Tag Archives: historical fiction

#BookReview ‘The Crownless Queen’ by Elizabeth Chadwick @Chadwickauthor #historicalfiction #medieval

I really enjoyed reading The Royal Rebel, first of the two books about Joan of Kent written by Elizabeth Chadwick, so was eager to read The Crownless Queen. Joan, or Jeanette as Chadwick calls her, is a fascinating character who lived at a time of royal upheaval. England 1360. Jeanette, happily married to her teenage love Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent, fills her days caring for their four children but missing her soldier husband who is on duty in Normandy. When news arrives of Thomas’ death, Jeanette’s stable and contented life is upended, her safety and position threatened. ‘Eventually, the pain withdrew, becoming a dull, cramping ache, and the fog thinned to mist. Tears came and, with them, harsh, choking sobs that left her throat raw and her body exhausted. Reality, however, remained solid. No matter how much she sought oblivion, she was back in the world.’ Prince Edward, the Black Prince, her childhood friend and godfather to her sons, promises to help. Unexpectedly, his help comes as a marriage proposal. Still mourning, she is married again, too soon but the security of her children is assured.
This is an epic tale of a woman at the heart of royalty, the entwining of royalty and politics, foreign diplomacy and wars, set on a foundation of Jeanette’s domestic life. She is a skilled diplomat and politician and, as wife of the heir to the throne, she needs to be. Her husband’s father, King Edward III, has taken a mistress but is quick to complain about his son’s new wife who, he says, ‘Despite her reputation, she is still a golden apple on the tree.’ Those first three words refer to Jeanette’s marriage to Thomas. The King sends his son to France to govern Aquitaine. Chadwick takes the historical fact and the gaps of record, and creates a readable novel I picked up at every opportunity. Edward’s frailty, Jeanette’s awkward relationship with her brother-in-law John Duke of Lancaster (or John of Gaunt, as we know him), the lives of Jeanette’s two sons, Tom and Johan, both squires in noble homes, and Jeanette’s grief, all add layers to this story.
The blurb states that The Crownless Queen can be read as a standalone but I think in order to enjoy all the subtleties, it is best to read The Royal Rebel first.
Jeanette, which is the familiar name by which Joan was addressed by her family and friends, is the sort of character you root for. Her bravery, her sense of justice, her steadfastness. A wonderful blend of detailed family life and motherhood, combined with state politics, court plotting, romance, grief and betrayal.
Excellent.

Here’s my review of the first in this series:-
THE ROYAL REBEL #1JEANETTEOFKENT

If you like this, try:-
‘The Miniaturist’ by Jessie Burton
‘A Good Deliverance’ by Toby Clements
‘Cecily’ by Annie Garthwaite

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE CROWNLESS QUEEN by Elizabeth Chadwick @Chadwickauthor https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-9ZZ via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-

#BookReview ‘Kingdom Come’ by Toby Clements #historicalfiction #WarsoftheRoses

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The impression of peace and security is transient in 1470. Kingdom Come by Toby Clements is the fourth book in the Kingmaker historical series set during the Wars of the Roses. And such a book it is I didn’t want to put it down. I have developed a fondness for Thomas and Katherine Everingham. The story continues on immediately from the end of the third book, Divided Souls, as King Edward IV is drawn north to deal with rebellion. The Earl of Warwick has switched sides and now backs the old king Henry VI whose wife Margaret of Anjou seeks to enthrone their son Edward of Westminster. King Edward is deposed and forced to flee to Bruges with his loyal retinue including Thomas’s patron, Lord William Hastings. Thomas and Katherine go too with their two children, Rufus and new baby Alice. As they face more impossible decisions, tragedy, poverty and vicious battles, the couple long simply to go home.
Kingdom Come is a page-turning story set in 1470-1471 when the wars see the three York brothers separated and reunited, where the York and Lancaster armies march to and fro across the country to meet in battle again and again, buffeting Thomas and Katherine to and fro entangled in events over which they have no control.
At the heart of this series are three secrets shielded by Thomas and Katherine. One a ledger, hidden for ten years, contains an inconvenient truth that could bring about their own deaths and make the already violent Wars of the Roses explode as kin turns on kin. The proof is ‘bundled tightly in its waxed linen and leather bindings, heavy as any chain, shackling them, inescapably, to the great weight of their pasts.’ The second secret, shrouded in mystery throughout, is seen with a wisp of a hint here and there but is so fleeting it is forgotten in the stories of Thomas and Katherine moving north and south, east and west, in pursuit of safety and the truth. Always, they return home to Marton Hall in Lincolnshire. The third secret, re-emerges in Kingdom Come to drive them from their home into destitution, refugees overseas, then back into battle at Barnet and then Tewkesbury.
Heartily recommended. This is a fine series. I’m crossing my fingers that there will be another Kingmaker installment to take us to the fall of Yorkist rule and the dawn of the Tudors.

