#BookReview ‘Devotion’ by @HannahFKent #historical #emigration

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In Prussia, 1836, fourteen-year-old Hanne lives in a world-within-a-world, a strict religious group where worship must be kept secret and hidden from the sight of neighbours. Devotion by Hannah Kent is the story of Hanne’s persecuted community. They live in fear of expulsion or worse. But when a new family arrives Hanne meets another outsider, Thea, and her life is changed forever. Hannah Kent Kent takes her time with the first half. This is a slow start, a painstaking building of the relationship between Hanne and Thea, drawing the world in which neither fits. As Hanne reaches womanhood, her life is changing in small ways. Her mother increasingly separates her from twin brother Matthias as they are prepared for different adult lives. Hanne simply longs to be free to be in the woods, to listen to the sounds of nature alive. But in times of fear or uncertainty, when she bristles against the strict confines set by her mother, the unshakeable belief of her father, she cleaves to her twin. The glimpse of a different world offered by Thea’s family, the more open way they behave with each other, makes Hanne’s mild dissatisfaction with her life become an acute fear of being trapped.
When the offer of safe passage to Australia comes from a helpful member of their congregation, a new life where they will be able to worship without fear becomes possible. ‘Without my father’s devotion to that Bible I would not be here. Without that Bible, nothing would have happened.’
The story is told in three parts, or ‘days’, and the event occurring at the end of the first day is perhaps not surprising but what follows is. To explain, is to tell too much of the plot. The second part, when the travellers settle in the Adelaide Hills, is slow paced. After the sections in Prussia and onboard ship, the indulgence of the writing in what is already a slow-paced novel begins to drag a little.
Kent’s writing is strongest when describing Hanne’s visceral connections with land and sea, with nature, with animals. She seems to directly commune with living creatures, to hear their voices. There is a magical element – magic or witchcraft – threaded throughout the story which is both a benefit and a curse, a source of division within the Lutherans but a form of communication with the native Peramangk community who live on the land the Lutherans claim for their settlement of Heiligendorf.
The theme of devotion, and love, runs throughout. The love shared by Hanne and Thea, but also Hanne’s love for her brother, her friend Hans and her parents. The devotion both to their shared faith and to each other. It is Hanne alone who feels the connection to nature and her devotion to every living creature, and this sets her apart.
At times the beautiful prose dominates the storyline and I lost track of the moment where the action paused. I admit to skipping chunks. No matter the beauty, the tenderness of the writing, a strong narrative is essential to stop the reader floundering and continue reading.
Basically, this is a love story, of love unobtainable and out of reach, but a love all-consuming.

Read my reviews of Hannah Kent’s two other novels:-
BURIAL RITES
THE GOOD PEOPLE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Wonder’ by Emma Donoghue
‘At the Edge of the Orchard’ by Tracy Chevalier
‘The Ninth Child’ by Sally Magnusson

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#BookReview ‘A Fatal Crossing’ by @TomHindle3 #crime

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‘When amateurs are involved… mistakes are made,’ says the detective. It is 1924 when a suspicious death occurs on board a transatlantic liner bound for New York with 2000 passengers.  A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle is set up as a classic closed room murder mystery. The detective has four days to find the murderer before the ship docks in New York. Tom HindleKey elements are mixed together. An elderly gentleman travelling under a false name is found dead, a key witness disappears, a painting is stolen, the captain wants an easy final voyage before retirement, while a Scotland Yard detective James Temple won’t say why he’s travelling to America. The captain, who is desperate to believe the death was accidental, permits Temple to investigate the crime only if accompanied by ship’s officer Timothy Birch. They are a mis-matched pair. Grumpy Temple is irritated by Birch’s interference. Birch, whose unspecified grief makes him an outsider amongst the crew, is intimidated by Temple. They begin to interview witnesses. Soon, Birch receives a death threat.
The story is told through the first-person narrative of Birch which is limiting and repetitive. It is a feature of crime novels to use more telling – not showing – than other genres, but here the options were reviewed again and again. I struggled to trust either Birch or Temple, but trust is a major theme of the book… trust tested under duress and grief, loyalty to someone hardly known, debts owed, and the sifting of truth from lies. The classic closed room setting of a ship should add to the tension but the nautical setting was under-used in terms of adding atmosphere, claustrophobia and the countdown of days as time runs out. As the story unfolds, we realise that information is being hidden by everyone and there are two mysteries to be solved. I started to long for a second voice as an alternative to Birch, to add perspective on the mysteries and bring a change of tone.
This is a novel featuring a soul-searching protagonist that also involves a crime, rather than a fast-paced crime novel with a single focus. Neither Birch nor Temple seems to be telling the truth. When a huge twist is revealed at the end, I was left not knowing what to believe.

