmany challenges. He can whisper to horses and calm them, he's Imposing authority through a skilled herbalist, and he can make music that moves men's heartscoronation is important. Ned And William is glad to be on this journey because he hopes right to be reunited with Ieuan ap y Gof, an exiled bard and the man who taught him musicworry. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906784043</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James McCreet|title=The Incendiary's Trail|rating=3.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=This book opens with a bang and except for brief slow-downs in While the middleprevious king, Harold, is an exciting dead and riveting read. It's both a historical mystery and a thriller, teaching the reader a little bit about Victorian London while still making the book an immersive experience that can be hard to leave. The policemen really have very little idea who likelihood of more pitched battles is behind over, the initial murder, rebels are stirring and much less of the ones that follow, and I loved learning what happened along with themcountry does not wish to recognise a new overlord.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0230736270</amazonuk>1800422466
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew Pearl3949666079|title=The Last DickensNoema|author=Dael Akkerman
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime General Fiction|summary=In Bengal, India on ''This is a June day in 1870 two young mounted policemen are hot on the trail of dacoit suspected of the recent daylight robbery of a train of bullock carts. The chests taken from the carts were full of Opiumstory about some things that happened to me about twelve thousand years ago.''
Meanwhile Maya is a few thousand miles away young girl living in Boston, USA, a young office boy hunter gatherer village during the Mesolithic era. Climate change is chased through occurring, the docks by a dark stranger Sea of Grass encroaches further and further into Maya''Hindoo'' appearance wielding a walking stick topped by a ferociously fanged idol.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184655084X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Angus Donald |title=Outlaw|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=When Alan Dale s forest home, and food is caught stealing from a market stall in Nottingham he narrowly escapes with his life becoming more and limbs more scarce. What to do? Can the law givers in tact. To protect him from the justice federation of Sir Ralph Murdacvillages muster peaceful ways to cope? Can the Traveller, Alan's mother begs a spiritual figure who interprets the mercy wisdom of the great outlaw, Robin Hood. Robin agrees to take Alan into his protectionAll Life, and so begins Alan's life as an outlaw.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751542083</amazonuk>provide solutions?
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529125898
|title=Godmersham Park
|author=Gill Hornby
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=''If it were not for the casual dereliction of the odd gentleman's duty, there would no women to teach well-bred daughters at all.''
{{newreview|author=Jane Borodale |title=The Book Anne Sharpe was thirty-one years old when she arrived at Godmersham Park to take up the position of Fires|rating=4governess to twelve-year-old Fanny Austen.5|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=Agnes Trussel leaves her home to save her family from the disgrace She had no experience of teaching but this was a case of learning that she has been raped and is carrying an illegitimate childnecessity. With limited options Until the death of her mother, Anne had a comfortable life and in despair at was loved by both parents although her situation she takes money father was frequently absent from the home of a neighbour to pay her way to Londonhousehold. Once thereWhen her mother died, her life as assistant father cast her off and would have nothing more to the dour John Blacklock, a firework maker, gives do with her security and a sense of worth. But No explanation was offered but she is sure that all she values is likely to be lost once her pregnancy and her status as would receive an annuity of £35 a thief becomes knownyear. The crux of her situationHer maid, and that of many women like her at the timeAgnes, is well summarised would receive nothing but was fortunately taken in her thoughts: ''the child is almost all I have, I think. And its'' ''existence will ensure that anything else will be taken away from meby some neighbours.''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007305729</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreview|author=Adam Thorpe|title=Hodd|rating=3|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=Like every other English child I was brought up on tales of Robin Hood.  ''Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding through the glen, Robin Hood, Robin Hood with his band of men. Feared by the bad,'' ''loved by the good, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.''  The theme music to the 1950s TV series starring Richard Greene says it all. The legends and myths surrounding Robin of Loxley, faithfully recreated in all of the outings from Walter Scott's ''Ivanhoe'' through the Errol Flynn films, to the BBC's recently lamented Jonas Armstrong depict the Outlaw as Saint.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079433</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris Hannan Melissa Fu |title=MissyPeach Blossom Spring
