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If you love historical fiction, please JOIN the society today. You won't be sorry. 'I've just read Solander - it's a triumph!' - Bernard Cornwell. |
Editors' Choice Titles for May 2009: [Table of Contents] [Feb 2009]
[Nov
2008] [Aug 2008]
[May
2008] BLOOD ROYAL THE RED VELVET
TURNSHOE THE GLASS OF
TIME THE GREAT LOVER PALACE
CIRCLE WILD ORCHID
TWILIGHT
OF AVALON THE PHYSICK BOOK OF DELIVERANCE DANE
(US) / THE LOST BOOK OF SALEM (UK) THE BOOK
OF NIGHT WOMEN Galway
Bay A QUIET
FLAME TUCK:
The Legend Triumphs THE OWL
KILLERS A BEAUTIFUL
PLACE TO DIE The Last
Dickens SILENT
ON THE MOOR Drood THE HELP | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In February of the year 1383 a
rain started to fall before Martinmas. It swept through France, Flanders,
and Tuscany causing floods and famine. Europe is dangerous. There is
plague and the Hundred Years War is causing political turmoil. Hildegard,
the nun heroine of Hangman Blind, is sent on a dangerous mission to
bring the Cross of Constantine from Italy to York. A disappearance, a
murder, and a grisly discovery in Bruges set in action a terrifying course
of events for Hildegard. She leaves Bruges accompanied by the young,
arrogant musician Pierrekyn, murder suspect, and Talbot, her knight
protector. They arrive at the monastery on St. Bernard’s Pass during a
snowstorm, and by now the novel’s events are spiraling. For the next
two-thirds of this story, the reader is gripped by suspense, the
revelation of characters noble and bad, and a deep political secret that
endangers King Richard’s crown. Many want Hildegard’s mission to fail, and
one character plans a deadly revenge.
Esperanza Gorst is an orphan,
raised in Paris by her guardian, the mysterious Madame de l’Orme. When she
is in her teens, Esperanza’s guardian places her in the home of Emily,
Lady Tansor, as a lady’s maid, and insists that Esperanza find a way into
Lady Tansor’s confidence. Though Esperanza is unsure why, Madame de l’Orme
promises to reveal the truth of the escapade through three letters, which
she will send periodically. As Esperanza receives the letters and begins
to learn the truth about her parentage and her relationship with Lady
Tansor, she finds there are numerous questions waiting to be answered—and
that she isn’t who she believed she was. 
s a ghost story without ghosts, a tale of family
secrets revealed, past cruelties avenged, and a young
woman who finds herself coming of age in a way she could never have
expected. The epic, neo-Victorian narrative style, reminiscent of classic
works of 19th-century literature, made me feel as if I were
peeping through a keyhole and sneaking glances at a secret diary as the
story unraveled. It helps to have read Cox’s first novel, The Meaning
of Night, before beginning The Glass of Time, since the stories
are intertwined, and questions left lingering at the
end of the earlier book are resolved. All in all, a fantastic,
extraordinarily detailed world to lose yourself in, and an essential read.
-- Nanette Donohue
The island of Tahiti
holds a fascination for troubled souls. Gauguin lived there in the 1890s.
So too, in the early months of 1914, did poet Rupert Brooke, the subject
of this vivid novel. He died in the east Mediterranean the following year
of septicaemia, at the age of twenty-seven. Author Jill Dawson has delved
into the darkness of his life, at odds with the romantic, lyrical poet of
popular imagination.
It’s been a long time since I was
as caught up in a novel as I was in Palace Circle. The action
sweeps from London’s glittering debutante balls to the crowded streets of
World War II Cairo, with seamless transitions between scenes and
viewpoints and never a dull moment throughout. In 1911, eighteen-year-old
Delia Chandler marries Viscount Ivor Conisborough, twenty-two years her
elder, exchanging carefree days at her beloved Virginia home for a life of
privilege at the Windsor court. She adjusts quickly, captivating
aristocrats and politicians alike with her Southern charm and outgoing
personality. Despite the casual acceptance of love affairs among members
of her circle, Delia believes her marriage to be an exception to the
rule—until she comes face to face with Ivor’s gorgeous long-time
mistress.