Read my reviews of the other books in this series:-
WINTER PILGRIMS #1KINGMAKER
BROKEN FAITH #2KINGMAKER
DIVIDED SOULS #3KINGMAKER

And also by Toby Clements:-
A GOOD DELIVERANCE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Players’ by Minette Walters
‘The Key in the Lock’ by Beth Underdown
‘Plague Land’ by SD Sykes #1OSWALDDELACY

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview KINGDOM COME by Toby Clements https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-90E via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-

#BookReview ‘The Fourth Queen’ by Nicola Cornick @NicolaCornick #historical #timeslip #Tudor

#BookReview ‘The Queen’s Painter’ by Wendy Holden @Wendy_Holden #historical #AnneBoleyn #Tudor

3 Replies

Wendy Holden has found a fresh take on the familiar Anne Boleyn story in The Queen’s Painter and it’s an absorbing, entertaining and fun read. Basically it’s revenge drama as three of Anne’s supporters seek a way to make Thomas Cromwell pay for organising her death. Young German painter Hans Holbein arrives at the English court hoping to make his fortune as an artist and also to see again the teenage girl he met in France. That girl is now Queen Anne, her husband Henry VIII. What follows is an inventive plot organised by poet and diplomat Thomas Wyatt, Holbein and Anne’s serving woman Jennet to bring about the downfall of Cromwell. Cromwell, however, proves almost indestructable. Observations of the Tudor court are familiar from the novels of Philippa Gregory, CJ Sansom etc, as are many of the real characters, but what makes this novel so unusual is the voice of Hans Holbein. At heart, this is the story of Holbein’s life, some of it told in flashback, and of his profession as an artist negotiating the difficulties and subtleties of court diplomacy. Painting techniques, completed works, subjects, rival artists and his works portraying the royal court. Holbein was famed for painting true portraits of his subjects and Holden takes this fact and has enormous fun with it. Don’t miss the author’s ‘Acknowledgements’ at the end where she explains her lifelong fascination with Tudor life and Holbein’s portraits.
So this is a novel portraying a historically famous period in British history featuring possibly our most famous, or infamous, queen. It is a revenge mystery, and is also funny and clever. Hans’ fascination with Anne Boleyn takes on a supernatural element as her ghost pops up every now and then with pertinent, wry and witty comments that add colour to the scene and spur Hans on towards revenge.
Once I finished reading, I revisited Holbein’s paintings and particularly ‘The Ambassadors’ which features at the beginning of the novel as Holbein’s portrait-that-was-not-a-portrait of Anne.
Thoroughly enjoyable. I’ve read Wendy Holden since her first romantic comedy in 1999, Simply Divine, and have never since been disappointed.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Wendy Holden:-
THE DUCHESS
THE PRINCESS

If you like this, try:-
‘Dissolution’ by CJ Sansom #1SHARDLAKE
‘The House of Seymour’ by Joanna Hickson
‘The Royal Rebel’ by Elizabeth Chadwick#1JEANETTEOFKENT

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE QUEEN’S PAINTER by Wendy Holden @Wendy_Holden https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-9WS via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-

