The Little Reader Library: historical fiction

Showing posts with label historical fiction. Show all posts

Tuesday, 9 September 2014

The Sacred River - Wendy Wallace - Guest Book Review

Published by Simon & Schuster

Guest book review by Josie Barton

Harriet Heron is the cosseted daughter of an upper class Victorian family. Her severe asthma, in smog ridden London, necessitates her staying indoors, where her fascination for Egypt and the Egyptian Book of the Dead carries her through the worst of her illness. Tentatively, on the advice of her doctor, Harriet embarks on a journey to Egypt with her mother, Louisa and her eccentric Aunt Yael. On the boat to Alexandria they are befriended by an enigmatic artist, Eyre Soane, whose interest in Harriet and her family can only be regarded as suspicious and whose association with them continues throughout the novel.

Their arrival in Alexandria is filled with the sights, sounds and scents of a city so foreign that Harriet’s senses seem to come alive and she is enchanted by what she sees around her. Her health improves, and she is able to immerse herself in the history and culture of a country which has long fascinated her. However, for Louisa and Yael, Egypt is not just a land of contrasts, but is also a place where they must try to find some sort of inner peace.

From the start of the novel, the author cleverly intertwines the story of three very different women and shows just what it was like to live within the closeted world of Victorian sensibility. They each have their own secrets, aspirations and hidden yearnings, and as the languid torpor of Egypt starts to influence them, their hopes, dreams and fears of the past are laid open to scrutiny in a fascinating journey of self discovery. Egypt is so beautifully described that it becomes vibrantly alive, from the contrast of valleys tinged with the gold of its ancient tombs, through to the poverty and turmoil of a land at odds with itself. The whole character and nature of the novel revolves around the effect that this beautiful country has on Harriet, Louisa and Yael.

Overall, I thought that there was much to enjoy within the novel. The slow and languorous nature of the narrative is entirely in keeping with the unhurried atmosphere of nineteenth century Egypt, and I am sure that this book will appeal to fans of well written historical fiction.

Many thanks to Josie for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library. Please do also visit Josie's fab book blog JaffaReadsToo!

Wednesday, 3 September 2014

The Vanishing Witch - Karen Maitland - Guest Book Review

Published by Headline

Guest book review by Lisa Weir

Wow! Just....WOW!!

A riveting, page-turning whopper of a book that had me captivated – in fact, positively bewitched – from the start. Blending history, superstition, folklore, murder, mystery and witchcraft sublimely, this book is an absolute must-read for fans of historical fiction.

Set in Lincolnshire in 1380, we are swept away to the time of King Richard II, when, led by his advisor John of Gaunt, he raises taxes to an all time high; a price that the majority of peasants cannot pay leading to the infamous peasant’s revolt.

One such peasant is river boatman Gunter, struggling to pay not just the new taxes but the rents owed by him to rich landowner and wool merchant Robert of Bassingham.

Robert has his own problems with his cargoes going missing, losing him money but fortunately he has the friendship of a new widow to appease him; Mistress Catlin is as divine a specimen of womankind as ever there was and Robert becomes enchanted with the young widow, a welcome change from his scold of a wife but when his wife passes away and he takes Catlin to be his new bride, things don’t go as well as he would have wished in his new little family as jealousy and suspicion between servants and sons abound.

And who is the mysterious friar seen following the players of this novel? What part has he to play in the bad luck and woes that befall Robert one after the other?

As the peasants struggle and eventually lead a rebellion that has seen no precedent and as Robert gradually loses control of all he holds dear, the reader becomes enmeshed in a world that comes alive in with the medieval superstition, the fear of witchcraft and the plain cruelty and greed that renders the rich richer and the poor poorer in these squalid and fearful times.

I was utterly lost in this medieval world; each chapter is headed by a spell, charm or ancient lore which fascinated me; the author’s knowledge of the true facts of the Peasant’s Revolt and of ancient folklore are woven together so brilliantly they lend a magical and mysterious element to the story as the reader is tantalized by the puzzling events surrounding the characters and tries to work out whether witchcraft is indeed at work or if it is just the exaggerated workings of our brains throwing us off the real scent.....It might be a big read but it’s a read that will have you spellbound and leave you 100 per cent satisfied.

Huge thanks to Lisa for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library! Lisa blogs at The Book Addicted Housewife, do visit her fab book blog too!

Read an interview with the author on JaffaReadsToo blog.

Tuesday, 24 June 2014

City of Dreams - Harriet Steel - Author Guest Post

Today on the blog I'm pleased to welcome historical novelist, Harriet Steel, talking about the inspiration for her latest book, City of Dreams.