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=This begins so well, with just I loved the right sort of first sentence prelude to hook you into Peach Blossom Spring, a book: ''I expect you have theshort chapter entitled '' Origins''consolation of religion, or . Unfortunately it is the guidance only truly poetic part of a philosophy, but when me and the girls get frazzled, or blue, or rapturous,book that I expected more from. Covering Chinese history from 1938 to 2005 as viewed through one family'' ''or just awfully so-so, we shin out and buy ourselves some hatss perspective.'' So says our heroine of When their home city is set ablaze during the piecewar with Japan, 19 a young mother (Meilin) and her four-year -old Dol McQueen, son (Renshu) are among those who narrates us through her exploits in America's nineteenth century Wild Westflee. She's roughThe story follows them on their journey across China, sheand in Renshu's determined, but ultimately she's very damaged: a young, drug addict prostitute who trails hopelessly after her alcoholic mother from country case eventually to countryAmerica. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099501554</amazonuk>1472277538
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ben Kane1916072038|title=The Silver Eagle House in the Hollow (Forgotten LegionThe Talbot Saga)|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=I thought Ben Kane's debut novel [[The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane|The Forgotten Legion]] was excellent, but that it ended a little abruptly, even with the knowledge there was more to come. Having now read that 'more to come', I feel a lot better about it. The story is so relentless that there was no obvious place to pause between books.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090110</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Marie Brennan |title=In Ashes Lie|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=It's September 1666 and although the mortals' Civil War is over the war amongst the fae is still raging in London. There's now a greater threat to the Onyx Court and it could destroy everything when a spark starts a fire which for three days spreads through the city devouring everything in its path. Can the mortals and the fae unite to find a way to defeat a foe which neither can better on their own?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497185</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti |title=Secretum|rating=3.5|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=Back in 2002, Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti shocked Italy with [[Imprimatur by Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti|Imprimatur]], a historical fiction novel which cast aspersions on the behaviour of past Popes. Despite being a very well researched and well-written mystery, it was boycotted in Italy, although it proved popular in other parts of the world. However, the lack of recognition in their home country meant that the follow up that such a good story deserved has been seven years in the making.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971047</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lauren Willig |title=The Secret History of the Pink CarnationAllie Cresswell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=I used to have months when I would gorge on chick lit before I got married. I lived in London and would wile away the tedium We meet part of the tube by escaping into easy, comforting reads of twenty-somethings who worried about shoes and shopping and menTalbot family in Yorkshire in November 1811. It was reassuring to know that the girl, albeit after a series of highs Twenty-seven-year-old Jocelyn Talbot and lowsher mother have travelled in some discomfort from their home at Ecklington, would ultimately get the guy. I'm a different kind of person now, a stay at home mum more likely to be found playing in the park than shoe-shopping house in London, and so it's been a while since I've felt like picking up a chick lit book. Something about this one intrigued me though. From the back cover blurb it's hard to tell if it's a historical novel, or contemporary chick lit, or perhaps some kind of mysteryhollow. I have a feeling that if you come to it The two women are angry with any particular expectations each other and Jocelyn is well aware of it fulfilling one of these genres you might be disappointed. But if you see it as a fun, exciting, genre-less read then, hopefully, you wonher mother't be able to put it down.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007613</amazonuk>}}s strengths and weaknesses:
{{newreview|author=Elaine di Rollo |title=A Proper Education for Girls|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=''A Proper Education for Girls'' She is a knowing satire about Victorian attitudes towards womenpracticed at subterfuge, focusing on the enduring bond between twin sistersat concealing, Alice and Lillian Talbot. The novel opens with beneath a description facade of their fatherrespectability, a man with a very Victorian belief in Progress and a penchant for scientific experiment. He is obsessively devoted to his indiscriminate collection of the deplorable truth'interesting and useful artefacts' which has gradually subsumed their entire house. Mr. Talbot had expected his daughters to equal his enthusiasm and devote their entire lives to The Collection with only a bunch of old ladies (their aunts) for company, but, it didn't quite work out that way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099513463</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Susan Wooldridge |title=The Hidden Dance|rating=3.5|genre=WomenHester is furious about Jocelyn's Fiction|summary=It is 1933refusal to do as she was asked, and the SS Etoile which has just left Southampton harbour en route for New York. On board is Lily Sutton, a timid, disturbed woman whose posh accent seems unsuited to her situation of travelling in steerage. Through a series of flashbacks to various years in Lilyprecipitated ''s life we learn why she is so frightened this violent and what has brought her to make this secretive journey to New York. As well as learning about her romantic aspirations through the story we also see her stumble into a difficult situation on board ship that lends a crime mystery feel to the latter half of the bookunexpected removal''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007419</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Judith Lennox |title=The Heart Then we are told of the Night|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=When Kay is hired as Miranda's companion, she has no idea what to expect; she just knows that she would like to leave behind her quiet life in the English countryside. She quickly befriends Miranda and becomes her partner in crime, evading Miranda's 'aunt', really her father's ex-mistress, and seeking out adventures in a variety birth of European cities. Trouble begins, however, when Miranda meets Olivier, a young aspiring filmmaker who believes that Miranda would be a stunning actress. Unsurprisinglychild and, Miranda truly falls in love with Oliviersoon after, which inadvertently leads to Kay's dismissal and return to England. Now separatedHester Talbot departs, these best friends must find their way on their own throughout World War II. With Kay leaving Jocelyn in England shame and Miranda in East Prussia, the women's lives are completely different, providing us with a huge backdrop in which to fall isolation in love with these characters and become enchanted with their livesYorkshire.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755344847</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert Ryan Annabel Abbs|title=Death on the IceThe Language of Food
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=In 1917, Captain Robert Falcon Scott's widow seeks Eliza Acton is a poet who has never had the slightest inclination to get boil an egg. When tasked with writing a cookery book on the market to redress the balance, to counter the rumourshe recruits Ann Kirby, public opinion and growing thought that not all was right a local woman with Scott and his exploits in Antarcticaa troubled home life. SeeminglyTogether, they test, in 2009craft, Robert Ryan seeks refine and reshape the same. However his book is certainly not just concentrating on Scott - we get a lot world of Oates, Evansdomestic cookery, reinventing the other Evans, recipe book and all changing the rest face of the fatal party - as well as Shackleton, Amundsen and morecookery writing forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755348354</amazonuk>1398502227
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti Freya Marske|title=ImprimaturA Marvellous Light
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=My history teacher at school would be stunned Robin Blyth is nudged into a job in the Civil Service, much to see his chagrin. There he meets Edwin Courcey and learns that the number streets of historical fiction books I've been reading recentlyLondon are threaded with magic. He would be even more surprised Desperate to discover remove a curse that I've mostly enjoyed themthreatens to swallow him, Robin follows Edwin to the countryside, where the hedgegrows bristle with incantations and the people shimmer with power. Whilst I've always loved reading, history was There they uncover a subject for which I showed great ineptitude and disinterest sinister plot that threatens the lives of all magicians in my younger years. How times changethe British Isles.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971055</amazonuk>1529080886
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marion Urch B09F4CTKJR|title=Invitation to Dance|rating=3|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=Lola Montez was an undeniably fascinating woman, a product of and producer of scandal. Born Eliza Gilbert to a young Irish girl and an English junior officer, she spent her early childhood in India before being shuffled off to relations in Scotland and then school in Bath. This novel chronicles her life and career as a Spanish dancer, all over Europe of the mid-nineteenth century and as far away as America and Australia.