#BookReview ‘The Burning Grounds’ by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers #crime #historical #India #Raj

6 Replies

It is three years since The Shadows of Men when Suren Banerjee fled Calcutta for Europe. In The Burning Grounds, fifth in the Wyndham & Banerjee series by Abir Mukherjee, Suren returns to the city and to his former colleague Captain Sam Wyndham. Both are facing difficult cases, each needs the other’s help but is reluctant to ask. A man is found dead in the burning ghats of Calcutta. Wyndham, out of favour at the Imperial Police Force and trusted only with the most menial of cases, is sent to deal with the body. Except the corpse isn’t just anyone. He’s one of the city’s wealthiest businessmen, a patron of the arts, producer of a film being shot in Calcutta at this moment. He is admired wherever he goes. And now his throat has been cut.
Suren, who has returned home to India after his relationship in Paris with a French woman faltered, is drifting without a job, without authority. Then his cousin Dolly, a photographer, goes missing. Suren, desperate to find her, goes cap in hand to Wyndham. The reunion is awkward, both blame the other for the cause of Suren’s flight abroad. Begrudgingly, day by day, they work together, sniping, squabbling, resentful. Both are changed men and Calcutta is changing too. Dolly’s studio has been ransacked, no-one has seen her and Suren is frantic with worry. Meanwhile at a party a million miles away from the burning grounds, Sam meets a glamorous woman. Estelle Morgan is the Australian actress whose face is on the front pages of newspapers. They both enjoy a mild flirtation and Sam begins to wonder if there is a life for him beyond the grief for his dead wife and his more recent regrets at the failure of his on-off relationship with Annie Grant. But when he is charged with investigating the death of JP Mulllick, he must travel to Bishnupore to interview the film crew, he sees Estelle Morgan again. Suren goes too. More people die, none of them Dolly, but when the two cases, oh so different, are linked, Sam and Suren must learn to work together again.
Set against the last decades of the Raj, the success of these books is the laser focus on the relationship of two men who were born thousands of miles distant from each other. Intellectually they are on a level, in religious and cultural terms they are poles apart, but they find common ground in their belief in the triumph of right over wrong, the pursuit of criminality and along the way wrestle with cultural dilemmas, shames, beliefs and behaviours on both Anglo and Indian sides. As the country inches towards independence, the balance of power in the two men’s relationship adjusts too.
Excellent. This is a fine series of historical crime fiction.

Here are my reviews of the first five books in the Wyndham & Banerjee series:-
A RISING MAN #1WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
A NECESSARY EVIL #2WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
SMOKE AND ASHES #3WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
DEATH IN THE EAST #4WYNDHAM&BANERJEE
THE SHADOWS OF MEN #5WYNDHAM&BANERJEE

And a standalone contemporary thriller:-
THE PINNACLE

If you like this, try:-
‘My Name is Yip’ by Paddy Crewe
‘Leeward’ by Katie Daysh #1NIGHTINGALE&COURTNEY
‘The Silver Bone’ by Andrey Kurkov #1KYIVMYSTERIES

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE BURNING GROUNDS by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-91l via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-

#BookReview ‘The Wanton Road’ by JC Harvey @JCollissHarvey #historical #EnglishCivilWar

