Tag: historical fiction

The Unseeing (2016): Anna Mazzola

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★★★

Edmund Fleetwood has an unfortunate handicap for a man who wants to make his name as a criminal lawyer. He has principles. When the Home Secretary asks him to review the Edgeware Road murder case, in which a woman is liable to hang for concealing a murder, Edmund finds himself becoming deeply emotionally involved in what he believes to be a fundamental miscarriage of justice. Based on a real murder committed in 1836, Anna Mazzola’s debut novel sets the facts of the case within a tantalising web of secrets.

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The Wolf in the Attic (2016): Paul Kearney

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★★★★

This was an extraordinary read: a real shapeshifter of a book. It began like a children’s story, full of the innocent fancies of an isolated little girl, but then morphed into an eerie fantasy full of symbolism and old magic. The most frustrating thing about the whole novel is that its final pages introduce a whole new potential canvas and then, with so many questions unanswered, and so much backstory unexplained, it simply finishes. I assumed that it must surely be the first part of a series but, so far, I haven’t found any mention of a planned sequel. And so I’ve been left feeling strangely short-changed because, for the most part, this is a genuinely gripping world and so much more could have been said.

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The House at Bishopsgate (2017): Katie Hickman

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© Neil Bennett

★★★★

The Pindar Trilogy: Book III

I only realised that this novel was the third part of a trilogy after I had finished it, which goes to show that it reads perfectly well as a standalone book. In fact, I’m delighted to discover this because The House at Bishopsgate has left me itching to know more about the characters’ exotic histories. This is the concluding part of a story begun in The Aviary Gate and continued in The Pindar Diamond, neither of which I’ve yet read, but watch this space, as they might make an appearance soon. Hickman’s tale of intrigue, secrets, lost love and scheming ambition makes for an addictive brew.

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Arsenic for Tea (2015): Robin Stevens

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★★★★

A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery: Book II

First off, a Happy New Year to one and all! I hope that 2017 brings you lots of exciting discoveries, wonderful stories and engaging discussions. For my own part, I kicked off the year with a self-indulgent treat: the second book in Robin Stevens’s schoolgirl detective series. You may remember that I was utterly charmed by Murder Most Unladylike and I was itching to see what Daisy and Hazel’s next case would be. It turns out that the sequel is no less delightful.

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How Far to Bethlehem? (1964): Norah Lofts

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★★★½

I discovered this book during a pre-Christmas exploration of the Book Barn, a few miles from where I live, and decided it was perfect for the festive season. The plan was to finish it last night, on Christmas Day, but what with the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special, and the satiety brought on by too much Christmas pudding, I didn’t quite get round to it. It’s a thoughtful, rich rendition of the Nativity story, in which the familiar events of the bible are set within their historical context at the turn of the 1st century AD. Most intriguing is Lofts’s vision of the three wise men, who between them span the three known continents of the ancient world.

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Boudica: Dreaming the Serpent Spear (2006): Manda Scott

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★★★★

Boudica: Book IV

I’ve been saving the fourth and final Boudica novel until the Christmas holidays, because the epic sweep of these books demands a bit of focus. Besides, I’ve grown deeply fond of Scott’s characters, who blend courage and nobility with a profound self-knowledge, and I wanted to savour the conclusion properly. I’ve followed their stories across four books and three decades, but all things must end.

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The Red Sphinx (1866): Alexandre Dumas

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★★★★

Now that Christmas is almost upon us, we can start planning reading lists for the New Year. For those who love derring-do, intrigue and swashbuckling, there’s a treat coming up in January: a fresh new translation of a little-known sequel to The Three Musketeers. Although the musketeers themselves don’t appear, there’s a handsome young hero, a beautiful heroine, battles, plots and, bestriding everything like a colossus, the Red Sphinx himself: the shrewd Cardinal Richelieu.

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Gutenberg’s Apprentice (2014): Alix Christie

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★★★ ½

What was the year that changed the world? We could probably argue about that until we were all blue in the face, but 1450 has more claim than most. For it was in this year, in Mainz, that a small team of artisans began work on a formidably ambitious project: the creation of the very first book printed with movable type. This novel follows the gestation of this project, drawing out all the sweat and labour of the process, under the beady eye of its suspicious, unpredictable, misanthropic begetter: Gutenberg.

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The Scandal of the Season (2007): Sophie Gee

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★★★

Hands up, anyone else who hasn’t read Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock? Not just me then. Thank heavens. Mind you, you don’t really need to have read it in order to enjoy this fictionalised account of its creation. Gee brings late Stuart London to life in all its snobbish splendour: here are the coffee houses, the levees and masquerades, the self-obsessed glittering mass of the nobility and the hungry throng of writers snapping at their heels. One of these, hungrier and more ambitious than the rest, is a young Catholic poet named Alexander Pope, who has come to London hoping to make his name.

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