Category: Historical Fiction

The Witch’s Stone by Kirsty Ferry

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Jess Morgan is a genealogist and historical researcher who has returned to the area of Northumberland where she grew up to work on a new project looking into the history of a ruined chapel. There are plans to make it part of a Heritage Trail for tourists, so some interesting facts about the site are needed. Reacquainted with an old school friend, Nate, who is managing the project for the heritage group, Jess begins investigating the chapel’s past and discovers links with an ancient stone known as Isabel’s Stone – or the Witch’s Stone – and a woman called Eliza who is buried in the chapel graveyard.

A second thread of the novel is set in 1888 and follows Eliza, the twenty-two-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Stratford of Stratford Chase. Eliza is recovering from an accident she suffered several months earlier which left her with damage to her spine and unable to remember what happened. All she knows is that Lucian Ashcombe, the man she loves, was somehow involved and was sent away, forbidden to see her again. But now Lucian has returned – and so has another man, Benedict Rochford, her intended husband. Can she trust either of them? If only her memories would come back!

Jess and Eliza are linked by a third woman: Isabel, the witch, whom it’s said can be summoned by running three times around her stone. I was interested to read at the end of the book that Kirsty Ferry was inspired by a brief record in an old book of a witch with an evil eye and a sinister cat who lived in a cottage near Brinkburn Abbey. Ferry’s portrayal of Isabel, the Brinkburn Witch, is much more sympathetic; she appears to the protagonists in times of need, tying the two storylines together. The two narratives merge further when Jess, who is staying in a room at Eliza’s old home, Stratford Chase, now converted into a hotel, begins to slip between past and present, and when Nate discovers an old hunting knife which seems to wield a strange power over him.

There are some supernatural elements, then, but they never completely dominate the novel; the focus is on the personal stories of the characters with Jess researching the history of the chapel and trying to rebuild her life after her recent divorce and Eliza struggling with her amnesia and looking for a way out of the marriage her parents and brother have planned for her. I was much more interested in Eliza’s story at first as it was where all the drama was taking place, but later in the book the two threads come together so well that it’s hard to separate one from the other. Not everyone in the story gets a happy ending, but that’s reality and I still found the final chapter very satisfying. I also loved the setting – not enough books are set in Northumberland! The fictional Stratford Chase and the ruined chapel are located in the Simonside Hills near Rothbury and the author describes the landscape beautifully.

This is the first Kirsty Ferry book I’ve read; she has written a large number of others and I’m not sure if any of them appeal to me, but I’ll certainly be looking out for The Snow Witch, due to be published later this year!

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

The Last Love Song by Lucinda Riley

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This is a reworking of one of Lucinda Riley’s early novels, originally published as Losing You in 1997 under the name Lucinda Edmonds. After Riley’s death in 2021, her son Harry Whittaker completed her unfinished novel, Atlas, then updated another of her early books, Hidden Beauty, as The Hidden Girl. It would be interesting to know exactly how much is Whittaker’s work, but without reading the originals it’s impossible to tell.

The Last Love Song begins in 1964 in the village of Ballymore on the coast of West Cork, Ireland. When sixteen-year-old Sorcha O’Donovan goes to see a local band with her friends from school, she has no idea that her life is about to change forever. Within months she is heading for London with the lead singer, Con Daly, having been disowned by her father, who disapproves of their relationship. After a period of struggling to make ends meet while Con looks for opportunities in London’s vibrant music scene, he finally achieves stardom with his new band, The Fishermen, and he and Sorcha become rich and famous almost overnight. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily bring happiness and when Helen McCarthy, a face from both their pasts, arrives back in their lives, everything starts to go wrong.

