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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1471187179Tananarive Due|title=A Beautiful Spy|author=Rachel HoreThe Reformatory|rating=45
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Minnie Gracetown, Florida. June 1950. After a scuffle with a white boy, twelve year-old Robbie Stephens Jr is an sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, otherwise known as the Reformatory. It'ordinary' girl living an unexciting life in s a place with a leafy provincial suburbbrutal and dark reputation. The book But the segregated reformatory is set in a chamber of horrors, haunted by the boys that have died there. In order to survive the 1930s school governor and Minnie 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 expected living in Boston, having been sent to live up with a family who run an inn, and being made to her mother's expectations and find work there from a nice young man age. When she hears there is to marrybe a hanging of some pirates in the town, produce children she decides to go and spend watch. Enthralled and horrified in equal measure, Hannah finds herself embroiled in a young boy's death at the rest hands of her days looking after her husband and their hometwo vicious pirates. UnfortunatelyShe hides away, this isnso that they don't what she wants find and kill her too, and then to do at all and neither does escape them completely she want runs away to continue working sea, dressing as a secretary. As a result of a chance meeting, she finds herself drawn into espionage, working for boy and joining the secret service and effectively living notorious Ned Low's pirate ship as a double life - attempting to infiltrate the Communist Party of Great Britaincabin boy. Minnie She soon finds herself torn between what she perceives as her duty and in the friends she has made - thick of things when there is a mutiny on board, and likes - whilst working for from there we are caught up in her rip roaring tale of life on the Communist Partyocean waves.|isbn=0861547438
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{{Frontpage
|author=Afonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)Sarah Marsh|title=Kokoschka's DollA Sign of Her Own|rating=23.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=WellAfter a bout of scarlet fever as a child, this looked very much like Ellen Lark loses her hearing. Suddenly plunged into a book I could love from the get-goworld of silence, which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of iteverything about her life changes. I found things to potentially delight me each Living in a time – a weird section in when the middle on darker stock paperuse of sign language was seen as something only savages do, Ellen is sent to a chapter whose number was in the 20school where she is taught to lip read,000s, letters used as narrative form, and so onbut physically restrained from signing. It intrigued with From here, she ends up in another school studying under Alexander Graham Bell who has been teaching the subterranean voice deaf and using a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentioned, toosystem called Visible Speech. But you've seen At the star rating that comes with this reviewsame time, Bell is working on other inventions and can tell that if love was on these pagesideas, it was not actually caused by themand Ellen finds herself unwittingly caught up in a complicated tangle of espionage. So what happened?|isbn=15294026971035401614
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{{Frontpage
|author=Christina Hammonds ReedClaire North|title=The Black KidsHouse of Odysseus|rating=4.5|genre=Teens Literary Fiction |summary=Christina Hammonds Reed's debut novel is set against 'What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the backdrop of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a reaction to few months after where we left off. In the absolution palace of four police officers for beating a black manOdysseus, Rodney Kingwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, nearly who sailed to deathwar at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. Told from As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the perspective throne of Ashley Bennettthe Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the novel follows her evolution from brink of a silent bystander when confronted fragile peace. One that shatters however with matters the return of Orestes, King of raceMycenae, to a woman finding her voice and embracing her heritagehis sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=14711881910356516075
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Caroline ScottB0C7J9D21B|title=When I Come Home AgainA Captive in Algiers (Muhammed Amalfi Mysteries)|author=A J Lewis
