Historical fiction
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Memory is a wicked thing that warps and twists. But paper and ink receive the truth without emotion, and they read it back without partiality. That, I believe, is why so few women are taught to read and write. God only knows what they would do with the power of pen and ink at their…
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A True Crime Podcast-style Book Review Karston, Ohio, 1900. Jenny Jenkins is surprised by the sound of an automobile. She hurries out on the porch, and sees her husband, Constable Richard Jenkins in the passenger seat with his right arm in a sling. Welcome to Mostlymurders, the bookstagram account where we look at fictional murders…
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The magnanimous patriarch, the gracious widow, the glittering professional, the glamorous vamp, the girlish ingénue… Colonel Hadrian Russell is an institution in the Britannia, keeping court in the London club where he is presiding as acting club president. Almost as famous as the Colonel are his four sons’ widows, Lady Alice, forever in widow’s black,…
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It was the first cost of ownership: being seen. In this county, visibility wasn’t a compliment, it was a target marked in daylight. A Reconstruction-era historical novel set in Alabama, and a testament to quiet but persistent resistance and resilience. Angie Sterling inherits an old abandoned house and quickly learns just how many of her…
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The first sign of trouble came disguised as gossip. Like a curl of smoke, it slipped through my bookshop’s half-open windows with meandering confidence, snaking its way through the Latin Quarter. When the rich and prominent Fournier, owner of the glamorous Maison Fournier department store in Paris, dies under very public circumstances right after having…
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Ad/PR. My January reading was dominated by great debut novels, from Tudor-era action in A Bastard’s Bosworth to delicious Japanese food in The Kamogawa Food Detectives, gothic Holmesian mystery in the early 1900s with Strange Beasts, a character-driven crime drama in Blood Between Us, colonialism and identity in A Memory Called Empire, strong women, representation…
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A prequel novella in the Lady Matilda Investigates Series. Lady Matilda, who is mourning the unfortunate death of her husband, is convinced to host the village of Little Biddington’s annual dog show, bringing her companion Hetty and late husband’s basset hound, Wellington, with her. But when the very unpopular Adelaide Forsythe is found murdered in…
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Book 1 in the Harker & Moriarty series. A brilliant gothic fantasy horror mystery set in Paris in 1903. Samantha Harker, the daughter of Jonathan and Mina Harker, works for The Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena. Originally a researcher, Sam is desperate to leave the library and be assigned as a field…
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Brother Cadfael is a series of 20 books by Ellis Peters (pen name of Edith Mary Pargeter) and a 1990s TV series of 4 seasons, following the life of the 12th century amateur sleuth and monk, Brother Cadfael. An immersive historical setting and a really interesting main character is what makes this series so appealing.…
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An illegitimate son from already questioned blood. Roland. The bastard. After many years of exile in Brittany, Henry Tudor is marching against Richard III. Among Henry’s retinue is Roland, Henry’s illegitimate son who is aching to be recognised by his father. As the army advances towards a lethal encounter with the forces of Richard III,…