Two decades later, preparations are being made for a huge charity concert at Wembley Stadium. The Fishermen have agreed to reform for the event, but one member is missing – Con Daly, who disappeared seventeen years ago after suffering a personal tragedy. There’s only one person who may be able to find out what happened all those years earlier; the problem is, she’s in prison…

I enjoyed this book; it was much more than just the simple romance it seemed to be at first. Although I found Sorcha slightly bland, I thought Helen McCarthy was a great character and I veered between loving and hating her at various times throughout the book. Mostly I admired her for trying to get what she wanted out of life despite things not always going her way. There’s also a crime element to the story, which becomes stronger towards the end – my biggest criticism of the book is that this part of the plot is dropped for a long section in the middle – and although I easily guessed who the culprit was, I was kept in suspense wondering when and how they would finally be caught!

What I really loved about this book, though, is the portrayal of the 60s music scene. The novel takes us step by step through every stage of the Fishermens’ rise to fame, beginning with the formation of the band and choosing of the name, their first meeting with the man who would become their manager, and the difficulties they faced in getting signed to a record label. The complex and often tense relationships between the four band members are explored and it’s difficult not to think of the Beatles, with Con and Todd in the Lennon-McCartney positions as the band’s two main songwriters, Derek as an aspiring songwriter in his own right, struggling to make himself heard, and Ian as the happy-go-lucky drummer. If you enjoyed Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six, I think you’ll like the musical aspect of this novel, if nothing else!

I think there are one or two more Edmonds novels that haven’t been published yet, but I haven’t seen any news on whether Harry Whittaker will be reworking them as well. Of the books already available under the Riley name, I haven’t read Hothouse Flower or The Angel Tree yet, so still have those two to look forward to. I’ve also discovered that Harry has written his own book, Orlando, coming later this year.

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

The Cromarty Library Circle by Shona MacLean

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My experience of Shona MacLean’s work has so far been limited to her historical thriller, The Bookseller of Inverness, set in Scotland in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rising (and published under the name SG MacLean). Her newest novel, The Cromarty Library Circle, is very different – the only similarity is that it’s also set in Scotland.

Cromarty is a town in the Scottish Highlands, situated at the tip of the Black Isle. The story takes place in 1831, when a group of people get together to form a circulating library and discuss which books they should order for it. They’re a select group, referred to by the town clockmaker (who has not been invited, despite being better read than they are) as ‘the great and the good’. They include Sir William and Charlotte Mackenzie, the local laird and his wife; her best friend, Rachel who is married to the minister, Alasdair Mackay; the previous minister, Micah Fraser, now retired; the hotel keeper Mrs Cameron and her son Ludovic, who works in a bank; two spinster sisters, the Misses Rose; a newly arrived schoolteacher, John Learmonth; an antiquarian, Isaac Fordyce, and the owner of a rope factory, Willie Hossack.

If you feel overwhelmed by this list, I can tell you that there are even more characters – those outside of the library circle – who also play a part in the story. Maybe it would have been better if I’d read this book in physical form and could easily turn back to the character list at the beginning, but I read it on my Kindle and struggled to keep track of who was who. It didn’t help that we switch from one perspective to another every few pages, rather than being given time to get to know one character before meeting another. Once I eventually managed to settle into the book and keep the many residents of Cromarty straight in my head, though, I found a lot to interest me.

In terms of plot, not much actually happens in the first half of the book. MacLean takes her time setting the scene and introducing the characters, focusing on all the gossip, snobbery, rivalries and minor scandals that go along with being part of a small 19th century community with a clearly defined social structure. I was strongly reminded of Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. The drama is saved for later in the book, when the troubled marriage between Sir William and Charlotte Mackenzie reaches breaking point, the secret past of schoolmaster John Learmonth is revealed, and the people of Cromarty have finally had enough of the arrogant, bullying attitude of the ropemaker’s son, Farquhar Hossack. I was more invested in the story by this point, so I think, for me, it was worth persevering through the slow, confusing beginning.

The lives of the characters play out against the backdrop of wider political and social changes affecting Scotland and the world as a whole. One of these issues is the debate around the abolition of slavery; this is of particular significance to our story because Sir William owns a plantation in the Caribbean and another character, Hester, is a formerly enslaved woman from Demerara who now works as a servant at the Camerons’ hotel. There’s also a lot of discussion in Cromarty of the Reform Act about to be passed in parliament which will extend the right to vote (although still not to women or most working class men). Then there’s the cholera epidemic gradually moving closer and closer to Cromarty and we even hear about the recent Polish uprising against Russia through the character of Stanislas, the clockmaker’s apprentice. The novel touches on so many different things that I felt the library circle storyline got a bit lost in the background, although it serves its purpose of bringing the central group of characters together now and then.