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=1918 When we first meet our hero, his name is Ettore and a young man is arrested in Durham Cathedral. He refuses to give a name, no matter how hard they push he will not say who he islives at The House of Beautiful Swallows. Eventually they determine Idyllic as this isnmight sound, it't wilful obstinance, he doesns a bordello and Ettore't answer because s mother died when he doesn't knowwas born. He remembers being on the road for a long time, and being frightened, and some 's not been short of the faces from the roadmothers, though - but other than that – everything that came before has gone. They need a name for the forms and so they call him Adam and, because he was found someone of his background in the Galilee Chapellate-eighteenth-century Amalfi, it becomes Adam Galilee'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. A fanciful name for Ettore was nothing if not resourceful - and determined - and it was not long before he had a tired young man in successful business as a dishevelled uniform who doesn't know who he is, where he is or how he got thereguide for visitors. He was even saving some money.|isbn=1471192172
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1405946172Essie Fox|title=The Glass House|author=Eve ChaseFascination|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Rita lost both her parents in The Victorian era is incredibly over-romanticised as a car crash when she was just six years old: since then she's always craved setting for historical fiction (matched only, perhaps, by the Second World War) which has often led to more than a familyfew writers mishandling it. SheThere'd lived with her grandmother in Torquay until she got s such a job as a nanny with the Harrington family glut of media set in London. Soon her engagement to Fred, a Torquay butcher, fell through and the Harringtons became her family. In 1971, after a fire at era that the London house, Jeannie Harrington, her children, 13-year-old Hera and 6-year-old Teddy, along hallmarks we've come to associate with Rita went it are familiar to the family's house in the Forest point of Deanbeing cliched, hackneyed even. It wasn't ''quite'' dilapidatedAll this is simply to illustrate that it would be an easy thing to do poorly. But despite that, but something about it certainly wasnstill grabs me – and something about this book't the same standard s description did as the London house had been before the firewell.|isbn=1914585526
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{{Frontpage
|author=Sally MagnussonNicole Jarvis|title=The Sealwoman's GiftA Portrait in Shadow
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= There is a legend that God came ''I want all of Florence to visit Adam & Eve know my name'' Cast out from Rome, Artemisia Gentileschi arrives in Florence seeking an oasis in the Garden. Eve had not finished bathing which her children art can find a home and ashamed of those still not cleansed, where her future can thrive rather than stagnate. But as some as she enters Florentine society she attempted to hide them faces great opposition from the eyes powerful Accademia, the self-proclaimed guardians of God, denying the healing magics that she had more children than those, already bathed, that she willing paraded for him. God was not through paintings have the power to be deceived, however, protect the city and decreed that what was sought to be hidden its citizens from the eyes of God would henceforth be hidden from the eyes of man, plagues and curses. The all-male Accademia has hoarded power over art and architecture for centuries and so the Elves were born: the hidden folkguard it above all else. They can see manTo them, but man can only see Artemisia – an ambitious young woman who promises trouble and change – has no place amongst them if they so chooseand their society.|isbn=14736389841803362340
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{{Frontpage
|author=Wendy Cheyne Thomas D Lee|title=From Perilous Times|rating=3|genre= Fantasy|summary= ''Hate is the path of least resistance'' Set in the near-distant future, in a world on the Auld Rock verge of climate collapse, Britain is in great peril. The British Isles desperately needs a hero (or several) to a Hard Placesave the day and rescue what little remains. What no-one expected was that one of the Knights of the Round Table would answer the call.|isbn=0356518523}}{{Frontpage|author=G K Holloway|title=In the Shadows of Castles|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary= After We begin after the Jacobite defeat at momentous battle in 1066 and on the Battle day of Culloden, William of Normandy's coronation as King of England. William's position is not secure and the new king has many Scottish estates were given to English lordschallenges. Imposing authority through a coronation is important. They were not kind And William is right to their crofting tenantsworry. Many on While the mainland were cleared previous king, Harold, is dead and while this did not happen much on the islands such as Shetlandlikelihood of more pitched battles is over, the new exploitative conditions led many Shetlanders to leave - to port cities on rebels are stirring and much of the mainland, country does not wish to North America and even to Australia and New Zealandrecognise a new overlord. |isbn= 18385917531800422466