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1637 Picardy, France. A husband is widowed and must find a way to continue with life, for the sake of five-year old Ned and newborn James. The Wanton Road, fourth in the Jack Fiskardo series by JC Harvey, begins with the heartbreak of grief, a description of loss so deep it is immobilising. Fiskardo is a soldier and he does go on, as readers of the previous three books know he will. Harvey has told Jack’s story from childhood. Now he is a widower, a single father, and all he knows is fighting so he sets off on his loyal horse M’sieu in search of employment. He heads for the much-contested Dutch town of Breda intending to offer his services as a discoverer, a scout, where he stumbles upon not only his old comrades the Dead Men but also his oldest enemy Carlo Fantom and a potential new love. Pris Holland is an intriguing heroine, feisty, brave, resourceful, she has her own shadows and pain to bear.
After a detour back to Picardy to collect his children, Jack heads for London where there is talk of war coming and possible employment. With the Thirty Years War coming to a stuttering close, it seems fitting that Harvey brings Fiskardo to England eventually to fight with the King against Parliament. This is a doomed task, as we know from the history books. Threads and characters from the previous books are woven together with the history of the period, entangled, twisted and re-imagined. The pages turn quickly without me noticing how absorbed I am in the story, whether it is the speed of battle or the slower intrigue of politics and love. Pris returns to London to her family, inn owners, brothel keepers, smugglers, and at occasional war with rivals the Skinner family. These enmities and loyalties bob in and out of the novel, bringing threat, rescue, safety, betrayal. Fiskardo, his soldiers and French servants find a new home at Varney, a country house near Oxford. There they feel secure, both boys grow and particularly James, premature, underweight, mis-shapen, thrives. But how long can this peace, and love, last before war returns again?
There are so many plot twists and turns it is difficult to describe the story and do it justice. Jack and Pris meet, they part, they’re together, they’re separated by war, they grieve. Just surrender yourself to the rollercoaster. The ending is magnificent; a fast-paced rush as Jack, who must finally confront his lifelong enemy if he is ever to live in peace, is chased from one safe haven to another.
Magnificent 5*.

Here are my reviews of the Jack Fiskardo series:-
THE SILVER WOLF #1FISKARDO’SWAR
THE DEAD MEN #2FISKARDO’SWAR
PEACE AND LOVE #3FISKARDO’SWAR

If you like this, try:-
‘Orphans of the Carnival’ by Carol Birch
‘Broken Faith’ by Toby Clements #2KINGMAKER
‘The Armour of Light’ by Ken Follett #4KINGSBRIDGE

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE WANTON ROAD by JC Harvey @JCollissHarvey https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-9UM via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-

#BookReview ‘The Sky Beneath Us’ by Fiona Valpy @FionaValpy #historical #romance #botany #Himalaya

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A dual timeline story following the quest of Daisy Laverock to Nepal to solve the story of her disappeared great-great aunt, botanical artist Violet Mackenzie-Grant, The Sky Beneath Us by Fiona Valpy takes place as the Covid pandemic begins. Daisy is divided from her family at home and is forced to confront the unknown.Scotland 1927. Against the wishes of her family, Violet enrols at the Edinburgh School of Gardening for Women where two significant things happen. She discovers a wonderful talent for painting botanical illustrations, and she falls in love. These two things combine and she finds herself in Nepal, deep in the mountains, where in learning to survive she also learns how to live. I found Violet’s story captivating and would have happily spent the rest of the novel with her.
Scotland 2020. Daisy is in Nepal planning to travel in the footsteps of her distant relative Violet whose story has become lost to her family. In Daisy’s bag are some of Violet’s plant journals which tell part of the story; Daisy’s objective is to discover the whole truth. When international travel is closed, Daisy finds herself Isolated in Kathmandu. Deciding to continue with her plan alone Daisy, like Violet before her, is stepping into the unknown. Alone, anxious, worried for the safety of family at home, she meets a father and son who offer to guide her on foot to the village of Phortse. Her difficult journey is leavened by occasional texts from her mother and two daughters in Scotland, and oldest friend Jack who is sailing a yacht across the Atlantic.
In her darkest moments, Daisy turns to Violet’s journals for inspiration. Little does she know how closely her journey will coincide with Violet’s experience.
The story juxtaposes the limitations placed on women’s lives in the 1920s, with the movement restrictions placed on everyone around the world during the Covid pandemic. In The Sky Beneath Us, these reach from the west coast of Scotland to Nepal and encompass all nations. In her time of need Daisy, like Violet before, finds empathy, generosity and friendship around her.
The Sky Beneath Us is full of wonderful descriptions of the Himalaya, its traditions, its spirituality, nature, botany and most of all the Sherpa people. This is a story of isolation and beauty, loneliness and togetherness, grief, despair and hope. The solutions found by Violet and Daisy, named as the flowers, are similar in their simplicity, their resilience and their hope.
Only when I read the Author’s Note at the end of the book did I realise that The Sky Beneath Us is linked to an earlier Valpy book, the only other one by this author that I’ve read, The Skylark’s Secret.
Read quickly, it is Violet’s story and her discovery of exquisite Himalayan flowers that stays with me.