If you like this, try:-
‘Death and the Brewery Queen’ by Frances Brody #12KATESHACKLETON
‘The Mystery of Three Quarters’ by Sophie Hannah #3POIROT
‘The Secrets of Gaslight Lane’ by MRC Kasasian #4GOWERDETECTIVE

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#BookReview ‘The Key in the Lock’ by Beth Underdown #historical

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Two unrelated deaths, thirty years apart, set in motion a chain of cause and effect. Decades later, so many answers remain unspoken. The Key in the Lock by Beth Underdown is an unusual multiple timeline historical mystery set in Cornwall, rather like Mary Stewart mysteries but darker. Beth Underdown Ivy Boscowen has known two deaths in her life. In 1918 she is mourning the death in the Great War of her son, Tim. The exact circumstances of his death cannot be confirmed and this haunts her, she becomes afraid that her reluctance for him to enlist actually forced him to go and so feels responsible for his death. At night she dreams of Tim when he was a child, hiding beneath a bed. This dream morphs into the memory of another young death; when Ivy was nineteen, young William Tremain died in a house fire at the nearby Polneath. He was found asphyxiated beneath a bed. The two deaths are unconnected in terms of circumstances and cause, but are forever connected in Ivy’s mind because of decisions taken.
When she was a teenager, Ivy was sweet on Edward Tremain, son of ‘Old’ Tremain, owner of Polneath and the gunpowder works. Appropriately, at the heart of this novel are two fires plus explosive secrets hidden for decades. Ivy is a rambling, unreliable narrator who makes inconsistent statements, assumptions and rash decisions, and I found it difficult to warm to her.
The echo in the opening sentence of Daphne du Maurier’s first sentence of Rebecca felt unnecessary and heavy-handed. Yes, this novel is also set in Cornwall, but tone and style are different. This is more a character piece than a mystery and I didn’t find it particularly gothic. Some events are mentioned in advance so there is no mystery when they happen, others are simply disorientating rather than curious. The timeline switches between the two main timelines – 1888 and 1918 – plus flashbacks to Tim’s childhood and 1919, and it’s not always clear when things are happening.
I finished the book in two minds. I prefer the 1888 storyline but can’t help thinking there is a clearer, stronger story buried within, hidden by unnecessary plot complications and red herrings.

Read my review of THE WITCHFINDER’S SISTER, Beth Underdown’s debut novel.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Animals at Lockwood Manor’ by Jane Healey
‘Touch Not the Cat’ by Mary Stewart
‘The Vanishing of Audrey Wild’ by Eve Chase

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#BookReview ‘Tea for Two at the Little Cornish Kitchen’ by @janelinfoot #romance

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I’m not a great reader of novels described as ‘heartwarming’, particularly with cheerful pastel-coloured covers. But as an impulse read for a winter day when I was feeling under the weather and in need of comfort, Tea for Two at the Little Cornish Kitchen by Jane Linfoot proved to be a bit of a surprise. Jane LinfootSecond in the Little Cornish Kitchen series, I hesitate to call this a ‘cosy romance’ but it is fun, flirty and funny. Novels set in Cornwall are almost a genre of their own and the fictional seaside village of St Aidan with its pastel-coloured houses set on steep windy streets leading to the beach is ideal for a ‘community’ novel with a strong list of characters.
There are lots of alliterations, hashtags and cute names starting with Cressida Cupcake, the social media name for hit online baker Cressy Hobson. Dog and apartment-sitting for her brother Charlie [owner of the Little Cornish Kitchen Cafe and star of the first book in Linfoot’s series, one of a collection set in St Aidan] Cressy will be at Seaspray Cottage for six weeks. She’s glad to escape London and the embarrassing fallout after an online baking disaster. She’s trending on social media as #CrappyCupcake, her book deal has fallen through, her blog sponsors have disappeared and she is short of cash. But when confronted with her sister-in-law’s circle of best friends, she hides the truth and is determined to work things out on her own.
Inevitably she is soon pulled into the community and joins the fundraising plans for the financially-struggling Kittiwake Court community care home. Cressy’s private baking parties take off, as do her sales of bake boxes via the local Facebook group. Add in a meeting with her handsome teenage crush, assorted sheep to be fed and eggs to be collected, a collection of adorable cats and dogs, various cute children and babies, and the scene is set for Cressy to lurch from disaster to triumph to embarrassment and disaster again and again. There are serious themes too – miscarriage and infertility being the main two – but in general there’s a light hand when it comes to the reality of seaside living, seasonal unemployment, online hate, poverty and the struggles of an ageing population. This is romantic comedy, a getaway from the real world. In this pastel-coloured village, reality is pushed firmly to one side.
Not my normal reading but great for the time when a Bakewell tart blondie is preferable to a single digestive. Oh, and if you enjoy baking there are some great recipes at the end.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

