"I love the smell of book ink in the morning." Umberto Eco
"I love the smell of book ink in the morning." Umberto Eco
Janet Dean Knight explores contemporary themes through historical fiction. Her debut novel, The Peacemaker is a moving story of a young woman’s struggle to make peace with her father on the eve of the Second World War. Born and raised in a coalmining village, Janet draws on her experience and family history to tell compelling …
Gill Thompson is an English lecturer who completed an MA in Creative Writing at Chichester University. Her first novel, THE OCEANS BETWEEN US, tells the heart-breaking story of a mother and son separated by war and by continents, fighting their way back to each other. The first three chapters of THE OCEANS BETWEEN US were …
Emma Carroll. Faber & Faber. (304p) ISBN 9780571328499 In Emma Carrol’s latest historical adventure for Middle Grade we find Lilian and her friends in a race against time to stop the Pharaoh’s curse. Right from the start this goes at a cracking pace that pulls you along in anticipation of the next part of the …
Lucy Strange. Chicken House. (304p) ISBN 9781910655030 The Secret of Nightingale Wood is Lucy Strange’s debut novel and begins with a setting similar to ‘The Railway Children’ by E. Nesbit. It is set in the early 20th century and in a country setting reminiscent of ‘The Railway Children’, with a change in family home, with …
Jessie Burton. Pan Macmillan. (448p) ISBN 9781447250937 I was hooked from the very start, the detail in this book would match the detail of The Miniaturist. This is, on the face of it, a story of love and marriage in 17th century Amsterdam, between a young, country girl and an older, rich merchant. Johannes gifts …
Niklas Natt och Dag. John Murray Press. (416p) ISBN 9781473682146 The Wolf and the Watchman was one of my favourite books of 2019. As I’ve probably gone on at length somewhere else, I’m not a thriller/mystery reader by nature, but this is such a wonderfully engrossing and descriptive novel of 19th century Stockholm I was …
Hannah Kent. Pan Macmillan. (384p) ISBN 9781447233176 My manager had been pressing me to widen my reading material and when she found I had never read any historical fiction that didn’t have a fantastical element to it I was told in no uncertain terms to read this book, and she loaned me her copy. Set …