Guest post by author Harriet Steel

Many authors have found inspiration in sensory experiences. The example that most readily spring to mind is that of Marcel Proust and his famous Madeleine, but a piece of music, a waft of scent, the feel of a wave-smoothed pebble or the touch of a hand might also spark off an idea that grows into a novel or a short story. For me, paintings have often provided inspiration and this was the case with my recently published novel, City of Dreams. It's set in Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century and tells the story of Anna, a young Russian girl, who comes to Paris with her new French husband, Emile Daubigny. She's thrilled to be in the most fashionable city on earth, but when Daubigny turns out to be a rogue and abandons her, she has to cope with a very different life from the one she had looked forward to with such joy.

The names that come to mind in the art of the time are well known - Manet, Renoir and Monet to mention the most famous. Manet's harsh realism certainly had a place in City of Dreams, although Monet's beautiful pictures were less influential. His water lilies and haystacks are a marvellous subject for his magnificent explorations of colour and light, but I suspect their private lives are a little lacking in interest. No, it was his contemporary, Auguste Renoir, whose work really fired my imagination. His work is sometimes dismissed as, 'chocolate boxy' but look closer - there's so much more to it than that. Renoir's paintings, with their lush brushwork and limpid, sensuous colours, aren't just beautiful, they're full of stories too and bursting with life.

A glamorous woman with her beau in the box at the opera looks pensive, as if she's not really enjoying herself. A girl gazes wistfully out of the picture plane in The Moulin de la Galette, The young men in The Boating Party, show off their muscles while a smooth, dandified young man whispers in his girl's ear. Who are they all? What are their stories?

It was my desire for answers to questions like these that planted the seed of City of Dreams in my mind and finding them has been a fascinating journey.

City of Dreams is available from Amazon in paperback or Kindle formats.

Visit Harriet’s Amazon Author Page http://www.amazon.co.uk/Harriet-Steel/e/B00845TT0U for details of her other books, and her blog https://harrietsteel.blogspot.com/ for articles on history and interviews with a variety of guests, including bestselling author, Joanne Harris (Chocolat) and Margaret Mountford (The Apprentice) on her other life as an academic specialising in Greek papyri.

Twitter @harrietsteel1

Thursday, 19 June 2014

The Lost Duchess - Jenny Barden

'You like to hear of the world, don't you? To learn who's doing what and why. For a young maiden you have a lively curiosity.'

Only a few pages into this novel, the above lines are used to describe Emme Fifield, and we know immediately that she desires more from her life, beyond the realms of her role as lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, she wonders about the world that Sir Francis Drake and those who travel with him see; 'To think of such places!' she imagines, as she speaks with Lord Hertford in the opening chapter, discussing the imminent arrival of Sir Francis. Her moments spent with Lord Hertford will however take a turn for the worst and in fact increase her need to leave life at court, escaping a scandal that could ruin her.

She joins the expedition to the New World to Sir Walter Raleigh's Virginia, to found a permanent English settlement at Roanoke, travelling under another name and assuming a role beneath her previous status, with the promise to return and report back what she learns about the place to Queen Elizabeth and Sir Francis Walsingham, her chief intelligencer. However, Emme in fact intends to stay in the new colony and never return to England again, hoping the scandalous incident with Lord Hertford can thereby remain buried in the past.

She meets Kit Doonan, a mariner with Sir Francis Drake, whilst still in England, and her attraction to Kit is immediate and strong, and it is reciprocated by him. As Emme learns of the frightening experiences he has endured, being held hostage, taken prisoner, and set to work as a slave before being freed and finding his way home, her admiration for him grows:

'What must the mariner have been through: imprisoned, enslaved, outcast and then rescued as if brought back from the dead? What had he been through since? She watched him wipe the water from his mouth with the back of his hand, and pictured him in a prison cell, and then in a wilderness, and next on a rolling deck in the thick of a storm. He would have been graceful wherever he was, she decided; he did not need to drink from crystal to look like a gentleman.'

The attraction and will-they won't-they kind of tension between the pair of them simmers wonderfully before it becomes a great love, and Kit is a dashing, courageous and handsome hero to Emme's 'quick witted and stout-hearted' adventurous lady. I found both the main characters engaging. Kit is not without his own secrets, his own reasons why he so strongly wants to be part of the expedition to Virginia and to help form Governor John White's City of Raleigh, and he struggles inwardly about if and when to reveal them, and to what cost.