In this retelling of “The Ballad
of Mulan” for the young adult reader, told in the first person, Cameron
Dokey breathes fresh life into an archetypal story of a cross-dressing
young woman who goes to war in defense of her beloved China and in place
of her father. We are quickly won to the side of its heroine, who came
into the world as the blossom of an unconventional love match. Her
grief-stricken father does not come home to meet her until Mulan is a
teenager, and he’s forced into retirement by war injuries and an angry
emperor. He discovers a daughter who loves climbing trees and learning
forbidden skills from her friend, Li Po. Father and daughter struggle
through their new relationship, but soon a new, very feminine wife joins
the household. She becomes pregnant just as the Huns advance again on
China and the Emperor sends out his call. Mulan takes up her father’s
armor and warhorse and joins Li Po’s archers. Her skills bring her to the
attention of the emperor’s youngest son, and she joins him in a daring
attempt to turn the tide of the invasion.
In Arthurian fiction, queens tend
to fall into two groups: the powerful and the powerless. Anna Elliott
places Isolde among the latter. To a large extent this is because she sets
her version of the story of Trystan (as she calls him here) and Isolde in
a brutal Dark Age (6th-century) Britain. It is Isolde’s misfortune to have
lost her male protectors at a time when women badly need them, and to make
matters worse she is mistrusted by almost everyone, for is she not the
daughter of Modred, Arthur’s son by incest with his half sister Morgan?
And of Gwynefar, who betrayed her husband? And did not her father’s
rebellion lead to the disaster at Camlann? And is she not a healer like
her grandmother, a reputed sorceress? She was wed to Constantine, Arthur’s
heir, but now he lies dead, and the rulers of Britain, gathered to choose
a successor, view her with suspicion, if not outright
hostility.
This is a story that’s easy to
lose yourself in. It alternates between the early 1990s, when Connie
Goodwin is working on her doctorate in American colonial history at
Harvard, and the colonial Salem area, mostly in the early 1690s. Connie
has passed her oral exams, and when asked by her mother to ready Connie’s
grandmother’s long vacant house outside of Salem for possible sale, she
decides she can spend the summer fixing up the house while finding a topic
for her dissertation, which she needs to start soon. She has never seen
her grandmother’s house before and is amazed to find it is centuries old,
hidden by overgrowth. Shortly after she arrives, she finds an ancient key
containing an equally old slip of paper with the word
s “Deliverance Dane” written
upon it. Connie is not one to ignore a historical mystery, one which plays out for the reader in the Interlude
sections, in which we get glimpses of the life of Deliverance Dane, her
daughter, and granddaughter. Goody Dane has the misfortune to live at the
time of the Salem witch trials. But what was her role? Why is she not
mentioned in the records of that time?
The Book
of Night Women is a beautifully written, sweeping
tale of Jamaican slavery set in the early 19th century. The
story centers on Lilith, a slave born on the Montpelier Estate, a large
sugar plantation, where life is ruled by danger and fear. Lilith comes of
age and kills a black slave driver who attempts to rape her. This event
marks Lilith from the other slaves, who begin to both fear and revere her
for they sense that she possess a dark power hidden within. Members of a
group which calls itself the Night Women keep their eye on Lilith and
bring her into their secret circle. At their meetings, Lilith learns they
are plotting a slave revolt of massive proportion that involves several
plantations. She hesitates to participate, but the Night Women see her as
a force that could really help their cause, and Lilith is torn between her
feelings. 
Ireland, 1848: Blight
has killed the potato crop for the third time in four years, there’s no
work or food, the rents are due, and you are being turned out of your
home. Just as you decide you must escape to America, your beloved husband
dies, leaving you with four young children and another on the way. So what
do you do? If you are Honora Kelly and her sister Maire, you forge ahead,
doing what you must to survive and give your children a better
life.
Framed as a war criminal, ex-SS
officer Bernie Gunther is forced to flee to Argentina with the likes of
Adolph Eichmann for company. He finds that his reputation gained before
the war as a Berlin police detective has preceded him. Bernie is instantly
drafted into Peron’s secret police with a mission to find a missing girl.
The clues lead him to link the disappearance with a murdered girl in 1932,
a case he nearly solved before his investigation was terminated by the
rise of Hitler. Before long he finds evidence that the old nightmares of
his Nazi days have been reborn in the new world. Linking up with a
beautiful, young Jewess, he launches an investigation that puts him in
deadly conflict with both the Peron regime and the Nazi war criminals that
the president so warml
y embraced.