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Alison Weir3949666079|title= Six Tudor Queens: Katheryn Howard The Tainted QueenNoema|author=Dael Akkerman|rating= 4.5|genre= Historical General Fiction|summary= ''Katheryn was seven when her mother diedThis is a story about some things that happened to me about twelve thousand years ago.'' Maya is a young girl living in a hunter gatherer village during the Mesolithic era. Climate change is occurring, thus we are thrust the Sea of Grass encroaches further and further into this tumultuous time in young KatherynMaya's life, trying to find a forest home, both figuratively and literally, where she can grow food is becoming more and grievemore scarce. Unfortunately, Katheryn is followed by bad luck and she learns an important lesson, she is too young, too poor and too unimportant What to be do? Can the law givers in the federation of any value villages muster peaceful ways to anyonecope? Can the Traveller, but she is beautiful and surely, that will count for something in a spiritual figure who interprets the endwisdom of All Life, won't itprovide solutions?|isbn=1472227778
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=15291237631529125898|title=Miss AustenGodmersham Park
|author=Gill Hornby
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=It''If it were not for the casual dereliction of the odd gentleman's long been known that Cassandra duty, there would no women to teach well-bred daughters at all.'' Anne Sharpe was thirty-one years old when she arrived at Godmersham Park to take up the position of governess to twelve-year-old Fanny Austen burned most . She had no experience of teaching but this was a case of necessity. Until the letters which she and other members death of the extensive Austen family her mother, Anne had exchanged with or about a comfortable life and was loved by both parents although her sister Janefather was frequently absent from the household. What is not known is ''why'' she did this When her mother died, her father cast her off and at this stage - would have nothing more than two hundred years after Jane's death - a definitive answer is unlikely to forthcomingdo with her. Gill Hornby has provided us with some possible answers in No explanation was offered but she would receive an annuity of £35 a book that proved to be far more emotionally complex than I year. Her maid, Agnes, would receive nothing but was expectingfortunately taken in by some neighbours.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1471186393Melissa Fu |title=Photographer of the Lost|author=Caroline ScottPeach Blossom Spring |rating=43.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=May 1921I loved the prelude to Peach Blossom Spring, a short chapter entitled ''Origins''. Edie receives a photograph through the post. There is no letter or note with Unfortunately it. There is nothing written on the back only truly poetic part of the photograph. It is a picture of her husband, Francisbook that I expected more from. Francis has been missing for four yearsCovering Chinese history from 1938 to 2005 as viewed through one family's perspective. TechnicallyWhen their home city is set ablaze during the war with Japan, he has been "missing, believed killed" but that is not something that a young widow can believemother (Meilin) and her four-year-old son (Renshu) are among those who flee. She hangs The story follows them on the word 'missingtheir journey across China, and in Renshu', disbelieving the word killeds case eventually to America. |isbn=1472277538
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=099944235X1916072038|title=The Man Who Killed HitlerHouse in the Hollow (The Talbot Saga)|author=Andre PronovostAllie Cresswell|rating=34.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Germany is split. Some We meet part of her is the Talbot family in Yorkshire in favour of Hitler and the Nazis, but much isn'tNovember 1811. Some of Twenty-seven-year-old Jocelyn Talbot and her is stuck to the east fighting the Sovietsmother have travelled in some discomfort from their home at Ecklington, but some will soon have to be on the other front, against the Americans coming into house in the continent to put things right as they see ithollow. Finding out that the war to the east isn't working, due to HitlerThe two women are angry with each other and Jocelyn is well aware of her mother's tactical ineptitude strengths and inability to heed advice, some people reckon Stalin weaknesses: ''She is five seasons away from being in