I had a mixture of feelings about this book, then, but in the end I enjoyed getting to know the people of Cromarty. I’ll look out for Shona MacLean’s next book, but I still have one of her earlier ones, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton, waiting to be read.

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

The Lost Orphans of Lyon by Helen Parusel

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There are so many books set during the two world wars, it can be easy to think that you’ve read enough of them and don’t need any more…but I’m so pleased I didn’t overlook The Lost Orphans of Lyon. Although I’ve read other novels about the French Resistance, this one touches on aspects that were new to me, such as the role of the Huguenot community of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in sheltering hundreds of child refugees fleeing the Nazis.

Although the novel is inspired by real historical events, the story is told through the eyes of two fictional women. Yvette Dubois and her husband Armand have been married for just two weeks when they receive the news that Armand’s brother, Lucien, has died, leaving them to inherit his crumbling château and vineyard in the French countryside. Armand insists that he can’t leave his business in Lyon, so it falls to Yvette to take on the management of their new property. With only a hostile housekeeper for company, Yvette is annoyed at being abandoned so early into her marriage, but she soon finds a sense of purpose when she hears a knocking from behind a tapestry in the library. Pulling back the tapestry, she opens a hidden door to discover a young woman with two small children. It seems that Lucien was part of an escape network smuggling vulnerable children to safety in the nearby village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

To put things in context, it’s September 1942 and a large part of France is under Nazi occupation. The area around Lucien’s château has remained part of the ‘free zone’, but will soon become occupied as well. When Yvette decides to continue Lucien’s work, she knows how dangerous it will be – particularly when she learns that Armand is collaborating with the Germans.

Part of the book is also written from the perspective of Marie, a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in Chambon. Marie is in love with Pierre, a man who has joined the maquis – the band of armed fighters hiding in the countryside and working on behalf of the French Resistance. Determined to play her own part in defying the Nazis, Marie takes on the job of collecting the children at the other end of the tunnel from the château and bringing them to the village to be housed.

Yvette and Marie are both very engaging characters – two women from completely different backgrounds, but dedicated to the same cause. I liked both of them and was equally invested in each of the two narratives. This is a book I didn’t want to put down…and when I did have to, I couldn’t wait to get back to it! With the stakes being so high, there’s a real sense of danger throughout the novel (the Nazi characters are as horrible and brutal as you would expect) and there’s no guarantee that any of the people involved in the escape chain are going to survive.

As well as the storyline with the children, Yvette and Marie both have their own personal stories – Yvette’s discovery that her husband isn’t the man she thought she knew and Marie’s love for Pierre, despite the disapproval of her parents – as well as some subplots involving other characters, such as the servants at the château. I thought the balance between the historical and the personal was just about right, although other readers may prefer more or less of one or the other. Overall, though, I found this a vivid and moving portrayal of life in Occupied France.

This is the first book I’ve read by Helen Parusel. I see she has written three others dealing with the resistance movements in other parts of Europe, so after enjoying this book so much, I would definitely like to try another one. I just need to decide which one to choose next!

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

The Fourth Queen by Nicola Cornick

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The title of Nicola Cornick’s latest novel, The Fourth Queen, refers, as you may have guessed, to the fourth wife of Henry VIII – Anne of Cleves. However, although she does feature in the book, this is really the story of a fictional character, Marris North, the former prioress of Winterhill Priory, who loses her home and her position in 1539 due to the dissolution of the monasteries. When Marris falls in love with Sir William Sharington, the commissioner sent to oversee the closure of the priory, he finds new roles for Marris and her sisters at court in the household of the new Queen Anne (called Anna in the book). Sadly, Anna’s marriage is not a success and when she finds herself in trouble she approaches Marris for help in concealing a secret that could put them both in danger.