Here’s my review of another Fiona Valpy novel:-
THE SKYLARK’S SECRET

If you like this, try:-
‘Thin Air’ by Michelle Paver
‘A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom’ by John Boyne
‘The Cottingley Secret’ by Hazel Gaynor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SKY BENEATH US by Fiona Valpy @FionaValpy https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-90j via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-

#BookReview ‘Love Lane’ by Patrick Gale @PNovelistGale #historical

#BookReview ‘The Devil to Pay’ by Katie Daysh #historicalfiction #adventure #navalwarfare

1 Reply

It’s 1802 and the Anglo-French war is over. I thoroughly enjoyed Leeward, first in the Nightingale & Courtney historical naval series by Katie Daysh, so was keen to read the next book. In The Devil to Pay, though the enamoured sailors set sail for the Mediterranean on the same ship they are soon separated. Leeward was Hiram Nightingale’s story, The Devil to Pay is told from the perspective of Lieutenant Arthur Courtney. The forbidden relationship of these two men, separated by social conventions, the law and nautical miles, is the skeleton of these books. Courtney is not like Nightingale; he was born into rural poverty and is still uncomfortable dining at the captain’s table. When HMS Loyal goes missing on route to Malta with two important diplomats aboard, Courtney and Nightingale are enlisted on the ship sent to find her. Their secret mission involves working closely with their one-time enemy, France. As the HMS Lysander sails south, accompanied by French frigate, the Fantôme, their journey is marred by the discovery of two Lysanders, crew members, having sex. An onboard punishment involving pain and humiliation turns into a naval tribunal in Gibraltar. With the Lysander stuck in dock, the Fantôme, with Nightingale on board, sets sail to continue the search for the Loyal. Shipwreck and piracy are suspected and Courtney, following on belatedly from Gibraltar, doesn’t know if Hiram is alive or dead, free or enslaved.
Can love survive separation, pirates, shipwreck, doubts and treachery? Daysh handles the emotions of the separated lovers with a light hand. Just when Courtney is distraught at Nightingale’s departure, he must once again take responsibility for a ship without a direct order to do so. Should he follow his instincts, or naval law? There are so many twists and turns in this plot that it’s impossible to forsee the ending, its a rollercoaster of emotions just as stormy as the waves that the sailors face.
Excellent. This is a series to read in order, so be sure to read Leeward first. The English and the French may not be enemies in this book, as they were in Leeward, but war between the two will be rekindled a year after The Devil to Pay ends.
Next in the series is A Merciful Sea.

Here’s my review of the first book in this series:-
LEEWARD #1NIGHTINGALE&COURTNEY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Blue Afternoon’ by William Boyd
‘A Rustle of Silk’ by Alys Clare #1GABRIELTAVERNER
‘Rush Oh!’ by Shirley Barrett

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE DEVIL TO PAY by Katie Daysh https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8Wd via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-