Berlin. The only way to shore things uppracticed at subterfuge, and repair the splitsat concealing, is to kill Hitlerbeneath a facade of respectability, and luckily Baron Nicholas is the man to do itdeplorable truth''. He Hester is furious about Jocelyn's aristocratic enoughrefusal to do as she was asked, he knows enough people in industry, society which has precipitated ''this violent and other circles unexpected removal''. Then we are told of the birth of powera child and, soon after, Hester Talbot departs, so once he's succeeded he might be able to keep a German presence leaving Jocelyn in Europe. But will he still be able to keep the "predatory American capitalists" shame and the blatantly communist Soviets from meeting isolation in the middle?Yorkshire.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1789018625Annabel Abbs|title=Just Another Girl on the Road|author=S KensingtonThe Language of Food|rating=4 5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Eliza Acton is a poet who has never had the slightest inclination to boil an egg. When Sergeant Farr and Corporal Valentine first encountered Katrinka Badeau tasked with writing a cookery book, she was just eighteen years old and fleeing from recruits Ann Kirby, a farmhouse and local woman with a group of German deserters who had raped hertroubled home life. Despite being outnumbered she was giving just about as good as she got when Farr Together, they test, craft, refine and Valentine intervened and finished reshape the group off. It was 1944 and Farr and Valentine were part world of domestic cookery, reinventing the Jedburgh unit, EDMOND, lead by Major Willoughby Nye. Nye recognised Katrinka immediately - he'd worked on her father's merchant ship recipe book and Katrinka had once had a crush on Nyechanging the face of cookery writing forever. When he offered her a job with his unit, she accepted|isbn=1398502227
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1542007232Freya Marske|title=The Rabbit Girls|author=Anna ElloryA Marvellous Light|rating=34
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Berlin, 1989. Miriam Robin Blyth is nudged into a job in the middle of a city freshly unitedCivil Service, with the Wall newly broken down and people able much to cross at liberty for the first time in decadeshis chagrin. She is in There he meets Edwin Courcey and learns that the middle streets of such euphoria, but cannot feel it, for she has not left her father's apartment in weeks, nursing London are threaded with magic. Desperate to remove a curse that threatens to swallow him as he lies dying. One standard bed-bath, however, is very differentRobin follows Edwin to the countryside, when he gasps where the name ''Frieda'' that she does not recognise – hedgegrows bristle with incantations and she sees for the first time ever a tattoo for his camp inmate identity under his watch. One bombshell outside, then, and two insidepeople shimmer with power. And inside her father, Henryk, what is going on, as he has There they uncover a first-person narrative alternating with her story? What will we find happened, as he remembers back to sinister plot that threatens the real Frieda, a young woman that shook him to lives of all magicians in the core when he was her literature professor? That's right, more bombshells… British Isles. |isbn=1529080886
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529311446B09F4CTKJR|title=The Long Flight HomeFlights for Freedom|author=A L HladSteven Burgauer
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=September 1940 - as WWII rages on, bombs rain down on Britain, destroying It's the homes later stages of World War I and lives of a people on the edgeUnited States has just entered the conflict. In Epping Forest, Susan Shepherd Petrol Petronus is a young American who has signed up and her grandfather Bertie live together raising homing pigeons with joined the birds proving a comfort for Susan following 17 Aero Squadron. This company was the loss of her parents. These pigeons are more than just birds first US Aero Squadron to Susan though – be trained in each oneCanada, and especially in Duchess, she sees a distinct personality and forms a close bond. Meanwhile, young pilot Ollie Evans leaves Maine the first to head be attached to Britain the RAF and join the Royal Air Force. Working with first to be sent into the skies to fight the National Pigeon Service, he soon meets Susan and is tasked with air-dropping hundreds of homing pigeons into German-occupied France, where many will not surviveGermans in active combat. As the mission is plannedBut before that can happen, Petrol has to master flying the bond between Ollie and Susan grows stronger, notoriously difficult but when Ollie's plane is downed behind enemy lines, it may be Duchess who provides an unexpected lifeline and ensures that hope of a reunion for Susan and Ollie remains…majestic Sopwith Camel.