If you like this, try:-
‘Girl in Trouble’ by Rhoda Baxter
‘Butterfly Barn’ by Karen Power
’59 Memory Lane’ by Celia Anderson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
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#BookReview ‘Tempted by the Runes’ by @PiaCCourtenay #romance #timetravel

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Having visited Iceland and loved the wild beauty, I was pleased to discover Tempted by the Runes by Christina Courtenay. A time-travelling Viking romance combining Sweden, Iceland and Ireland in the 21st and 9th centuries, this is a light romance which skips along nicely.
Geir Eskilsson is a Viking adventurer who sets sail from Sviariki [Sweden] in AD875 in a ship bound for Iceland, loaded with fellow travellers, livestock and tools. During a stopover in the port of Dyflin [Dublin, Ireland] to buy thralls [slaves] to work the land, he sees a strangely dressed woman being attacked. Christina CourtenayIn 2021 a nineteen-year-old Swede, Maddie, is visiting Dublin with her parents and brother to attend the Clonarf Viking Festival. Maddie’s father is an archaeologist, her mother a conservator, so she and her siblings have attended Viking re-enactments since they were small and have learned the practical skills of Viking life at workshops. When Maddie explores Dublin on her own, she finds steps down to the shore of the River Liffey where she sees a knife half-buried in the mud.
From the beginning it’s necessary to ignore the large number of conveniences and coincidences that occur; just abandon the questioning voice in your head and enjoy the story. Maddie is incredibly naive for her age and makes many impulsive questionable decisions; for example, she leaves the hotel still wearing her Viking outfit so is appropriately dressed when she finds herself in 9th century Dyflin. There she just happens to bump into Geir, not some anonymous Viking who would have treated her differently; to explain why will spoil the plot.
The Norse legends run throughout and it felt good to understand references to Odin, Loki and Thor’s hammer. I realised at the end that I read the whole book seeing Geir as Thor in the Marvel movies and hearing his spoken voice as Chris Hemsworth. The description of Iceland’s beautiful scenery, coastline and wildlife is also well done. After the early clash of culture – Maddie is horrified when Geir returns from a hunting trip with Great Auks, birds now extinct through over-hunting – it soon settles into a will they/won’t they romance, threatened by violent visitors and a Viking femme fatale.
I admit to being irritated to discover, on starting the book, that it’s actually part of a series which is not clearly stated. After hovering, I decided to go ahead and read it. It turned out not to matter too much but I’m not sure I will now read the earlier books. Some characters from the earlier Runes books are mentioned in Tempted by the Runes so I know the outcome of their story arcs. It’s a shame this mystery is lost, as this was an entertaining romance to read on holiday.