Like all the other Nicola Cornick novels I’ve read, this one also has a present day storyline and in this case it follows Jenna Bergin, a woman in her thirties who owns a bookshop in Wantage, not far from Winterhill Hall and the ruined priory. For as long as she can remember, Jenna has been able to remember a former life as Marris North, while her younger sister, Bree, also believes she is the reincarnation of Marris’s sister, Bridget. When Jenna learns that an archaeological dig is taking place at Winterhill, she becomes concerned that Anna’s secret is going to be uncovered after all these years – and she decides that she’ll do whatever it takes to stop that from happening.

I liked the portrayal of Anne of Cleves in this book; of all Henry VIII’s wives, she’s the one who tends to get the least attention, which is understandable as their marriage only lasted a few months before being annulled and was less dramatic than some of the others. She’s shown here as a kind-hearted, loyal, sensible woman who can also be naïve and unworldly at times. Her big secret is something that was rumoured at the time but there’s no evidence that it actually happened; if true, it could have changed history so it’s an interesting idea to explore in a novel. I also liked Marris but found her less convincing as a character as she seemed to adapt far too quickly to the loss of the priory and no longer being a nun. In case you’re wondering, Winterhill Priory never existed but is based on Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, which really was dissolved in 1539 and bought by Sir William Sharington.

In the modern day, Jenna shares a lot of Marris’s character traits and her relationship with Bree mirrors the one between Marris and Bridget. I haven’t mentioned yet that there’s a third sister: Molly, or Rose as she was in her former life. Although Molly is aware of her reincarnation, she doesn’t embrace it the way her sisters do and when you see how her story plays out, both as her present and past self, it’s easy to understand why. There are one or two other characters who also existed in both timelines, but I won’t give any more details as I don’t want to spoil too much (although you’ll probably guess one of them almost as soon as they appear). If you’re someone who doesn’t believe in reincarnation, you’ll need to just suspend your disbelief here and not ask too many questions!

This isn’t one of my favourite Nicola Cornick books, but when you’ve read a lot of an author’s books (this is my eighth) it’s inevitable that you’ll like some more than others. I did enjoy it, particularly the historical sections, and will be looking out for her next one.

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

Pixie by Jill Dawson

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I was drawn to this book first by the title and the cover, then I remembered that I’d read and enjoyed one of Jill Dawson’s other novels, The Bewitching, a few years ago. That book was about witch trials in the 16th century, but this one is on a very different subject: the life of Pamela Colman Smith, an important and influential artist in her time who has been largely forgotten today. Pixie was the nickname given to Pamela by the famous actress Ellen Terry and I’ll keep things simple by referring to her by that name for the rest of this review. The book is a work of fiction, but closely based on what we know of the life and career of the real woman.

Born in England in 1878 to American parents, we first meet Pixie as an eighteen-year-old living in Jamaica due to her father’s job. Her mother has just died and Pixie is heartbroken, particularly when she learns that she and her father will be leaving her beloved Jamaica behind to return to New York. At least she has her love of art to sustain her and when her father also dies a few years later, leaving her alone in the world, Pixie decides to travel to London to pursue her dream of becoming an artist.

In London, Pixie is taken under the wing of Ellen Terry and is introduced to the other actors, artists and writers who form her social circle, including Henry Irving, Bram Stoker, William Butler Yeats and his brother Jack Yeats. She works on stage design for the Lyceum Theatre group, writes and illustrates books on Jamaican folklore and attempts to start her own magazine, but even when she begins to have success as an artist, she struggles to get people to take her seriously. She’s forced to hear herself described as ‘strange’ and ‘odd-looking’ and to listen to speculation over her racial background; it seems that people are determined to find a way to label her, but all Pixie wants is to be accepted for who she is and regarded as the talented artist she knows herself to be.