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863223958</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFlights for Freedom|author=Eloisa James |title=Duchess by NightSteven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=In this third instalment of the It''Desperate Duchesses'' series the focus is on Harriet, s the Duchess later stages of Berrow. A widow of two years, Harriet manages her vast estate, makes judgements in World War I and the local court (where United States has just entered the judge conflict. Petrol Petronus is only a drunken figurehead) young American who has signed up and is generally settled into her lifejoined the 17 Aero Squadron. But she feels unattractive, old and boring; ready This company was the first US Aero Squadron to find another husband but doesn't attract too many dancersbe trained in Canada, never mind suitors, when she turns up at a costume ball dressed as a dumpy Mother Goose (complete with a stuffed bird). When her friend sets off on a visit the first to a permanent house party at a residence of a certain very disreputable Lord Strange (in order be attached to create a scandal the RAF and entice a husband she never met back the first to be sent into the country), Harriet decides skies to go with her, but worried about fight the debauchery, she goes as a young man, a nephew of Duke Villiers who also accompanies the ladiesGermans in active combat.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340961082</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ben Kane |title=The Forgotten Legion|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=Since the release of ''Gladiator''But before that can happen, Roman life Petrol has been a growth industry in to master flying the entertainment world, with even ''Doctor Who'' visiting Pompeii at one point. The last time I visited Roman times in written form was when I was still doing Latin at school. Fortunately, Ben Kane's ''The Forgotten Legion'' is far more engrossing than school ever wasnotoriously difficult but majestic Sopwith Camel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090102</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Samantha HuntChristophe Medler|title=The Invention of Everything ElseMadrigal: A Closely Guarded Secret
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Historical Fiction |summary=Nikola Tesla, born in 1856Set against the backdrop of the English Civil War, was a young engineering student secret plan (code-named Madrigal) is discovered by Sir Robert Douse in Croatia, the summer of 1642. As a Serb with a ferocious talent for invention when he sailed to America armed only with a note loyal servant of introduction from his former employer to Thomas Edison which said: ''I know two great men the King, and you are one Head of them; the other Secret Service, it is this young man.Robert'' Promised prodigious amounts s duty to uncover the details of money the plan and follow the clues to reorganise Edison's workshops, he was uncover one of the most guarded secrets in history—especially since the end cheated by Edison, who made a joke about plot could affect the American sense of humour when Tesla asked to be paidKing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099524007</amazonuk>B095HY8SXQ
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Terri Wiltshire 1471187179|title=Carry Me HomeA Beautiful Spy|author=Rachel Hore
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=1904. Alabama. A white girl is raped by a black man, a hobo from the last train through town. The townsfolk are up in arms.
 
The opening to ''Carry Me Home'' is so reminiscent of the novel I read immediately before it ([[Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman|Scottsboro]]) that I worried I might be in for a re-run. I was worried because Scottsboro is perfect, and any imitator is bound to fail. I worried unnecessarily. The starting premise aside, the two books have nothing at all in common.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>023071448X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=John Boyne
|title=The House of Special Purpose
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=There must have been countless people reading the book after watching the film made from [[The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne|The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas]] and wondering what John Boyne was going to do next, with no idea he had already done something else - the brilliant ribaldry of [[Mutiny on the Bounty by John Boyne|Mutiny on the Bounty]]. If nothing else the pair showed up the chameleonic brilliance of this young author.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385616066</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Caroline Rance
|title=Kill-Grief
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Mary Helsall began work as a nurse in Chester in 1756, but she was rather impatient and caring for others didn't come naturally to her. Her solution was gin and oblivion - and a volatile relationship with a hospital porter, but it was only when a diseased beggar came to the hospital for treatment that it became clear that Mary had secrets to hide.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955861349</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Ellen Feldman
|title=Scottsboro