If you like this, try:-
‘Ferney’ by James Long
‘Winter of the Heart by EG Parsons
‘Fatal Inheritance’ by Rachel Rhys

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#BookReview ‘The Red Monarch’ by Bella Ellis #historical #crime

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I’ve loved both of the Bella Ellis’s Brönte Mysteries series to date and the latest, The Red Monarch, is my favourite so far. If I could give it 6*, I would. It ticks so many boxes. Fast action, thoughtful detecting, literary and Brönte references, romance, the dirty violent underworld of London, dastardly baddies to defeat and wrongs to be righted. Bella EllisWhen Lydia Roxby runs into trouble in London, she writes to her former governess Anne Brönte appealing for help. Lydia’s actor husband Harry has been imprisoned by a violent gang, accused of stealing a jewel. Heavily pregnant Lydia is given seven days to return the jewel or Harry will be killed. The four Brönte siblings rush to London and find Lydia living in an attic room at the Covent Garden Theatre, run by Harry’s father.
The first problem for the Bröntes is how to find a jewel when no information is available. Lydia knows nothing and either people are ignorant or frightened to speak. The streets around Covent Garden are run by a gangster, Noose, and his network of thugs and spies. So, naturally, the first thing the Bröntes do is seek a face-to-face meeting with Noose.
Operating out of their comfort zone but driven by a clear determination of what is right, backed up by their love for each other, Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell must negotiate the dangerous streets of the slums, adopting disguises, refusing to be cowed by threats and bluster, taking risks on who to trust. The more they find out, the clearer it is that they must confront the crime boss who terrifies everyone. But the so-called Red Monarch is so feared that no one dare say his name for fear of being overheard by one of his spies and subsequently killed as a traitor. The whole area exists in an atmosphere of fear and exploitation.
This is an original concept and a plot that, like its two predecessors, combines genres effortlessly. With witty asides and foreshadowing of the Bröntes’ writings – as this novel starts, the sisters’ first edition of poetry is published – this is both familiar and unfamiliar territory. Like comfort food, but surprisingly different. As the thoughtful, literary siblings pursue criminals, we see the strengths and weaknesses of each. Who would have imagined Emily carrying a sword?
Loved it. Oh, and another beautiful cover.

Click the title below to read my reviews of these other Bella Ellis novels:-
THE VANISHED BRIDE #1BRONTEMYSTERIES
THE DIABOLICAL BONES #2BRONTEMYSTERIES
A GIFT OF POISON #4BRONTEMYSTERIES

And one by Rowan Coleman [aka Bella Ellis]:-
THE GIRL AT THE WINDOW 

If you like this, try:-
‘A Death in the Dales’ by Frances Brody #7KATESHACKLETON
‘Hiding the Past’ by Nathan Dylan Goodwin #1MORTONFARRIER
‘Cover Her Face’ by PD James #1ADAMDALGLIESH

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#BookReview ‘In a Summer Season’ by Elizabeth Taylor #classic #love

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What a painful, heart-wrenching read is In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor. It is about love – giddying heart-spinning young love, the intensity of teenage crush, the love and companionship of friendship, parental love, second love, age-gap love, tragic love and lust-love. Elizabeth Taylor Widow Kate is seen by friends and family to have married again, unwisely, to a younger man, the charming and feckless Dermot. Kate’s sixteen-year-old daughter Louise hates the way Dermot speaks to her mother, while Kate’s son Tom struggles to make his way in his grandfather’s business and retired teacher Aunt Ethel fears for the new marriage which she believes is founded solely on sex. As Kate adopts new hobbies to fit in with her husband – going to the races, the pub – Dermot feels excluded by the things he doesn’t know, and by Kate’s shared experience with first husband Alan. The household exists in an uneasy alliance. For the first half of the book, this calm is layered with a troubling current eventually brought to the surface by the arrival of Alan’s oldest friend, Charles, and his beautiful daughter Araminta. Tom becomes too caught up in his own calf love for Minty to worry about his mother, Lou falls for the local curate, while Ethel tells all in sensational letters to her friend Gertrude. ‘Ethel had a way of bending her head at closed doors, not listening, as she told herself, but ascertaining.’
None of the characters are endearing. Their paths to the truth, or not, about love – their own love and that of others – their assumptions, misjudgements and blindness, are beset with challenges. Some I forsaw, others I didn’t. Elizabeth Taylor draws a delicately coloured picture of life in a middle-class English family in the Home Counties in the fifties. Times are changing, post-war, particularly the role of women. Kate drifts, used as she was to being the junior partner to her first husband Alan, now she finds herself acting as both mother and lover to her second, younger, husband. Neither are truthful to the other.
More a story of consecutive scenes than a novel with increasing tension, In a Summer Season was published in 1961 and so combines the slower classic style of the older novel, injected with the new sexual tension appropriate to the times. The ending, so long awaited, finally arrived abruptly. My favourite Taylor novel, to date, is A View of the Harbour.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Read my reviews of other books by Elizabeth Taylor:-
A WREATH OF ROSES
A VIEW OF THE HARBOUR
ANGEL
AT MRS LIPPINCOTE’S
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

