The Witch Elm by Sally-Anne Martyn

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Midwife Melissa Hendrix has bought a house in the small English village of Heredge, ready to start a new life after being embroiled in a scandal at her previous hospital. She is also trying to escape from her ex-boyfriend who has been stalking her and she hopes he won’t be able to track her down. As she settles into her new home and job, however, she quickly discovers that things are not quite right. She can’t believe that in such a small community there are twelve women all heavily pregnant and due at the same time – and every one of them is insisting on a home birth. And why does the sinister Lucien and his Open Arms Church seem to have such a hold over everyone in the village?

In 1656, Elizabeth Wade and her parents live in the same house, Elm Tree Cottage, that Melissa will move into almost four centuries later. Elizabeth works as a servant in the household of the wealthy Radcliffe family, but she also has a knowledge of herbal remedies and when she meets a company of travelling performers she is asked to tend to one of the party, who is an invalid.

You can probably guess what’s going to happen to Elizabeth, considering the title of the book and the way female healers were regarded in the 1650s as waves of witch hunting swept across the country. I’ve read other novels about historical witches and witch trials and expected this one to be very similar, but it actually turned out to be quite different and although some parts were predictable, others weren’t. There’s a lot of emphasis on horror elements – an ancient elm tree that seems to possess magical powers, rituals and curses passed down through the centuries, strange noises and ghostly presences. The dark atmosphere and creepy village setting kept reminding me of The Craftsman by Sharon Bolton.

Melissa’s narrative alternates with Elizabeth’s throughout the book and usually I would find myself drawn more to the historical timeline – this time, though, I preferred the present day one. Melissa came to life for me in a way that Elizabeth didn’t and I enjoyed seeing her navigating the various challenges she faces in the role of midwife in a community under the thumb of an influential cult leader. As an outsider she is viewed with suspicion and wariness at first, but slowly begins to form some friendships – including one with Grizzly, the stray cat who takes up residence in her house! I would have liked to have been told more about her backstory, though, as I felt that part of the book was incomplete.

Elizabeth felt less real to me, but her story was still compelling and I thought it was interesting to read about the travelling performers (although I was slightly bothered by the use of the term ‘circus’ throughout the book as it felt anachronistic). Obviously circuses didn’t exist then in the way they do today, but small groups of entertainers like the one in the novel did, despite the bans on public theatre in Puritan England. Elizabeth’s association with these people makes her situation more dangerous, especially as the woman she is caring for also appears to be a witch. I was intrigued by the village being referred to as Heathersage in the historical chapters and Heredge in the modern ones; I’m assuming a natural corruption of the name over time, although there’s no explanation given.

The Witch Elm turned out to be a perfect October read. Sally-Anne Martyn is a new author for me, but it seems she has written three other thrillers which also sound interesting, although quite different from this one.

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Reviewed for RIPXXI hosted by @perilreaders

The Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry

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This is the fifth and final book in Ambrose Parry’s Raven and Fisher historical crime series set within the medical world of 19th century Edinburgh. I’m sorry that it’s the last one, as I’ve enjoyed all of the books and am disappointed there won’t be any more. If you’re new to the series, I recommend reading in order starting with the first novel, The Way of All Flesh, but it’s not completely essential as the books also work as separate mysteries.

As The Death of Shame opens, Dr Will Raven is trying to establish his own medical practice, away from his friend and mentor James Simpson, the famous obstetrician. He is assisted financially by Sarah Fisher and in return has agreed to give her some training in secret as she has been disappointed in her efforts to obtain a medical degree like the American female physicians, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell. Sarah soon has more urgent matters to deal with, however; her young niece, Annabel, was due to arrive in Edinburgh to take up a position in service, but she has gone missing and Sarah fears she may have been lured into prostitution.

Meanwhile, Raven is also having problems of his own. His father-in-law, Dr Cameron Todd, has been found dead, believed to have committed suicide, and as Raven begins to dig into the circumstances of his death he makes some shocking discoveries. His wife, Eugenie, has seemed depressed and withdrawn since the birth of their second child and Raven feels he can’t burden her with anything else, so he continues his investigation alone, afraid of what else he might learn.