#BookReview ‘Murder Under her Skin’ by Stephen Spotswood @playwrightSteve #crime

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New York 1946. Murder Under her Skin by Stephen Spotswood, second in the Pentecost and Parker post-WW2 private detective series, starts in the Big Apple and ends in rural Virginia. A completely different world that challenges expectations and attitudes. When Willowjean Parker receives a call for help from her old boss at the Hart & Halloway’s Travelling Circus and Sideshow, Will and her boss Lillian Pentecost catch a train to the small town of Stoppard. Before Will met Lillian and became a New York detective, she spent five years with the circus and her best friend was Ruby Donner the tattooed lady. Now Ruby is dead with a knife in her back.
Spotswood takes us into the circus world, the sleaze behind the magic and wonder, the tough life behind the make-up and sequins, the rivalries, the money problems, loyalty and friendship, the envy and spite. Ruby Donner ran away from Stoppard as a teenager and never went back until returning now with the circus. Who killed her? A circus colleague or someone from her hometown who has been harbouring resentments for years? Ms Pentecost’s most recent case has made the national papers and she’s famous, even in Stoppard, but not everyone welcomes the circus or the big city detectives. Will’s former mentor, the knife-throwing Russian Valentin Kalishenko, is already locked up in the town jail and the local police chief doesn’t welcome the arrival of strangers telling him how to do his job.
The focus on life in a small town in Virginia highlights the changing society as soldiers return from war and adapt to normal life again. Lillian and Will lodge with Ruby’s uncle Doc, who runs the local cinema, and he proves a useful guide to Stoppard’s people, their secrets, lawbreaking and lies. When the circus’s sideshow is firebombed, the detectives know they must be on the right track.
Murder Under her Skin develops the dynamic relationship between Will Parker and Lillian Pentecost that was introduced in the first book, Fortune Favours the Dead. Although Lillian is older and the boss, both women bring significant skills and strengths to their detecting partnership and Murder Under her Skin is told from Will’s point of view. The women are mutually supportive of each other. Lillian is Will’s mentor and teaches her the craft of detection, Will supports Lillian when her multiple sclerosis causes issues. It is too simplistic to say Lillian is the brains and Will the brawn; while Lillian proves to be nifty with a sword, Will knows when to take the initiative and ask difficult questions and when to say silent and listen.
Very enjoyable, full of snappy dialogue between Lillian and Will, plus plenty of offbeat characters who may or may not be as they seem. Next in the series is Secrets Typed in Blood.

And here are my reviews of other books in the series:-
FORTUNE FAVOURS THE DEAD #1PENTECOST&PARKER
SECRETS TYPED IN BLOOD #3PENTECOST&PARKER

…and read the #FirstPara of FORTUNE FAVOURS THE DEAD.

If you like this, try:-
‘Death at the Sign of the Rook’ by Kate Atkinson #6JACKSONBRODIE
‘Darktown’ by Thomas Mullen
‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ by Stuart Turton

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MURDER UNDER HER SKIN by Stephen Spotswood @playwrightSteve https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8Vx via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-

	#BookReview ‘This is… on #BookReview ‘The Chase’ by Ava…
	#BookReview ‘The Fin… on #BookReview ‘Wolf Winter’ by C…
	#BookReview ‘The Fin… on #BookReview ‘Gabriel’s Moon’ b…
	Great Opening Paragr… on #BookReview ‘Secrets Typed in…
	#BookReview ‘Murder… on #BookReview ‘Secrets Typed in…

SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS

Sharing thoughts on the books I read, new authors, favourite authors, classics re-visisted

Tag Archives: historical fiction

#BookReview ‘The Crownless Queen’ by Elizabeth Chadwick @Chadwickauthor #historicalfiction #medieval

#BookReview ‘Kingdom Come’ by Toby Clements #historicalfiction #WarsoftheRoses

#BookReview ‘The Fourth Queen’ by Nicola Cornick @NicolaCornick #historical #timeslip #Tudor

#BookReview ‘The Queen’s Painter’ by Wendy Holden @Wendy_Holden #historical #AnneBoleyn #Tudor

#BookReview ‘The Burning Grounds’ by Abir Mukherjee @radiomukhers #crime #historical #India #Raj

#BookReview ‘The Wanton Road’ by JC Harvey @JCollissHarvey #historical #EnglishCivilWar

#BookReview ‘The Sky Beneath Us’ by Fiona Valpy @FionaValpy #historical #romance #botany #Himalaya

#BookReview ‘Love Lane’ by Patrick Gale @PNovelistGale #historical

#BookReview ‘The Devil to Pay’ by Katie Daysh #historicalfiction #adventure #navalwarfare

#BookReview ‘Murder Under her Skin’ by Stephen Spotswood @playwrightSteve #crime

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