If you like this, try:-
‘Touch Not the Cat’ by Mary Stewart
‘My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You’ by Louisa Young
‘The Confession’ by Jessie Burton

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#BookReview ‘The Swift and the Harrier’ by Minette Walters #historical

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The latest historical novel from former thriller writer Minette Walters is an absolute cracker. I raced through The Swift and the Harrier which is a fabulous mixture of dramatic history, medicine, family divisions and romance, all set in the English Civil War. Minette Walters Three days before the English Civil War begins in 1642, a Catholic priest is hung in Dorset for treason. Gentleman’s daughter and physician Jayne Swift is introduced to us in the public crush on Dorchester’s streets as people press to see the action. To avoid confrontation, Jayne steps into a doorway and finds herself drawn into the house by a thin-lipped elderly woman. They are strangers and in the current political unrest, all strangers must be mistrusted. This meeting is the catalyst for a narrative which takes us through the twists and turns of this war which sets brother against brother, where unpaid soldiers are ordered by superiors to loot and ransack civilian property, where small towns are attacked under siege for little gain and where men choose sides on blind belief rather than an understanding of the facts. Disguise and dissimulation are necessary to avoid the attention of whichever band of soldiers are encountered.
Jayne is a wonderful heroine. Plucky, bloody-minded, honest and fair, with a strong belief of a medic’s neutrality in time of war despite her staunchly Royalist father, she concentrates on treating the sick and wounded. This gets her into trouble numerous times. During the execution in Dorchester, Jayne encounters so many arrogant and boorish men, dismissive not just of women but of anyone whose views or experience are different to their own. She manages to evade arrest, and worse, thanks to some examples of honourable men. The role of women and the lack of freedoms is a theme running throughout the book, not just Jayne’s own medical career but a gentlewoman’s hidden proficiency as an artist, cousin Ruth’s marriage to a domineering violent man, and the bravery and efficiency of the women of Lyme Regis during its siege by Royalty forces. At the heart of it all – the war, the political and religious divide, marriage, work and family relationships and inheritance – is the right of everyone, man or woman, rich or poor, to the freedom of choice.
In the first action scene in Dorchester, Jayne is aided by William, a footman to Lady Alice Stickland, the elderly lady whose doorway in which Jayne takes shelter. And here is the first romantic thread which is stitched to the end of the book. Who is William? Why does his appearance change and why does he tell a different story every time Jayne sees him? Is he trustworthy?
A book I didn’t want to end. My knowledge of the Civil War is superficial and I particularly enjoyed the passages about the siege of Lyme Regis, a place I know.

Read my reviews of the two ‘Black Death’ historical novels, also by Minette Walters:-
THE LAST HOURS #1BLACKDEATH
THE TURN OF MIDNIGHT #2BLACKDEATH

If you like this, try:-
‘The Evening and the Morning’ by Ken Follett #PREQUELKINGSBRIDGE
‘The Pillars of the Earth’ by Ken Follett #1KINGSBRIDGE
‘World Without End’ by Ken Follett #2KINGSBRIDGE

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#BookReview ‘A Change of Circumstance’ by @susanhillwriter #crime