The Death of Shame, like the other books in the series, is both a mystery novel and a social commentary on the darker side of life in Victorian Edinburgh. Suicide, blackmail and the trafficking of young women are just some of the topics this book tackles, along with the growing trade in pornography made possible by new developments in photography. It’s a fascinating book, although obviously quite disturbing at times as well. The Historical Note at the end is definitely worth reading as it provides more information on some of the subjects covered in the book, as well as explaining which characters are real or inspired by real people.

Ambrose Parry is a pseudonym of the husband and wife writing team consisting of crime author Chris Brookmyre and consultant anaesthetist Dr Marisa Haetzman. With their different skills and areas of knowledge, they both bring something special to the writing of these novels. I felt that this particular book didn’t have as much medical detail in it, but with the inclusion of real life doctor Emily Blackwell it does explore the prejudice towards women in medicine and the lack of opportunities for study, as well as looking at the difficulties even qualified male doctors like Raven face in setting up a new medical practice and trying to convince patients to entrust them with their care.

This book brings the series to a satisfying conclusion, although I think there was still more that could have been written about Will and Sarah and I’m sorry that their story has come to an end. The good news is that there’s an Ambrose Parry short story I haven’t read yet, so at least I still have that to look forward to!

Reviewed for RIPXXI hosted by @perilreaders

#1949Club – Some previous reviews

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1949 Club, hosted by Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, starts on Monday and we will all be reading and writing about books published in that year. It seems to have been a particularly great year for publishing – I have previously reviewed eleven books on my blog and thought I would list them before the week begins. If you haven’t decided what to read yet, maybe you can find some inspiration here!

The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier – After a slow start, I loved this book about three siblings looking back on their childhood and wondering whether they really were ‘parasites’, as a family member once described them. Since reading this book several years ago, I have read some biographies of du Maurier and can see how some elements of the novel were inspired by her own childhood.

Alice by Elizabeth Eliot – This is one of several Elizabeth Eliot novels published by Dean Street Press. Although the title is Alice, the story of Alice’s life actually unfolds through the eyes of her best friend, Margaret, the narrator. I found it dark in places but also amusing and entertaining and I’m sure I’ll be reading more books by Eliot.

The Noh Mask Murder by Akimitsu Takagi – I loved this Japanese crime novel, which is now available from Pushkin Press in a new English translation by Jesse Kirkwood. It’s a very enjoyable locked room mystery and I found it interesting to learn about Japan in the post-war period, as well as the different types of masks used in Japanese theatre.

The Hatter’s Ghosts by Georges Simenon – This is one of Simenon’s short psychological thrillers, which he referred to as romans durs, or ‘hard novels’. It’s an atmospheric, unsettling novel set in a rainy La Rochelle. I read it in an English translation by Howard Curtis.

Crooked House by Agatha Christie – You can always count on Agatha Christie to have had a book published in the relevant year! This is one of her standalones (no Poirot, Miss Marple or Tommy and Tuppence) and concerns the murder of Greek businessman Aristide Leonides. It’s a clever mystery with lots of suspects – and of course, I didn’t manage to solve it.

Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge – I love Elizabeth Goudge’s novels, although this isn’t one of my favourites. It’s set in Devon during the Napoleonic Wars and revolves around the love story between Stella, an adopted girl who lives on a farm, and Zachary, a young sailor who deserts his ship and comes to the farm looking for work. Although the romance didn’t really convince me, I loved the setting and the local legends and folklore woven into the plot.

Vittoria Cottage by DE Stevenson – This is the first in Stevenson’s trilogy about the Dering family who live in Ashbridge, a quiet English village. Like many of Stevenson’s books, this is a gentle, comforting novel with a heroine – Caroline Dering – I liked immediately. I still need to read the other two in the trilogy.

Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski – This is one of my favourite books published by Persephone. It follows the story of Hilary Wainwright who is trying to track down his little boy who disappeared in Paris during the war. It’s such a suspenseful story – you hope there will be a happy ending for Hilary and his son but there’s no guarantee that there will be.

In a Dark Wood Wandering by Hella S Haasse – First published in Dutch, I read this in an English translation by Lewis C Kaplan. It’s a beautifully written historical novel set in France and England during the Hundred Years’ War and it follows the story of Charles of Orléans throughout this turbulent period of history.