I loved reading this well-plotted story from start to finish, and I particularly loved the time once the settlers had arrived in what was to be their new home, and the encounters and tribulations they faced there. Jenny Barden writes wonderfully in her reimagining of what might have happened to them, and to Sir Walter Raleigh's settlement at Roanoke. The historical detail is strong and is evidence of her interest and passion for this period and these events; the author's research into this episode in history makes for an absorbing, convincing vivid depiction of the characters, the details of life at sea, the tribes, the locations. I liked the inclusion of extracts from authentic records by real figures named in the story such as John White, Ralph Lane and others at the start of the chapters.

She has combined a great cast of characters with plenty of action and tension to create an intelligent and informative read that I really enjoyed and also found absolutely fascinating. It's not an area I knew very much about at all, and it's inspired me to find out more about it. How wonderful to know for example that John White's granddaughter, Virginia Dare, whose birth I read about in the novel, really was the first English child born in North America, and to ponder the true mystery as to what happened to the colonists; it's intriguing. I loved reading the author's note at the end of the novel, and I was glad of the inclusion of the map at the beginning too, I referred to this several times as I read and enjoyed being able to do this.

The Lost Duchess begins as a novel set in the Elizabethan court, but it quickly becomes so much more; it's a marvellous historical novel of love, adventure and exploration, with excitement, danger and suspense; there is so much to enjoy in this novel, a compelling blend of fiction and fact. Emme declares: 'I want to be part of the brave adventure.' Reading The Lost Duchess was an escape, I set sail and immersed myself in a grand and momentous adventure, one I'd heartily recommend!

Thank you to the author for kindly sending me a copy of this novel for an honest review as part of her Book Tour - more details below including author links.

Published by Ebury Press

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Please join author Jenny Barden as she tours the blogosphere for The Lost Duchess from May 26-June 20.

Paperback Publication Date: June 5, 2014
Ebury Press
Paperback; 448p

An epic Elizabethan adventure with a thriller pace and a high tension love story that moves from the palaces of England to the savage wilderness of the New World.

Emme Fifield has fallen about as far as a gentlewoman can.

Once a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, her only hope of surviving the scandal that threatens to engulf her is to escape England for a fresh start in the new America where nobody has ever heard of the Duchess of Somerset.

Emme joins Kit Doonan's rag-tag band of idealists, desperados and misfits bound for Virginia. But such a voyage will be far from easy and Emme finds her attraction to the mysterious Doonan inconvenient to say the least.

As for Kit, the handsome mariner has spent years imprisoned by the Spanish, and living as an outlaw with a band of escaped slaves; he has his own inner demons to confront, and his own dark secrets to keep...

Ever since Sir Walter Raleigh's settlement in Virginia was abandoned in 1587 its fate has remained a mystery; 'The Lost Duchess' explores what might have happened to the ill-starred 'Lost Colony' of Roanoke.

Buy the Book

Amazon (AUS)
Amazon (UK)
Book Depository

About the Author

I've had a love of history and adventure ever since an encounter in infancy with a suit of armour at Tamworth Castle. Training as an artist, followed by a career as a city Jenny (Portrait 2)solicitor, did little to help displace my early dream of becoming a knight. A fascination with the Age of Discovery led to travels in South and Central America, and much of the inspiration for my debut came from retracing the footsteps of Francis Drake in Panama. The sequel centres on the first Elizabethan 'lost colony' of early Virginia. I am currently working on an epic adventure during the threat of invasion by the Spanish Armada.

My work has appeared in short story collections and anthologies and I've written for non-fiction publications including the Historical Novels Review. I am active in many organisations, having run the 'Get Writing' conferences for several years, and undertaken the co-ordination of the Historical Novel Societyís London Conference 2012. I am a member of that organisation as well as the Historical Writers' Association, the Romantic Nevelists' Association and the Society of Authors. I'll be co-ordinating the RNA's annual conference in 2014.

I have four children and now live on a farm in Dorset with my long suffering husband and an ever increasing assortment of animals.

I love travelling, art, reading and scrambling up hills and mountains (though I'm not so keen on coming down!).

Author Links

Website
Facebook
Twitter
Jenny Barden's Blog
English Historical Fiction Authors Blog

Also by Jenny Barden

Publication Date: June 20, 2013
Ebury Press
Formats: Paperback, Ebook

Mistress Cooksley may be a wealthy merchant's daughter, but she blushes at my words and meets my eyes look for look. Yet I cannot hope to court her without fortune, and a dalliance with a pretty maid will not hinder me from my path.

Captain Drake's endeavour might bring me gold, but I, Will Doonan, will have my revenge.

The Spaniards captured my brother and have likely tortured and killed him. For God and St George, we'll strike at the dogs and see justice done.

I thought I'd left Mistress Cooksley behind to gamble everything and follow Drake, and here she is playing the boy at the ends of the world. She's a fool with a heart as brave as any man's. Yet her presence here could be the ruin of us all...