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=178747920XChristophe Medler|title=Brightfall |author=Jaime Lee MoyerMadrigal: A Closely Guarded Secret|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Robin Hood is gone – denouncing both his former life and his love MarianSet against the backdrop of the English Civil War, and retreating to a monastery – although nosecret plan (code-one knows quite what led him to abandon all that he had built. Marion's life since has been relatively quiet - but when her friends start dying, Marion named Madrigal) is tasked discovered by Father Tuck to break Sir Robert Douse in the curse surrounding them and to save their livessummer of 1642. Setting off with As a soldierloyal servant of the King, a Fey Lord and a sullen Robin HoodHead of the Secret Service, she becomes tangled in a maze it is Robert's duty to uncover the details of betrayals, complicated relationships, the plan and a vicious struggle for follow the clues to uncover one of the most guarded secrets in history—especially since the plot could affect the throne…King.|isbn=B095HY8SXQ
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=17846316471471187179|title=A Perfect ExplanationBeautiful Spy|author=Eleanor AnstrutherRachel Hore|rating=54
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Enid Campbell was Minnie is an 'ordinary' girl living an unexciting life in a woman who, on leafy provincial suburb. The book is set in the face of it1930s and Minnie is expected to live up to her mother's expectations and find a nice young man to marry, had everything. Leading produce children and spend the life rest of an aristocrat – full of inherited wealth her days looking after her husband and splendourtheir home. Unfortunately, glamourous locales and high expectations. Only Enidthis isn's life has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosed, untreated t what she wants to do at all and threatening both Enid and those close neither does she want to hercontinue working as a secretary. After losing custody As a result of her childrena chance meeting, she finds herself drawn into espionage, Enid sells her son working for the secret service and effectively living a double life - attempting to her sister for £500 – but is this an act of greed, or an act of desperation? Exploring infiltrate the true story Communist Party of Great Britain. Minnie finds herself torn between what she perceives as her own grandmother, Eleanor Anstruther duty and the friends she has found the perfect subject for an explosive, moving made - and beautifully welllikes -written debutwhilst working for the Communist Party. [[A Perfect Explanation by Eleanor Anstruther|Full Review]]
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0857058738|title=Equator|author=Antonin Varenne Afonso Cruz and Sam Taylor Rahul Bery (translator)|title=Kokoschka's Doll|rating=32.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=It strikes me that nobody can speak well of Well, this looked very much like a book I could love from the Wild West outside the walls get-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of a theme parkit. Our agent I found things to see how bad it potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, a chapter whose number was here is Pete Fergusonin the 20, who bristles at the indignity of the white man against Native 'Indian'000s, who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo huntletters used as narrative form, and who hates so on. It intrigued with the way subterranean voice a man – and womanhears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentioned, of course – can turn against fellow man at the bat of an eyelidtoo. But this book is about so much more than you've seen the 1870s USA, and the attendant problems star rating that comes with gold rushesthis review, pioneer spirits and racial genocide. He finds himself trying to find this book's version of Utopia, namely the Equator, where everything is upside down, people walk can tell that if love was on their heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on the ground to counter the anti-gravitythese pages, and where, who knows, things might it was not actually be bettercaused by them. But that equator is a long way away – and there's a whole adventure full of Mexico and Latin America between him and it… So what happened?|isbn=1529402697
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{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1472227727Christina Hammonds Reed|title=Six Tudor Queens: Anna of Kleve, Queen of Secrets|author=Alison WeirThe Black Kids
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical FictionTeens |summary=Poor, frumpy Anne of Cleaves always gets a raw deal by history, of all Christina Hammonds Reed's debut novel is set against the wives backdrop of Henry VIII she is the one who is known for being rejected. Anne Boleyn and Katheryn Howard were the sexy ones1992 Los Angeles riots, Jane the dutiful one who delivered a son, Katherine of Aragon clung on reaction to her crown and Katharine Parr clung on to her life but poor frumpy Anne the absolution of Cleaves just rolled over and moved along. Not any more! Alison Weir presents us with four police officers for beating a different view of this young woman who saw the opportunity to live an independent life and took it.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0718187091|title=Liberation Square|author=Gareth Rubin|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=In an alternate 1952black man, Soviet Troops control British Streets. After D-Day goes horribly wrongRodney King, Britain is first occupied by Nazi Germany – only nearly to be rescued by Russian soldiers death. Told from the Eastperspective of Ashley Bennett, and Americans the novel follows her evolution from the west. Dividing the nation between them, London soon finds itself split in two, a wall running through it like a scar. When Jane Cawson's husband is arrested for the murder silent bystander when confronted with matters of his former wiferace, Jane is determined to clear his name. In doing so, Jane follows a trail of corruption that leads woman finding her right to the highest levels of the state – voice and soon finds herself desperate to stay one step ahead of the murderous secret police…}}{{Frontpageembracing her heritage.|isbn=191236266X|title=The Boy in a Turban|author=Joseph Hucknall|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=You might not think that Georgian London contained many black people. But it contained more than you think. You may have heard of Francis Barber, the black African slave who became the friend of lexicographer Samuel Johnson and was a beneficiary of his will. ''The Boy in a Turban'' tells the story of a fictional black character, James, in Georgian London. James, then Quaccoe, is brought to the capital from a Jamaican plantation by a ship captain who wanted a servant for his two daughters.1471188191
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