Deadly Duo by Margery Allingham – This is a pair of novellas – Wanted: Someone Innocent and Last Act. As far as I can tell, the former was originally published in 1946 but Last Act appeared for the first time in this collection, which was published in 1949. Both of them are crime stories and I preferred the first one to the second.

Head of a Traveller by Nicholas Blake – Nicholas Blake was a pseudonym of the poet Cecil Day-Lewis and under this name he wrote a series of mysteries featuring Nigel Strangeways, a private investigator. Head of a Traveller is the ninth book in the series and in this one Nigel is investigating a murder at a country estate owned by a poet.

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Have you read any of these? Will you be taking part in 1949 Club and if so, what will you be reading?

The Well by Elizabeth Jolley

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Elizabeth Jolley is not an author I’ve ever come across before, but when I saw The Well on NetGalley I decided to give it a try. It sounded intriguing and suitably dark for the RIP XXI challenge. Originally published in 1986, the book has recently been reissued by Virago with a new introduction by Alice Slater. I saved the introduction until the end in case of spoilers, but it’s definitely worth going back and reading it.

The novel opens late at night with two women driving home from a party. One is Miss Hester Harper; the other is her adopted daughter, Katherine. As Katherine is almost ready to take her driving test, Hester allows her to get behind the wheel for practice. Due to a combination of inexperience and recklessness, Katherine hits an object on a bend in the road. Hester gets out to investigate and, although she doesn’t say exactly who or what the car has hit, the implication is that it’s a person. Acting impulsively and out of desperation, Hester urges Katherine to continue driving home so they can throw the body down the well in their yard and pretend nothing has happened.

Home for Hester and Katherine is a wheat and sheep farm in rural Western Australia. The two women have lived there alone since Hester inherited the farm from her father and because it’s so isolated, they are able to successfully dispose of the body without anyone knowing what they’ve done. Hester hopes they can put the incident behind them and move on, but Katherine is haunted by what happened and begins to spend more and more time alone at the well…

The drive home, the accident and the decision to hide the body all happen within the first ten pages of the book; we then go back to an earlier period in time with Hester remembering how the teenage, orphaned Katherine first came to live with her and how their relationship developed. We also get some glimpses of Hester’s childhood and her infatuation with her German governess, Hilde Herzfeld.

When we meet Hester as an adult in the book’s present day, it’s not stated exactly how old she is but she describes herself as middle-aged and of ‘advancing years’. Her feelings for the much younger Katherine seem to mirror her obsession with Hilde all those years ago. Her love for Katherine is intense and possessive, she’s jealous of Katherine’s friendship with a girl from the orphanage, and she’s afraid that Katherine will go away and leave her. It seems likely that she’s a lesbian, but like a lot of things in the book it’s left open to interpretation.

Later in the novel we return to the story of the body in the well and the atmosphere becomes darker as Katherine, consumed by guilt, begins to have fantasies about what is really down there. Although there were times in the first half of the book when I felt bored, I found the second half more gripping and quite unsettling. I was a bit disappointed by the ending, though, as it’s very abrupt and, again, difficult to interpret. The only other problem I had with the book was Katherine’s way of speaking, which feels unrealistic and unnatural; it’s partially explained by Hester’s observation that Katherine likes to mimic the American celebrities she admires, but I was still irritated by it!

The story has a timeless feel; I’m not sure if we’re told exactly when the story takes place – Katherine’s favourite actor is John Travolta, so it’s presumably set around the time it was published in the 1980s, but otherwise it could easily have been much earlier in the 20th century. Overall, despite my criticisms, I found The Well a fascinating and unusual novel.

Thanks to Virago for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Reviewed for RIPXXI hosted by @perilreaders

Six Degrees of Separation: From Life of M to A Bad Business

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It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we’re starting with Life of M by Rachel Cusk. I haven’t read this book, but here’s what it’s about:

M is a film star, and one of the most recognisable faces of our time.

With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. For her, it seems, the rules of reality have melted away.

Now M has agreed to let a stranger write her biography. Their project will sprawl and expand: to the olive groves and holiday beaches where M spends her days; across hotel rooms, bourgeois facades, film sets; through endless modern cities. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths – about the very experience of living – might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture? And what in the end will M make of their work?