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Lafferton, the small town at the heart of the Simon Serrailler crime novels by Susan Hill, has until now only known small-scale drugs crime. In A Change of Circumstance, a young local man is found dead of a presumed overdose in a flat above the Chinese pharmacy in neighbouring hippy village Starley. County lines drug gangs are using local Lafferton children and people are beginning to die. This is the eleventh instalment of this excellent series. Susan HillHill’s Serrailler novels are always a delight to read, thoroughly grounded in the town of Lafferton with familiar characters and landmarks set against beautiful countryside. A reminder that crime happens in pretty places too. I wasn’t so sure about the veracity of some of the police procedure but the stories of Brookie and Olivia feel real enough, both children from fractured families pulled into crime by lies and bribes. A Change of Circumstance is a horrible portrayal of the manipulation and abuse of children but lacking in the narrative drive of earlier books. I finished it quickly but it is short – 315 pages compared with first in the series The Various Haunts of Men which is 448 pages long.
As always, a network of minor storylines add depth and colour to the main themes and Simon’s sister Cat is the beating heart of the drama. Now a GP for a private doctors’ service, she is called out to an elderly man who refuses to go into hospital. Her Yorkie terrier Wookie goes missing while son Sam is home from medical school and being secretive about his study plans. Small details that add to the real life feeling of the series, typical family life.
It’s an odd ending to the drugs case, almost as if a television drama stopped five minutes before the end. I felt slightly let down in not seeing the arrest of the guilty party, instead it is more a hint than an action scene and I missed that final feeling of justice done. The ending to Simon’s story is the change of circumstance of the title. I’m still not quite convinced but it will add a new angle to the next Serrailler story.

Read my reviews of the previous ten novels in this series:-
THE VARIOUS HAUNTS OF MEN #1SIMONSERRAILLER
THE PURE IN HEART #2SIMONSERRAILLER
THE RISK OF DARKNESS #3SIMONSERRAILLER
THE VOWS OF SILENCE #4SIMONSERRAILLER
THE SHADOWS IN THE STREET #5SIMONSERRAILLER
THE BETRAYAL OF TRUST #6SIMONSERRAILLER
A QUESTION OF IDENTITY #7SIMONSERRAILLER
THE SOUL OF DISCRETION #8SIMONSERRAILLER
THE COMFORTS OF HOME #9SIMONSERRAILLER
THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT #10SIMONSERRAILLER

And also by Susan Hill, HOWARD’S END IS ON THE LANDING

If you like this, try:-
‘Magpie Murders’ by Anthony Horowitz #1SUSANRYELAND
‘The Killings at Kingfisher Hill’ by Sophie Hannah #4POIROT
‘The Killing Lessons’ by Saul Black

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#BookReview ‘Daughters of War’ by @DinahJefferies #WW2 #adventure

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It’s a while since I read a book in gulps, not wanting to put it down, not wanting to leave the story. Daughters of War by Dinah Jefferies is the first of a World War Two trilogy about three sisters. And what characters they are, each individual, quirky, vulnerable, stubborn, brave and refreshing. I lurched from having one favourite, then another. At the end I was equally drawn to each. Dinah JefferiesIn the Dordogne live three sisters – Hélène, Élise and Florence – alone in their mother’s house during the German occupation. Hélène is the eldest, a nurse, the mother hen, the worrier. Élise is the rebel, helping the Resistance, disappearing at night. Florence, the youngest, is a gardener, a cook, a nature lover. They are tired of the war, terrified by the Germans and their increasingly violent and indiscriminate reprisals, desperate for a normal life without remembering what that might be.
Backstory is important and there are many mysteries, unspoken memories and fears, which can only by explained when something happens to trigger understanding. We see the girls’ mother Claudette, in England for the war, only through their memories but she is a pivotal character nonetheless.
The story opens in spring 1944 when the girls’ quiet life at their stone cottage in the woods is altered by two arrivals. Jack, a British Special Operations soldier, has parachuted in with orders to train the Resistance in preparation for the invasion. Tomas, a young German soldier, has deserted and is found hiding in their garden shed. What follows is a tale of innocence, love, bravery, cruelty, loyalty and honour.
Jefferies’ descriptions of the French countryside – the trees, the birds, the wildflowers, the Dordogne scenery, coupled with the descriptions of Florence’s cooking – work as a shocking juxtaposition to the horror of war in this oh so beautiful tranquil place.
A page-turner.

Here are my reviews of the next books in the series:-
THE HIDDEN PALACE #2DAUGHTERSOFWAR
NIGHT TRAIN TO MARRAKECH #3DAUGHTERSOFWAR

Read my reviews of these standalone novels by Dinah Jefferies:-
THE SAPPHIRE WIDOW
THE TEA PLANTER’S WIFE
THE TUSCAN CONTESSA

If you like this, try these:-
‘Dangerous Women’ by Hope Adams
‘The Blue Afternoon’ by William Boyd
‘Birdcage Walk’ by Helen Dunmore

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