This is book three in the King
Raven trilogy, the final chapter of Stephen Lawhead’s interpretation of
the Robin Hood legend. During the rule of William Rufus in
12th-century England, the Norman conquerors wanted to control
the rich farmland of Wales, along with the rest of the isle. Before the
arrival of the Normans, the young Bran was to become king of a small realm
within Wales. After his father was killed at the hands of the Norman
invaders, his realm was seized and ruled by a cruel overlord. This novel
begins as Rhi Bran and his band of outlaws, who lived secluded in the
dense forests of the land known as The March, fight to regain control of
his land. One of his men
, a small squat Friar named Tuck, would become
instrumental in trying to regain his throne in this final book of the
trilogy.
The year is 1321. Deep in the
heart of the English countryside, an isolated village is controlled by a
sinister group called the Owl Masters. A pagan group, they rule by fear,
terrorising the local population with accusations of sin bringing
retribution in the form of horrific death. The status quo is disturbed by
the arrival of a group of religious women who establish a community at the
edge of the village. The Owl Masters, who find their
power being challenged by the women, react violently and, aided by the
corrupt local priest, seek to destroy the community of
Beguines.
characters
in the book in a series of small but connected chapters. The tension
builds slowly but subtly with the conflict between the religious community
and the Owl Masters building to a satisfying climax. The writing is taut,
compelling, and atmospheric, evoking the superstitious ignorance of the
age. If you like gothic medieval novels with venal priests, murder,
witches, and strong-minded women, this is for you. I loved it. Definitely
one to keep, and highly recommended. 
South Africa, 1952.
Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper is sent to investigate the murder of
Afrikaner police officer Captain Willem Pretorius in the remote town of
Jacob’s Rest. As Emmanuel digs deeper into Pretorius’s double life, he
must also stay one step ahead of the dead man’s thuggish sons and Security
Branch officers intent on pinning the murder on black political
activists.
le whose complete indoctrination in the
idea of white supremacy makes him blind to where the
evidence is pointing. Yet, according to the absurd race laws, he outranks
the black constable, Shabalala, despite the latter’s greater experience
and phenomenal observational and tracking skills.
If you love reading Charles
Dickens, this novel will be heaven-sent. If you’re not a big fan of
Dickens, you will be after reading this novel. It’s that good and
that much fun.
The book revolves around
Dickens’s unfinished last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. After
Dickens’s death in 1870, his Boston publisher, James R. Osgood, sets off
on a journey to England to find if rumored additional chapters really
existed. He fights off opium dealers and thugs hired by rival publishers,
gains the trust of Dickens’s family members, and tangles with a villain of
mythic proportions. All this action might sound overblown, but it’s a
literary romp through 19th century culture and its seamiest
sides, not unlike much of Dickens’s work. It’s well written and chock full
of details on Dickens and his times. This reviewer might question why the
character of Osgood’s companion and love interest is relatively
undeveloped, but this is a minor quibble. Highly recommended. --
Pamela Ortega
Widowed Lady Julia Grey returns
in this third outing to openly pursue Nicholas Brisbane, a private
investigator she first encountered over her husband’s corpse. Her pursuit
takes her to Yorkshire, where Brisbane has been gifted an estate. A book
set in the 19th century on the Yorkshire moors begs for a hero
as brooding as Heathcliff, and Brisbane is that. He is as determined to
rebuff Julia as she is to make him admit his feelings for her. All manner
of obstacles conspire against the couple: Brisbane’s half-Gypsy side and
his renunciation of the Sight (which comes with punishing headaches), the
widowed mother and daughters who have lost their family home to him and
are 
dependent on his charity, and Lady Julia’s gruesome
discovery among their dead brother’s Egyptian artifacts.
In 1865, Charles
Dickens, returning from a holiday with his mistress and her mother, is
involved in the disastrous railway accident at Staplehurst. As Dickens
wanders through the carnage, helping to tend the injured and dying, he
encounters a strange figure, calling himself “Drood.” But who is Drood? Is
he a figment of Dickens’s imagination? Or that of the narrator, Dickens’s
friend and literary rival, the opium-addicted Wilkie Collins? Or that of
Inspector Field, the detective who claims that Drood is a master criminal
who must be brought to justice?
As befits a novel with Dickens as
a major character, Drood is a doorstopper of a book, with a vast
number of characters, most of them historical. Though the novel by no
means feels top-heavy with historical facts, Simmons appears to have
omitted no detail of Dickens’s last years, with even a doomed dog of
Dickens making several appearances. The dialogue is sharp, with each
character having a distinct voice, and the descriptive writing is vivid,
with the grisly Staplehurst scenes being particularly
memorable.