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Minnie is an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting life in a leafy provincial suburb. The quote book is set in the 1930s and Minnie is ascribed expected to live up to her mother's expectations and find a nice young man to Haywood Pattersonmarry, one produce children and spend the rest of the Scottsboro boysher days looking after her husband and their home. With FeldmanUnfortunately, this isn's magict what she wants to do at all and neither does she want to continue working as a secretary. As a result of a chance meeting, she finds herself drawn into espionage, it's hard working for the secret service and effectively living a double life - attempting to know whether infiltrate the quote is true, or is part Communist Party of the fictionGreat Britain. That's Minnie finds herself torn between what she perceives as her duty and the difficulty when you tell stories that rely friends she has made - and likes - whilst working for their power on the truth of the events on which they're basedCommunist Party. How much is the reader to believe? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330456148</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Manil SuriAfonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|title=The Age of ShivaKokoschka's Doll|rating=42.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Shiva might be Well, this looked very much like a book I could love from the Destroyer in the Hindu trinity get-go, which gives us Brahma as the creator is why I picked my review copy up and Vishnu as the preserver, but life is never that simpleflipped pages over several times before actually reading any of it. It is never made explicit what ''The Age of Shiva'' refers I found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the title of the novel. Who is the analogical Shiva who wreaks such destruction middle on darker stock paper, a chapter whose number was in the lives we encounter?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747596395</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Julia Stoneham|title=Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=During the Second World War many women in Britain were seeing their men leave them to go and fight20, but Alice Todd finds herself abandoned by her husband for a younger woman. She has to find a way to support herself and her young son000s, Edwardletters used as narrative form, and so she applies for the post of Warden on a farm, taking care of a group of young women working as Land Girls. Mostly the horrors and tragedies of war seem very distant to the girls as they struggle more It intrigued with the horrors subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of sharing bath waterit mentioned, their blisters from hard farm work and living in a cold, isolated farmhousetoo. However, even here they find that they arenBut you't protected from ve seen the hostilitiesstar rating that comes with this review, and the tragedies can tell that enter their lives serve to bring if love was on these pages, it was not actually caused by them closer together as a make-shift family. So what happened?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0749079096</amazonuk>1529402697
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anna RichardsChristina Hammonds Reed|title=Little GodsThe Black Kids
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary FictionTeens |summary=Forty-seven days into Christina Hammonds Reed's debut novel is set against the warbackdrop of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a reaction to the absolution of four police officers for beating a black man, Rodney King, long before nearly to death. Told from the Luftwaffe came anywhere near our capitalperspective of Ashley Bennett, an explosion wrecked the house in which Eugenia (Jean) had suffered novel follows her evolution from a silent bystander when confronted with matters of race, to a woman finding her voice and embracing her first nineteen yearsheritage.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>033046440X</amazonuk>1471188191
}}
{{newreview|author=Ann Weisgarber|title=The Personal History of Rachel DuPree|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Do you remember reading ''The Red Pony'' at school? If you shed tears at John Steinbeck's short masterpiece, be sure Move on to find time for this story of rural hardship from new American author, Ann Weisgarber. I thought 'The Personal [[Newest History of Rachel DuPree' was a stunning read, with more than a nod at Steinbeck, yet enough distance to place the writer in her own territory. The two settings, Chicago and South Dakota, convinced me of their authenticity immediately. The family grabbed my sympathy from the opening scene and every character was satisfyingly 3-D. Unsurprising, then, that this novel took seven years to write.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330458558</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jo Graham|title=Hand of Isis|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Once long ago, three sisters were born in the same year. All were children of the Pharaoh Ptolemy Auletes, the eldest born to a serving woman, the middle to his Queen, the youngest to a slave from Thrace, who died in childbirth. The middle child, of little consequence when born, being the forth legitimate child of the Pharaoh and a girl, would one day become Egypt's most famous Queen. Her name was Cleopatra.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497002</amazonuk>}}Reviews]]
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