I struggled to find a clever first link to start this month’s chain, so I’ve gone with a very simple link to a book with a similar title: Yann Martel’s Booker Prize winner, Life of Pi (1), in which an Indian boy, Pi, finds himself stranded in a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan – and a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker!

There’s also a tiger in Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch (2). Jaffy Brown comes face to face with it in the streets of London and the experience leads to him being offered a job with Mr Jamrach, a dealer in wild animals. For the next few years Jaffy works at Jamrach’s menagerie, helping to take care of the animals – until one day he gets the chance to go to sea in search of a ‘dragon’. I loved this entertaining historical adventure novel, my favourite of the three books I’ve read by Birch.

The Georgian Menagerie by Christopher Plumb (3) shares a word in the title and is an interesting non-fiction book about the history of exotic animals and birds in 18th century London. As you can imagine, it’s sad to read about the treatment some of these creatures received once they were removed from their natural habitats and exhibited to the public, but there are also lots of fascinating and amusing anecdotes.

There’s a sort of menagerie in Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (4), although it focuses on only one type of animal. This unusual novel follows the story of the Bigtree family who run an alligator-themed amusement park in the Everglades. I found this book a bit uneven, but loved the imaginative setting, complete with theme park attractions such as daily alligator wrestling shows, the Bigtree family museum and the Swamp Café!

I tried to think of an alligator link, but I could only come up with a crocodile one! Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (5) is the first in the Amelia Peabody mystery series, about a Victorian lady with a passion for archaeology. Like most of the books in the series, this one is set in Egypt. Unless I’ve forgotten, I don’t think there were any real crocodiles in the novel – the title comes from an ancient Egyptian poem.

There is an actual crocodile in one of the stories in the collection A Bad Business by Fyodor Dostoevsky (6). The story is appropriately titled The Crocodile and is about a Russian civil servant, Ivan Matveich, who is swallowed alive by a crocodile being exhibited in St Petersburg. It’s a fascinating and surprisingly funny story. There are five others included in the book, all in new translations by Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater.

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And that’s my chain for October! The chain has an animal theme and the links have included: ‘Life of’ titles; tigers; the word Menagerie; animal parks; alligators and crocodiles.

In November, in recognition of Novellas in November, we’ll be starting with a novella that’s on our reading list.

My Commonplace Book: September 2026

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A selection of quotes and pictures to represent September’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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She was a spirited girl last night and a pensive young woman tonight. Seventeen was the age when they tried on various poses to see which one they liked best, I recalled.

The Heiress of Northanger Abbey by Nancy Bilyeau (2026)

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The word willing is one of the most useful words in the English language. It’s so easy for people to tell you they can’t do something, that they won’t do it. But hardly anyone will say they’re unwilling to try. Attempt it on someone, if you like. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

The Midnight Guests by Alex Hay (2026)

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I thought that in mastering spelling I would be led to the promised land of knowing things, how to act in the human sphere. That words were everything. Holding everything together. The countless grains of sand that kept the Cumberland River itself from sinking into the earth. And in knowing words I would not sink myself.

The Newer World by Sebastian Barry (2026)

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Daphne du Maurier, c. 1930

‘There you go again,’ she said. ‘Such sweet formality. But I will nudge you away from it, for this is what writers do: they prise open all the closed and shuttered places in other people. You didn’t know that, did you?’

The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain (2026)

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As I’ve got older, I have become more interested in the areas of life where I find I don’t have a strong opinion. There are plenty of things I do feel very strongly about, of course. But as the world and its new media technologies push for more and more polarisation, I treasure the places where I can see more than one side to a question.

The Strangers by Naomi Alderman (2026)

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How could they know? How could anyone know? If just one person, once, in the whole history of the world, had done just one thing differently from the way they in fact did do it – who could say that it would not have changed the whole future of mankind?

By Horror Haunted by Celia Fremlin (1974)

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It seemed incredibly insensitive. At times, Mabel felt herself bowled over by the cruelty of other people, unable to function in a world that so often cared so much about the wrong things. At least Mabel tried to do the right thing, even if sometimes the consequences were disastrous.

The Scholars by MacKenzie Common (2026)

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Portrait of John Law, by Casimir Balthazar

“Fortune may be blind, but it is possible to take her by the hand and guide her. The art of winning lies in the study of why men lose. Indeed,” he ended, on a more pensive note, “that may be the whole art of life. I do not know.”