I knew absolutely nothing about Pixie before reading this book, so I resisted the temptation to look her up online until I’d finished and just let the story unfold. Pixie’s biggest achievement and the thing she is probably most remembered for today is the 1909 illustrated Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck and the later chapters of the book concentrate mainly on this (the fact that for decades it was usually referred to as simply the Rider-Waite Tarot shows the struggle Pixie has faced in getting the recognition she deserves), but I also enjoyed learning about her other projects and interests outside of the art world. For example, she joins a secret society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and meets famous occultists such as Aleister Crowley.

Pixie’s personal life is also interesting to read about. Dawson strongly implies that she’s a lesbian and although that doesn’t seem to have been officially confirmed, it’s considered likely due to the fact that she never married, lived for twenty years with her companion Nora Lake, and was friends and, at one point, housemates with Ellen Terry’s daughter Edith Craig and her partner Christabel ‘Christopher’ Marshall. There’s also the question of Pixie’s appearance, which seemed to confuse everyone she met; although both of her parents were white, she was described at various times as Japanese, Jamaican or a Gypsy, and Dawson provides a theory to try to explain this.

I found Pixie a fascinating character. She’s given a distinctive narrative voice – naive, sensitive and almost childlike – which suits her personality perfectly without being irritating. I enjoyed getting to know her and am pleased Jill Dawson has chosen to write this book and give Pamela Colman Smith the attention she deserves.

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

A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer – #1961Club

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This week, Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book are hosting another of their clubs where we all read and write about books published in the same year – and this time it’s 1961! There are some authors who were so prolific you can usually rely on them to have had a book published in any given year and one of those authors is Georgette Heyer. Her novel from 1961 is A Civil Contract and it’s one I hadn’t read before, so I decided to read it for the club.

A Civil Contract is set, like most of her novels, in the Regency period and begins with Adam Deveril, the new Viscount Lynton, returning from the Peninsular War to find his family facing financial ruin. It seems that his father, who recently died, has left so much debt that the Deverils could have to sell Fontley, their beloved country estate. Adam is also forced to end his relationship with the woman he loves, Julia Oversley, knowing that a marriage between the two of them will no longer be considered appropriate. Julia’s father, Lord Oversley, however, has a possible solution to Adam’s money problems – his friend, Jonathan Chawleigh, is a very wealthy merchant and has a daughter whom he is determined to marry into the aristocracy.

Compared to the beautiful Julia, Adam finds Jenny Chawleigh plain and ordinary, but as he gets to know her better he quickly discovers that she’s intelligent, funny, sensible and kind-hearted. To Mr Chawleigh’s delight, the marriage goes ahead, with his daughter gaining the title of Lady Lynton, and in return Adam receives the money he needs to keep Fontley in the family and provide for his mother and sisters. It’s a practical marriage rather than one made for love and Jenny understands that Adam’s heart still lies with Julia, but the two are quite happy together – except on the many occasions when Mr Chawleigh interferes and becomes irritatingly over-generous with his money!

I enjoyed this book. It’s not as much fun as some of Heyer’s others – it’s a quieter, more mature novel, similar to Black Sheep, for example – but I liked the characters and the realistic portrayal of a marriage of convenience in that era. There’s no passionate romance here, just two people learning to get along together. I did feel sorry for Jenny, though, because she clearly loves Adam from the beginning and has to accept that he doesn’t feel the same way about her, at least not while Julia is still around. He does eventually start to see Julia in a slightly different light, but there’s still a sense that part of him will always love her and not Jenny. As a romance, then, the book is not entirely satisfying, but it’s believable.

We don’t really get the sparkling, witty dialogue between hero and heroine that we get in other Heyer novels, but there’s still some humour, mainly provided by Jenny’s father, Mr Chawleigh. He’s a wonderful character – he’s loud and overbearing, considered ‘vulgar’ by upper class society, but he’s also well-meaning and genuinely wants to use his money to make Adam and Jenny happy. I enjoyed watching his relationship with Adam develop as they come to understand and respect each other, despite some serious differences of opinion along the way.

So, I don’t think I would name A Civil Contract one of my absolute favourite Heyer novels, but it’s still one that I liked very much and a perfect choice to start my 1961 Club reading.