The Gamester by Rafael Sabatini (1949)

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“I’m a reliable witness, you’re a reliable witness, practically all God’s children are reliable witnesses in their own estimation – which makes it funny how such different ideas of the same affair get about.”

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham (1953)

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‘Life,’ she declares inside her head, ‘is like a wood heap. People do things to ameliorate and to alleviate. With one little detail after another people move through life. It is like taking wood from the heap, one log at a time to the fire, or in summer, the slow stacking of one log upon another, when a wood pile is being moved or rebuilt.’

The Well by Elizabeth Jolley (1986)

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“It is a theory of mine,” I said, warming to my theme, “that we owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness – either enforced or voluntary. The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself – and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.”

The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie (1942)

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Favourite books read in September:

The Moving Finger and By Horror Haunted

Authors read for the first time in September:

Naomi Alderman, Elizabeth Jolley

Countries visited in my September reading:

England, USA, Australia, France

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Reading notes: September was another good month for me in terms of the number of books I managed to read. More importantly, I enjoyed most of them, although one or two were slightly disappointing. I was pleased to be able to join in with Short Story September with By Horror Haunted and I also finished my Classics Club Spin book, The Kraken Wakes, before the deadline for once. In October, I’ll be taking part in 1949 Club, the latest of Karen and Simon’s year clubs, which are always something to look forward to! You may have noticed I’ve already read one book for that and am in the middle of a second one.

What did you read in September? Do you have any plans for October?

The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie

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This month’s theme for Read Christie 2026 is ‘Best According to Agatha’, with the option of choosing any of the books on Christie’s own list of her top 10 favourites which she compiled in 1972. My choice was easy as the only one I hadn’t already read was The Moving Finger.

First published in 1942, this is a Miss Marple mystery, although Miss Marple herself doesn’t appear until near the end. The book is narrated by Jerry Burton, a pilot who has been injured in a plane crash. He and his sister Joanna have decided to rent a house in the small market town of Lymstock so he can get away from London for a while and finish recuperating in peace and quiet. However, life in Lymstock proves to be much less quiet and peaceful than he’d expected! Almost as soon as they arrive, Jerry receives an anonymous letter containing the accusation that he and Joanna are not brother and sister. Knowing this is untrue, they aren’t too concerned and destroy the letter, but later learn that several other people in the town have also been receiving them.

As the letters become the main topic of conversation in the town, some people begin to speculate that there’s no smoke without fire and maybe some of the accusations are true. When Mrs Symmington is found dead after receiving a particularly nasty letter, it’s assumed that she has committed suicide. Now that the writer has had some success, will they stop sending the letters? No, they don’t – and when another death occurs, the vicar’s wife decides to call in an expert, “someone who knows a great deal about wickedness”. The expert, of course, is Miss Marple!

The Moving Finger is a very enjoyable novel. I loved the portrayal of a small community where everyone knows everyone else’s business – the ideal setting for a poison pen letter mystery. I was reminded of Fear Stalks the Village by Ethel Lina White but I think this one is a stronger novel. Despite the book being published in 1942, there are no mentions of the war and the residents of Lymstock seem to be completely untouched by it, something I’ve noticed in other books of hers from that period (N or M? is the main exception). The assumption is that Jerry is an RAF pilot whose plane was shot down, but that’s never actually made clear and there are only the vaguest references to his accident, which happens before the novel begins.

I didn’t manage to solve the mystery – I had narrowed the suspects down to two but neither was correct. Of course, Miss Marple has no difficulty identifying the culprit, using her powers of observation, perception of human nature and knowledge of village life. I’m not sure that there was really any need for her to appear in this book at all, though. She doesn’t arrive on the scene until chapter ten (of fifteen) so it could probably have worked just as well as a standalone novel with a different character, maybe Jerry himself, solving the mystery. Still, it’s always nice to see Miss Marple, even if only briefly!

I’ve now read all of the Miss Marple novels, although I still have one of the short story collections to read. I’ll be returning to the Tommy and Tuppence series for Read Christie in October.

Reviewed for RIPXXI hosted by @perilreaders